Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Is the West Fanning Euromaidan-Style Public Protests in Georgia?

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 16.05.2024

The US, EU and NATO have slammed the newly-passed foreign agents law in Georgia, while the foreign ministers of Iceland, Lithuania and Estonia took part in protest rallies against the legislation in Tbilisi. Sputnik’s pundits called these actions foreign meddling in Georgia’s affairs.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis expressed support for the “European” aspirations of Georgian protesters at a protest rally in Tbilisi on May 15.

“In a democracy, the government owes it to you, the Georgian people, to follow the direction your moral compass is showing,” Landsbergis told the crowd. “I am speaking out because I am… on the side of a European Georgia.”

But Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, the secretary-general of the ruling Georgian Dream party, called their actions hostile and aimed at dividing Georgian society.

“This is not friendship, this is enmity, this is an attempt to deepen polarization in our country,” Kaladze told the Rustavi 2 TV channel. “Could you imagine our minister of foreign affairs going to Yerevan and speaking at an [Armenian] opposition rally?”

Direct Foreign Interference in Georgia’s Affairs

It was not the first time that Lithuanian officials have fanned public protests in a foreign state, according to Dr. Eduardas Vaitkus, Lithuanian politician who was an independent candidate in the 2024 Lithuanian presidential election.

“This is direct interference in the internal affairs of the sovereign state of Georgia,” Vaitkus told Sputnik.

Vaitkus cited earlier precedents for Lithuania’s meddling in the domestic affairs of Ukraine and Belarus. Vilnius has spent millions of euros supporting Belarusian self-declared opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, backed by the West, who advocates for a coup d’etat in Minsk.

He recalled that the Lithuanian foreign minister’s grandfather, then-European Parliament member Vytautas Landsbergis, was spotted during the 2013 Euromaidan events in Kiev calling for a wider revolt in Ukraine.

“Unfortunately, this is the position of the Lithuanian state. My opinion is that traitors in our state are leading Lithuania in a way that creates a threat to all residents of Lithuania,” Vaitkus said.

The politician condemned the Lithuanian government’s “double and triple standards” in its unwillingness to recognize the will of the Crimean people to reunite with Russia — while rushing to embrace the self-declared independence of Kosovo alongside the West.

“Politics must have moral values. And [the Lithuanian government] demonstrates that duplicity is its main imperative in foreign policy,” Vaitkus said.

Russian Senator Konstantin Dolgov believes that Vilnius’ political agenda is not independent, but is dictated from the West.

“What can you expect from Lithuania and Estonia? These are countries that have long lost their independence and have become ‘appendages’ of Washington and Brussels,” Dolgov said, arguing that foreign ministers Iceland, Lithuania and Estonia could be sent by their Western patrons to fan unrest in Georgia.

Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Dmitry Polyansky noted that the foreign ministers’ presence at Georgian protests is reminiscent of US and European politicians’ conduct during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan unrest in Kiev.

US Trying to Exert Pressure on Georgia as Its Hegemony Wanes

The US, EU and NATO have criticized the newly-passed foreign agents bill in Georgia, with US Assistant Secretary of State Jim O’Brien announcing on May 14 that Georgian MPs could be subjected to sanctions for “undermining democracy”.

While attacking the bill, which obliges Georgian media and NGOs to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive over 20 percent of their funding from abroad, US policy-makers avoid mentioning that the Georgian legislation is reminiscent of the US’ own Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

FARA requires individuals acting on behalf of foreign governments, organizations or persons foreign to the US to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and to disclose their relationship, activities, receipts, and disbursements in support of their activities.

Under to US law, such individuals are described as “foreign agents” while the FARA Unit of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES) is responsible for the Act’s enforcement.

The fierce US opposition to the Georgian bill under the guise of the “protection of democracy” and sanctions threats is an attempt to keep Tbilisi in line with the collective West’s agenda, according to Tiberio Graziani, chairman of Rome-based think tank Vision and Global Trends.

“The so-called defense of democracy, as promoted and implemented by the US-led West, falls within the context of the hybrid, cognitive and psychological war against those countries considered enemies, for geopolitical and geostrategic reasons,” Graziani told Sputnik.

“Any [country] that attempts to operate and act in the international context to responsibly promote the defense of its national interest is demonized by the US. Examples of this practice include, just to give a few examples, the so-called color revolutions,” he continued.

The US is believed to be behind a series of color revolutions in the former Soviet Union, including the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and the failed Jeans Revolution in Belarus in 2006.

According to the expert, the threat and use of sanctions against foreign politicians pursuing national sovereignty constitutes a form of long-term US hybrid warfare.

Now that the world is becoming multipolar, the US is feeling the loss of its role as hegemon and could act irrationally with dramatic consequences for the rest of the world population, Graziani warned.

May 16, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK Army Unit Labeled Accurate COVID Reporting as “Malinformation”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 16, 2024

More details are coming out about the Covid-era activity of the UK army unit, the 77th Brigade, which the country’s government used to spy on citizens, suppress dissent around issues related to the pandemic, and flag content for social media sites to label or remove.

The unit, said to be of the psyops (“psychological operations”) variety, carried out a series of controversial and even suspected unlawful activities over this period of time, although in early 2021, the UK government flat-out denied it was involved in “any kind of action against British citizens.”

But a batch of subsequent responses to freedom of information requests, including those filed a year later by the Big Brother privacy-promoting NGO, tell a different story.

Perhaps it’s hardly the fault of the 77th Brigade that it spread disinformation while saying it was fighting it, or that it was among agencies that came up with the idea to get government censors to infiltrate social platforms – after all, the unit was set up in 2015 for the purpose of conducting “covert (online) warfare and subversion campaigns.”

The more pertinent question may be why the UK government decided to rely so heavily on the military (the country’s air force, RAF, was also involved) in order to monitor and censor people’s discussions about things like masks, lockdowns, vaccines – and why these soldiers were instructed to turn on their fellow citizens.

Either way, it did, and it was: In one example early in the pandemic – March 2020 – Guardian reporter Jennifer Rankin tweeted that both UK and EU sources had confirmed the former was not a part of the EU’s PPE procurement project.

The military was quick to label this as “malinformation” – apparently the “code word” for making sure the government is perceived positively regardless of whether reporting/content is accurate. In Rankin’s case, it was.

Big Brother Watch researcher Jake Hurfurt writes about this and cites a whistleblower who revealed how the 77th Brigade managed to bypass legal rules around using the army to monitor dissent at home.

“The leading view was that unless a profile explicitly stated their real name and nationality, which is, of course, vanishingly rare, they could be a foreign agent and were fair game to flag up,” the whistleblower is quoted as saying.

But there’s another way the authorities worked around “the problem,” Hurfurt explains: “As in the United States, UK government officials insist that the flagging of social media content by officials was legal because the officials were just making suggestions, not demanding censorship.”

May 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

US: Ilan Pappe interrogated by FBI at Detroit Airport

MEMO | May 16, 2024

Prominent Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, known for his strongly anti-Zionist views, has revealed that he was subjected to a two-hour interrogation by the FBI upon his arrival at Detroit Airport on Monday. During the ordeal, US security officials recorded everything on his phone. The 70-year-old professor, who has long been a vocal critic of Israel in his speeches and books, took to social media to share his experience.

In his statement, Pappe described the questioning as “out of this world,” with the two FBI agents asking him about his alleged support for Hamas and whether he considered Israel’s actions in Gaza to be genocidal. “They asked me what I believe is the solution to the ‘conflict’ (seriously, this is what they asked!),” wrote Pappe, expressing his disbelief at the nature of the questions.

The professor said that he was interrogated about his personal connections, with the agents inquiring about his Arab and Muslim friends in America, the length of their relationships, and the nature of their interactions. Pappe responded by directing the agents to his published works in some instances, while providing brief “yes” or “no” answers in others, citing exhaustion after an eight-hour flight.

He also mentioned that the FBI agents engaged in a lengthy phone conversation with an unidentified party, which he speculated could have been an Israeli official. Following the conversation, the agents copied the contents of his phone before allowing him to enter the country.

Despite the troubling nature of the interrogation, Pappe believes that such actions by the US and European countries, taken under pressure from pro-Israeli lobbies or Israel itself, are indicative of “sheer panic and desperation” on their part. He believes that these reactions are a response to Israel’s increasingly tarnished reputation, which he predicts will soon lead to the country becoming a “pariah state”.

Prof. Pappe’s experience comes after recent incidents where Palestinian academics, including the Rector of Glasgow University, Ghassan Abu Sitta, were denied entry to France and Germany. These events have raised concerns about the treatment of individuals critical of Israel’s policies and the influence of pro-Israel lobbies on foreign governments.

May 16, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | 2 Comments

Palestinian journalist killed in Israeli air strike in northern Gaza

Palestinian Information Center – May 16, 2024

GAZA – An Israeli air strike on Jabalia in northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday night killed the journalist Ha’el al-Najjar and a number of his family members.

Local sources said that at least one missile was fired at the journalist’s house.

Thus, the number of journalists killed in the Israeli aggression on Gaza, ongoing since October 7 last year, rose to 144, according to data provided by the Government Media Office.

The Office had also documented the arrest of at least 20 journalists in Gaza by the Israeli occupation forces in the same period.

May 16, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

USAID whistleblowers accuse Biden of ‘direct complicity’ in Gaza famine

The Cradle | May 16, 2024

Current and former officials from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department say the White House has ignored months of internal warnings about the spread of famine in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to an in-depth investigation by the Independent.

“I believe the US to be complicit in creating the conditions for famine. Not only has our response been woefully inadequate, but we’re actively responsible in large part for it,” a USAID employee told the British daily.

Internal documents reviewed by the Independent show that staffers have repeatedly warned USAID administrator Samantha Power and other senior leaders about the intensifying crisis in Gaza “often to no avail.”

“What was surprising to me, and deeply disappointing, was the fact that we were hearing nothing about imminent famine in Gaza,” a USAID staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, is quoted as saying.

According to the investigation, at least 19 internal dissent memos have been sent since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza by USAID staff, with one of the most recent ones chastising the White House for its “failure to uphold international humanitarian principles and to adhere to its mandate to save lives.”

In an internal dissent cable leaked to HuffPost in early April, officials warned that “the threshold to support a famine determination has likely already been crossed” and that the level of hunger and malnutrition in Gaza was “unprecedented in modern history.”

“Having worked in the administration during the Afghan withdrawal and also the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so many efforts were spearheaded and led, and normal procedures were bypassed given the urgent humanitarian situation. [In Gaza], however, it has been a totally different ballgame. There are systemic issues with how we issue Palestinian cases,” a homeland security official told Responsible Statecraft earlier this week.

“Any kind of initiative to expedite help for Palestinians has been blocked or quelled or slowed down dramatically in a way that I’ve never seen before … As the months dragged on, it became evident that the dissent channels that the State Department likes to tout are about placating staff more than actually listening to those with deep regional and policy expertise and making changes,” the 15-year federal employee added.

Furthermore, the USAID whistleblowers who spoke with the Independent described Washington’s public proclamations of doing all it can to stop the spread of hunger as “very disingenuous.”

“I don’t believe that the President of the United States – Israel’s most important ally and benefactor – has so little leverage that he can’t force them to take meaningful steps to really allow in the amount of aid that is necessary to save lives. It feels like there was no real effort to force Israel’s hands in terms of ensuring greater access to humanitarian assistance,” the US officials say.

Jan Egeland, the Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a humanitarian organization with dozens of aid workers operating in Gaza, told the British daily that there is a “double standard” from the White House when it comes to Israel.

“The administration could have [pressed Israel to cease its aid restrictions] through the application of Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits assistance to countries restricting US-funded humanitarian assistance; it could have done so through the withholding of arms shipments; it could have done so by supporting resolutions at the UN calling on Israel to stop restricting humanitarian assistance,” Egeland says, stressing that Washington’s “diplomatic impotence has been astounding.”

Dozens of Palestinians – most of them children – have died from starvation as hundreds of thousands are living under conditions of “full-blown famine” in the north of the enclave.

Despite the critical situation, the Israeli army has routinely blocked the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Moreover, mobs of Israeli settlers regularly attack the small trickle of aid deliveries headed for the strip, destroying the food and attacking truck drivers.

On 16 May, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced that it ran out of stock in southern Rafah and had suspended food aid distributions there since 11 May. As conditions worse, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on Thursday it had anchored a floating pier off the coast of Gaza that will allegedly allow for limited aid deliveries.

Speaking to the Independent, Jeremy Konyndyk, a former high-ranking USAID official, described Washington’s plan as a “major policy failure.”

“When the US government has to use tactics that it otherwise used to circumvent the Soviets in Berlin and circumvent ISIS in Syria and Iraq, that should prompt some really hard questions about the state of US policy,” he said.

May 16, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

In Slovakia, the lone gunman strikes again

By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 16, 2024

The “lone gunman,” that cartoonish figure that for the last several decades – at least since November 1963 – has regularly framed most high-profile assassinations, has struck again, this time in disobedient Slovakia. He always pops up whenever his presence is required to warn misfits and discipline even team players who are inattentive to their tasks.

The assassination attempt on the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico fits that pattern. Fico’s political record going back for decades may have provoked a measure of distrust in globalist circles. However, his electoral victory and return to power in the fall of last year probably would have been treated as a manageable challenge had Fico been rotten enough to act as his colleagues routinely do, saying one thing before elections and doing the opposite afterwards.

He has, instead, turned out to be a man true to his word, certainly quashing any rumours that he had ever been recruited as one of WEF’s Young Leaders. At a critical juncture for the globalist string-pullers, when being a cooperative team player is considered de rigeuer, he chose to go off the beaten path with other outcasts like Victor Orban and to champion old fashioned values, such as Slovakia’s national sovereignty.

Fico however did not just insist on Slovakia’s sovereignty, which would have been bad enough, but also on other despised notions, equally discredited in present-day Europe: Statehood, Nationhood, Religion, and Family. It is his adherence to those values, once the cornerstone of the European civilisation before its cultural implosion, that made Fico a lone gunman target.

But to these shortcomings several other, no less bothersome and also potentially life threatening faults, should be added. Over the last several months, as Project Ukraine was turning into a shipwreck, Fico defiantly refused to allow military aid for the Kiev regime, called for cancelling anti-Russia sanctions, and repeatedly expressed the prohibited notion that Ukraine will be defeated.

As if that were not enough, there is more. In a long-forgotten tragedy in 2006, a Slovak aeroplane mysteriously crashed whilst flying back from Kosovo. On board, in addition to Slovak peacekeepers, there was a most interesting cargo. Slovakian specialists and forensic experts were involved in the exhumation of several mass graves in Kosovo where Serbian victims had been buried and they were bringing the evidence back home. It turned out that many of those victims exhibited thorax incisions which strongly suggested that they had been used as unwilling organ donors by Albanian traffickers. Readers whose memory is still unimpaired will recall the controversy about human organ extraction and trafficking in Kosovo that raged at the time, culminating in the incriminating 2010 report on this topic submitted to the EU by Swiss investigator Dick Marty.

The Slovak team handed a set of the evidence it had unearthed to NATO, of which Slovakia had by then become a member. But just to make sure that their findings would not disappear in some NATO black hole, they took the precaution of carrying an extra set home with them. That evidence was on board the aeroplane that inexplicably crashed and it perished along with about 40 Slovak personnel whose mouths concerning their gruesome findings in Kosovo were thus forever sealed.

As custom ordains in such situations, a hasty and superficial investigation was conducted by Slovak authorities, its conclusions were declared a state secret, and then sealed.

Five years ago, the 2006 plane crash again was in the limelight as new evidence emerged that the event may not have been an accident after all because of an explosive device that was placed on board. The Slovak parliament opened an inquiry into the matter which Robert Fico wholeheartedly and publicly supported.

In addition to his more recent gaffes, that also must have been a huge strike against him.

Predictably, responsibility for the shooting was instantly attributed to a lone individual who allegedly bore Fico a political grudge and decided to kill him. How that risible, Jack Ruby-type explanation will pan out, we may soon see as Slovakian authorities press their inquiry.

But irrespective of what Slovakian investigators uncover and how much of it their NATO overlords allow them to publish, certain preliminary conclusions about this ghastly attempted murder may still be drawn. Based on the totality of past experience, these conclusions are bound to be ultimately corroborated and will most certainly withstand the test of time.

The gangster hit on the Slovakian Prime Minister will have had its intended effect whether he survives or not. It was an intimidatory message sent loud and clear to all concerned not even to think of challenging the rules based order. The nature and reach of the “rules” as pertaining to them was made starkly clear the other day in Slovakia. As the position of the collective West crumbles, all European leaders who might be thinking of flip-flopping or asserting their nations’ interests in preference to obediently following orders have been put on notice. If Robert Fico was vulnerable, so are they. And this applies not just to pathetic excuses for national leaders who are presently in office, but also to those aspiring to replace them. More widely, the attempted murder of Robert Fico sends a message to outstanding non-political public figures of many profiles, such as Archbishop Vigano, whose bold statements, coherent analyses, and compelling appeals to the public threaten to collapse the manufactured consensus.

May 16, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Slovak government blames assassination of Robert Fico on opposition parties and liberal mass media

By John Cody | Remix News | May 16, 2024

Following the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico, the ruling government is pinning the blame for the heinous and anti-democratic attempted murder on the opposition and dominant left-wing media.

“You have made us all targets,” said Ľuboš Blaha, the deputy speaker of the Slovak parliament, and a member of Fico’s Smér party, during a heated press conference. “You have spread a haunting hatred for years. You hated that people elected us so much that you went after us like wild animals. These are the fruits of your labor. The prime minister is fighting for his life because of you.”

He noted that “liberal media” had whipped up hatred of Fico related to his commitment to nationalist politics and his desire to end the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire.

The country’s interior minister, Matúš Šutaj Eštok, further noted that the constant media and opposition attacks on Fico helped fuel the climate that led to his attempted assassination, including the use of dehumanizing language.

“I am asking all of you to stop piling on the attacks and expressions of hatred that are directed at one political camp or another. From what was unleashed and many of you sowed, a storm arose today. And we are slowly standing on the threshold of civil war,” Minister Šutaj Eštok told journalists.

Fico was shot by a 61-year-old assailant in Handlová, central Slovakia, with the alleged far-left political activist and writer immediately arrested by the police. Slovak media reports that several gunshots hit Fico, who was operated on for a total of seven hours following life-threatening gunshot wounds.

The suspect, Juraj C., has been said to be a pro-Western liberal angered that Fico was shuttering one of his favorite television channels.

“The investigation is still ongoing. But I can openly say that this assassination was politically motivated and the perpetrator’s decision was made just after the presidential election,” said Interior Minister Šutaj Eštok, according to news outlet Irozhlas.

Other politicians also called for the hatred coming from the left to end now before it fueled more bloodshed.

“It’s hard to find words at this moment because Slovakia has never been confronted with this situation before. I call for us to stop this hatred,” said Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kaliňák.

While Fico was still lying on the operating table fighting for his life, the same Slovak media and opposition attempted to place the blame for the shooting on Fico himself.

“This type of politics practiced by Fico, ex-prime minister Igor Matovič, Andrej Danko, and Ľuboš Blaha has long been a prototype of hateful rhetoric. It’s a whole list of politicians who sowed hatred and used the lowest forms of personal attacks,” said sociologist and ex-prime minister Iveta Radičová, during a broadcast on Czech Radio Plus.

The government office reported that Fico was transported by helicopter to the hospital in Banská Bystrica, where he arrived at approximately 4:00 p.m.

The operation was reportedly successful, and there are reports that Fico is currently in stable condition. However, it is unclear what his prognosis is, what kind of permanent damage he may have suffered, and whether he will be able to perform his duties as prime minister at a later date.

May 16, 2024 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment