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Nothing to worry about? South Korea sounds the alarm

By Gilbert Doctorow | June 21, 2024

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday’s Financial Times informed readers about the red carpet that was rolled out for Vladimir Putin at his various stops in and around the North Korean capital during his two-day stay there. They spoke of the Russian folk songs which local artists performed in Putin’s honor. They mentioned that various state to state agreements were signed but said almost nothing about the contents.

Today the FT has taken a very different approach to Putin’s visit in a feature article entitled “Japan and South Korea sound alarm over Putin-Kim military pact.” Lo and behold, Seoul has read the text of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that North Korea issued and discovered that it contains: “a pledge to deploy ‘all means at its disposal without delay’ to provide ‘military and other assistance’ in the event that one of the signatories was invaded or in a state of war.”

The FT goes on to cite the South Korean foreign ministry’s expression of regret over the strategic partnership: “… co-operation between Russia and North Korea ‘should not undermine regional peace and stability’.” Seoul warns “that their co-operation on military technology would violate UN Security Council resolutions.”

Those resolutions, by the way, are up for renewal in the not-too-distant future, and Putin has said from Pyongyang that Russia will veto any extensions.

The fact is that this barking from the South Koreans is frustrated by the very opacity of the wording of both the texts and of Putin’s spoken remarks after the signing and at a meeting with Russian journalists before his departure for Vietnam.

One thing is certain: the Russian-North Korean deal is not just transactional: it is a genuine alliance, the first and only one that Russia has at this moment.

What kind of military assistance will the sides provide to the other in case an act of aggression is declared? What kind of military technical cooperation do the parties have in mind?

For example, will Russia be providing North Korea with ICBMs capable of reaching all of the United States, as some American experts believe? Or is Russia just extending its nuclear umbrella over North Korea, with a pledge to destroy any attacker? Will Russia provide North Korea with its ship sinking hypersonic missiles that could be very useful if this or any future American president sends an aircraft carrier task force to Korean shores to threaten Pyongyang with instant destruction as Trump once did?

Turned around the other way, what can and will North Korea do to help if Russia declares that an act of aggression has been committed against it by NATO in the midst of the Ukraine conflict? Last evening’s edition of the authoritative Russian talk show, The Great Game, moderated by Duma member and Kremlin insider Vyacheslav Nikonov provided an intriguing insight into what people close to Putin are thinking in this regard.

For some time, Russia’s chattering classes have speculated about possibilities for enlisting some of North Korea’s one million man army to help their forces in the ground war in Ukraine. Now, under conditions of the newly signed military alliance with Pyongyang, these same Russians are saying that should NATO forces enter Ukraine to join the fight against them, as Emmanuel Macron has been urging, then Russia may invite 50,000 or more North Koreans to lend a hand to their cause. Moreover, they note that the North Koreans have some very impressive artillery pieces to bring with them to the fight.

If that kind of talk on Russian television is being ignored by the military attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow I would be very surprised.

In closing, I mention that the fuss raised by Seoul over the Russian-North Korean military alliance was the subject of a 10-minute interview I gave to Iran’s Press TV this morning.

The link is here:  https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/129882

As I was alerted by one very attentive reader, this link is usable if you ignore the warnings about possibly compromising security of your computer and opt to proceed at your own risk. The warning is malicious, a bit of disinformation from Iran’s detractors, nothing more.

An alternative link that works directly, without unnerving warnings is here: https://odysee.com/PressTV-2024-06-21:8

Enjoy the show!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Hunter Biden’s Charge of Lying Under Oath

The June 5 criminal referrals are indication enough that the Oversight and Judiciary committees are far from done, spent, or at a dead end.

By Patrick Lawrence | Consortium News | June 19, 2024

This is the fifth in Consortium News’ series on the congressional investigation into President Joe Biden’s allegedly corrupt involvement in the business affairs of his son Hunter. We publish these reports whenever new developments warrant them. Our earlier reports can be read here,  here, here and here . 

One reads regularly in the mainstream media, when events force them to report on the question, that the U.S. House Oversight Committee has hit a wall as it investigates Hunter Biden’s schemes to leverage his father’s power and Joe Biden’s potentially impeachable role in his son’s unseemly doings.

The House hearings have stalled, or fizzled, or reached a dead end: This has been the standard theme in corporate media for months now.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” Michael Goodwin asked in The New York Post as far back as March, “CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico and others on the left all reached exactly the same conclusion at the same time.”

Let us put aside the notion that the above-named media are “left” and consider the implications of what Goodwin, a conservative columnist and relentless critic of the Biden regime, means to imply with this remark. There are three points to consider.

One, U.S. media’s brazen rush to slam shut the door on the House proceedings puts their bias in favor of the president and his family well beyond dispute.

Two, liberal newspapers and broadcasters — repeatedly claiming that the House hearings have produced no proof or indication of wrongdoing on the president’s part — can do so only by ignoring very substantial evidence of criminal and impeachable offenses.

Finally and not least, whatever the final outcome of the House proceedings, the nation’s most powerful media have already sustained considerable self-inflicted damage by way of the negligence that is perfectly legible in their coverage of the investigations and its interim findings.

To be noted in this connection: More than two-thirds of Americans, according to a poll conducted earlier this year, think the House hearings should continue; half of these respondents — 34 percent of those surveyed — “think Joe Biden is guilty of corruption and should be impeached.”

These figures cannot land as a surprise to anyone who has paid careful attention to the House hearings. Among much else, they have already produced substantive evidence establishing in considerable outline the operations of what is called, with justification, the Biden crime family:

— Payments of $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden by Mykola Zlochevsky, the founding chairman of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company. Zlochevsky sought (and enjoyed) Vice–President Biden’s protection from Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma on charges on suspicion of extensive corruption.

— Gross payments to the Biden family, chiefly Hunter and Joe’s brother James, of more than $20 million during the years (2009–2017) when Joe was vice-president.

— A dense network of 20–odd shell companies the Biden family set up to disguise payments received from influence-peddling schemes Hunter conducted in Ukraine, Russia, China and elsewhere.

— The detailed testimony, so far not credibly refuted, of government investigators — from the F.B.I. and the IRS — providing granular evidence of the Biden family’s illegal financial operations.

— The covert, corrupt efforts of David Weiss, during his tenure as federal attorney for the Delaware District, to protect Hunter Biden from the above-noted investigators and, in addition, to negotiate a plea bargain on gun and tax charges that would immunize Hunter Biden from all subsequent criminal liabilities. This plea deal collapsed a year ago next month.

— Voluminous evidence of Joe Biden’s often intimate involvement in Hunter’s business dealings, many of these illicit, as lodged in the infamous laptop computer Hunter left at a repair shop in Wilmington, the contents of which were obtained by The New York Post.

— A check for $240,000 James Biden wrote his brother shortly after he and Hunter consummated a transaction with a Chinese associate worth many times this figure. James Biden continues to contend that this was repayment of a loan from Joe Biden, but he and the Biden White House refuse to provide documentation substantiating the nature of the transaction.

Consortium News reported on these and other matters earlier in this series. Now there is evidence that Hunter Biden compounded his legal liabilities when he testified at length and under oath to Congress on Feb. 28 — an appearance Biden refused until he was threatened with contempt of Congress.

The House Ways and Means Committee, which also has an investigative function in the Biden case, voted on May 22 to release 100 pages of new evidence showing that Hunter Biden lied three times during that testimony. The evidence of this was provided, once again, by Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, the IRS investigators who had previously presented the Oversight Committee with evidence of the Biden family’s corruption.

The Ways and Means Committee is chaired by Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican. Here is part of Smith’s official statement as he released the new evidence:

“Hunter Biden has shown once again he believes there are two systems of justice in this country — one for his family, and one for everyone else. Not only did Hunter Biden refuse to comply with his initial subpoena until threatened with criminal contempt, but he then came before Congress and lied….

The documents released today are not part of a personal vendetta against Hunter Biden, but are meant to ensure the equal application of the law.

Lying during sworn testimony is a felony offense that the Department of Justice has prosecuted numerous individuals for in recent years…. Hunter Biden’s lies under oath, and obstruction of a congressional investigation into his family’s potential corruption, calls into question other pieces of his testimony.

The newly released evidence affirms, once again, the only witnesses who can be trusted to tell the truth in this investigation are the IRS whistleblowers.”

Ways and Means presents the three instances when Shapley and Zeigler caught Biden lying in a succinct format, the rigorous tone of which suggests the committee’s strong determination to hold the president’s son to the letter of the law.

Each entry is headed, “Lie #1,” #2, or #3, followed by a section headed “Hunter Biden’s Sworn Testimony” and another called simply “The Truth.”

In the first case, Biden is shown to have lied about who he was texting, in a now- famous incident, when he warned a Mr. Zhao that his father was with him as he demanded an immediate wire transfer of $5 million.

Biden, hiding behind his drug and alcohol addictions, claimed in testimony, “I sent the text to the wrong Zhao.” The committee produced What’sApp telephone records showing there was only one “Zhao” in Hunter Biden’s universe, and it was Raymond Zhao, the chairman of CEFC, a Chinese energy company that, shortly after the exchange of texts, wired $5 million to accounts Hunter Biden controlled.

In the second case, Biden claimed to have no beneficial association with or control of the bank accounts of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a financial entity Biden operated with a business partner named Devon Archer.

The committee revealed evidence that Biden in fact used Rosemont Seneca to receive his monthly stipend from Burisma, where he sat on the board during his father’s vice-presidency, as well as funds from other foreign enterprises and people to whom he was selling influence.

Lie #3 concerned Biden’s intervention to secure a U.S. visa in behalf of Mykola Zlochevsky, the Burisma founder (who is misidentified in the Ways and Means statement as “Nicolay.”) Asked about this during his Feb. 28 testimony, Biden asserted, “I’d never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa.” The committee produced email traffic demonstrating that Biden “was actively using his name and father’s influence to aid foreign nationals in obtaining visas from the U.S. government.”

Zlochevsky in 2010. (Svetlana Pashko, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Scant Coverage

It is shocking — or perhaps not in view of the media’s record — to consider how little coverage these revelations received at the time. On June 5, Jason Smith, Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, who chairs Oversight, sent criminal referrals to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, recommending the Justice Department charge Biden, and James Biden as well, with making false statements under oath.

David Weiss, who now serves as a special prosecutor, also received the three chairs’ letter. Neither Garland nor Weiss has so far responded publicly. It is difficult to see how either the DoJ, the White House, or the media can ignore, spin, or distort these charges — open-and-shut matters documented on paper and in digital records.

Tangentially related but closely so, after a trial of of seven days, June 4 to June 10, the jury on June 11 found Hunter Biden guilty on all three charges related to his purchase and possession of a gun in 2018, during a time he was drug addicted and lied about this condition on his application to purchase a .38 Colt revolver.

Biden now awaits sentencing by Maryellen Noreika, the district court judge in Delaware who rejected the objectionably lenient plea bargain to which Weiss agreed in July 2023.

Much has been made of the Biden family’s displays of unity and compassion before and during Hunter Biden’s trial. President Biden flew to Wilmington for a late-night visit with Hallie Biden a few days before the trial began.

Even The New York Times suggested this risked leaving the president open to charges of witness tampering, given Hallie Biden was scheduled to testify for the prosecution. Hallie Biden is the widow of Beau Biden, Joe’s oldest son, and, during Hunter Biden’s years as an addict was for a time after Beau’s death Hunter’s paramour.

During testimony, Hunter’s chronic indulgences in cocaine and alcohol were almost ostentatiously played out for the jury and, it seemed, the public. The First Lady, Jill Biden, attended the trial daily but for the days she was at the Normandy beaches to join the president in marking the 80th anniversary of the D–Day landings.

The Biden clan was notably stoic when the verdict was announced. Evidently for the cameras, Hunter Biden took his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, by the shoulders, leaned to kiss her, and audibly whispered with a faint smile, “Hey.”

It is not possible to interpret these evidently rehearsed-for-the-public family displays with anything like certainty. But questions inevitably arise. They turn, almost inevitably on David Weiss’ role as the prosecutor in the gun case.

Weiss is a highly problematic figure. As earlier noted, he was deeply compromised when, during federal investigations into Hunter Biden’s tax records and the broader matter of his foreign business dealings, he, Weiss, acted covertly on numerous occasions to shield Hunter Biden from the lawful scrutiny of federal investigators.

Many were astonished — and many Republican political figures objected — when, the plea deal of July 2023 having collapsed, Attorney–General Garland promoted Weiss to the rank of special prosecutor.

This was ostensibly to give Weiss broader powers to direct investigations into the corruption allegations Hunter Biden faced — an array that threatened to lead to the White House door.

As many critics immediately charged, the Weiss appointment seemed intended not to extend his powers but to keep in place a federal attorney who had just demonstrated his willingness to protect the president’s son — and by extension the president, let us not miss — as a matter of partisan loyalty.

Hunter Biden’s trial on various charges related to his handling of his federal taxes is to begin on Sept. 5, two months to the day before the presidential elections.

Weiss will again be the prosecutor. This leaves us now with two questions.

One, were Hunter Biden’s attorneys in the gun trial in essence shadow-boxing? Their defense strategies — it could not be proven Hunter was using when he purchased the gun, a guilty verdict would infringe on his Second Amendment rights — were flimsy and unpromising.

Was the guilty verdict, in other words, what is called in intelligence circles a limited hangout?

Has a decision been made at top levels of the Democratic- controlled federal judiciary to find Hunter Biden guilty on the lesser crime of illegal gun possession — on the argument he had to be convicted of something — so as to prepare a skeptical public for an innocent verdict in the much more consequential trial on charges of financial corruption — a trial that could directly threaten the Biden presidency?

Two, where are the House hearings likely to go from here, and what will be the next step? The June 5 criminal referrals are indication enough that the Oversight and Judiciary committees are far from done, spent, or at a dead end.

As previously noted in this series, it seems clear they have enough sound evidence to support a vote to impeach President Biden.

But it remains to be seen whether the House committees will have the political will to press the case they appear to have, just as the outcome in California, where Weiss will prosecute the tax and corruption cases, is for now not at all certain.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s terrorist designation of IRGC ‘utter servility’ to Israel: Iran

Press TV – June 21, 2024

The spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry says Canada’s unlawful decision to designate the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group is “utter servility” to the Israeli regime.

In a social media post on Friday, Nasser Kan’ani said the Canadian government’s move against the IRGC is not under recognized principles of international law and will bear no fruit.

It is not strange that the agents and allies of the Israeli regime designate the world’s largest anti-terror force as a terrorist group at a time when the criminal regime is conducting the largest genocide against the people of Palestine in Gaza, he wrote.

“History and awakened human consciences will remember these self-proclaimed defenders of human rights and real accomplices to crimes against humanity along with the Zionist criminals and terrorists,” the Iranian spokesman said.

Kan’ani expressed confidence that the IRGC will become more powerful and honorable and will remain a “thorn in the eyes of the enemies of Iran and Islam.”

In a hostile move against Iran, Canada’s Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc Ottawa on Wednesday listed the IRGC as a “terrorist entity” under the Criminal Code and called on Canadians in Iran to leave.

Last month, the Canadian House of Commons adopted a non-binding resolution calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to blacklist the IRGC and expel an estimated 700 Iranians.

The move makes Canada the second country in North America after the United States to blacklist the IRGC.

Iran’s Interim Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani said on Thursday that the Canadian government’s move against the IRGC was a senseless gift to the bloodthirsty Israeli regime, terrorists and enemies of peace and stability in West Asia.

His comment came after Kan’ani in a statement said that Iran reserves the right to reciprocate with a “proper” response to Canada’s unlawful act.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump names cause of Ukraine conflict

RT | June 21, 2024

Russia’s intervention in Ukraine was triggered by the irresponsible and provocative rhetoric which US President Joe Biden and his administration used about Ukraine joining NATO, Donald Trump has said.

Trump, who is seeking a rematch with Biden for the presidency in November, appeared on the ‘All-In’ podcast posted late on Thursday. The comments about Ukraine came during a conversation on foreign policy with co-host David Sacks.

“For 20 years, I heard that if Ukraine goes into NATO, it’s a real problem for Russia. I’ve heard that for a long time. And I think that’s really why this war started,” Trump said.

The Republican presidential candidate pointed out that there had been no talk about armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine when he was in the White House, but as soon as Biden replaced him, things began to deteriorate.

“I thought that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin may be – well, look, he’s a good negotiator, I thought he was going to be doing that for negotiation purposes,” Trump said. “Then all of a sudden, they attacked, and I said, ‘what’s going on here?’”

According to the former president, one of the key issues was the rhetoric coming out of the White House.

“Biden was saying all of the wrong things. And one of the wrong things he was saying [was] ‘no, Ukraine will go into NATO’,” Trump said.

Sacks pointed out that in January 2022 or thereabouts, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Moscow that Ukraine would join NATO and that Washington thought it was OK to put nuclear weapons there. “So no wonder the Russians hit the roof,” he noted.

“Well, let’s say you were running Russia. You wouldn’t be too happy,” Trump replied. “And that’s always been off the table. It’s always been understood that that was a no-no,” he added, addressing Kiev’s potential NATO membership.

Floating the idea of Ukraine in NATO was “very provocative,” Trump said. “And now it’s even more provocative. I hear routinely they’re now talking about Ukraine entering NATO. And now I hear France wants to go in and fight. Well, I wish them a lot of luck!”

Putin has specifically pointed to Western statements about Ukraine’s possible membership in the US-led bloc as a security threat Moscow could not ignore. Ukraine’s neutrality has been one of the non-negotiable Russian conditions for the conflict to end.

NATO has argued that its “open door” policy is essential and that no one had the right of veto over it, but also that its expansion eastward was not the cause of the conflict.

In an interview with Time magazine earlier this month, Biden claimed that the US is “the strongest nation” because of NATO expansion, and that he told Putin he would get “NATOization of Finland” instead of “the Finlandization of NATO” during their June 2021 summit in Switzerland.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | 1 Comment

Israeli pressure on Labour party, British politics ‘huge’, Corbyn says

Al Mayadeen | June 21, 2024

Before Keir Starmer took over the Labour leadership, he demanded full party backing for future Israeli military operations, Jeremy Corbyn, former UK Labour Party leader, said in an interview with independent journalist Matt Kennard published on Wednesday.

Corbyn’s statement comes amid ongoing debate and scrutiny surrounding his tenure, which ended amid accusations—widely contested—of failing to effectively address “antisemitism” within the party. It is worth noting that Corbyn has a longstanding record of advocating for peace and Palestinian rights.

When asked by Kennard if he was surprised by the level of support that Starmer and other senior Labour figures had shown for “Israel” during its aggression on Gaza, Corbyn responded that he was not shocked, explaining that the reason was “because I know where many of these people are coming from.”

“During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee, they confronted me and said: ‘Will you give a blanket undertaking that you as party leader and potentially prime minister will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes?’ And I said no,” he stressed.

Corbyn stated that the Israeli government’s influence on the party is “huge”, as is the impact of the pro-Israeli lobby on British politics as a whole.

Furthermore, he criticized his successor over an interview for LBC shortly after October 7, where Starmer argued that “Israel” has the “right” to cut water and power supplies to Gaza in “self-defense”.

Those remarks “totally shocked” Corbyn, he said, because “it’s absolutely clear in every aspect of law, never mind morality, that you don’t bomb schools, you don’t destroy water supplies, you don’t cut off electricity.” Contrary to Starmer’s assessment, such actions constitute “a war crime,” he emphasized.

It is worth noting that the interview further addressed the UK’s involvement in what Kennard described as the US “imperial project”, Corbyn’s efforts to diminish the “special relations” between the two countries, and speculated on the potential outcomes of the early July snap election for British citizens.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU’s Mass Surveillance Faces Fierce Resistance

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 21, 2024

The European Union (EU) has managed to unite politicians, app makers, privacy advocates, and whistleblowers in opposition to the bloc’s proposed encryption-breaking new rules, known as “chat control” (officially, CSAM (child sexual abuse material) Regulation).

Thursday was slated as the day for member countries’ governments, via their EU Council ambassadors, to vote on the bill that mandates automated searches of private communications on the part of platforms, and “forced opt-ins” from users.

However, reports on Thursday afternoon quoted unnamed EU officials as saying that “the required qualified majority would just not be met” – and that the vote was therefore canceled.

This comes after several countries, including Germany, signaled they would either oppose or abstain during the vote. The gist of the opposition to the bill long in the making is that it seeks to undermine end-to-end encryption to allow the EU to carry out indiscriminate mass surveillance of all users.

The justification here is that such drastic new measures are necessary to detect and remove CSAM from the internet – but this argument is rejected by opponents as a smokescreen for finally breaking encryption, and exposing citizens in the EU to unprecedented surveillance while stripping them of the vital technology guaranteeing online safety.

Some squarely security and privacy-focused apps like Signal and Threema said ahead of the vote that was expected today they would withdraw from the EU market if they had to include client-side scanning, i.e., automated monitoring.

WhatsApp hasn’t gone quite so far (yet) but Will Cathcart, who heads the app over at Meta, didn’t mince his words in a post on X when he wrote that what the EU is proposing – breaks encryption.

“It’s surveillance and it’s a dangerous path to go down,” Cathcart posted.

European Parliament (EP) member Patrick Breyer, who has been a vocal critic of the proposed rules, and also involved in negotiating them on behalf of the EP, on Wednesday issued a statement warning Europeans that if “chat control” is adopted – they would lose access to common secure messengers.

“Do you really want Europe to become the world leader in bugging our smartphones and requiring blanket surveillance of the chats of millions of law-abiding Europeans? The European Parliament is convinced that this Orwellian approach will betray children and victims by inevitably failing in court,” he stated.

“We call for truly effective child protection by mandating security by design, proactive crawling to clean the web, and removal of illegal content,  none of which is contained in the Belgium proposal governments will vote on tomorrow (Thursday),” Breyer added.

And who better to assess the danger of online surveillance than the man who revealed its extraordinary scale, Edward Snowden?

“EU apparatchiks aim to sneak a terrifying mass surveillance measure into law despite UNIVERSAL public opposition (no thinking person wants this) by INVENTING A NEW WORD for it – ‘upload moderation’ – and hoping no one learns what it means until it’s too late. Stop them, Europe!,” Snowden wrote on X.

It appears that, at least for the moment, Europe has.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Czech populists pull out of liberal Renew group in EU Parliament over disastrous Green Deal and migration

BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | JUNE 21, 2024

Euro MPs from Czechia’s populist ANO movement have renounced their affiliation with French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renew Europe political grouping in the European Parliament, citing irreconcilable differences over the Green Deal and mass immigration.

ANO leader and former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš announced the decision to withdraw his lawmakers from the liberal political group during a press conference on Thursday.

“We went to the polls to fight against illegal migration, to change the Green Deal, which is destroying European industry and agriculture and has a negative impact on our citizens,” Babiš told journalists.

“Based on the negotiations, we came to the opinion that Renew simply has a different position than the ANO movement,” he added.

“Above all, we want the Czech Republic to remain a sovereign country,” the former Czech leader told followers on his X account, hinting at the European liberals’ desire for an “ever-closer union” and a road towards a federal Europe.

It means the Renew Europe group will be seven MEPs fewer after the withdrawal of its Czech faction and makes it even more likely the group will be overtaken by the center-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group as the third-largest in the European Parliament.

The move has possible ramifications for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who is seeking reelection among the newly-elected parliamentarians and the arithmetic is becoming problematic.

The old guard of the European People’s Party, Socialists & Democrats (S&D), and Renew is losing control of the narrative in the European Parliament and von der Leyen needs almost all of the votes from these respective parties to guarantee her reelection.

Should 13 percent of the voting bloc refuse to endorse her candidacy, a figure previously seen during her first term and for the election of former president, Jean-Claude Juncker, von der Leyen would fall short of the support she needs to remain in post.

On the future of the ANO and its European affiliation, Babiš remained coy about what was next for his party, but did rule out joining the ECR, which includes lawmakers from Czechi’s governing ODS party.

“ECR is certainly not a solution for us. Representatives of other Czech political parties have a big say in the factions, and the ECR is certainly not our choice. We’ll see, maybe a new faction will emerge,” he said.

“We will now look for partners in the European Parliament with whom we can promote our program,” he added.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Polls show east German state elections will be historic turning point, but the establishment has a plan to block the AfD

By John Cody | Remix News | June 21, 2024

German elections in the eastern states this autumn are likely to send shockwaves through the German political landscape, with the latest poll from Saxony showing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) leading at 32 percent. However, AfD performing well in these elections is mostly already baked in, and now the German political establishment is looking for ways to keep the party out of power, including what will likely be extremely unorthodox alliances.

The real twist in these polls is the introduction of the newly formed leftist BSW party, led by Sahra Wagenknecht. In the poll from Saxony, the party is in third place with 15 percent. Until recently, Wagenknecht’s party did not even exist.

The Christian Democrats (CDU) are in a close second behind the AfD. If the elections were held now, the only possible coalitions would be AfD and BSW, AfD and CDU, and CDU and BSW. In such a scenario, any governing coalition in Saxony would only need 44 percent of the vote to govern, as most parties would not make the cut to enter parliament.

Why are only these three coalition combinations possible? The polling continues to reveal the historic crash of left-liberal parties, with the Greens at 5 percent, the Social Democrats at 5 percent, and the Free Democrats at a measly 2 percent. With a 5 percent threshold, all of these parties are threatened with being voted entirely out of parliament, which would be a catastrophe for the governing coalition parties.

As a result, the CDU will have limited options about whom to work with when all the votes are counted, at least according to current polling.

It is true that the BSW is considered so far to the left that any coalition with it will immediately harm CDU’s credibility. Furthermore, on key issues such as the war in Ukraine, the CDU and BSW parties are diametrically opposed, with BSW promoting an immediate ceasefire. However, the CDU and BSW coalition is the most likely outcome if both parties can secure enough votes, as the CDU will be under enormous pressure to choose this scenario, even if the CDU and AfD are closer ideologically on a range of domestic issues.

For starters, CDU has ruled out any cooperation with the AfD, and in fact, some of its members are actively working to ban the AfD party entirely.

Secondly, the BSW and CDU have not ruled out cooperation at the state level, according to German news outlet MDR. For example, in the eastern state of Thuringia, polling shows a similar situation as in Saxony, with the AfD and the CDU leading, while the BSW has soared higher, reaching 21 percent. There, the BSW regional leader Katja Wolf ruled out a coalition with the AfD but said alliances with other parties are possible.

“It must be possible to talk and reach compromises with all democratic parties,” said Wolf.

BSW is well positioned to serve as a “spoiler” party against the AfD, just as many on the left had hoped for. The CDU, in turn, will work with the far-left party as needed, and the media will likely be in place to support its decision. Importantly, the German political establishment, including the CDU, will not have to compromise on key foreign policy issues, as the BSW will have little influence on the course of the war in Ukraine at the local state level. The war will continue, open borders will remain in place, and the AfD will be contained.

At least, that is the plan.

Of course, even a shift of a few points in either direction could mean a BSW and CDU coalition is no longer possible, leaving AfD a window to enter a potential coalition government. However, there are still many months to go until elections are held. The AfD could lose or gain support in the east, although it appears to have hit a temporary ceiling in the east over the last year.

If the EU elections were any barometer, the media and the government will likely wait until the final two months of the state elections to spring investigations, launch arrests, and wage a massive media campaign against the right. Despite this last media onslaught against the AfD, it appeared to have little effect in the east of Germany, where the AfD rose to be the number one party in the country.

The AfD is hoping to break the firewall. It is up to voters in the east if this will ever happen.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Hungary ‘won’t ride NATO war train’ – Orban

RT | June 21, 2024

The US appears intent on continuing to fight Russia in Ukraine and hopes to win, but Hungary is acting to counter this destructive policy, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.

The vocal opponent of the Western approach to the Ukraine conflict expressed fresh criticism during a weekly interview on Kossuth Radio on Friday.

“It appears that the Western world, led by the Americans, wants to defeat Russia, with the Germans playing the role of extras,” Orban claimed. He described the strategy as “hopeless,” adding that it is disastrous for the Ukrainians and Russians dying on the battlefield and is potentially escalatory.

The Hungarian leader claimed, however, that “we have already slowed the train to war,” citing the outcome of the recent European Parliament elections in which his party enjoyed success while some pro-Ukrainian groups suffered setbacks.

The Hungarian government has secured assurances from both outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and his presumed successor, Mark Rutte, that Budapest will not be dragged into a “mission” that the US-led bloc is establishing in Ukraine, the prime minister said. Hungary will not contribute troops, weapons, or money to the plan, Orban vowed.

“I can pull the emergency brake. The train will stop, and we Hungarians will get off this train,” he said. “And if we become very strong and the stars are lucky, we will convince the driver not to go any further.”

Moscow has described the Ukraine conflict as a US-initiated proxy war. After several member states publicly said this month that they will allow Kiev to strike targets deep inside Russia with Western-supplied weapons, President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow could supply similar arms to enemies of the West.

French President Emmanual Macron, who has called on NATO countries not to rule out troop deployments to Ukraine, was among the EU leaders to have suffered the biggest in the European Parliament elections. He subsequently dissolved the French parliament, and is facing the threat of becoming a lame duck for the rest of his term as his political alliance contemplates a potential wipeout in the national legislature.

Supporters of the NATO involvement in the Ukraine conflict say its mission will be limited to training Ukrainian troops on the country’s soil.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

MI6 Coup in Macedonia Unravels

By Kit Klarenberg | Active Measures | June 21, 2024

On May 12th, this journalist documented the labyrinthine Western-orchestrated machinations via which Macedonia – under the locally-despised name of North Macedonia – was forcibly enrolled in NATO, despite widespread public opposition. Absent from that investigation was reference to the central role played in these connivances by British intelligence. Namely, London’s ambassador to Skopje and lifetime MI6 operative, Charles Garrett. Now troublesome VMRO-DPMNE is returned to office, it is vital his activities in the country are re-examined.

Charles Garrett receives an award from King Charles

As The Grayzone has previously documented, London operates a dedicated program known as “Global Britain” in the West Balkans. Leaked documents related to the effort reveal it is concerned with insidiously influencing the composition of local governments and legal and regulatory environments to advance British interests, while filling regional security, intelligence, and military forces with handpicked assets. As one leaked file makes clear, MI6 does not tolerate regional opposition to its agenda, readily deploying active measures to neutralize any and all local resistance:

“In contexts where elite incentives are not aligned with [Britain’s] objectives/values… an approach that seeks to hold elite politicians to account might be needed… We can build relationships and alliances with those who share our objectives and values for reform… It is critical that the media have the capacity and freedom to hold political actors to account.”

Events in Macedonia over the past decade provide a brutal demonstration of what can befall governments and officials in the Balkans who do not share Britain’s “objectives” and “values”, and how they are “held to account.” So too does a 2020 coup in Kyrgyzstan, where Garrett set up shop after leaving Skopje. With Central Asia now in the crosshairs of London’s endless quest for “reform” overseas, it’s never been more vital to beware Brits bearing gifts.

‘Colorful Revolution’

Following Russia’s March 2014 reunification with Crimea, NATO’s efforts to expand in the Former Yugoslavia became turbocharged. The Grayzone has previously reported how alliance membership was imposed upon Montenegro, despite near-universal public opposition, in 2016. Achieving this feat required sustaining a corrupt, savage pro-Western dictator in power for almost two decades, and an elaborate connivance whereby anti-NATO opposition actors were jailed on bogus charges of colluding with Russian intelligence to overthrow the government, based on bogus CIA and MI6-supplied evidence.

Similar subterfuge played out in Skopje, which signed a “Membership Action Plan” with NATO in 1999. While slightly more supportive of NATO membership than Montenegrins, the local population near-unanimously opposed changing the country’s name, which Greece, the EU and US made a prerequisite for joining. The VMRO government, led by Nikola Gruevski, pledged Macedonia would always be called Macedonia. So a Western-orchestrated coup was put into motion.

In February 2015, opposition party SDSM’s leader Zoran Zaev began regularly dropping what he and the media branded “bombs” – deeply damaging wiretaps of private conversations between prominent Macedonian officials, businesspeople, journalists, and judges. The tapes seemingly implicated Gruevski and his ministers in serious crimes, including murder. Zaev claimed the illegally-captured recordings were passed to him by whistleblowers. The premier countered that the releases were supplied by foreign intelligence services, with the objective of forcing an early election.

Subsequent investigations exposed how SDSM deceptively edited and spliced these leaked recordings to grossly distort their contents, and falsely incriminate government officials. For example, one “bomb” was extensively doctored to make it sound like VMRO leaders conspired to cover up the 2011 murder of a young Macedonian in Skopje by a senior police officer, while shielding them from justice. The unexpurgated tape indicated they were in fact shocked by the killing, and wanted the culprit to be severely punished.

It was not until four years later that the truth was revealed, however. Upon release, Zaev’s “bombs” sparked widespread outcry in Macedonia, prompting hundreds of thousands of citizens to take to the streets, voicing righteous rage at VMRO. Openly called the “colorful revolution” by participating citizens and NGOs, and English language media, the EU and US duly stepped in and brokered the Przino Agreement, under which Gruevski resigned, and new elections were held.

SDSM scraped into office via a fragile coalition, then set about laying the foundations of Macedonia’s name change in explicit service of NATO membership, with tens of millions of dollars in assistance from intelligence cutout USAID. Parliamentarians were blackmailed – frequently using the illegal wiretap intercepts – and bribed into passing unconstitutional and highly controversial reforms, allowing Skopje to be rebranded North Macedonia without public support, or even the President’s signoff. A sham referendum, boycotted by most citizens, was also cynically staged.

At last, North Macedonia was formally inducted into NATO in March 2020. Alliance officials have since repeatedly made clear they consider Bosnia and Herzegovina joining to be inevitable. This is despite 98% of Bosnian Serbs opposing membership, due to NATO’s central role in the criminal destruction of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. There are covert British efforts to promote NATO in Serbia too, despite over 80% of the population opposing joining.

‘Charlie’s Angels’

In August 2013, Charles Garrett was appointed London’s ambassador to Macedonia. His express brief was to help the country “achieve its goals of joining NATO and the EU.” Multiple local sources have informed this journalist that Garrett was instrumental in the “colorful revolution,” distributing cash to NGOs and activists involved in the unrest from his diplomatic pouch, while attempting to get government supporters on board.

Public records strongly suggest Garrett is a lifetime MI6 officer. His lengthy career in London’s diplomatic service includes spells in Cyprus, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Taiwan, all key nuclei of intelligence gathering and cloak-and-dagger action for Britain’s foreign spying agency. He was also posted to the Balkans in the latter half of the 1990s, when the region became a veritable MI6 playground.

Under the Przino Agreement, a Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) was created to investigate officials over serious crimes supposedly revealed by the illegal intercepts. A previously unknown prosecutor from a small Macedonian border town, Katica Janeva, was selected to run the Office. While the SPO was supposed to prosecute SDSM activists – including Zaev, for releasing the intercepts – this never materialized. Meanwhile, any and all Western officials visiting Macedonia made sure to visit SPO headquarters and get snapped with Janeva. Garrett was, of course, among them.

Charles Garrett and Katica Janeva

Initially, Western journalists treated Janeva to multiple fawning profiles. The British press was particularly smitten. The Financial Times referred to her as Macedonia’s “Beyonce”. The BBC dubbed the Special Prosecutor and her two primary assistants “Charlie’s Angels”, claiming the trio were “the scourge of Macedonia’s political elite and heroines of the street protests now rocking the tiny Balkan nation.” A lengthy USAID-funded “documentary” featured her staff mocking their targets via phone, between discussing who to jail next over pizza and cigarettes.

That broadcast has been removed from the web, and virtually no trace of its existence can be found online today. This may be because in June 2020, Janeva was jailed for seven years for corruption. Her crime-fighting crusade was from inception an obscene, partisan fraud. Along the way, the Special Prosecutor secretly enriched herself through a variety of unscrupulous, criminal means. The SPO’s true objective was destabilizing the VMRO government, and discrediting its supporters by association.

Janeva’s targets were often indicted on farcical charges. For example, at one stage Prime Minister Gruevski was accused of “abuse of office” for commissioning the construction of two “Chinese highways”. Prosecutors charged he had improperly benefitted from the deal – not financially, but because he would “receive a popularity boost” if the highways were completed on schedule. Elsewhere, a pro-VMRO female journalist was accused of tax fraud for writing off laundry as a business expense, and resultantly subjected to much misogynistic mockery in SDSM-affiliated media.

More gravely, the owner of an independent news site committed suicide after being pressured to turn state witness by the SPO, following early morning police raids targeting him and his family. Cases brought against the owners of government-supporting TV stations Sitel and Nova shifted their editorial line in favor of SDSM, leading to the latter being closed outright. In its place, the rabidly pro-SDSM 1TV was launched by eccentric Macedonian media personality Bojan Jovanovski, also known as Boki 13.

Publicly, Boki 13 used his station to relentlessly promote the SDSM-led government and the SPO’s work, with Janeva a frequent guest on its assorted “factual” and entertainment programs. In private, he extorted wealthy businesspeople indicted by Janeva, or somehow caught up in the illegal intercepts, promising to make their legal troubles go away in return for lavish advertising buys on 1TV, or sizable donations to his “charity”, International Association. None other than Charles Garrett sat on its board.

‘Fifth Column’

By the time these facts became public knowledge, and Janeva and Boki 13 were in prison, Garrett was safely extracted from Skopje, having been appointed British ambassador to Kyrgyzstan. Almost immediately, a revolution erupted in Bishkek. Mass demonstrations, ignited by reports of vote rigging in the October 2020 parliamentary election, culminated with the military storming President Sooronbay Jeenbekov’s compound and removing him – physically – from office.

In February 2022, a Kyrgyzstan government-affiliated newspaper openly accused Garrett of operating a “fifth column” in Bishkek. It alleged that in the leadup to the 2020 vote, he along with US State Department representatives met with local journalists and bloggers, offering them enormous sums to identify electoral violations – such as vote rigging – and document official pressure on media outlets and civil society groups. Garrett purportedly promised them top-of-the-range broadcasting equipment, to increase their audience reach. Not long after publication, he returned to London.

Garrett has kept a low profile ever since and now occupies a cushy role overseeing the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Nonetheless, in September 2023, he submitted written evidence to a British parliamentary committee investigating London’s “engagement in Central Asia”. He advocated a number of means to exploit “disruption caused by Moscow’s renewed invasion of Ukraine” to undermine the region’s historic, economic and political ties with Russia and China, and “shape the future of these countries” according to Britain’s interests.

When British Foreign Secretary David Cameron conducted a much-publicized tour of Central Asia in May 2024, he followed Garrett’s proposals to the letter. The ambassador’s legacy visibly endures in Macedonia today too. In March 2016, colorful revolution protesters attempted to burn down the President’s office, after 56 individuals indicted by the SPO were pardoned. The premises were transformed into the headquarters of UK Aid, a now-defunct British government agency intimately implicated in the neoliberal rape and pillage of Ukraine.

The Skopje headquarters of UK Aid

This included running covert communications campaigns on Kiev’s behalf, promoting the destruction of workers’ rights locally. It is likely the organization was engaged in similar skullduggery in Skopje, after Garrett rode into town. VMRO’s return to government at last offers Macedonians an opportunity to halt the operations of all US and British intelligence fronts and cutouts operating on their soil, and reclaim foreign-conquered territory.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Ban on Use of Kaspersky Lab’s Software to Lead to ‘Increase in Cybercrimes’

Sputnik – 21.06.2024

The decision of the US Commerce Department to ban the use of Russian multinational cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab’s software in the United States will lead to an increase in cybercrimes, the company’s press office told Sputnik on Friday.

On Thursday, the US Commerce Department issued a new rule prohibiting information and communications technology and services (ICTS) transactions with Kaspersky Lab effective September 29, imposed new export restrictions on Kaspersky and blacklisted Kaspersky Lab, Kaspersky Group and Kaspersky Labs Limited for their alleged cooperation with Russia’s military and intelligence authorities.

“First of all, this decision will promote cybercrimes. International cooperation among cybersecurity experts is necessary to effectively counter cyber threats, but it is now limited. Moreover, users and businesses in the US will not be able to protect their devices from malware with industry-leading technology, according to independent tests. Our current customers in the US will face significant challenges as they will now be forced to urgently seek replacements for technologies they have relied on for years,” the company said in a statement.

The company added that Kaspersky Lab will continue protecting the world from cyber threats and its business “from actions that are aimed at wrongfully damaging the company’s reputation and commercial interests.”

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

History lesson for Piers Morgan

June 20, 2024

You seem very reliant on accepting Putin’s worldview
rather than perhaps the stark reality of the
barbarism with which he’s executed this war.
Yeah, maybe because I know too much about the United States.
Because the first war in Europe after world War two was the US bombing of Belgrade for 78 days to change borders of a european state.
The idea was to break Serbia, to create Kosovo as an enclave, and then to install Bondsteel, which is the largest NATO base in the Balkans, in the southwest Balkans.
So the US started this under Clinton, that we will
break the borders, we will illegally bomb another country.
We didn’t have any UN authority.
This was a, quote, NATO mission to do that.
Then I know the United States went to war repeatedly,
illegally, in what it did in Afghanistan and then what
it did in Iraq and then what it did in Syria, which was the Obama administration, especially Obama and Hillary
Clinton, tasking the CIA to overthrow Bashar al Assad.
And then what it did with NATO illegally bombing Libya to topple Muammar Gaddafi and then what it did in Kiev in February 2014.
I happened to see some of that with my own eyes.
The US overthrew Yanukovych together with right wing ukrainian military forces.
We overthrew a president.
And what’s interesting, by the way, is we overthrew
Yanukovych the day after the European Union representatives had reached an agreement with Yanukovych to have early elections, a government of national unity and a stand down of both sides that was agreed.
The next thing that happens is the opposition, quote unquote, says, we don’t agree.
They stormed the government buildings and they deposed Yanukovych.
And within hours, the United States says, yes, we support the new government.
It didn’t say, oh, we had an agreement that’s unconstitutional what you did.
So we overthrew a government contrary to a
promise that the European Union had made.
And by the way, Russia, the United States,
and the EU were parties to that agreement.
And the United States an
hour afterwards backed the coup.
Okay, so everyone’s got a little bit to answer for.
In 2015, the Russians did not say, we want the Donbas back.
They said, peace should come through negotiations.
And negotiations between the ethnic Russians in the
east of Ukraine and this new regime in Kiev led to the Minsk II agreement.
The Minsk II agreement was voted by the UN Security Council unanimously.
It was signed by the government of Ukraine.
It was guaranteed explicitly by Germany and France.
And you know what?
And it’s been explained to me in person.
It was laughed at inside the us government.
This is after the UN Security Council unanimously accepted it.
The Ukrainian said, we don’t want to give autonomy to the region.
Oh, but that’s part of the treaty.
The US told them, don’t worry about it.
Angela Merkel explained in Die Zeit in a notorious interview after the 2022 escalation.
She said, oh, you know, we knew that Minsk two was just a holding pattern to give Ukraine time to build its strength.
No, Minsk too was a UN security council unanimously
adopted treaty that was supposed to end the war.
So when it comes to who’s trustworthy, who to believe
and so forth, I guess my problem, Piers, is I know the United States government, I know it very well.
I don’t trust them for a moment.
I want these two sides actually to sit down in front
of the whole world and say, these are the terms.
Then the world can judge, because we could get
on paper clearly for both sides of the world, we’re not going to overthrow governments anymore.
The United States needs to say, we accept this agreement.
The United States needs to say, Russia needs to say,
we’re not stepping 1ft farther than whatever the boundary is actually reached and NATO’s not going to enlarge.
And let’s put it for the whole world to see once in a while, treaties actually hold.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

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