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Pandemic Officials are “Disappointed in Themselves”, per the New York Times

By Igor Chudov | May 3, 2024

An article in the New York Times is titled “Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?” (no paywall)

The author, Apoorva Mandavilli, was correctly described by Vinay Prasad as the worst science reporter. She states her surprise about “thousands” who believe that Covid vaccines harmed them. While we know that number to be an understatement, it is interesting how the New York Times recognizes them after years of stonewalling.

But in a recent interview, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime leader of the Food and Drug Administration, who retired in February, said she believed that some recipients had experienced uncommon but “serious” and “life-changing” reactions beyond those described by federal agencies.

“I feel bad for those people,” said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were rolling out. “I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.”

FDA’s Dr. Woodcock is disappointed in herself:

“I’m disappointed in myself,” she added. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”

The article discusses thousands of people gaslit by vaccine promoters and their doctors, who were intimidated not to report vaccine injuries:

Similar sentiments were echoed in interviews, conducted over more than a year, with 30 people who said they had been harmed by Covid shots. They described a variety of symptoms following vaccination, some neurological, some autoimmune, some cardiovascular.

All said they had been turned away by physicians, told their symptoms were psychosomatic, or labeled anti-vaccine by family and friends — despite the fact that they supported vaccines.

Even some key vaccine promoters report vaccine injuries, which they could not report anywhere:

Dr. Gregory Poland, 68, editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said that a loud whooshing sound in his ears had accompanied every moment since his first shot, but that his entreaties to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the phenomenon, tinnitus, had led nowhere.

He received polite responses to his many emails, but “I just don’t get any sense of movement,” he said.

The federal officials in charge of setting the policy still refuse to believe these reports:

Federal health officials say they do not believe that the Covid vaccines caused the illnesses described by patients like Mr. Barcavage, Dr. Zimmerman and Ms. France. The vaccines may cause transient reactions, such as swelling, fatigue and fever, according to the C.D.C., but the agency has documented only four serious but rare side effects.

The excuse that these officials give for ignoring vaccine harms is that they were fighting misinformation :

The rise of the anti-vaccine movement has made it difficult for scientists, in and out of government, to candidly address potential side effects, some experts said. Much of the narrative on the purported dangers of Covid vaccines is patently false, or at least exaggerated, cooked up by savvy anti-vaccine campaigns.

Questions about Covid vaccine safety are core to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Citing debunked theories about altered DNA, Florida’s surgeon general has called for a halt to Covid vaccination in the state.

“The sheer nature of misinformation, the scale of misinformation, is staggering, and anything will be twisted to make it seem like it’s not just a devastating side effect but proof of a massive cover-up,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at Johns Hopkins University.

So, get this please, the massive coverup was necessary to debunk ‘“misinformation” about the existence of a massive coverup. I hope it makes sense to you, my dear reader!

They finally note miscarriages caused by COVID vaccines:

Among the hundreds of millions of Americans who were immunized for Covid, some number would have had heart attacks or strokes anyway. Some women would have miscarried. How to distinguish those caused by the vaccine from those that are coincidences? The only way to resolve the question is intense research.

Another way to get the alarm signal of miscarriages is to ask, why does the Moderna vaccine cause 42% more miscarriages, compared to the Pfizer vaccine.

Why Now?

Are we observing a paradoxical awakening of honesty among federal officials and vaccine researchers? Have Apoorva Mandavilli and her employer finally decided to come clean about Covid vaccines?

Did these dishonest people suddenly straighten their ways, after being paid millions in research grants, CDC vaccine promotion fees paid to the media, etc? As much as I hope people can improve, I doubt that explanation.

The most likely explanation is that:

  • Most vaccine-injured people are Democrats
  • Facing a tough election in 2020, the Democratic party is afraid that the victims of vaccines that their party promoted and that disproportionally affected their core voters, might divert their votes and vote for an anti-vax Democrat, Robert Kennedy.

That might explain a puzzling turnaround in reporting vaccine injury in major newspapers such as the New York Times.

May 3, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Police State Revealed: US Student Protesters Tracked and Spied Upon

A State trooper stands gurad near pro-Palestinian demomstrators at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas – © AFP / Suzanne Cordeiro
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 03.05.2024

Thousands of American students at pro-Palestinian rallies face increased surveillance and scrutiny from police and university authorities.

Pro-Palestinian college students in the US may encounter surveillance on campuses following their protests, according to Axios.

The media outlet warned that the extent that law enforcement agencies and universities use social media monitoring tools and facial recognition software is greater than the public imagines.

Over the past two weeks, more than 2,000 protesters have been arrested due to close cooperation between law enforcement officers and university authorities. Citing Albert Fox Cahn, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s (S.T.O.P.’s) founder, Axios noted that police and universities have a long history of security cooperation, which includes sharing campus video footage, students’ geolocation, and social media posts.

US educational institutions have also mastered surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, installing all sorts of surveillance tools and apps for public safety. For instance, some installed automated license plate readers while others reportedly used state law enforcement’s facial recognition databases.

As per the media outlet, at least 37 universities have been clients of Social Sentinel (also known as Navigate 360), a US technology firm that tracks students’ social media behavior with a declared aim of preventing self-harm or violence on campuses. It turned out that the technology has also been used to spy upon student protesters since 2015, according to a 2022 journalist investigation.

In addition to abusing students’ privacy, various artificial intelligence tools could mislead their users. For example, facial recognition applications are prone to errors, especially when it comes to non-white individuals. That could lead to potential misidentification, with little to prevent officials from inadvertently or intentionally abusing the technology.

Columbia University, which has recently emerged as a focal point of student protests, has been a target for police that tracked student groups since at least 2006, according to the Associated Press.

There is fear that participants of student movements could face continued surveillance by law enforcement agencies post-graduation. US college and university students appear to be aware of the potential threat: many wear masks and other face coverings to avoid identification during the protests.

May 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Starbucks continues to feel weight of global boycott over Gaza war

MEMO | May 3, 2024

Starbucks continues to feel the weight of global boycott campaigns over its support of Israel’s war in Gaza which has claimed the lives of over 34,500 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children.

The coffee chain announced a sharp decline in global sales; the worst since the pandemic, which resulted in its share price dropping to a 21-month low. Starbucks reported a 15 per cent drop in net income (to $772 million) compared to this time last year.

Global boycott campaigns have also forced the company to lower its profit forecast for the fiscal year 2024 as the performance of its cafes is expected to remain weak in the near future.

“In a challenging environment, this quarter’s results do not reflect the strength of our brand, our capabilities or the opportunities ahead,” CEO Laxman Narasimhan said in a statement.

The company has been trying to counter what it describes as “ongoing false and misleading information being shared about Starbucks” online.

In October, Starbucks sued Workers United, which has organised workers in at least 370 US Starbucks stores, over a pro-Palestinian message posted on a union social media account.

Starbucks said it was trying to get the union to stop using its name and likeness as the post also drew protests from pro-Israel demonstrators.

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Starbucks has seen a continual drop in sales and profits as a result of its actions.

May 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Anti-Semitic Awareness Bill Direct Attack on Free Speech

By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 03.05.2024

On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed the HR 6090 Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which would encode the definition of anti-Semitism defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance into the 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin.

The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act would legally define criticism of the government or state of Israel as an act of anti-Semitism, and should concern every American, regardless of their views on Israel.

“It would be as if you could not criticize US capitalism, and if you were to do so, you would be considered to be a bigot,” Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of history at the University of Houston told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday. “Indeed, I think that you should correctly sense a whiff of what befell the United States in the 1950s with the so-called ‘House un-American Activities Committee’.”

Speech that the bill would define as anti-Semitic includes “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel [than the US], or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”

In October, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) wore an Israeli Defense Force uniform, the same uniform he wore while serving in Israel’s military. That led some to question where his loyalties lie, an accusation that would be deemed anti-Semitic under this law.

It also would define “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” as anti-Semitic. Many pro-Palestinian advocates argue that having a country specifically designed for a group of people, in this case, Jews, is in itself a racist act, just as a country only for white people, Christians or any other group of people would be.

The bill would also ban “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy of that of the Nazis,” which is a comparison many are making after seeing the images coming out of Gaza which has been described as a Genocide by multiple human rights organizations, heads of state and protesters.

It would also ban the “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” a definition so broad, that it could be used to shut down any criticism of Israel that the government determines the speaker has not applied to another country.

Similar laws have been enacted in Europe and have had a chilling effect.

In France, two individuals were arrested for wearing shirts to a grocery store that read “Boycott Israel, Free Palestine” and handing out pro-Palestine flyers on the bus.

In Germany, a German-Israeli activist was arrested for holding a sign that read “As a Jew and Israeli, stop the genocide in Gaza.”

“Europe’s experience with similar laws shows why this [bill] would be a mistake.” Jacob Mchangama, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression posted on X on Thursday.

“It’s part and parcel of what can fairly be considered [a] sort of thought crimes,” Horne warned. “There are going to be thought police who are going to ferret out these alleged offenders of these thought crimes.”

There have been several laws passed in states across the US that attempted to ban boycotting Israel, they have all been shot down by federal courts as unconstitutional, and the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is sure to face a similar challenge if it passes but there is no guarantee how the courts will rule.

“Israel wields a great deal of power in the United States. All you have to do is look at the bill that passed today to see what opinions you are allowed to express and what opinions you are not allowed to express,” explained award-winning journalist and former lawyer Glenn Greenwald on his show on Wednesday. “Therein is the proof of the people and the countries who occupy and exert the greatest power and they have now used that power to formally attack the free speech rights of American citizens in some of the most glaring and explicit ways that I’ve ever seen.”

Later on Thursday, Senate leadership attempted to fast track the bill but were denied by members who oppose the bill, but that won’t be the end of it. “We’re going to look for the best way to move forward,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters.

May 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Legal experts debunk Israeli, US claims challenging ICC jurisdiction

Anadolu Agency | May 3, 2024

For days now, there is growing speculation that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is poised to issue arrest warrants against top Israeli officials for the ongoing war on Gaza.

Most of the hype has been fuelled by Israel itself, first with regular reports by Israeli news outlets about increasing apprehension among the top brass, followed by direct statements from Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, attacking the ICC and urging his Western allies to pressure the Court.

Another tactic employed by Israel and its supporters, particularly the US, has been to question the ICC’s power and jurisdiction to act against Israeli officials.

Spokespersons for the White House and US State Department have explicitly conveyed that the US does not believe the ICC has jurisdiction to move against Israel, specifically because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the international treaty that forms the basis of the ICC.

Legal scholars, however, have refuted these assertions, stressing that Israel not recognising the ICC or not being a signatory to the Rome Statute does not have any impact on the Court’s powers.

The ICC has been leading an investigation since 2021 into potential war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian groups dating back to 2014. The probe has grown to include ongoing attacks in the war in Gaza.

“Palestine is a state party to the ICC, and the ICC has accepted that it has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” Gerhard Kemp, a professor of criminal law at the University of the West of England Bristol Law School, told Anadolu.

The ICC also has jurisdiction over crimes committed by Palestinian nationals outside the Territory of Palestine, for example in Israel on 7 October, 2023, he said.

“The short answer is that there is not much that Israel can do to challenge the ICC jurisdiction over the alleged crimes committed in Palestine,” he explained.

Another legal expert, Mark Kersten, asserted that the ICC is able to “very clearly, logically and legally exercise jurisdiction in this case.”​​​​​​​

The ICC has territorial jurisdiction on Palestine, which it understands as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, he said.

First, this means it has jurisdiction over any crimes committed by citizens of Palestine, so it has the power to act against Hamas members for the 7 October attacks, even though most of it happened on the territory of a non-state party, Israel, he said.

“Second, it has jurisdiction over any crimes committed on the Territory of Palestine … which means it has jurisdiction over any Israeli authorities who have committed mass atrocities, international crimes in Gaza or the West Bank,” explained Kersten, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of the Fraser Valley in Canada.

‘Attempts to interfere, undermine and threaten ICC’

In the current situation, Kersten said the ICC is facing immense pressure from various countries, including Israel and the US.

“There’s definitely ongoing political pressure … I think pressure is probably too soft of a term. I have no doubt that various states are effectively threatening the ICC with certain consequences,” he said.

“There are definitely ongoing attempts to interfere, undermine and threaten the ICC. It is up to the ICC Prosecutor and, indeed, to a certain extent the judges, to withstand that.”

On Friday, Prosecutor Karim Khan’s office issued a sharply worded statement asserting that “all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence (ICC) officials must cease immediately.”

“Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offence against the administration of justice under Article 70 of the Rome Statute,” read the statement, without mentioning any cases or countries.

Kersten pointed out that pressure tactics are “nothing new” for the ICC, with both the US and Israel having previously threatened the Court.

The administration of ex-President Donald Trump even “issued sanctions against the Prosecutor and certain other ICC staff, as well as threatening to sanction their families,” he recalled.

“We have seen US policymakers and lawmakers say the same, that they would support literally sanctioning the only independent permanent international criminal tribunal in the world,” Kersten added.

What happens if warrants are issued?

According to the swirling reports, the Israeli leaders who could soon be facing ICC warrants include Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli military chief, Herzi Halevi.

If warrants are issued, all 124 countries that are state parties to the ICC are obligated to act.

“If an arrest warrant is issued against Netanyahu, he cannot legally step onto the territory of Germany or the UK or Canada,” said Kersten.

Being ICC member states, these countries will be obligated under both their own laws and also international law “to arrest and surrender Netanyahu to the ICC”, he said.

Non-state parties, however, do not have that obligation, he added.

On a potential timeline, Kersten said the ICC has often released “some of its most important and most significant decisions … at around 4 p.m. Hague time on a Friday, when the media isn’t really covering these issues.”

As for the possible basis of the warrant, he said it could be “about the issues of starvation or the denial of aid to Gaza,” adding that these are points “the Prosecutor has spoken about repeatedly, especially since 7 October.”

Kersten also believes that any warrant against Netanyahu would be “unsealed” and publicly announced, citing past examples of warrants against Russian President, Vladimir Putin, or Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

However, there have been instances in the past where ICC judges have accepted the Prosecutor’s request to issue sealed arrest warrants, he said.

These can then be unsealed in “a moment of vulnerability for the accused, for example, during travel to a member state of the ICC,” he added.

“Then, all of a sudden, that state has the obligation to catch the accused and surrender them to the ICC, in this massive kind of surprise moment,” said Kersten.

For someone as high-profile as Netanyahu, the expert reiterated that he does not believe a “sealed arrest warrant” is likely.

“It would be diplomatically inappropriate to issue a sealed arrest warrant for the head of a government … or a defence minister,” he said.

Complementarity challenge

While Israel has no standing when it comes to questioning the ICC’s jurisdiction, the one thing it can do is challenge the admissibility of any case in which warrants are issued on the basis of complementarity, according to Kemp, the Bristol Law School professor.

“This is because the ICC has complementary jurisdiction, meaning the ICC can only try a case if a national criminal justice system with jurisdiction over the matter is either unwilling or unable to try the case,” he said.

When Israeli nationals are accused of war crimes in Gaza, if Israel can show that its own courts will prosecute them “in a genuine prosecution and not a sham trial, then the ICC will stand back and will let Israel proceed with the case”, he explained.

“Of course, the ICC will evaluate the situation with reference to all the available facts,” Kemp added.​​​​​​​

May 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Inside story of mass graves at Al-Shifa and Al-Nasser hospitals in Gaza

By Robert Inlakesh | Press TV | May 3, 2024

“Everywhere you walk there are graves, decomposing bodies or potentially people buried under the rubble”, a resident of northern Gaza’s al-Rimal neighborhood told the Press TV website, describing mass graves at two of the largest medical complexes in the besieged coastal territory.

The discovery of hundreds of mass graves at the Nasser and al-Shifa hospital complexes, where United Nations (UN) officials reported that bodies were “buried deep in the ground and covered with waste”, has led its officials to call for an international probe into the horrors being uncovered.

So far, some 400 bodies have been recovered at the Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, while around 300 bodies have been discovered at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The deceased include “older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes,” said the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani.

While the Israeli military downplayed reports about mass graves as “baseless and unfounded”, it made the mistake of admitting to having dug up bodies that had been previously buried, in the process of trying to explain away the irrefutable evidence documented.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that “the presence of urinary catheters or splints, which were found to be still attached to some of the dead patients’ bodies during the exhumation process, as well as medical files that were buried with them in Al-Shifa Medical Complex, confirm the execution of ill and injured people.”

The Switzerland-based rights group also reported that some of the “victims’ decomposing bodies were found in several places, with some having been run over by Israeli bulldozers which left their bodies torn into pieces” and that Israeli forces had been using Palestinian civilians at al-Shifa Hospital as human shields.

Gaza’s civil defense also called for help in forensic examination to find out more about 20 bodies that they believe were buried alive.

First-person account of Al-Shifa horror

Palestinian journalist, Motasem A Dalloul, who is based in northern Gaza, was one of the first on the scene to witness the aftermath of al-Shifa Hospital and had to reach the area on bicycle as the roads were too severely damaged for vehicles.

Press TV website spoke to him around an hour after he finished documenting the horrifying scenes in and around the coastal territory’s largest hospital complex.

Describing the scene upon his arrival at the scene of the hospital, he said that “the Israeli invasion resulted in the destruction of an area of 1000 meters around al-Shifa Hospital.”

“Homes, schools, mosques, in addition to the actual hospital were all destroyed. I saw everything, I saw unprecedented destruction and as I arrived there, I went to the main gate of al-Shifa Hospital and as I walked forward I saw that it was blocked with the burned remains of two destroyed ambulances and so I entered through a hole in the wall beside it,” he told the Press TV website.

Dalloul then described the scenes of destruction upon entering the hospital’s grounds:

“I found all the buildings were affected. The main building, which included the reception and the surgery department, was completely destroyed. The special surgery building, which included the ICU and the operation rooms and the patient beds, was completely destroyed,” he narrated.

“It had not collapsed but was destroyed from the inside and completely burned. I then went through the other buildings, walking through the maternity ward and the cancer treatment facility which were, in addition to the administrative building, everything was either partially or completely destroyed, or burned out.”

The Palestinian journalist based in Gaza painted a graphic picture of mass graves that were discovered at the prominent hospital that is now lying in ruins due to Israeli bombings.

“If you enter the medical complex from the East to the West, on your right-hand side there is a mass grave. I saw parts of bodies on the surface of the soil. I saw decomposing hands and parts of heads. When I counted the number of bodies that were visible, I counted that around 15 people were visible in this mass grave,” he explained with unutterable grief and sorrow.

“I saw bodies of people who were either killed or executed inside the buildings and around the yards of the hospital.”

‘Hospital is gone forever’

Dalloul said that when he spoke to Dr. Marwan Abu Saada, the director of al-Shifa Hospital’s ICU department, he was told that it would take 10 years to rebuild such a facility and that the “hospital is gone forever”.

He added that Dr. Saada was in tears while he was explaining the extent of the unprecedented damage at the hospital that remained in the news for several weeks due to the military siege.

Since then, the ICU department director has publicly appealed to the international community to launch a probe into the Israeli military siege, death and destruction at the al-Shifa Hospital.

Press TV website was also told about the horrifying cases of children searching for the remains of their grandparents, parents and siblings – an unimaginable situation for anyone to go through.

Press TV website contacted Motassem again, around a week later, to update us on the work done by professional teams sent to exhume bodies that were lying in mass graves at al-Shifa Hospital.

He told us that there was an urgent need for supplies at the time in order to help identify the bodies.

On the day the Israeli military withdrew from al-Shifa after weeks of siege, there were bodies of children, women and men that were left in the streets, many of which were already decomposed or badly mutilated by tanks and bulldozers, so the only way to identify the dead was from their clothing.

A harrowing case reported by Mondoweiss, during the aftermath of the Al-Nasser Hospital invasion, confirmed that the process of identifying the bodies in mass graves was similar to what occurred at al-Shifa.

A 51-year-old man named Ayman, who visited the hospital with his wife and one of his sons, was left searching through “a pit of bodies buried, cut up” that were in pieces and left scattered amongst bags of garbage, stating that his son “was wearing the blue wool sweater.”

“I bought it for him. I know everything he wears and can identify him by his clothes,” he said.

A Palestinian man, pleading anonymous, who was seeking shelter at the Al-Nasser Hospital complex, but left before Israeli forces stormed and occupied it, said he wasn’t at all surprised.

“They used drones to shoot at us if we moved, many were killed like this every day and when the tanks came we chose to leave because it was not safe. Everyone knew that the Israelis would kill many, including many of the medical staff and they still stayed to perform their jobs,” he told the Press TV website.

“We remember the bravery of the doctors and medical staff, they were heroes and the Israelis don’t care for human lives. Look what they did at every hospital, at schools, at our homes. They killed people holding up white flags, the mass graves are not just at the hospitals, they are everywhere and the death toll is so much higher than we are told I am sure.”

13,000 still missing, likely buried

Important to note is that although two of the largest mass graves that have been discovered to date are those outlined here, yet there are around 13,000 Palestinians still missing and buried in the rubble throughout the Gaza Strip.

In January, 50 bodies were discovered at the Khalifa Bin Zayed elementary school in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia, a school being used for shelter by displaced refugees, while another 30 bodies were discovered dumped in black bags amongst garbage at the Hamad School; the bodies were decomposing but showed signs of torture and many were found with their hands and feet bound.

Israel is also known for holding the dead bodies of slain Palestinians, with various reports stating that when they were returned to their families, their organs were missing.

This even prompted the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor to call for an international inquiry into the seizure of bodies and possible organ trafficking.

Amongst the abuses that have occurred at the Nasser Hospital and al-Shifa Hospital are the deprivation of food, water and medical care to the sick and injured; in addition to various forms of torture, arbitrary executions and even sexual violence.

The United Nations recorded at least two cases of Israeli soldiers raping Palestinians in February, yet, after countless allegations of rape and other forms of sexual violence, again, there has been no international probe into these credible reports.

With the discovery of the mass graves at the al-Shifa and Nasser medical complexes, there is an urgent need for international, independent probes into the conduct of the Israeli regime’s ground forces, believe human rights experts.

The mass graves are only part of the gruesome series of massacres but should be a turning point due to the sheer scale of murdered and mutilated bodies found, they state.

May 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Yemen expands front against Israel to include Mediterranean Sea

The Cradle | May 3, 2024

The Yemeni armed forces announced on 3 May the start of the “fourth phase” of escalation against Israel and in support of Palestine, threatening to target Israeli-linked ships “anywhere within our reach.”

Sanaa highlights in a statement that the attacks, which have successfully locked Israel out of the Red Sea, will expand to the Mediterranean Sea. Earlier this year, the Yemeni armed forces expanded the scope of their pro-Palestine operations to include the Indian Ocean, severely affecting the Israeli economy.

Friday’s statement from the Ansarallah-led government also warns Tel Aviv against launching their assault on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, saying that, with immediate effect, any ships “linked to the provision of supplies and entry into the Palestinian ports under occupation” would be subject to “severe penalties.”

The statement stresses that these ships will not be allowed to “sail through the area of military operations, regardless of their destination.”

The escalation by Yemen was made public by armed forces spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree, who made the announcement in front of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis who continue to gather in the capital every week to show their support for the Palestinians in Gaza.

Since mid-November, Yemen has maintained a naval trade blockade against Israel. The armed forces’ operations remain mostly unaffected despite an illegal US bombing campaign and the heavy militarization of the Red Sea by NATO countries.

“We didn’t necessarily expect this level of threat. There was an uninhibited violence that was quite surprising and very significant. [The Yemenis] do not hesitate to use drones that fly at water level, to explode them on commercial ships, and to fire ballistic missiles,” Jerome Henry, the commander of France’s Aquitaine-class FREMM frigate Alsace, told Le Figaro last month.

Ansarallah leaders have repeatedly stated that the Yemeni operations will continue until Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza comes to a stop and a lasting ceasefire is implemented.

In the face of its failure to deter Yemen, Washington recently offered the country “an acknowledgment of its legitimacy” in exchange for its neutrality in the war on Gaza.

“[Washington] pledged to repair the damages, remove foreign forces from all occupied Yemeni lands and islands, and remove Ansarallah from the State Department’s ‘terrorism list’ – as soon as they stop their attacks in support of Gaza,” according to Yemeni sources who spoke exclusively with The Cradle.

The offer also included “severely reducing” the role of the Saudi-appointed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) and “accelerating the signing of a roadmap” with the Saudi-led coalition to end the nine-year war that has decimated Yemen.

May 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

Iran’s Israel Strike Reshapes West Asia Forever

By Kit Klarenberg | Active Measures | May 3, 2024

On April 13th, Iran, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s AnsarAllah, executed Operation True Promise, a vast wave of drone, cruise and ballistic missile strikes on the Zionist entity, launched in retaliation to Tel Aviv’s criminal bombing of Tehran’s Damascus embassy less than two weeks earlier, which killed two Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) generals. As a result, history was made, and the world – in particular West Asia – will never be the same again.

Iran’s first ever strike on the entity, following decades of provocations, escalations, assassinations, incendiary threats, and determined lobbying for U.S.-led war against Tehran by Tel Aviv officials, the effort targeted airbases, Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ, and a constellation of air defense systems. The U.S., Britain, and France scrambled jets to help shoot the vast payload down – unsuccessfully – while Jordan controversially permitted Western powers to use its airspace for the purpose. The entity claimed a 99% interception rate.

However, extensive photo and video material shows many missiles hit their targets, and wrought much damage. In the process, Iran demonstrated to Tel Aviv and its Western backers a hitherto unknown ability to circumvent layer upon layer of protective measures, including top tier fighter jets, NATO-supplied air defense systems, and the much-vaunted Iron Dome. One by one, they largely failed in their duty, leading to the astonishing sight of Iranian missiles soaring unmolested over the Knesset.

This righteous scene no doubt sent untold chills scouring around Western and Israeli corridors of power, searching vainly for spines to run up. It also dispatched a palpable message – Tehran could, if it wished, have struck the Zionist legislature, but didn’t do so. For the time being, at least. The floor was now Tel Aviv’s, to decide whether – and how – to retaliate. A response came on April 19, in the form of pre-dawn drone sorties across Iran.

Initially framed by Western media as hugely impactful, in reality a small swarm of Israeli quadcopters attempted to breach Tehran’s air defenses, but ultimately couldn’t. An Iranian spokesperson subsequently referred to the effort as “failed and humiliating.” This characterization surely applies more widely to the pathetic state to which Tel Aviv has been reduced, following Operation True Promise’s seismic success. As we shall see, the Zionist entity now has little time remaining, and no good choices left to make.

‘New Equation’

Despite its astonishing optics, and unprecedented nature, some West Asian observers were disappointed that the attack on Israel wasn’t a decapitation. Such perspectives overlook the Islamic Republic’s longstanding commitment to caution. Devastation of Tehran’s Syrian embassy was without historic parallel, and clearly concerned with eliciting a major escalation, in order to drag the U.S. into total war. A measured, well-advertised show of strength deterred wider response, while signaling a major shift in Iranian policy towards the entity. IRGC commander Hossein Salami has said:

“We have decided to create a New Equation, and that is if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point we will attack against them.”

Those are fighting words, and Operation True Promise plainly demonstrated they can be backed with action. Iran has shown it can strike the entity directly from its own soil, its fleets of missiles and drones capable of traveling thousands of kilometers over both friendly and hostile airspace, separate timezones, and multiple countries. Along the way, Tehran will have gleaned an enormous amount of invaluable intelligence on the defensive capabilities, and vulnerabilities, not only of Israel, but the local Western infrastructure upon which its defenses depend.

Any future Iranian strike would make the most of whatever was learned on April 13th, and the data yield was likely enormous. Since Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began in February 2022, defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached extraordinary levels – and intensive learning and on-the-go refinement of battle strategy is core Russian military doctrine. As a nameless Ukrainian Army officer bitterly told Politico on April 3, Western weapons systems sent to Kiev “become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians”:

“For example, we used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully – but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.”

If there’s a next time too, Iran’s missile and drone fleet is likely to be considerably more sustained, playing out over several days, weeks, or even months, wave after wave, burst after burst. Estimates suggest around 300 separate projectiles fired at the entity during Operation True Promise. Largely unsuccessful attempts to repel the blitz by Tel Aviv alone cost $1.08 – 1.35 billion, according to an Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) general.

“One Arrow missile used to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile costs $3.5 million, while the cost of one David Sling missile is $1 million, in addition to the sorties of aircraft that participated in intercepting the Iranian drones,” they told local media. Meanwhile, an Israeli think tank researcher calculates the costs “were enormous”, comparable to what Israel spent during the entire 1973 Arab/Israeli war, which lasted almost three weeks.

Those sums were spent on missile interceptors, missiles, jet fuel, and other military equipment and infrastructure. It is uncertain how much Iran spent on the Operation, but it is undoubtedly orders of magnitude less. Some sources have suggested $30 million, which could well be accurate. This massive cost discrepancy is a very, very grave issue for the entity, as the U.S. can attest, given its embarrassing experiences attempting – and completely failing – to end AnsarAllah’s anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea.

Almost immediately, Politico reported that the Pentagon was aghast that it was squandering missiles costing millions to shoot down $2,000 AnsarAllah drones. “That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor,” a CIA officer lamented. “We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.”

‘Israel Goes Under’

There is no sign publicly yet of Washington having rectified this concern, which may account for why US officials at the start of April offered AnsarAllah a sweeping offer of total surrender in return for ending the Red Sea blockade, which was rejected. But in the event of a subsequent Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, Tehran’s Shahed drones will not be used to deter shipping, but tie up, smoke out, and exhaust the entity’s air defenses.

This tactic was used to significant effect on April 13th, as it has been by Russia since its airstrikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure began in late 2022. Now, Kiev is on the verge of being de-electrified, which will cause a battlefield and population displacement, with potentially devastating knock-on effects on neighboring countries, and states trying to keep Kiev’s lights on. It seems safe to say neither Israel nor its Western allies could sustain a serious defense to a protracted assault by Tehran, economically or materially.

That conclusion is supported by an April 22nd Wall Street Journal report, which revealed the Biden administration was shocked at the scale of Iran’s barrage. It “matched worst-case scenarios” outlined by U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, an unnamed senior official despairing, “this was on the high end… of what we were anticipating.” White House Situation Room attendees on the day allegedly feared Israel and its allies would not be able to repel the assault. And they couldn’t.

On top of a mass crime against humanity amounting to a 21st century Holocaust, the entity’s genocide in Gaza has been utterly destructive to its own economy. A Financial Times investigation of November 6th 2023 documented how the assault has ravaged personal finances, job markets, businesses, industries, and the Israeli government itself. “Thousands” of companies were teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis. One in three businesses had either shuttered or were operating at 20 percent capacity.

The race to escape Israel

One can imagine how much worse things have gotten in the six months since, and Israel isn’t yet embroiled in an all-out war. An extended period of mass strikes from Iran, AnsarAllah and Hezbollah could completely paralyzse the entity economically, render entire areas of the entity uninhabitable – or, at least, uninhabited – destroy infrastructure, and much more. Among the infrastructure in Tehran’s crosshairs could well be the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would unleash deadly chaos on a grand scale.

Resultantly, the entity’s “Samson Option”, under which it is committed to launch a mass nuclear strike if its existence is threatened, should no longer be taken very seriously. Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld once boasted, “we have the capability to take the world down with us, and I can assure you that will happen before Israel goes under.” But Tehran’s hypersonic missile capabilities are in every way an effective counter-deterrent. They could even deliver a nuclear, or chemical/biological payload of their own.

‘Whoever Moves’

The Zionist entity’s Iranian drubbing is further exacerbated by its attempt to crush Hamas being an absolute disaster, in every conceivable way. The fiasco’s consequences are and will remain wide-ranging and grave, to the extent of fatal. This may account for Netanyahu’s flailing bid to draw Tehran into all-out war. After all, the scale of Israeli Occupation Forces’ defeat is such that in an absolutely scathing op-ed for Haaretz on April 11th, Zionist “journalist” Chaim Levinson lamented:

“We’ve lost. Truth must be told… It’s unpleasant to say, but we may not be able to safety [sic] return to Israel’s northern border… No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership’s weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we’re a shtetl with an airforce, and that’s on the condition it’s awakened in time.”

Even the Western media, which since the genocide began has been at best silent and at worst complicit – and much more active in the latter sphere than the former – has acknowledged Tel Aviv’s battlefield cataclysm. The Economist, a nakedly Zionist publication that has whitewashed, diminished, or outright justified every conceivable crime committed by the IOF, has condemned the Forces’ “military and moral failures”, and how “its generals botched the strategy, and discipline among troops has broken down”:

“[Israel is] accused of two catastrophic failures. First, it has not achieved its military objectives in Gaza. Second, it has acted immorally and broken the laws of war. The implications for both the IDF and Israel are profound… Hamas fighters are still ambushing Israeli forces throughout Gaza and the group is reasserting itself in areas the IDF has left… Accusations that Israel has broken the laws of war are plausible.”

An Israeli Occupation Force psychopath

The Economist went on to slam a “lack of enforcement” of already virtually non-existent “rules of engagement” under which the IOF operate. A “veteran reserve officer” was quoted as saying commanders could arbitrarily “decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist or that buildings should be destroyed.” A sapper in another unit admitted, “the only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”:

“Soldiers have filmed themselves vandalising Palestinian property and, in some cases, put those videos online. On February 20 the IDF’s chief of staff published a public letter to all soldiers warning them to use force only where necessary, ‘to distinguish between a terrorist and who is not, not to take anything which isn’t ours – a souvenir or weaponry – and not to film vengeance videos.’ Four months into the war, this was too little, too late.”

That The Economist printed such things at all reflects how far the Zionist entity has fallen since October 7th. Now, it is a global pariah, viscerally loathed by the overwhelming majority of the world’s citizenry. Its once-vaunted military is not feared by adversaries, and their ability to unilaterally strike Muslim countries with total impunity, and no comebacks, is over. Tel Aviv’s claim to “defense” and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.

Meanwhile, the entity has suffered population collapse, with concomitant mass brain drain and workforce freefall as settlers flee or get conscripted. Demand for mental health services has reached all-time highs, as the trauma of perpetrating genocide, and living under the daily threat of attack as Palestinians have since 1948, ravages soldiers and civilians alike. But scores of psychiatrists have relocated elsewhere due to stressful workloads, and likely won’t return. Such are the foundational flaws of a settler colonial state.

For many, these developments may be little consolation, coming as they do off the back of thousands of murdered and mutilated Palestinian children. Yet, they are unambiguous indicators that the Zionist entity is on the brink of extinction, which wasn’t the case before Hamas breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls on October 7th 2023. Palestine is now closer to being free than at any point since Israel’s creation. And there is no going back to “normal”.

Refaat Alareer

Time is now and forever on the side of the indefatigable, undefeated Resistance – so too justice, and virtue. We should never forget the immortal, galvanising words of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, slain in cold blood by a targeted IOF airstrike on December 6th 2023:

“If I must die, let it bring hope.”

May 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Drone hits passenger bus in Russian border region – governor

RT | May 3, 2024

A drone struck a passenger bus on Friday morning in one of the villages in Russia’s Belgorod Region, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has said. He later reported that another UAV hit a car in the same settlement.

The attacks happened in the village of Voznesenka, located not far from the border with Ukraine, Gladkov wrote on Telegram.

According to the governor, an FPV drone had targeted a passenger bus which was being used to transport the employees of one of the local firms.

A driver and two passengers were inside the vehicle at the moment of the attack, he said.

“As a result of the explosion, one person was injured. The man suffered a barotrauma and a bruise to his right arm,” Gladkov said.

A few hours later, the governor reported another UAV attack in Voznesenka, saying that a kamikaze drone had struck a parked car in the village.

“There is one victim. A man with shrapnel wounds to his back and upper and lower extremities was rushed by ambulance to the regional clinical hospital,” he said.

The targeted car suffered “serious damage,” while three more vehicles were hit with shrapnel. Windows were also blown out in a nearby building, the governor said.

In the town of Shebekino in Belgorod Region, a kamikaze drone also struck a gas station; the explosion set one of the gas storage tanks on fire, Gladkov said.

No one was injured in the incident, the governor stressed, adding that the emergencies services have arrived on site.

Also on Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that five Ukrainian drones had been destroyed by air defenses above Belgorod Region and one more above Crimea overnight.

The Russian regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk, all of which border Ukraine, have been the targets of numerous Ukrainian missile, mortar and drone attacks since the outbreak of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. The strikes have targeted energy infrastructure and residential areas, resulting in civilian deaths and injuries, as well as the destruction of property.

May 3, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment