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Pro-Palestinian protests grow at UK college as Sunak seeks crackdown

Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024

Around thirty demonstrators continue their pro-Palestinian encampment for the third consecutive night as similar encampments have recently emerged on approximately 15 university campuses across the UK.

These student activists are urging their universities to divest from “Israel” in objection to its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. It is worth noting that divestment involves the selling off of stocks in Israeli companies or cutting financial ties in other manners. Additionally, they are demanding an immediate ceasefire in the besieged region.

Despite the peaceful demonstrations at Cambridge and various other UK campuses, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak convened with university leaders at his Downing Street offices on Thursday, reportedly attempting to prevent the surge of pro-Palestinian protests similar to those witnessed in the US in recent weeks.

In the same context, Sunak’s office extended invitations to vice-chancellors from several leading UK universities to address measures aimed at combating the “anti-Semitism” weapon of choice on campus.

As a part of these efforts, Sunak unveiled plans for the government to allocate an extra £500,000 ($623,000) to bolster the University Jewish Chaplaincy Service, aimed at providing support to Jewish students.

Accusations of a rise in antisemitism reflect a broader trend observed not only in the UK but also across Europe and the US. This trend appears to be part of efforts aimed at quelling pro-Palestinian student activism and uprisings on campuses.

It is worth noting that the charges of anti-semitism have been rampant in Western media in an attempt to silence pro-Palestine positions or any denunciation of the war on Gaza unleashed by the Israeli occupation.

Instead of upholding their students’ rights to peaceful protest and fostering an environment conducive to freedom of speech, the UK government opted to crack down on student demonstrators.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | 2 Comments

THE STATS ON PALESTINIAN TERRORISM — 2000 TO APRIL 2024

By Larry Johnson | SONAR | May 10, 2024 

I have completed the initial cleanup of the data posted on the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which lists all suspected Palestinian terrorist attacks during the 23-year, four-month period (i.e., 2000 to April 26, 2024). During this period, the Israeli Government identifies 672 terrorist attacks blamed on the Palestinians. Why do I phrase it like that? Because several of the incidents involve the discovery of dead Israelis with no identified attacker. Here is just one example:

Apr 30, 2013 – Evyatar Borovsky, 31, of Yitzhar, was stabbed to death in a terror attack at the hitchhiking post at theTapuah junction in the northern West Bank.

Maybe it was a terrorist attack or maybe it was a jealous husband. Listing this as a terrorist attack implies a degree of planning and intent that is not supported by the data.

Now here are the really interesting numbers. 105 of the attacks are attributed to Hamas. 58 to Islamic Jihad and 5 to Hezbollah. In other words, only 25% of the attacks are associated with a specific Palestinian group. The remaining 75% are blamed on nameless culprits. The total number killed by Palestinian violence during this 23-year-plus period is 1,455. That is the number of victims listed at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs site. And, as I noted in my recent article (Hamas is a Third-Rate Terrorist Organization), the Israelis killed 7,065 Palestinians during the same period of time. In other words, the Israelis killed almost five times the number of Palestinians. This may explain why the Palestinians carried out “terrorist” attacks — they were seeking vengeance, retribution.

I am not suggesting that Hamas was a benign actor. Hamas took credit for several bombings, such as the August 9, 2001 suicide blast at a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem. There is no excuse for this kind of mindless violence. If someone is wearing a uniform and carrying a firearm, then they are a legitimate target of war. That is insurgency, not terrorism in my view. Others may differ. Killing families sitting down for a meal is not only criminal, but evil. It is wrong when Hamas or Islamic Jihad do it and it is wrong when Israel drops a bomb on civilian housing and wipes out extended families. It appears that Hamas and the other Islamic groups concluded that such acts of violence were counterproductive because the last use of an explosive on a public gathering in Israel was July 18, 2012. It also is possible that Israel increased its security protocols making it more difficult for suicide bombers to infiltrate into Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

I have attached the spreadsheet to this article. I have not had time to thoroughly organize the data. For example, I would like to get the incident dates into a separate column. I want to identify how many of the victims were military versus civilian. I want to identify the specific group that claims responsibility for the attack. If any of you have the free time and the inclination (and the skill) to convert this database into something more useful as an analytical tool please feel free to take a whack.

Vilifying Hamas as an unrepentant international terrorist group is not fair nor accurate. They share more in common with Native American tribes carrying out attacks on European settlers in the 19th Century in America’s Wild West. It is violence spawned by a fight over land and freedom of movement. Hamas is not in the same category nor league as ISIS and Al Qaeda. Not even close.

One final point of reference. The number of people murdered in Chicago between 2000 and 2023 stands at 13,526. And we don’t call that terrorism. Israel has close to ten million people, while Chicago is a little more than one-fifth the size, with 2,665,000 in 2022. Just keep that in mind.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 3 Comments

Israeli military not a professional army; its ground incursions look like Daesh attacks

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024

The Israeli military’s ground assaults in the Gaza Strip have been punctuated by the discovery of mass graves, the publicizing of war crimes of occupation soldiers for fun, and a record of mass slaughter, human shield taking, and widespread torture. Although most modern armies have committed war crimes, the Israeli military does not operate like a professional force, but rather a collection of ill-disciplined racist militia groups.

On May 6, following the announcement by Hamas that they had accepted a ceasefire proposal, the Israeli leadership immediately struck down any prospect of a viable agreement being reached and its military began sending tanks toward Rafah, under a massive airstrike campaign. The first objective that the Israeli regime’s military sought to achieve was the capturing of the Rafah Crossing, situated roughly 3 kilometers from the separation barrier between Gaza and the rest of occupied Palestine.

While immediately shutting off Gaza completely, preventing aid trucks and civilian passage through to the Egyptian side of the border, the conduct of the Israeli soldiers was also important to pay attention to. According to the Zionist military, it was the Givati Brigade that was responsible for the storming of the Rafah Crossing. Instead of professionally carrying out their very simple task – driving tanks into an area that was not defended – they decided to film videos of themselves using their military vehicles to crush and demolish areas throughout the border crossing, which were shared online in order to brag about it. The crossing was desecrated, Israeli flags were flown in place of Palestinian ones, and, according to reports, around 20 workers at the crossing were either slaughtered or kidnapped.

The Givati Brigade is supposed to be some of the most well-trained in the Israeli army and is not like the reservists. They are also one of the two brigades that make up the Israeli Southern Command, which collapsed within an hour of the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7. What these forces were sent to do on May 6 was to violate the terms of the 1978 Camp David agreement, which normalized ties between Cairo and Tel Aviv, as they had entered the Philadelphia Corridor. Although the Egyptian client regime was not willing to declare this act of war a reason to throw away the Camp David agreement, the callous way in which the Zionist forces went about their de facto act of war against Egypt was telling.

The clear provocations by Israeli soldiers who decided to pull out their iPhones and film themselves destroying property for laughs at the Rafah Crossing are nothing new, however. Throughout the ground war in Gaza, Zionist soldiers have filmed themselves humiliating, beating, and posing with Palestinian civilians they have kidnapped. They also filmed themselves stealing property, smashing stores and homes, and defecating and urinating inside Palestinian houses, in addition to randomly blowing up buildings for fun. Israeli soldiers have also filmed themselves playing with women’s lingerie, even wearing it and dancing in it for videos, while hurling insults at Palestinian women. These soldiers then post these videos on social media to brag about their war crimes and sexually motivated actions. Perhaps the most voluminous archive of these videos has been compiled on the Twitter account of Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi.

Another common theme for the Israeli military’s forces is to go on their phones and film themselves for Tiktok Livestreams, which has even aided the Palestinian Resistance in pinpointing their locations on occasion so that they can carry out operations using short-range rockets and mortar attacks.

If it was just a few instances of Israeli soldiers doing this sort of thing, followed by strong disciplining action from their superiors, then it could be put down to individual actions. This is clearly not the case. Instead, this fits into a trend within the Israeli military that has been ongoing for years. The issue came to a head in 2018 in fact, during the non-violent protest movement in Gaza called ‘The Great Return March’, where Israeli soldiers would publish videos of themselves shooting unarmed civilians and breaking out into laughter, and then posting the video on social media. At that time, by observing the Israeli media’s commentary on it, it became clear that their soldiers do not listen to orders and will even help companies test their weapons on the battlefield, putting aside their standard-issue weapons.

The issue of whether an Israeli soldier has the right to do as he/she pleases emerged in a major way back in 2016. A soldier operating in al-Khalil for the occupation forces, named Elor Azaria, decided to pull out his rifle and shoot a Palestinian man in the head after he was already severely injured and lay on the ground. The incident was filmed, causing an international backlash and forcing the Israeli military to act. In the end, a large group of Israeli society rallied behind Azaria and supported him in his alleged “right” to slaughter Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, even protesting and creating a fundraiser for him. In the end, he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. He only served 9 months and exited to a demotion in his rank in the army, yet he was not kicked out of the military.

From Elor Azaria until now, this problem has only grown inside the Israeli military. The issue is that the Israeli military is composed of ill-disciplined soldiers who feel that they can behave in any way they choose. What the war in Gaza has revealed is that this issue is not just a growing problem, but is the culture of the Israeli armed forces. Even the ease with which Israeli soldiers are given high ranks is embarrassing and has created an environment for its soldiers of “participation awards”, enabling soldiers who are ill-prepared to be promoted and get to rule over other soldiers who have no idea what they are doing.

When you have a military force of this nature, formed of entitled ethnic-supremacists who feel like they can behave however they choose, it is a recipe for disaster when you send them into an urban warfare combat zone, densely populated by a civilian population they are indoctrinated to believe are inferior to them. Now add on top of this the religious supremacist element to it, where even the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling the people of Gaza “Amalek”, and it becomes clear why these ill-disciplined, entitled, racist, and ill-trained soldiers are carrying out a violent crusade against civilians.

This is why we see the Israeli military looting homes and businesses. This is why we see such mass scale torture, sexual humiliation, and even the rape of Palestinian women. It also explains why the Israeli military committed its series of what has been dubbed ‘Flour Massacres’, murdering over a thousand people who are waiting for food aid in various areas of Gaza, the worst cases being in the North of the besieged coastal enclave.

We have seen the evidence, presented at the International Court of Justice, showing Israeli soldiers chanting on films about their intention to kill “Amelek” arguing that there are no innocent civilians. The whole world has also seen drone footage of Israeli forces using their unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to launch targeted strikes on groups of civilians walking in open areas, in addition to drone footage clearly showing Israeli soldiers using human shields. The Zionist military even shot dead their own prisoners in the al-Shujaiyah neighborhood, while waving their shirts as white flags.

The mass graves that are being uncovered throughout the Gaza Strip produce evidence that civilians were buried alive, stripped naked, and tied up before being executed, with many even showing signs of torture and that they were chucked in black bags among garbage. There are also the two most prominent mass grave cases, revealed after the Israeli army withdrew from the Al-Shifa Hospital and the Nasser Hospital complex.

Women, children, elderly individuals, journalists, UN employees, doctors, civil defense teams, disabled people, and even foreign aid workers were all carelessly slaughtered in the most inhumane ways possible and even with precision weapons.

It is not only the case in Gaza, as in southern Lebanon there is the case of 7 volunteer healthcare workers who were murdered with a precision weapon that completely destroyed the ambulance center they were stationed at.

This is the method of the Israeli military, chaos and insane precision strikes on civilian targets. While many of the killings were clearly ordered up the chain of command when such war crimes are carried out at a pre-approved level, why would soldiers on the ground care about the laws of war? They clearly see that no law applies to them. They don’t even bother changing their tactics often either, an example of this being that the Palestinian Resistance has filmed its operations targeting soldiers who stand in the windows of occupied buildings. Throughout the entire ground war, we see videos of Israeli soldiers making this obvious and stupid mistake. In one case, it appears that an Israeli soldier was smoking marijuana out of a bong when he was killed by a Yassin warhead.

All the abovementioned is meant to say that an invasion of Rafah’s population center, where some 1.4 million displaced civilians are packed into a densely populated area, is understood to be such a major catastrophe because of the nature of what the Israeli military is. This is not a professional army, for the most part, the soldiers are unprepared for what they are sent to face. They are cowardly and trigger-happy, knowing that no consequences will come for opening fire randomly when they freak out. They also have the space to freely carry out their racially and religiously motivated desires by inflicting any pain on civilians that they see fit. The Israeli soldiers know that they will never be held accountable, maybe receiving a slap on the wrist being the worst-case scenario, so they commit unspeakable acts on a daily basis.

Instead of the Israeli military being referred to as an army, it would be more appropriate to call them a collection of ethno-supremacist militias. They do whatever they like and will never be held accountable, serving a population that also believes in their genocidal mentality. There are only three discernable differences between the Israeli militia forces and their Daesh counterparts: Daesh are more willing to die for their sectarian cause, the Israelis inflict much higher civilian death tolls, and they do it with the latest in modern military equipment that is in endless supply from their Western backers.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US contradictory report on Israeli arms: credibility vs. inconsistency

Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024

Between “credible and reliable” Israeli assurances that it will use US weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law, thus allowing for the further transfer of American arms to “Israel” amid its war on Gaza, and saying it was “reasonable” to assess that “Israel” did use US-supplied weapons that were “inconsistent” with its international humanitarian law obligations, the US seems lost for words when it comes to “Israel’s” use of its arms.

According to the American administration, the Israeli occupation has most likely violated international standards when it came to the protection of civilians in Gaza, the United States Department of State told Congress on Friday, as reported by The New York Times.

While the Israeli occupation is violating international standards, the US argued that there was no justification for withholding military aid.

The State Department report said the Israeli occupation “has the knowledge, experience, and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations.” However, “Israel” is still not being held accountable for not doing so.

“The results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” as to whether the Israeli occupation forces are making sufficient use of said tools, the report acknowledged.

Still, the report, in one of its many contradictions, said the US had no hard proof of Israeli violations in Gaza.

It underlined difficulties faced by Washington in collecting reliable information from Gaza, especially since the Israeli occupation was yet to share complete information to verify whether weapons it had been given by the US were used in specific incidents involving human rights violations.

Finally, somehow, the report differentiates between the broader potential for the Israeli occupation to have breached international law and drawing conclusions based on specific incidents that could substantiate what has been proven as factual time and time again.

For now, it seems that the Biden administration finds assurances given by “Israel”, i.e., mere word of mouth, that it would use US arms consistently with international law, sufficient.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

How Britain Sabotaged Ukraine Peace

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024

On April 16th, Foreign Affairs published an investigation, documenting in forensic detail how in May 2022 Kiev was a signature away from a peace deal with Russia “that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees,” which was scuppered by Western powers. The outlet attributes the failure of negotiations to “a number of reasons” – although it’s unambiguously clear the biggest was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson offering President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the blankest of blank cheques to keep fighting.

For two years, claims and counterclaims have abounded about these peace talks, initiated almost immediately after the conflict began, and why they collapsed. Independent journalists and researchers, the Kremlin, and some foreign officials involved, assert that a favorable settlement was within reach, only to be scuttled at the 11th hour by Western actors. By contrast, Kiev, its supporters, and proxy sponsors have strenuously denied that negotiations were ever taken seriously by either party, while claiming Moscow’s terms were completely unacceptable.

Foreign Affairs has now validated what anti-imperialists have consistently contended. Amicable peace could’ve been achieved in Ukraine at the earliest stages of the proxy conflict, on terms favourable to both parties. Western powers responsible for sabotaging negotiations in service of weakening Russia knew that all along. Yet, they kept this inconvenient reality consciously concealed until now, when the war is unambiguously an unwinnable lost cause for all concerned, bar Moscow.

Still, to have the truth confirmed by Foreign Affairs – an elite US journal published by the notorious, highly influential Council on Foreign Relations – is hugely significant, and the narrative threat posed is evident. Within hours of release, Polish think tank operative Daniel Szeligowski took to X to rubbish the investigation at length, reinforcing the established Western fable that negotiations could never have succeeded, due to Kremlin intransigence, and Ukrainian resolve, in the face of industrial scale Russian war crimes.

Such pushback is only to be expected. After all, Foreign Affairs has raised a number of troublesome questions about the proxy war. In particular, why it continues to grind on today at unsustainable human and financial cost for Kiev and its foreign sponsors. The investigation also confirms Western governments that pushed Ukraine into conflict with its neighbor and historic ally were completely unwilling to come to the country’s rescue, in the event Russia responded to their provocations.

Talks begin, major concessions offered

Foreign Affairs bases its investigation on multiple “draft agreements exchanged between the two sides, some details of which have not been reported previously,” and interviews “with several participants in the talks as well as with officials serving at the time in key Western governments.” It offers a granular timeline of events, “from the start of the invasion through the end of May, when talks broke down.”

Before then, Vladimir Putin and Zelensky reportedly “surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war.” This included peacefully resolving “their dispute over Crimea during the next 10 to 15 years.” Talks began four days after the invasion in Belarus, with President Aleksandr Lukashenko playing mediator.

Putin appointed a negotiating team led by Vladimir Medinsky, a senior adviser to the Russian president who previously served as culture minister. By his side were deputy ministers of defense and foreign affairs, among others. Kiev dispatched Davyd Arakhamia, parliamentary leader of Zelensky’s political party, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, and other senior officials. The individuals involved amply underlines how seriously negotiations were taken by both sides.

By the third round of talks, drafts of a peace treaty began to circulate. Many more materialized over subsequent weeks, as the two sides sought to overcome “substantial disagreements”, refining details face-to-face in a variety of international venues, and via Zoom. In brief, Kiev would accept various limits on the size of its Armed Forces, striking range of any missiles sited on its territory, and number of tanks and armored vehicles it could maintain.

Most crucially, Ukraine would implement the Minsk Accords, “renounce its NATO aspirations and never host NATO forces on its territory,” accepting permanent neutrality. In return for ensuring Russia’s “most basic security interests”, Kiev was free to pursue EU membership, and “security guarantees that would oblige other states to come to Ukraine’s defense if Russia attacked again in the future.”

Those guarantees could extend to “imposing a no-fly zone, supplying weapons, or directly intervening with the guarantor state’s own military force” – “obligations…spelled out with much greater precision than NATO’s Article 5,” Foreign Affairs observes. The outlet suggests this component was the undoing of negotiations, due to Kiev’s “risk-averse Western colleagues”:

“Kyiv’s Western partners were reluctant to be drawn into a negotiation with Russia, particularly one that would have created new commitments for them to ensure Ukraine’s security.”

Whitewashing Johnson’s Kiev visit

Foreign Affairs notes that Naftali Bennett, Israeli premier while the talks were ongoing, who was “mediating between the two sides”, has said that he “attempted to dissuade Zelensky from getting stuck on the question of security guarantees.’ He explained, “There is this joke about a guy trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a passerby. I said, ‘America will give you guarantees? It will commit that in several years if Russia violates something, it will send soldiers? After leaving Afghanistan and all that?’ Volodymyr, it won’t happen.’”

Of course, several of Ukraine’s “Western patrons” have sent soldiers to assist in the proxy conflict – most prominently Britain, which in January signed a wide-ranging “security cooperation agreement” with Kiev. Foreign Affairs references Boris Johnson’s visit to the country in April 2022, and how Davyd Arakhamia has claimed the then-Prime Minister “said we won’t sign anything at all… let’s just keep fighting.”

The outlet adds that “already on March 30, Johnson seemed disinclined toward diplomacy, stating that instead ‘we should continue to intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of [Putin’s] troops is out of Ukraine.’” So it was that he arrived in Kiev on April 9, “the first foreign leader to visit after the Russian withdrawal from the capital.” Johnson reportedly told Zelensky:

“Any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid… some victory for him. If you give him anything, he’ll just keep it, bank it, and then prepare for his next assault.”

Yet, Foreign Affairs downplays Johnson’s intervention, claiming allegations the British premier sabotaged negotiations are “Putin’s manipulative spin.” In support, the outlet notes how despite Moscow’s withdrawal from the northern front resulting in “the gruesome discovery of atrocities that Russian forces had committed in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin,” talks continued thereafter. The two sides worked “around the clock on a treaty that Putin and Zelensky were supposed to sign during a summit to be held in the not-too-distant future”:

“The sides were actively exchanging drafts [and] beginning to share them with other parties… the April 15 draft suggests that the treaty would be signed within two weeks. Granted, that date might have shifted, but it shows that the two teams planned to move fast… work on the draft treaty continued and even intensified in the days and weeks after the discovery of Russia’s war crimes, suggesting that the atrocities at Bucha and Irpin were a secondary factor in Kyiv’s decision-making.”

‘Bucha Effect’ leads to ‘frozen negotiations’

Bucha may have been a “secondary factor” in Ukrainian decision-making, but it wasn’t from the British government’s perspective. Unmentioned by Foreign Affairs, days before Johnson landed in Kiev, he boldly declared the alleged massacre of civilians in the town by Russian forces didn’t “look far short of genocide,” and “the international community – Britain very much in the front rank – will be moving again in lockstep to impose more sanctions and more penalties on Vladimir Putin’s regime.”

While a subsequent UN investigation failed to validate charges of genocide by Russia in Ukraine, once Johnson deployed the term, many Western officials followed suit. As a result, widespread public and state consent for keeping the proxy war going was very effectively manufactured across Europe and North America. To even speak of a negotiated settlement publicly became beyond the pale. Meanwhile, Britain’s shadowy, spook-infested Counter Disinformation Unit, which censors social media, began policing content related to Bucha online.

What happened in Bucha remains extremely murky. At the time, an anonymous US Defense Intelligence Agency official told Newsweek that civilian deaths could have resulted from “intense” ground combat over control of the town: “We forget two peer competitors fought over Bucha for 36 days, the town was occupied, Russian convoys and positions inside the town were attacked by the Ukrainians and vice versa.” They further warned the “Bucha Effect” had “led to frozen negotiations and a skewed view of the war”:

“I am not for a second excusing Russia’s war crimes nor forgetting that Russia invaded the country. But the number of actual deaths is hardly genocide. If Russia had that objective or was intentionally killing civilians, we’d see a lot more than less than .01 percent in places like Bucha.”

Such anxieties fell on deaf ears, although they reflect a broader resistance to escalating the proxy war on Washington’s part. In December 2022, the BBC reported that British officials were intensely worried about the “innate caution” of US President Joe Biden, “who is… concerned about provoking a wider global conflict.” A nameless state apparatchik revealed that London had “stiffened the US resolve at all levels”, via “pressure.”

Leaked material shows senior British military and intelligence officials leading London’s contribution to the proxy war are committed to challenging the “US position… firmly and at once.” One can only speculate whether incidents such as the Kerch Bridge bombing, which these officials secretly planned and helped Kiev execute – despite reported US opposition – were intended to escalate the conflict further, and keep Washington embroiled in the quagmire.

We are also left to ponder whether those officials played any role in the massacre of civilians in Bucha, whose names Ukraine refuses to release despite formal Russian requests. Kremlin apparatchiks, and Aleksandr Lukashenko, have claimed to possess evidence British special forces were responsible for the killings. None has emerged since, although why Britain prevented an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Bucha requested by Russia in April 2022 going ahead remains an open question.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Don’t confuse them with facts

By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 11, 2024

Extraordinary events are taking place in the streets of Tbilisi. Normally, agitated crowds should be demanding increased transparency in public affairs and access to all the facts they need to efficaciously exercise their civic duties. In Georgia, they want the opposite. The agitated crowd’s vociferous demand is for the facts to be withheld from them.

They are vigorously opposed to Parliament’s intention to enact a legal mechanism that would provide for the registration of foreign agents operating within the country. The legislation now before the Georgian Parliament, which a comfortable majority of the deputies support, would make available to the demonstrators and to all citizens of Georgia information about foreign financing sources of the “non-governmental organisations” that proliferate in Georgia. In that small country targeted for regime change by the collective West there are currently about 20,000 “NGOs,” a remarkable statistic by any measure. The demonstrators however adamantly refuse to know and they oppose that their fellow citizens should be allowed to find out what entities from abroad supply money and logistical assistance to those “NGOs.” Consequently, what they are actually opposing is public disclosure of the agenda those organisations promote and serve.

In simple terms, the demonstrators are saying, “Do not turn on the lights. We prefer to wander in the darkness and as in the current geopolitical confrontation our country is being strong-armed to take a stance disadvantageous to it we prefer that the Georgian government and the public should also roam in complete darkness.”

Briefly, the law that the protesters are objecting to, and which is on the verge of being passed by the Georgian Parliament, provides that if more than twenty percent of operating funds originate from foreign sources, Georgian “NGOs” must publicly disclose such a fact and identify the sources of their funding. This law has been mendaciously misrepresented by Georgia’s NGO sector and the collective West media and political institutions as the “Russian law.” But it is, of course, nothing of the sort. It does exhibit some commonalities with legislation passed by the Russian Duma several years ago that requires foreign agents in Russia to be registered, but the Russian law itself is but a translated copy/paste version of the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) that the US Congress had passed in 1938. The enactment of FARA is explained by reference to perfectly reasonable national security and democratic transparency concerns:

“The Foreign Agents Registration Act provides the public with an opportunity to be informed of the identity of persons engaging in political activities on behalf of foreign governments, foreign political parties and other foreign principals, so that their activities can be evaluated in light of their associations.”

To say that from the standpoint of democratic practice the Georgian demonstrators’ demands are merely counter-intuitive would be putting it quite mildly. Being mostly young, with access to the internet and presumably computer-savvy, these opponents of the Georgian transparency law can easily research the facts. Invincible ignorance is therefore a plea that these alert young intellectuals are precluded from invoking.

The interesting question is what could possibly motivate a large crowd of mostly young Georgians to assemble day after day in the streets of their capital and to even try to storm their Parliament in a show of revulsion toward perfectly acceptable legislation which, moreover, happens to be invested with the imprimatur of the world’s leading democracy?

In light of what we have already witnessed of the successful application of cognitive reformatting techniques not merely in Ukraine but over the years in Georgia as well, and in Armenia more recently, the answer is readily suggested. In the Ukraine, after years of persistent and amply funded perception-altering indoctrination (to the tune of five billion dollars, according to Victoria Newland) the Maidan putsch of 2014 became possible. Even if they were not the majority, a politically significant portion of the Ukrainian public were persuaded to open the gates to their country’s adversaries. They were successfully zombified to choose fairy tale promises made by the West over the tangible benefits that would have accrued from the proposed alliance with Russia and associated countries. The tragic outcome of the wrong choice that a politically illiterate nation made then is today plain for all to see.

A symmetrical process has been taking place in Georgia. Since the partially successful “Rose revolution” of 2003, Western special services and their ancillary agencies have had twenty years to fine tune their color revolution scenario and adapt it to Georgia’s unique conditions. To that end, thousands of “NGOs” were set up, abundantly funded, and turned loose to reformat the thinking of the traditionalist Orthodox society in Georgia.

The creation of an insular core of programmed local activists to promote collective West’s agenda whilst deceitfully cultivating the illusion that the work being done was entirely by domestic forces not beholden to foreign sponsors is a fundamental part of the game. Transparency with regard to the logistics and command and control of local activists would demolish that illusion. The local public would grasp that it is being misled and manipulated, and by whom. That is impermissible. Hence the frantic effort and the mobilisation of all available local assets against the registration law, to impede the Georgian authorities from efficiently addressing this paramount national security issue. The monetary investment and decades-long cultivation of pliant cadres must not be allowed to go to naught.

An excellent theoretical explanation of the subversive technology on full display in the streets of Tbilisi is the concept of the “Lesser nation” developed by Academician Igor Shafarevich in his insightful essay “Russophobia.” The “Lesser nation” is an elitist subculture ensconced within its larger host. It is specifically programmed to be alienated from the larger nation that surrounds it and to continuously vex it from within. Just as importantly, in response to the remote control signals emitted by its animators, it is configured to be aggressive, loud, and obnoxious. The Lesser nation’s self-awareness is shaped to counter-pose it to the larger community in which it operates, whose interests, values, and traditions it dismisses with disdain. But at the same time, in sovereign fashion it claims the right to rearrange that community’s affairs, treating it as mere human fodder for the achievement of the Lesser nation’s ideological aspirations.

Shafarevich makes observations whose pertinence will readily be recognised by all who have studied the technology of “color revolutions” and creation of local battering rams that are meticulously prepared in advance to ensure their success.

He points out that local operatives are inculcated with the “belief that the people’s future, like a mechanism, can be freely designed and restructured; in this connection [they are imbued with] a contemptuous attitude toward the history of the ‘Greater People,’ up to and including the assertion that it has not existed at all; the demand that the basic forms of life be borrowed in the future from outside and that we [must] break with our own historical tradition [in this case it is the demonstrators’ demand that Georgia sacrifice transparency to chimerical EU membership, thus affirming its commitment to “European values”];  the division of the people into an ‘elite’ and an ‘inert mass,’ and the firm belief in the right to use the latter as material for historical creativity; and finally, outright revulsion toward representatives of the ‘Greater People’ and their psychological makeup” [P.17].

Shafarevich diagnoses this phenomenon as “hostile alienation from the spiritual foundations of the surrounding world” [P. 37].

With regard to the gullibility of the preponderantly youthful recruits, Shafarevich points out that “in the face of this refined technique of brainwashing that has been tested in practice and improved through long experience, confused young people find themselves absolutely defenceless. For, after all, no one who might be an authority for them will warn them that what they are dealing with is simply a new version of propaganda, albeit a very toxic one, that is based on an extremely fragile factual basis” [P. 28].

“Thus,” he concludes, “logic, facts and ideas alone are powerless in such a situation … ” [P. 25].

In other words, they will not be confused with facts.

Time will tell what measures the Georgian authorities will employ to ensure the integrity of their country. Scott Ritter harbours no doubts that Georgia is targeted for “regime change” but he believes also that the current Georgian government are well aware of the fate their Western “partners” have envisioned for them and will react accordingly. Let us hope that in Georgia on both the governmental and popular levels sound judgment shall prevail, as in neighbouring Armenia it evidently has not.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

Britain At War-The Final Warning

By Christopher Black – New Eastern Outlook – 11.05.2024 

On May 26, 2023, I wrote an article titled, Britain At War-Provoking the Consequences, attempting to warn the people of Britain and the West that their role in the war against Russia makes them a direct party to the conflict and that, as a consequence, Russia has the right to attack them. It seems the warning has to be repeated because the British, along with the rest of the NATO alliance of aggression, have increased their direct role in the Ukraine conflict and are threatening to escalate the war further. In reaction, Russia has had to call in the British ambassador and issue another warning, likely the last one they will receive, that Russia will act against them if they continue to do all they can to attack Russia and its people.

Russia is no longer in a forgiving or tolerant frame of mind after the terrible attack on the Crocus Concert Hall, an act of sheer terrorism carried out by assets of the Kiev regime with the probable support of the UK and the US special services and with express approval of the western media which celebrated the attack as a demonstration of “Putin’s weakness.” That terrorist attack changed everything. Russia states it will go after everyone involved. The Western nations involved should believe them. But they evidently are incapable of thinking about their actions and the consequences.

This infantile and criminal attitude is maintained in all the NATO states, even through changes in the personalities making up their governments. In Britain, defence and foreign ministers change, but the thinking remains the same. In the US, the Democratic and Republican Parties, despite their squabbling over how to make “America great” are, in fact, a single War Party, and, as in all their wars, free speech and assembly are victims of police aggression against citizens.

In Canada, the same, though here the government has been assigned the role by Washington of slandering China for the purpose of making the Chinese people “the other” so that they can be attacked. The West prepares for general war. China and Russia are left trying to bring sense to insanity but are forced to act to defend themselves. Just days after the US Secretary of State, Blinken, abused his visit to China by threatening it about its relations with Russia, further hostile threats were made in the days after he left. President Xi then travelled to Europe to try to get them, at least the French, to see sense, with no concrete result, but in Serbia paid respects not only to their resistance against NATO but to the Chinese victims of the NATO attack against China in 1999 when NATO bombed the Chinese embassy.

Now, just a year after the Russian government warned the UK that its hostility towards Russia and its aggression against it in Ukraine will lead to severe consequences, prompting my earlier article, the UK has again been warned.

On May 6, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned both the British and French ambassadors in reaction to the bellicose statements of their governments against Russia. But for the British there was a special warning, which needs to be read, since it is not reported in the Western media, or only in part. The Foreign Ministry Press Release states,

“On May 6, UK Ambassador to Russia Nigel Casey was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to be delivered a strong protest against the recent statement by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron in an interview with the Reuters news agency regarding Ukraine’s right to strike Russian territory using British weapons. The Ministry firmly pointed out to Ambassador Casey that Cameron’s hostile outburst directly contradicts the British side’s earlier assurances during the transfer of long-range cruise missiles to the Kiev regime that they would under no circumstances be used to strike Russia’s territory. By doing so, the head of the Foreign Office disavowed this position and admitted his country was a de facto party to the conflict.

The ambassador was told that the Russian side considered Cameron’s words as evidence of a serious escalation and confirmation of London’s growing involvement in combat actions on Kiev’s side. Nigel Casey was warned that any UK military facilities and equipment on Ukrainian territory and beyond could be hit as a response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory with British weapons. The ambassador was urged to consider the inevitable disastrous repercussions of such hostile steps by London and to urgently refute in the strongest and most unequivocal manner the bellicose provocative statements by the head of the Foreign Office.”

We note further that the German ambassador to Russia has been recalled to Berlin, an ominous sign, though perhaps it was to provide an excuse not to attend the formal ceremony of President Putin assuming office. Most western ambassadors to Moscow refused to attend, though interestingly the French did, experts since the days of the Sun King and Napoleon in tricks and subterfuge.

But, on May 8th, the British, instead of reacting with reason and reflection, after receiving the Russian warning about their completely irrational hostility towards Russia, and direct role in the war against Russia, provoked the situation even further by declaring the Russian Defence Attaché in London to be persona non grata and threatening Russian owned diplomatic properties in the UK by removing their diplomatic status, indicating they may make a move to seize them. As I write this, we await Moscow’s reaction to this step. But we can anticipate that it will be one of contempt and will only confirm Russia’s resolve to act against them if the warning is ignored.

In conjunction with the Russian warning to Britain, Russia and Belarus placed their tactical nuclear forces in a state of readiness, as a warning to the West about directly sending in NATO forces and F16’s which will be considered to be nuclear armed, and so the bases from which they fly, legitimate targets. This action can also be viewed as a further warning to Britain.

The British people should be alarmed at the road the British government is taking them down. But they seem oblivious to the risks they face, and the antiwar movement is totally fixated on the Israeli massacres in Gaza, a worthwhile cause, another crime against humanity of the US and the West generally, but it will pale in comparison to what state the world will be in when Russia acts on its warning. I say “when”, not “if” as the British, along with the Americans, are incapable of understanding reality, and the British démarche of May 8th indicates that they will ignore the Russian warning and continue their escalation. They have committed themselves to the madness of war and nothing, it seems, can cure them, except war.

What Russia will attack, only the Russian General Staff knows. Logical targets can be found in the British base in Cyprus, and other foreign installations but the UK itself can be targeted. The British dismiss the possibility. The Russians would not dare. So they think; a delusion that will lead them to disaster.

The Russians have every right to act against the UK under international law since it is a co-belligerent in the Ukraine conflict. It could have acted against it before now, but the Russians have been very patient, and cautious, trying to avoid a general nuclear war. But, now, too many lines haven been crossed, too many warnings ignored, too may crimes against Russia committed.

And if the people of Britain think that they are protected against attack, I remind them that The National and Defence Strategies Research Group, based in the UK, stated in a report on Britain’s air defences in 2016 that,

“Since the withdrawal from service of the Bloodhound missile system in the 1980s, the UK’s Air Defence posture has diminished to mainly a homeland benign airspace policing and point defence posture for deployed forces. The UK no longer has a comprehensive, integrated, or robustly layered short to long-range Air Defence capability, nor a credible or enduring operational capacity.”

Nothing has changed since then, except to get worse. In other words, the UK is defenceless against modern Russian standoff weapons.

I can remember, as a boy, my mother taking me several times on a bus through London. It must have been 1955 or so and I can remember mile upon mile of burnt-out blackened buildings, as far as the eye could see, especially in east London where entire districts were levelled by German bombs. The country, despite its air force, could not stop the bombing and then missile attacks which went on for five years.

The British government assured the people before that war, that all would be well, that they would have peace in their time. But they lied to the people then, as they are lying to them now. Britain was never the same after that war. It never really recovered from it.

Once again, the British government, ever saluting the masters in Washington, leads the British people into a dangerous war, which they were never asked about, and which they do not want. It lies to them about the causes, it lies to them about the fighting, and it lies to them about the dangers they face, placing them in a distant future, and hides from them the consequences of its actions. The British people must be warned. Britain is at war, and no amount of bluffing and lying can protect them from the consequences their government is provoking. They are predictable and they will be catastrophic. They have received the final warning.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ukraine War

By William Schryver | imetatronink | May 11, 2024

The essay below was originally published in early July 2022. Version 1.0 of #TheMotherOfAllProxyArmies in Ukraine had been severely attrited, and Version 2.0 would not appear until later in the summer.

Nevertheless, it had already become very apparent that the Russian strategy and doctrine for this war was not at all what the vast majority of western military “experts” expected it to be. And consequently they lacked the capacity to understand what was happening.

For the most part, they still don’t get it.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million Ukrainians (and a few thousand NATO-affiliated “volunteers”) have been sacrificed on the altar of western hubris and military ineptitude. Vast quantities of western equipment and ammunition has been expended — to the point of near-exhaustion in European NATO countries, and acute depletion of American stockpiles.

And yet the doctrine and tactics described in this mid-2022 article have changed only in the sense that the Russians have consistently refined and improved them along the way, even as the US/NATO have effectively learned nothing.

I’ve watched a LOT of drone footage from this war. I’ve seen, from a bird’s eye view, as it were, the design of the field fortifications Ukraine constructed, with NATO guidance, over the course of eight years.

The logic of these miles and miles of fortifications harkens back to the 1864-65 Battle of Petersburg (US Civil War), with a few World War I innovations thrown in for good measure.

It is a logic where victory largely depends on you not running out of men, heavy weaponry, and ammunition — and the enemy being comparatively stupid.

In many ways, the revealed logic of Ukraine’s long-prepared strategy for this war is a reflection of American military delusions and vanities, which multiplied and solidified over the course of the brief and fleeting “unipolar moment”.

Despite not having won a war since 1945, the US military is consumed with the vanity that it has always dominated opposing forces in every conflict.

There is a measure of truth in this perspective. But it is irrelevant. Because, since no later than the Korean War, the US has not faced a peer or near-peer adversary in a high-intensity conflict. The US military has not been, for almost three-quarters of a century, truly tested “under-fire”.

The US has measured its battlefield mettle, for decades, against brave sandal-shod men with AK-47s, RPGs, and a certain savoir faire for constructing IEDs.

But they have never faced anything like Russian artillery or missiles – not even in Hollywood movies or video games.

Consequently, the Pentagon’s self-perception of unquestioned supremacy has served to disinform and corrupt its doctrinal and procurement decisions for multiple generations of its officer corps. For most US generals and admirals, all potential opponents are underestimated.

That said, I believe a great many have now been awakened from their intellectual slumber by the manner in which the Russian armed forces quickly assessed the Ukrainian order of battle, and then professionally adapted their strengths and tactics to decisively defeat it.

The Battle of the Donbass

Here is a brief summation of the Russian tactical approach to the Battle of the Donbass:

Step #1: Advance reconnaissance units (often in force, with dozens or hundreds of drones overhead) to assess the situation; draw fire; relay to commanders raw video and geo-coordinates.

Step #2: With target-correcting drone swarms overhead, relaying real-time strike video, proceed to savage the fortifications with towed and mobile artillery, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (in gradations of strength and precision), and even horrific thermobaric munitions for particularly suitable targets.

Let smoke clear.

Repeat Step #1.

Still something moving there?

Repeat Step #2.

Repeat Step #1.

Dead bodies everywhere?

Step #3: Send in tanks and infantry to mop up.

Move to next series of fortifications.

And so on and so forth …

This is why Ukraine now suffers hundreds of battle deaths every single day. And why, for months, the Russians have suffered very few casualties — likely as low as a 1:8 ratio, and quite possibly even lower.

Artillery, airstrikes, and precision guided munitions are doing almost all the fighting.

The Fatal Hubris of NATO War Strategy in Ukraine

But back to Ukraine’s apparent strategy for this war, and the apparent US influence on that strategy.

I will preface my commentary on this issue by stating that Ukraine’s fatal blunder was buying into NATO’s over-confident delusion that they (the Armed Forces of Ukraine) actually had a reasonable opportunity to defeat the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in a high-intensity conflict.

I initially believed NATO military leaders must have had a sober view, far in advance, that their half-million-strong, well-armed, trained-to-NATO-standards Ukrainian proxy army had almost no chance of prevailing on the field of battle against Russia.

But watching drone video of Ukrainian fortifications has convinced me the US military brain trust, in the course of their eight-year-long preparation of the eastern Ukrainian battlefield, effectively disdained the Russian military and its commanders.

Their vanity persuaded them the Russians would mindlessly smash themselves to pieces against an entrenched well-armed force.

Indeed, they were so confident of the genius of their plan that they persuasively encouraged many hundreds of now-killed or captured NATO veterans to “share in the glory” of humiliating the Russians and bringing down the Putin regime once and for all.

They deluded themselves into believing the Russians lacked strategic and logistical acumen, a sufficiently well-trained force, and – arguably the biggest miscalculation of all – sufficient stockpiles of ammo to conduct a protracted high-intensity conflict.

In short, I have come to believe US/NATO commanders actually persuaded themselves that this “Mother of All Proxy Armies” had an excellent chance to soundly whip the Russians in a battle situated in their own back yard.

In other words, they disregarded centuries of European history that they somehow convinced themselves had no relevance to their 21st century aspirations to defeat Russia militarily and take a great spoil of its resources.

But, as is now readily apparent to all objective, knowledgeable military analysts around the globe, the Ukrainian proxy army has been pulverized by a patient, methodical, and significantly outnumbered Russian force, using long-established Russian doctrines and tactics.

Even more revealing is that once-vaunted and universally feared US/UK weaponry – almost all of it actually rather antiquated – has proven to be far less “game-changing” than the pea-brained strategists in Washington and Whitehall mistakenly believed.

Javelins, NLAWs, and Stingers have been exposed as mostly ineffective against their intended targets (tanks, helicopters, and low-flying jets). M-777 howitzers break down after just a few fires. GPS-guided “precision” munitions are routinely jammed by Russian electronic warfare counter-measures.

Worse yet, the inculcation of NATO field doctrines in the minds of the Ukrainian officer cadre has resulted in pervasively inflexible responses to battlefield events that develop contrary to expectations. Consequently, discipline has disintegrated, and improvisation has been paralyzed.

To be sure, if one were to go by the laughable assessments of western think-tank propagandists and their dutiful lackeys in the media, “Ukraine is winning” and “the inept Russian military has been humiliated”.

But more discerning observers around the world know better.

Sober military men in potential adversary countries across the globe see with clarity that Russia has, with one hand tied behind its back, eviscerated the massive, relatively well-armed and well-trained Ukrainian military.

The US/NATO intimidation factor has been forever compromised.

More geopolitically significant, at least in the near future, is that European NATO members can also read the scorecard of this war: they now understand as they never could previously that standing on the NATO side of the field is hardly a guarantee of security.

I am convinced NATO will not survive the results of this war in Ukraine. Sure, they’ll “keep up appearances” for the time being, but there can be no doubt most now understand that siding with a rapidly declining empire is fraught with great risk and minimal gain.

More concerningly, the Chinese have been watching all of these developments with great interest. They are almost certain to be emboldened to act decisively to secure their sphere of influence in the emerging multipolar world.

Great dangers now await in east Asia …

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

CUOMO, MAINSTREAM REVERSE COURSE ON VACCINE INJURY

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | May 9, 2024

In a shocking turn, mainstream voices who censored and suppressed conversation around vaccine injury have reversed course, even calling for a “9/11-style tribunal.” Yet they’re “limited hangout” falls short of full accountability or vindication for the injured. Del has a message for Chris Cuomo.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment