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Supreme Court Punts on Technicalities and the Censorship Leviathan Soldiers On

In a disappointing 6-3 ruling the court found that the states and individual plaintiffs lack standing to seek an injunction against the government

By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | June 26, 2024

The Supreme Court issued a very disappointing ruling today in our Murthy v. Missouri case. Note that this is not a final ruling, but only a ruling on the preliminary injunction. The case will continue. The key takeaway from the Court was this finding:

Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established Article III standing to seek an injunction against any defendant.

The Supreme Court punted here, refusing to opine on the merits of the case. The standing finding rests on technicalities that I will do my best to explain. To clarify, this ruling that we lack standing on the preliminary injunction does not mean we lack standing to bring the case to the trial. The case will move to the trial phase at the District Court now, where we will seek additional discovery and continue to expose the government’s elaborate censorship machinery. I hope we can uncover sufficient evidence for the Supreme Court not to continue to look the other way when it comes to a final ruling.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett explains:

Here, the plaintiffs’ theories of standing depend on the platforms’ actions—yet the plaintiffs do not seek to enjoin the platforms from restricting any posts or accounts. Instead, they seek to enjoin the Government agencies and officials from pressuring or encouraging the platforms to suppress protected speech in the future.

But this is manifestly untrue: it was the platforms actions done at the behest of the government. The whole Constitutional problem is one of joint action, where the state forced third parties to censor. I don’t see how the Court could miss this obvious fact, given the evidence we presented. The ruling continues:

The plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the near future, at least one platform will restrict the speech of at least one plaintiff in response to the actions of at least one Government defendant.

Apparently, the fact that we are still being censored on several platforms is insufficient to establish this? A related issue is one of traceability: the Court insists that we show that particular instances of censorship are directly linked to particular government actions. But this traceability standard presents an impossibly high burden for plaintiffs’—any plaintiffs—to meet. The government conducts its communications with social media companies in secrecy, and subpoenaed documents tell only a small part of the story—they can’t capture phone conversations or private meetings, for example.

On this standard, so long as the government does not name names of individuals in writing that it wants censored, then the government can exercise broad censorship powers and no one who is directly or indirectly harmed can have any recourse to legal redress. For example, the government could order Facebook and YouTube to censor anyone favorable towards the Great Barrington Declaration, a document critiquing our pandemic response written by my co-plaintiffs Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff. So long as those censored were not specifically named by the government, any person on the receiving end of this censorship would not be able to definitively establish in court that their censorship was government-driven.

The upshot is the government can continue to censor so long as the targets are ideas, topics, themes, and not specifically named individuals. In other words, it can do precisely what the First Amendment forbids: content-based censorship.

Try, if you can, to follow the byzantine logic of this judicial reasoning:

The plaintiffs suggest that the platforms continue to suppress their speech according to policies initially adopted under Government pressure. But the plaintiffs have a redressability problem. Without evidence of continued pressure from the defendants, the platforms remain free to enforce, or not to enforce, their policies—even those tainted by initial governmental coercion. And the available evidence indicates that the platforms have continued to enforce their policies against COVID–19 misinformation even as the Federal Government has wound down its own pandemic response measures. Enjoining the Government defendants, therefore, is unlikely to affect the platforms’ content-moderation decisions.

Translation: even if the government coerced platforms to censor you in the past, and platforms continue to censor you according to these same policies—and without any evidence (just taking the government’s word for it) that the government is not coercing platforms anymore—plaintiffs cannot prove that they will likely be harmed in the future, which is one of the necessary criteria for a preliminary injunction. Translation: they got away with it in the past, and we trust they won’t do it again in the future. Or if they do, you won’t be able to prove they were targeting you by name.

Let me try an analogy here: the government placed its boot on the platforms’ face, and the platforms tried to resist but eventually complied, however reluctantly, as the record in our case showed. Now the government claims it’s no longer stomping on the platforms’ face, which means the platform is free to go against the government’s directives now if they so choose. Forgive me if I think this strains all plausibility.

Finally, for purposes of the injunction at least, the Court rejected our argument, grounded in prior First Amendment cases, that free speech protects the rights of the listener and not just the speaker.

The plaintiffs next assert a “right to listen” theory of standing. The individual plaintiffs argue that the First Amendment protects their interest in reading and engaging with the content of other speakers on social media. This theory is startlingly broad, as it would grant all social-media users the right to sue over someone else’s censorship—at least so long as they claim an interest in that person’s speech. While the Court has recognized a “First Amendment right to receive information and ideas,” the Court has identified a cognizable injury only where the listener has a concrete, specific connection to the speaker. Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U. S. 753, 762. Attempting to satisfy this requirement, the plaintiffs emphasize that hearing unfettered speech on social media is critical to their work as scientists, pundits, and activists. But they do not point to any specific instance of content moderation that caused them identifiable harm. They have therefore failed to establish an injury that is sufficiently “concrete and particularized.” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560. The state plaintiffs assert a sovereign interest in hearing from their citizens on social media, but they have not identified any specific speakers or topics that they have been unable to hear or follow.

Again, try to follow the logic here: plaintiffs “do not point to any specific instance of content moderation that caused them identifiable harm” and the two states “have not not identified any specific speakers or topics that they have been unable to hear or follow.” But wait a minute. Those instances are not available for us to find precisely because the information was censored, which means we cannot access it! That information went down the digital censorship memory hole incinerator—it was effectively destroyed by being removed—so how can we possibly present it to the court? The crime itself made the evidence disappear. Under this impossible burden of proof, how can any Americans possibly assert their First Amendment rights?

Justice Alito, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, wrote a blistering dissent to this ruling. I’ll post more on that later. It is disappointing that we only have three justices of the Supreme Court who seem to understand what is at stake in this case.

In the meantime, rest assured that we will continue to fight the government’s censorship leviathan in court. As the case goes back to the District Court for trial we anticipate more discovery, which will allow us to continue to shine a light on the government’s unconstitutional behavior. Perhaps we will uncover communications that even meet the Supreme Court’s impossibly high traceability standard. Some individuals were specifically named and targeted in the government’s missives to social media companies, and at least one of them—Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—has filed an analogous case already. Maybe a Presidential candidate will fare better on the standing issue than we did.

This is not the end, my friends. Just one battle in what will prove to be a long war. Onwards!

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Free Speech Legislation Gains Attention Following Supreme Court Siding with Biden in Social Media Censorship Case

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 27, 2024

US House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has reacted to Wednesday’s ruling by the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in the Murthy v. Missouri case, to call for new legislation that would, going forward, reinforce the rules, already contained in the First Amendment, meant to protect citizens from government-orchestrated censorship.

Jordan, whose Committee is probing alleged government-Big Tech collusion in violation of the First Amendment through the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, noted that the US Constitution’s First Amendment is “first for a reason.”

According to the Republican congressman, free speech that this amendment protects (from government intervention) should extend to any government infringement – be it in Congress, or online.

Jordan said that while respectfully disagreeing with the SCOTUS ruling the Committee’s own oversight “has shown the need for legislative reforms.”

“While we respectfully disagree with the Court’s decision, our investigation has shown the need for legislative reforms, such as the Censorship Accountability Act, to better protect Americans harmed by the unconstitutional censorship-industrial complex,” Jordan wrote in a statement.

In other words, the increasingly pressing issue of how the government “interacts” with social platforms (because of their massive reach and therefore influence among the electorate) should be put into the hands of courts and their interpretations based on new and clear legislation to guide those decisions.

The Judiciary Committee chairman mentioned the Censorship Accountability Act – a bill that would let citizens launch legal action against federal employees suspected of colluding to suppress free speech.

Regardless of the SCOTUS decision, Jordan pledged that the Committee’s “important work will continue” – stating that the Subcommittee thus far has “uncovered how and the extent to which the Biden Administration engaged in a censorship campaign in violation of the First Amendment.”

Murthy v. Missouri – which sought to give the plaintiffs the right to pursue their legal case against the government, alleging it pressured social media to censor online user content, was thrown out by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 ruling as “lacking standing to sue.”

At the same time, the court canceled – at a particularly sensitive time, mere months before the upcoming US presidential election – an injunction that limited the way the government can “interact” with social platforms regarding a range of issues.

The collusion allegations for the most part refer to activities and communications between the government and Big Tech in the context of the previous vote that resulted in the installment of the current US administration.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

We Now Have Proof The COVID Vaccines Damage Cognition

Examining the causes and treatments of the common neurological injuries caused by vaccination

A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR | THE FORGOTTEN SIDE OF MEDICINE | JUNE 20, 2024

Story at a Glance:

• Subtle and overt neurological injuries are one of the most common results of a pharmaceutical injury.

• The COVID-19 vaccines excel at causing damage to cognition, and many of us have noticed both subtle and overt cognitive impairment following vaccination that relatively few people know how to address.

• For a long time, the hypothesis that the vaccines impaired cognition was “anecdotal” because it was based on individuals observing it in their peer group or patients.

• Recently large datasets emerged which show this phenomenon is very real and that the severe injuries we’ve seen from the vaccines (e.g., sudden death) are only the tip of the iceberg.

• In this article we will review the proof that vaccines are doing this and explore the mechanisms which allow it to happen so we can better understand how to treat it.

Note: I originally published this article a year ago. I am republishing it now because a robust dataset emerged which regrettably validates the hypothesis I put forward then.

When the COVID-19 vaccines were brought to market, due to their design I expected them to have safety issues, and I expected over the long term, a variety of chronic issues would be linked to them. This was because there were a variety of reasons to suspect they would cause autoimmune disorders, fertility issues and cancers—but for some reason (as shown by the Pfizer EMA leaks), the vaccines had been exempted from being appropriately tested for any of these issues prior to being given to humans.

Since all new drugs are required to receive that testing, I interpreted it to be a tacit admission it was known major issues would emerge in these areas, and that a decision was made that it was better to just not officially test any of them so there would be no data to show Pfizer “knew” the problems would develop and hence could claim plausible deniability. Sadly, since the time the vaccines entered the market, those three issues (especially autoimmunity) have become some of the most common severe events associated with the vaccines.

At the start of the vaccine rollout, there were four red flags to me:

• The early advertising campaigns for the vaccines mentioned that you would feel awful when you got the vaccine, but that was fine and a sign the vaccine was working. Even with vaccines that had a very high rate of adverse events (e.g., the HPV vaccine), I had never seen this messaging before. This signified it was likely the adverse event rate with the spike protein vaccines would be much higher than normal.

• Many of my colleagues who got the vaccine (since they were healthcare workers they were able to get it first) posted on social media about just how awful they felt after getting the vaccine. This was also something I had never seen with a previous vaccine. After some digging, I noticed those with the worst vaccine reactions typically had already had COVID and that their reaction was to the second shot rather than the first, signifying that some type of increased sensitization was occurring from repeated exposures to the spike protein. Likewise, the published clinical trial about Pfizer’s vaccine also showed adverse reactions were dramatically higher with the second rather than first shot.

• Once the vaccine became available to the general public, I immediately had patients start showing up with vaccine reactions, many of whom stated they received their flu shot each year and never had experienced something similar with a previous vaccination. One of the most concerning things were the pre-exacerbation of autoimmune diseases (e.g., spots in their body they previously would occasionally have arthritis in all felt like they were on fire). After I started looking into this I realized people were seeing between a 15-25% rate of new autoimmune disorders or exacerbations of existing autoimmune disorders developing after the vaccine, a massive increase I had never seen any previous vaccine cause.
Note: this was demonstrated by a February 2022 Israeli survey which showed 3% of vaccine recipients experienced a new autoimmune disorder and that 24% experienced an exacerbation of a pre-existing one, a rheumatologic database published in the BMJ that found 4.4% of recipients experienced an exacerbation of a pre-existing autoimmune disease, and a survey by a private physician of 566 patients which found vaccination spiked their inflammatory markers, causing their five year risk of a heart attack to go from 11% to 25%.

• About a month after the vaccines were available to the public, I started having friends and patients share that they’d known someone who had unexpectedly died suddenly after receiving the vaccine (typically from a heart attack, stroke, or a sudden aggressive case of COVID-19).

This was also extremely concerning to me, because reactions to a toxin typically distribute on a bell curve, with the severe ones being much rarer than the moderate ones. This meant that if that many severe reactions were occurring, what I could already see was only the tip of the iceberg and far, far more less obvious reactions were going to be happening, to the point it was likely many people I knew would end up experiencing complications from the vaccine.

Note: the above graph is only illustrating one aspect of the picture as there will also be a much larger number of minor reactions, and even more invisible ones (e.g., a symptom occurs years down the road) or no reaction at all.

I tried to warn my colleagues about the dangers of this vaccine, but even when I pointed out Pfizer’s own trial admitted the vaccine was more likely to harm than help you, no one would listen to me. Not being sure what else to do, but not be willing to do nothing, I decided to start documenting all the severe reactions I came across so I could have some type of “proof” to show my colleagues.

This was something that was extremely important at the time since no one was willing to take on the personal risk of publishing something that went against the narrative (that vaccines were killing people) in the peer reviewed literature. Shortly after Steve Kirsch kindly helped launch my Substack, I decided to post the log I’d put together, and since there was a critical need for that information (as many had seen the same things I’d observed but no one was reporting them), the post went viral and created much of the initial reader base that made my Substack possible.

It was immensely time consuming to do the project (especially the verification of each story that was reported to me), so I ended the project after a year. During that time, I came across 45 cases of either a death (these comprised the majority of the 45 cases), something I expected to be fatal later on (e.g., a metastatic cancer) or a permanent and total disability. Additionally, in line with the previously described bell curve, I also came across many more serious but not quite as severe injuries.

What I found remarkable about this was that through a passive reporting system in my own limited social network (I learned of these cases because people reached out to me or someone off-handedly shared them with me), I alone found enough cases of severe vaccine injuries to justify pulling the COVID-19 vaccines from the market, yet, our healthcare authorities, who had access to thousands of times as much data as I did chose to pretend nothing was happening. Furthermore, from my own dataset (due to it being large enough to contain all the common COVID vaccine injuries), I accurately predicted most of the vaccine injuries that would be subsequently seen and only now (years later) are gradually being acknowledged.

In turn, we are now seeing clear signs that excess mortality has spiked across the globe, large polls are finding that one fifth of Americans know someone they believe were killed by the vaccines and because so much trust has been lost from this cover up, public health authorities are at last admitting there may be a problem—but they didn’t say anything until now because they “didn’t want to create vaccine hesitancy,” which coincidently is the same excuse which has been used for decades (e.g., Dr. Meier, a distinguished professor called out this behavior after the government unleashed an easily preventable polio disaster in 1955.

Patterns of Vaccine Injury

I’ve had a long term interest in studying pharmaceutical injuries because many of my friends and relatives have had bad reactions to pharmaceuticals. In most of these cases, ample data existed to show that reaction could happen (often to the degree it strongly argued against the pharmaceutical remaining on the market) and yet almost no one in the medical field was aware of those dangers, hence leading to my injured friends never being warned before they took the pharmaceutical or even while the injury was occurring (e.g., the doctor said they’d never seen anyone have those reactions, that whatever was happening was due to anxiety, and that they would soon end — when in reality it became a lifelong condition because the patient didn’t stop the drug in time).

My bell curve theory originally came about from examining all of their cases. I thus was interested to know if the distribution of adverse events from the spike protein vaccines would match what I had observed with previous dangerous pharmaceuticals and if what I saw personally did or did not match what everyone was reporting online (which is part of why I put so much work into making sure the log was both accurate and detailed).

One of the things that immediately jumped out at me during that logging process were the multiple cases of a friend’s parent in a nursing home receiving the vaccine, immediately undergoing a rapid cognitive decline which was “diagnosed” as Alzheimer’s disease and then dying not long after. At the time, I assumed these were most likely due to undiagnosed ischemic strokes as that was the most plausible mechanism to describe what I’d heard, but I was not certain as I could never examine any of these individuals for signs a stroke had indeed happened.

Note: despite many deaths in the nursing home population due to COVID and the vaccines, the number of people awaiting admission to a nursing home has significantly increased (shown by this large data set from the Netherlands). Given that individuals typically do not want to go to a nursing home unless they are no longe able to take care of themselves, this suggests that something new is causing the rapid development of debilitating cognitive impairment (e.g., dementia) in the adult population. Likewise, as Ed Dowd has repeatedly documented, there has been a large increase in physical and cognitive disability throughout the adult population which has significantly impacted the economy because of how many workers are being lost to vaccine injuries.

Steve Kirsch was contacted by a whistleblower who reported there has been a 25 fold increase in sudden dementia at the nursing home where she works. Similarly, like the cases shared with me, Kirsch has noted that (like me) he has frequently been contacted by relatives who reported a sudden onset of dementia in their beloved relative which was then swept under the rug. Furthermore, he has also collected numerous other forms of evidence corroborating this is indeed happening. These cases are really sad because the elders in nursing homes have very little ability to advocate for themselves, and most people will just write the cases off as “Alzheimers,” rather than seeing the red flag staring them in the face.

These cases were very concerning to me, as they signified (per the bell curve) that there was going to be a much larger portion of people who would develop less severe cognitive decline following vaccination.

Note: one of the most common types of injuries from pharmaceuticals are neurological injuries which both impair cognitive function and create psychiatric symptoms. This places patients in a difficult situation of being gaslighted by the medical system. This is because their doctors assume the psychiatric symptoms the patients are experiencing are the cause of their illness rather than a symptom of it, leading to the patient being told the illness is all in their head and continually referred for psychiatric help. One of the best examples of this occurred as a result of the abnormal heart rhythms (e.g., rapid anxiety provoking palpitations) caused by the vaccine damaging the heart which were consistently diagnosed as being a result of anxiety, even when a subsequent workup I requested showed heart damage was present. Remarkably, in the early era of vaccines, many doctors (as detailed here) acknowledged that vaccines caused neurological injuries which manifested as psychiatric symptoms, but now that recognition has been almost completely forgotten.

As I began seeing more and more signs of cognitive impairment following vaccination, I realized that what I observed mirrored what I had previously seen with chronic inflammatory conditions such as mold toxicity, HPV vaccine injuries, and lyme disease. Some of the examples included:

• Many people reported having a “COVID” brain where it was just harder for them to think and remember things. I sometimes saw this occur after more severe cases of COVID, but more frequently after vaccination, along with many instance of patients who per their timeline clearly developed it from the vaccine but nonetheless believed it had come from COVID.

• These issues tended to be more likely to affect older adults, but younger ones were more likely to notice (and complain) about them. In the case of older adults, I typically learned about them from someone else who had observed the cognitive decline rather than directly from the individual.

• I saw numerous cases of vaccine injured individuals who had trouble remembering or recalling the word they knew expressed what they were trying to communicate (this is also a common mold toxicity symptom).

• I had friends and patients who told me their brain just didn’t work the same since they’d received the vaccine. As an example, a few colleagues told me they started losing the ability to remember basic things they needed to practice medicine (e.g., medication dosages for prescriptions). They shared that they were very worried they would need to take an early retirement and that they thought it came from the vaccine but there was no one they could talk to about it (which understandably created a lot of doubt and anxiety).

• I saw cases of coworkers demonstrating noticeable (and permanent) cognitive impairment after I’d assumed they’d received the vaccine. Their impairment was never mentioned or addressed (rather the physician kept on working, did not perform as well, and in some cases retired).

• I met significantly injured vaccine injured patients who told me one of the primary symptoms was a loss of cognitive functioning they had taken for granted throughout their life. In many cases following treatment of their vaccine injury, their cognition also improved.

• Colleagues who treated vaccine injured patients told me cognitive impairment was one of the common symptoms they saw and was particularly noteworthy because they had never seen anything like that happen to young adults. To quote Pierre Kory:

In my practice of treating vaccine injuries, one of the three most common symptoms I see is brain fog. So many of my patients had been in the prime of their lives, can now barely function, have significant cognitive impairment and need a lot of help from our nurses to carry out their treatment plans. I never imagined I would see any of this in people far younger than me and instead I see it every day. I bear witness to an immense amount of suffering on a daily basis that is hard to put into words.

• One of my friends (a very smart immunologist) developed complications from the first two vaccines and based on their symptoms was able to describe exactly which parts of their immune systems were becoming dysregulated. Against my advice, they took a booster and reported they suffered a significant cognitive impairment never experienced before in their lifetime. I feel this case was important to share as it illustrates how an exacerbation of a vaccine injury can also cause an exacerbation of cognitive symptoms.

Note: I also saw significant cognitive impairment occur in individuals who were acutely ill with COVID-19. This was not as unusual since delirium is a well known complication in patients hospitalized with a systemic illness (e.g., sepsis), but it seemed to happen more frequently than usual. However, in almost all cases, COVID-19 cognitive impairment resolved after their illness (even when they had been critically ill and required hospitalization) whereas the cognitive impairment I saw from the vaccines was often permanent (unless it was treated).

I specifically wanted to write this article for two reasons.

First, unless you’ve talked to a lot of people who have been through this, it’s really hard to describe what it’s like to gradually lose your mind and the basic cognitive function you relied upon to navigate the world—especially if everyone around you is telling you that it’s not happening and it’s all in your head. I wrote this article to give a voice to those people.

Second, despite Alzheimer’s disease being the mostly costly disease for America, most providers know fairly little about it and instead use it as a blanket diagnosis for anytime a patient shows signs of impaired cognition. This, I in turn would argue has been because there is minimal interest in understanding the causes (and treatments) of Alzheimer’s disease as there is so much more money in “research” for it and productive expensive (but useless and harmful) drugs for it.

Evidence of Cognitive Impairment

At the same time I was observing these effects, many rumors were also swirling around online that the vaccines would cause severe cognitive impairment and that we would witness a zombie apocalypse from the vaccine injuries.

This apocalypse of course never happened (which again illustrates why it is so important to be judicious with what one pronounces will come to pass—as our movement has repeatedly damaged its credibility by making easily outlandish and easily falsifiable predictions). Nonetheless, many have observed a suspicion cognitive impairment was occurring. For example to quote Igor Chudov’s article on the topic:

I own a small business and deal with many people and other small businesses. Most provided reliable service, would remember appointments, followed up on issues, and so on. I noticed that lately, some people have become less capable cognitively. They forget essential appointments, cannot concentrate, make crazy-stupid mistakes, and so on.

In my own case, in addition to poorly performing colleagues, the most evident change I noticed was a worsening of drivers around me and had quite a few near misses from impaired driving.

The great challenge with these situations is that it’s very hard to tell if something is actually happening or your perception is simply a product of confirmation bias. For this reason, while I was comfortable asserting my belief the COVID-19 vaccines were causing the severe injuries on either end of the bell curve, I avoided doing so for many of the less impactful injuries in the middle where it was much more ambiguous if what I was observing was “real” or simply my own biased perception of the events around me. Because of this, amongst other things, I never mentioned the changes in driving I observed.

Note: after I posted the original article many of the readers stated they too had observed a significant worsening in the behavior of drivers around them. I was then pointed to this dataset, which suggests this issue was happening, but is difficult to properly assess because COVID-19 can also cause cognitive impairment and less people were driving in 2020 and because the dataset still has not been updated since 2022.

Recently, Igor Chudov was able to identify another dataset from the Netherlands which further corroborated that we were indeed facing a massive cognitive decline:

Primary care data for January to March 2023 showed that adults visited their GP more frequently for a number of symptoms compared to the same period in 2019. Memory and concentration problems were significantly more common than last year and in the period before COVID-19. Where these symptoms are concerned, the difference compared to 2019 is growing steadily in each quarter.

In the first quarter of 2023, there was a 24% increase in GP [general practioner] visits related to memory and concentration problems among adults (age 25 years and older) compared to the same period in 2020. This is evidenced by the latest quarterly research update from the GOR Network. The increase in memory and concentration problems of adults seems to be a longer-term effect of the coronavirus measures as well as SARS-CoV-2 infections.

More specifically they found:
• No increase was observed in adults under 25 years old.
• A 31% increase was observed in those 24-44 years old.
• A 40% increase was observed in those 45-74 years old.
• An 18% increase was observed in those over 75 years old.

Note: previous rounds of this survey, in addition to the cognitive issues described above, found that since 2019, the general population has also experienced worsening mental health (e.g, anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts), sleep problems, tiredness, and cardiovascular issues (e.g., shortness of breath, dizziness or heart palpitation).

Typically, patients, less than 75 years old are unlikely to visit their doctors for cognitive issues. Taken in context with this data, it means there is a stronger case that the (massive) increases in cognitive issue for those under 75 were caused by something that happened after 2019. Additionally, since there were already a large number of visits for cognitive impairment in the elderly, the lower percentage increase is slightly misleading in quantifying the extent to which everyone was affected. For example to quote the previous report:

Primary care data showed that adults visited their GP somewhat more frequently for sleep problems in October–December 2022 than in the same period in 2019. This was particularly striking in the oldest age group (75 years and older).

Note: poor sleep is one of the primary causes of cognitive impairment (or dementia) and sadly also commonly impaired after COVID-19 vaccination.

All of this data put health officials in a bit of an awkward situation since publishing data demonstrating large scale cognitive impairment directly undermines the narrative they previous had committed themselves to. Nonetheless, the authors of the report were significantly more candid than many others before them:

The source of this increase in memory and concentration problems is unclear. A possible explanation could be that COVID-19 measures caused accelerated cognitive decline among people who were starting to have problems with memory and concentration (66 years on average).

COVID-19 was of course cited as a potential cause (which, as discussed above can sometimes cause long term cognitive impairment):

supplementary explanation could be that some of these people have long-term symptoms after COVID-19. Various studies have shown that memory and concentration problems are common in post-COVID symptoms. Other infectious diseases, such as flu, can also cause these symptoms. However, recent studies have shown that long-term memory and concentration problems are much more common after COVID-19 than after flu. In addition, these symptoms are more common in older age groups. The figures provided by GPs are consistent with this expectation.

Fortunately, the authors acknowledged that long COVID could not be the primary explanation for what was occurring, and instead alluded to the elephant in the room—the vaccines.

Finally, Ed Dowd has identified numerous government datasets demonstrating that widespread impairment and disability has occurred since the vaccine rollout. Likewise, VAERS detected a massive spike in cognitive issues being reported to it after the COVID vaccines hit the market.

Note: one of the key components of the COVID-19 vaccine push was to make it politically incorrect to raise any data-based objections to the vaccines, and thereby stifle any inconvenient discussions of the topic which would have exposed how dangerous these products were. Because of this, I repeatedly heard stories (like this one) of liberals (including famous ones) who had severe vaccine injuries but could not discuss them with their peers, as doing so meant being outcasted from their social group and being cut off from job opportunities, in effect placing them in a similar position to where gay men were in the early 1980s (as coming out often meant being ex-communicated by many close to you). Fortunately, things are now changing (as there are too many injuries to hide) and we are beginning to see more and more prominent individuals “come out of the closet” and admit they were vaccine injured.

Data Transparency

Making decisions has always been difficult and history is rife with catastrophic errors made by individuals who got it wrong. Because of this, a variety of solutions have been developed over the years (e.g., having a committee go through a process to decide something as it is unusual to have a leader who excels at making excellent decisions), all of which have serious short comings.

In recent years, we’ve had a push for data to become the means to making decisions. On one level, I think this is an excellent approach. For example in sales and the internet (which is where I suspect much of the push for data originated from), large amounts of data are used on a daily basis and constantly used to refine how a marketing campaign internet platform is set up so that it can maximize profits.

However, in many cases (e.g., those outside of business and sales), that same incentive to optimally utilize the data and adjust what’s being done due to the data does not exist. Because of this, while we have a large emphasis on gathering data, most of it is never utilized. For example, in medicine, we force our healthcare workers to do an immense amount of data entry, yet, we never combo the electronic health records to determine which drugs are unsafe or ineffective (which is very easy to do). I would argue this is because the healthcare system receives so much unconditional money they have no incentive to produce better results and because the pharmaceutical industry receives so much money for toxic drugs, it has every incentive to keep them on the market.

In order to enshrine this paradigm, industry had to both create the mythology that data should both be viewed as the ultimate authority we must all be subservient to, but simultaneously not be something that is publicly available. This in turn was done by arguing that data was “costly proprietary information and intellectual property must be protected” or that it “contained personal health information which could not ethically be disclosed to protect the patients.”

In turn, science has very much become us being expected to trust the team of “experts” who analyze a dataset, and not surprisingly, this process lends itself to corruption.

For example, the only publicly available vaccine injury database VAERS, exists because activists forced it to be required by law, and ever since it was made, the government (along with the medical establishment and the media) has done everything it can to undermine VAERS (discussed further here). Because VAERS reputation had been sullied, for the COVID vaccines, a new monitoring system, V-Safe, which was designed to address the short comings of VAERS was created. However, before long, activists discovered that V-safe did not allow the majority of adverse reactions to be reported in it, and furthermore would not make the data available for outside analysis. Instead, we were given access to a Lancet publication which concluded that:

Safety data from more than 298 million doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine administered in the first 6 months of the US vaccination programme show that most reported adverse events were mild and short in duration.

Reports of seeking medical care after mRNA vaccine were “rare”… Serious adverse events, including myocarditis, have been identified following mRNA vaccinations; however, these events are rare. Vaccines are the most effective tool to prevent serious COVID-19 disease outcomes and the benefits of immunisation in preventing serious morbidity and mortality strongly favour vaccination.

Through lawsuits, activists were eventually able to obtain the V-safe data where they then discovered the above study had lied and there were a lot of serious issues within that database. For example, the above article claimed 0.8-1.0% of vaccine recipients required medical care, whereas the raw V-safe data show 7.7% did—on average 2.7 times, which meant that every 4.8 vaccinations caused one medical visit.

Likewise, throughout the pandemic, we had almost all of the scientific journals refuse to publish anything which challenged the narrative (e.g., I’ve been in touch with numerous teams that have run into an endless number of roadblocks to publish contrarian data). Yet, simultaneously, those journals were willing to contort the existing (poor quality) data as much as possible if that supported the narrative (e.g., Pierre Kory has shown how multiple studies whose data demonstrated ivermectin benefitted patients concluded ivermectin was useless and then widely promoted for having debunked ivermectin).

Similarly, Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci were essentially responsible for the disastrous COVID-19 response (e.g., useless but harmful mass testing, masking and lockdowns), as both within the White House and in the (fawning) media, they relentlessly and successfully pushed for those approaches regardless of how much protest they met. As both news clips and eye witnesses testimonies showed, Fauci and Birx constantly used “the data” to justify their their approach (e.g., when challenged, Birx would often say “I’m all about the data” while Fauci always cited “the data” whenever he advocated for a policy on national television).

However, Scott Atlas (who was with them on the White House COVID-19 task force) discovered that they both never presented scientific papers to the task force, lacked the ability to critically evaluate scientific research, they did not understand basic medical terminology, they would make patently absurd and non-sensical interpretations of their data, and adamantly refused to consider any of the data which challenged their narratives. In many cases, what he witnessed was so absurd he likened it to being in the Mad Hatter’s tea party from Alice and Wonderland, whereas I felt it was a real life version of this iconic Whitehouse scene from Idiocracy.

Because of the widespread lack of data transparency, a few different approaches exist.

First many (e.g., Drs. Peter Gøtzsche and Malcolm Kendrick) have gradually become experts in “data forensics” and being able to identify the tricks the pharmaceutical industry uses to doctor research so that the data always ends up supporting the sponsor’s desired conclusion. What I personally find depressing about this is that a fairly repetitive playbook is used to doctor studies, but the top medical journals consistently turn a blind eye to this, always publish that deceptive research, and in most cases refuse to correct it once the public points out the fraud.

Second, many (e.g., Steve Kirsch) argue that if data is not made publicly available, one must assume it’s incriminating and the data’s owners are lying about what’s in it (e.g., that the COVID vaccines are safe and effective). For example, for decades activists have been trying to get access to the data from the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (as it has the information which could definitively say if vaccines are safe or effective) but they’ve had no success—which in turn suggests that database is full of incriminating information for the vaccine program. Likewise, given the disconnect between what I was seeing with COVID-19 vaccine injuries and what the government was reporting (the only message we ever heard was “safe and effective!”) it was clear to me the government had very bad data and had made the decision to do whatever could be done to cover it up—a prediction which sadly has continued to hold true.

Third, we have to rely upon publicly available datasets which happened to capture the effects of vaccination programs (e.g., the one which tracks annual disability rates in the USA registered a huge spike after the COVID-19 vaccines hit the market). Unfortunately, while these clearly show that an issue exists which needs to be investigated, they do not definitively prove causality, and hence are often dismissed on that basis (much like VAERS is).

Fourth, we have to rely upon whistleblowers. Unfortunately, when this happens, the national government typically targets them for violating “patient confidentiality.” For instance, when a New Zealand whistleblower released fully anonymized data showing the vaccines were killing people, his government charged him with crimes carrying a maximum seven year prison sentence.

Note: the most recent example of government persecution of whistleblowers happened in Texas, where in February 2022, Texas’s government declared providing gender transitions to minors constituted child abuse, and June 2023, outlawed it. In response to this, in March of 2022, one of the largest Children’s hospitals in Texas (and where Peter Hotez exerts a significant amount of influence) announced it would stop providing transgender hormonal therapies. This however was a lie, so in April 2023, a concerned surgeon who had previously worked at the hospital convinced the hospital to give him access to their medical records, and then leaked anonymized medical records demonstrating that the hospital was continuing these practices, as in his opinion, under Texas law, this was child abuse he was required to report. In response to this, the Biden administration (not Texas) charged him with four felonies which carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, which is very different from how other HIPPA violations have been handled. Likewise, more recently, after another nurse at the hospital exposed that the hospital was committing Medicaid fraud by billing for transgender care but labeling it as something else (as Texas’s Medicaid program does not permit for those practices to be reimbursed), after which the FBI was sent to interrogate (and likely intimidate) the nurse.

All of this hence leaves us in a very disorienting position—how do we know who to trust? In turn, I would argue one of the largest reasons so many people trust the audacious lies the government tells us is because the alternative (not knowing who or what to trust) is arguably even worse.

In my own case, I’ve developed a very simple rule for navigating the scientific literature (and many other sources of information as well).

Step 1. Determine the biases and conflicts of interest of the publication source (e.g., most medical journals and their editors take a lot of money from the pharmaceutical industry and hence do not want to upset their sponsors—an issue we sadly also see in the mainstream media).

Step 2. Determine if the conclusion of a published study agrees with, challenges, or is relatively neutral to it’s publisher’s bias.

Step 3 Use this formula:

• Agrees with publisher—high likelihood the study is wrong and it’s probably not worth your time to look into it.

• Disagrees with publisher—high likelihood the study is correct and that a very high bar had to be passed for it to be published (along with significant pressure being exerted behind the scenes).

• Relatively neutral for the publisher—you can take the paper at face value when you analyze its methods and conclusions to see if they had a reasonable way to derive their conclusion. Additionally, while the most prestigious medical journals are corrupt, this category is the one area they shine in and often ensure high standards were met for publication.

South Korea’s Data

In November 2023 and March 2024, some very interesting data emerged from a team of South Korean researchers where they looked at the electronic health records for a quarter and then half of the population in Seoul (2.2 million for the first study and then 4.3 million for the second) and then compared the rates of a variety of new (non-serious) medical conditions in those vaccinated and unvaccinated over three months. From this, they found a variety of medical conditions had a significant increase in the vaccinated. Those increases were as follows (with a range existing depending on how long after vaccination they were compared and which COVID vaccines they received).

This was essentially a dataset we had been trying to get for over 2 years and it matched what we’d seen (e.g., many of these conditions such as shingles and alopecia [hair loss] appear to be strongly linked to vaccination). In turn, it both demonstrated that the vaccines were causing massive harm to society as millions of Americans suffer from these diseases and hence millions more developed them.

Unfortunately, after I analyzed them, I realized it was not appropriate for me to discuss them here as they were pre-prints rather than published articles, which either meant that they had fraudulent data (as it was quite extraordinary they got access to this data) or they were too politically incorrect for any journal to want to publish. While I felt the latter was much more likely, I was not sure which is was, so I avoided publishing that article (which was hard to do given how much time I’d put into it) as I did not want to fall into the trap of promoting something because it promoted my pre-existing biases and then misleading the audience here.

Note: if for some reason these studies disappear I have included the pre-prints below.

Correlation Between Covid 19 Vaccination And Inflammatory Musculoskeletal Disorders
235KB ∙ PDF file

Download

 

Broad Spectrum Of Non Serious Adverse Events Following Covid 19 Vaccination A Populationbased Cohort Study In Seoul, South Korea
757KB ∙ PDF file

Download

We hence tried to reach the authors (no success) and I patiently waited for the articles to leave the preprint server (which has still not happened).

However, recently. three other studies were published by the same team using the same dataset. The first one, (also from March 2024) analyzed the increase of ten common autoimmune disorders (autoimmune hepatitis, ankylosing spondylitis, hashimoto thyroiditis, hypertension, inflammatory bowel disease, primary biliary cholangitis, rheumatoid arthritis, graves, vitiligo, lupus).

This one stated only vitiligo was increased (by 174%), so it seemed plausible to me it could have been published, as it made a token admission the vaccines were bad (as they had a rare side effect from a disease most people don’t know about). Then, when I looked at the data, I noticed a few of the other conditions appeared to have also increased. In turn, since those increases weren’t mentioned in the article, I took that as a sign the article was deliberately omitting incriminating information from its conclusion so it could make it to publication (this happens a lot). Additionally, I was surprised the authors did not evaluate for polymyalgia rheumatica, as this seems to be one of the autoimmune disorders most distinctively associated with vaccination.

That article made me more confident the initial results were real—however since it was published in an obscure journal, I reserved judgement on it. Recently however, two very important ones came out.

Two weeks ago, the first was published in Nature (one of the top medical journals). It found that COVID vaccination resulted in a 68% increase in depression, a 44% increase in anxiety, dissociative, stress-related, and somatoform disorders, a 93.4% increase in sleep disorders, a 77% decrease in schizophrenia, and a 32.8% decrease in bipolar disorder. I was really surprised to see this be published, and took it as a sign there may have been a decision made to begin disclosing some of the harms of vaccination in the official medical literature. Additionally, I took this as an indication that this was an indirect admission neurologic issues also followed vaccination (due to the strong link between neurologic and psychiatric symptoms).

Note: the previously mentioned Israeli survey found that 4.5% of those who received a vaccine developed anxiety or depression, and 26.4% who already had either experienced an exacerbation of it.

Around the same time (three weeks ago) another article was published in a mainstream journal (or to be more exact “accepted for publication”). It analyzed individuals over 65 and found COVID vaccination increased the risk of mild cognitive impairment 138% and the risk of Alzheimer’s by 23%, and a smaller increase in vascular dementia and Parkinson’s disease the authors did not deem to be significant.

To put this in context, given that America spends over 300 billion dollars per year on Alzheimer’s disease, this single datapoint effectively means that the COVID vaccines cost the United States around 100 billion dollars. Additionally, as the authors only tracked the difference over 3 months (and it increased over time as these are both progressive diseases), the actual cost is likely greater, especially given that the elderly keep on receiving boosters. Likewise, it also makes a very strong argument for anyone who believes the vaccines damaged their cognition that this indeed happened.

Why Are The Vaccines Causing Cognitive Impairment?

My specific interest in studying spike protein vaccine toxicity arose because I suspected I would see many similarities to other pharmaceutical injuries I had observed previously and treatments that had developed for those injuries could be used to treat COVID-19 vaccine injuries. On Substack, I’ve tried to focus on explaining the areas that I believe are the most important to understanding this, zeta-potential, the cell danger response (CDR) and the treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Note: Each of these is interrelated with and often causes the others.

Zeta Potential: Zeta potential (explained in detail here) governs if fluid in the body clumps together (e.g., forming a clot) or remains dispersed and capable of freely flowing. Additionally, it also influences if proteins will stay in their correct formation or misfold and clump together (with Alzheimer’s disease being characterized by misfolded proteins in the brain). Many different issues (discussed here) emerge when fluid circulation (be it blood, lymph, interstitial fluid or cerebrospinal fluid) becomes impaired. Since the spike protein is uniquely suited for impairing zeta potential, we have found restoring zeta potential (discussed here) often is immensely helpful during COVID-19 infections and for treating COVID-19 vaccine injuries. Many of those approaches in turn were initially developed from working with other vaccine injuries and cognitive decline in the elderly.
Note: the spike protein also has a prion forming domain, and many believe its responsible for the highly unusual amyloid (fibrous) blood clots seen in COVID-19 victims. Additionally, the COVID vaccines have been linked to extremely rare (and fatal) protein misfolding disorders such as the rapid dementia caused by CJD (discussed further here).

Cell Danger Response (CDR): When cells are exposed to a threat, their mitochondria shift from producing energy for the cell to a protective mode where the cell’s metabolism and internal growth shuts down, the mitochondria release reactive oxygen species to kill potential invaders, the cell warns other cells to enter the CDR and the cell seals off and disconnects itself from the body. The CDR (explained further here) is an essential process for cellular survival, but frequently in chronic illness, cells become stuck in it rather than allowing the healing response to complete.

Note: one common cause of impaired cognition are neurons becoming stuck in the CDR and hence not performing their cognitive tasks.

Understanding the CDR is extremely important when working with complex illnesses because it explains why triggers from long ago can cause an inexplicable illness, and why many treatments that seem appropriate (specifically those that treat a symptom of the CDR rather than the cause of it) either don’t help or worsen the patient’s condition. Many of the most challenging patients seen by integrative practitioners are those trapped within the CDR, but unfortunately, there is still very little knowledge of this phenomenon.

My interest was drawn back to the CDR after I realized that one of the most effective treatments for long COVID and COVID-19 vaccine injuries was one that systemically treated the CDR. Since many of the therapies that have been developed to revive nonfunctional tissue was developed by the regenerative medical field, I wrote an article describing how these approaches are applied to restore localized regions of dysfunctional tissue (which is sometimes needed to treat vaccine injuries) and another on the regenerative treatments that treat systemic CDRs (and are more frequently needed for vaccine injuries).

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD): since AD is one of the most costly disease in America, billions of dollars are spent each year in researching a cure for it. This research (which began in 1906) has had a very narrow focus on removing amyloid from the brain, and since the production of amyloid is a protective response from the brain, the decades of work to remove it have gone nowhere. Nonetheless, the FDA is presently working hand in hand with the drug industry to push forward ineffective, quite dangerous but highly profitable treatments for AD.

Remarkably, effective treatments do exist for AD and my colleagues have developed a few different methods that have successfully treated the condition. Additionally, one neurologist, Dale Bredesen developed a method for reversing AD that he proved worked in mulitiple publications (included a recent 2022 clinical trial)—something which no one else has done, but remarkably has been almost completely ignored by the neurological field.

All of these successful approaches utilize the following principles:

• Restore both the blood flow to the brain and the lymphatic drainage from it (which safely removes amyloid plaques). This often requires restoring the physiologic zeta potential and having a healthy sleep cycle. Additionally, AD is commonly linked to damage to the lining of the brain’s blood vessels, which is unfortunate because one of the most frequent toxicities of the spike protein is injury to the blood vessels (which has been shown in many autopsies—including within the brain).

• Treating the CDR (which causes chronic inflammation) and reactivating brain cells that became trapped in an unresolved CDR (which amongst other things requires reclaiming a healthy sleep cycle, providing the nutrients the brain needs to sustain itself, and mitigating the damage of neurotoxins like inhaled anesthetics).

Note: Bresden’s approach also emphasizes the importance of addressing chronically elevated blood sugar or insulin levels.

One of the most important things to recognize about AD is that it is a slowly worsening disease which often progresses over decades. In the early stages of AD (where it is the most reversible), minor cognitive changes occur, which (when possible to autopsy) correlate with tissue changes within the brain. In rarer instances, individuals can instead have a rapidly progressing form of Alzheimer’s (e.g., from Lyme) which strikes at a younger age and is often linked to the toxin exposure. Given how quickly the increase in AD appeared in both the patients I know and this dataset, I suspect it’s very likely the mechanisms behind the rapidly progressing forms of AD play a key role in the cognitive impairment and dementia we are seeing from these vaccines.

Conclusion

Many of the most successful people I know are willing to go against a crowd and act in spite of being afraid (e.g., they resisted the peer pressure to get the vaccine because they felt it was a good idea). Likewise, rather than looking to an authoritative source for advice, they tend to create preliminary assessments of what’s going on based on the limited data that’s available to them, and then act on it rather than waiting for a clear and definitive answer (or at least a safe one) to present itself.

In turn, as I’ve gotten to know many of the prominent dissidents in this movement, I’ve found they all had those traits in common (which likewise many of my extraordinary medical mentors did as well). For example, Steve Kirsch used this capacity to become a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur. When the vaccines came out, he “trusted the science,” and immediately got one, but before long noticed numerous people he knew had had severe injuries from them, and rather than be in denial about it, recognized that chain of injuries was statistically impossible, began digging into it, realized the existing data showed we had a huge problem, and then began speaking out on it despite the fact much of the (left wing) peer group he’d belonged to for decades disowned him for doing so.

In my own case, for the COVID vaccines, I had initially come in with expectation (which formed as the virus broke out in Wuhan) that whatever “emergency” vaccine was pushed for it would have significant issues and the adverse events would be by and large covered up by the government (or only “discovered” years down the line). In turn, I concluded it was far more preferable for me to feel confident I could treat the infection when I eventually got it and develop natural immunity than it was to take a risk with the vaccines.

However, once I began seeing a high number of red flags the moment the vaccines hit the market, I realized that I had made a big miscalculation and these things were incredibly dangerous so I needed to shift my focus to preventing people from being harmed by them.

Furthermore, I took the bell curve theory into account and assumed that if I was seeing occasional deaths or severe cognitive degeneration following vaccination, it was likely that far more cases of cognitive impairment were occurring, and as this recent Korean study shows, that is indeed the case.

It is thus both quite tragic and remarkable that we now have a leadership which has so little accountability to produce quality results that things like the basic scientific process (which helped our country become one of the most powerful nations in history) is being completely disregarded and replaced with a dogmatic system which refuses to consider basic data points which more and more are proving themselves to be immensely costly to our nation.

Everything we are seeing now was incredibly predictable and represented a systemic failure in our system and a profound societal decline that must be reversed if we want our nation to be something which continues to provide the basic things we have taken for granted from it for most of our lives. I am especially worried as prior to COVID-19, our society was already struggling to reverse this decline, and since that time, we’ve been hit by a wave of cognitive impairment which can only further diminish our ability to address this.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Dozens of Palestinian homes demolished across occupied West Bank

The Cradle | June 27, 2024

Israeli forces have demolished 17 Palestinian homes across the occupied West Bank on 26 June.

Local sources told WAFA news outlet that the demolitions included four houses east of Jericho, eleven homes in the Umm al-Khair community in Masafer Yatta in Hebron, one home in Beitillu village, and one home in east Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood.

In Jericho, the demolitions were carried out on the basis that they were built without Israeli-issued permits.

The eleven houses demolished in Masafer Yatta all belonged to to the Al-Hathalin family, leaving over 50 Palestinians homeless.

Bulldozers tore through the land, uprooting many solar cells, water tanks, and fences, as well as trees.

With international attention on Gaza, Israel has stepped up settler violence to ethnically cleanse and expand its illegal settlement of the occupied West Bank.

Last week, Israeli forces carried out a campaign of raids in various parts of the occupied West Bank, as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich openly confirmed that Israel has plans to annex the West Bank. The Israeli military gave significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants working for Smotrich to accelerate the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories.

In March, the Israeli government designated 2,000 acres of Palestinian-owned land in the occupied Jordan Valley as state-owned property for the construction of over 100 settlement housing units and an area for commerce and industry.

Earlier this month, Norway’s largest private pension fund, Kommunal Landspensjonskasse (KLP), dropped its stakes in Caterpillar Inc over concerns of complicity in the destruction of Palestinian homes.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli media expose gap in Israeli vs. UN tally on Gaza destruction

Al Mayadeen | June 27, 2024

Israeli analysis conducted by the Israeli army suggests significantly less damage to Gaza’s infrastructure from the ongoing war compared to international reports, according to a Thursday report from Ynet.

Israeli data claim that approximately 16%, or around 36,000 of Gaza’s permanent structures, have been irreparably damaged during the war. In contrast, UN assessments based on satellite surveys have reported damage to about 50% of structures, with some media outlets suggesting as much as 70% destruction based on similar satellite analyses.

Thousands of buildings destroyed by Israeli Army not linked to Hamas

Ynet reporter Yoav Zitun acknowledged significant discrepancies—sometimes up to 70%—between “Israel’s” claims and data from international bodies regarding the true extent of the damage in the Gaza Strip since October 7.

The correspondent explained that it is “inconceivable” to assume that the data provided by the Israeli army is closer to reality, and it could also be presented to international courts and foreign investigative committees that will investigate the actions of the Israeli army and “Israel” at the end of the war.

He also noted that international investigative bodies from international organizations will be allowed to enter the Gaza Strip when the war is over.

Ynet also noted that thousands of buildings destroyed by the Israeli army are not necessarily affiliated with Hamas but are “located near the border fence.”

The Israeli army justified their destruction by creating a “border buffer zone” and a corridor that splits Gaza into two through the middle, as per the report.

It also noted that hundreds of buildings were leveled in the al-Shujaiya and the al-Tuffah neighborhoods near Nahal Oz and towers in Beit Hanoun.

‘Israel’ destroys 72% of residential buildings in Northern Gaza

Earlier this month, a Palestinian official in Gaza reported that approximately 50,000 housing units had been demolished by Israeli occupation forces during their nearly eight-month-long aggressive campaign in the northern region of the territory.

The chairman of the Emergency Committee for Northern Gaza municipalities emphasized that along with the destruction of homes, vital infrastructure, such as sewage networks and roads, has been extensively damaged across most municipalities in Northern Gaza. Additionally, the official mentioned the destruction of 35 water wells, schools, and UNRWA facilities, highlighting the imminent risk of famine in the northern area of Gaza.

The official also announced that the Jabalia refugee camp and Beit Hanoun, both located in northern Gaza, have been designated as “disaster zones” due to the devastating destruction inflicted by Israeli aggressive war, which the official characterized as genocidal.

Abdallah al-Dardari, the UN assistant secretary general and director of the UN Development Program’s regional office for the Arab states, stated that the Israeli aggression has resulted in the complete or partial destruction of 72 percent of Gaza’s residential buildings.

Analysts across the world agree that “Israel’s” war on Gaza is currently among the bloodiest and most devastating in recent history. The Israeli regime claims to be considerate of civilian lives, but the death toll and the extent of the destruction reveal otherwise.

Back in March, the UNRWA agency revealed that the war on Gaza has resulted in around 23 million tons of rubble and unexploded weapons all over the area and that it will “take years” before Gaza is safe again.

Moreover, a report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in January indicated that rebuilding Gaza and restoring its 0.4% growth per year seen over the past 15 years would factually take 70 years, confirming that enormous amounts of aid would be needed to make Gaza at least habitable.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Yemen shows off hypersonic missile in Arab Sea op

The Cradle | June 27, 2024

Yemen’s Armed Forces released footage on 26 June of the new hypersonic ballistic missile that was used to target an Israeli ship in the Arab Sea a day earlier.

The Hatem-2 hypersonic ballistic missile is equipped with an intelligent control system and has significant maneuverability, according to the Yemeni army’s military media page. The locally-made Yemeni missile runs on solid fuel and boasts several different types with differing ranges.

The video and pictures released by Sanaa’s forces on Wednesday show the missile in use against the Israeli ship, the MSC Sarah.

The Yemeni army announced its attack on the MSC Sarah on 25 June.

“The naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out an effective military operation targeting the Israeli ship (MSC SARAH V) in the Arabian Sea. The hit was accurate and direct … We announce that this operation was carried out with a new ballistic missile that entered service after the successful completion of trial operations,” Yemeni army spokesman Yahya Saree said in a statement.

“The missile is distinguished by its ability to hit targets accurately and over long distances, as this operation demonstrated.”

The armed forces of Yemen’s Sanaa government – which is militarily aligned with the Ansarallah resistance movement – are known to locally produce weapons. Sanaa’s Armed Forces are also still in possession of weapons stockpiles from the Soviet era.

Washington and other western nations accuse Iran of smuggling weapons to Ansarallah in Yemen. Yemen has been under a tight Saudi-led blockade for nearly 10 years, making the import of arms into the country extremely difficult.

However, Iranian expertise has played a significant role in the production of Yemen’s anti-ship ballistic missiles, according to a 29 May report from Tasnim news agency.

Tasnim says that the Yemeni Muhit missile – revealed in a military parade in the capital, Sanaa, in September last year – is directly modeled after the Iranian Qadr missile, Tehran’s first locally manufactured anti-ship ballistic missile, which was developed over 10 years ago by late Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Brigadier General Hassan Tehrani-Moqaddam.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia comments on coup attempt in Bolivia

RT | June 27, 2024

Moscow has pledged its “unwavering support” for Bolivian President Luis Arce after his government faced an attempted military coup on Wednesday.

The failed putsch was led by the commander of the Armed Forces, General Juan Jose Zuniga. His troops occupied Plaza Murillo, the central square in the Bolivian capital La Paz, and broke into the presidential palace, but faced resistance at home and rebukes internationally.

Russia has condemned the attempted coup and considers it imperative that internal political disputes be settled within the framework of constitutional law, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

”We warn against attempts at destructive foreign interference in the domestic affairs of Bolivia and other nations. Such actions have previously led to tragic consequences for a number of countries and peoples, including in the Latin American region,” the ministry added.

The statement called Bolivia a “strategic partner.” Arce reiterated in late May his country’s intention to join BRICS, a group of not-Western economies that includes Russia among its founding members.

Bolivia fell prey to a coup in 2019, which ousted then-President Evo Morales and put into power the government of Senator Jeanine Anez. She is now serving a prison term for crimes that her regime committed during its deadly crackdown on mass protests.

Arce, who assumed office in 2020, and his mentor Morales, have been at odds over the future of their political force, the Movement for Socialism. However, Morales has unequivocally condemned the attempt to oust his former ally and urged the public to mobilize against General Zuniga. The coup leader was arrested hours after he tried to usurp power.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Lavrov reveals BRICS expansion stance

RT | June 27, 2024

The BRICS group of nations has voted to temporarily suspend new membership applications and focus on integrating the countries which have joined most recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced on Wednesday.

In a statement published on the ministry’s website, Lavrov revealed  that the Group of Ten BRICS members had decided to “take a break with the accession of new members in order to process the new arrivals, who have doubled the composition of the group.”

BRICS was initially founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with South Africa joining the group in 2010. This year, five more countries officially joined the organization, including Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates.

In his statement, Lavrov said that while the new arrivals are being integrated into the group, a new category of “partner countries” would be formed as a “stepping stone” to full BRICS membership.

“We will certainly promote our Belarusian friends as well as a number of other like-minded allies,” the minister said.

This year, Russia holds the rotating chairmanship of BRICS and has announced a “special mission” to identify new members. According to Yury Ushakov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide, more than 30 countries have formally applied, including Thailand and Malaysia, the latest to have submitted bids. Earlier this month, Zimbabwe also announced a desire to join the group.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov outlined that Moscow’s primary criteria for all aspiring BRICS members is “non-participation in illegal sanctions policies, [and] illegal restrictive measures against any BRICS participant, first of all of course against Russia.”

He said that all current members had expressed their “full understanding” of that position, which Moscow considers essential as the group’s growth continues.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s highly unpopular military conscription produces ‘ghost soldiers’ and widespread corruption

By Dmitri Kovalevich | Al Mayadeen | June 27, 2024

The end of June marked one month since Ukraine adopted a new law on military conscription that significantly limits the rights of Ukrainians. During this time, Ukrainian media has been full of reports, daily and even hourly, of ‘kidnappings’, as many Ukrainians put it, by military conscription officers from the streets and neighborhoods of the country of military-age men (25 and older) deemed fit for battle. Fighting between enlistment officers and civilians resisting their work is increasing, as is the publicizing of it all in Ukraine media.

Even pro-war, Western newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post can no longer hide from their readers the story of citizen resistance to conscription in Ukraine, as they have been doing for years.

Tension in Ukraine over forced conscription is growing daily. The Ukrainian military is promoting (and enforcing through conscription) its idea that justice demands that all Ukrainian men submit to the horrors of war, just as its soldiers have done for more than two years in direct confrontation with the Russian armed forces and in direct confrontation with the self-defense forces in Donbass for eight years before that. The Kiev regime launched a civil war against the people of Donbass (today the Russian Federation republics of Donetsk and Lugansk) in the spring of 2014, seeking to crush the deep-going opposition there to the far-right paramilitary coup of February 2014 that overthrew Ukraine’s elected president and legislature.

In response to the conscription terror unfolding daily in the streets and neighborhoods of the country, Ukrainian military vehicles are now being set on fire every day in various cities. Local residents believe the targeted vehicles to be transporting military enlistment officers, not ordinary soldiers. One result is that rank-and-file military personnel are increasingly placing notices on their transport vehicles reading ‘Not military recruiters’. As they conduct their work, lone military enlistment officers are coming under attack far to the rear of the front lines, even in western Ukraine.

The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Skeptic‘ comments on the confrontations, writing, “People do not understand who, exactly, is appearing before them in uniform: is it a simple military man, or is it military enlistment officer? The forced conscription being carried out by the authorities at the hands of military recruiters leads people to take illegal actions. Along with simple efforts to avoid the conscription officers, people are increasingly fighting back with their bare hands when cornered, risking their lives or their freedom in order to do everything possible to avoid going to the war front and suffering the fate of so many before them who have lost their lives or their health.

“The number of disabled people in Ukraine now exceeds three million, and their number is growing by more than 30,000 people every month through the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU),” the Skeptic channel writes.

On June 11, Ukrainians were stirred by media broadcasting a mass brawl in the city of Odessa between ambulance drivers and the military enlistment officers who were trying to conscript one of them. Dozens of ambulance drivers from all over the city came to the aid of their colleague, at which point several civilian vigilantes joined with the recruiters in beating the ambulance drivers with baseball bats.

According to a report in the widely-read, Ukraine media outlet Strana, the vigilantes were members of voluntary police assistance squads. These have been established since 2022. Private security companies often enroll their employees in such units. In fact, these are paramilitary formations dedicated to assisting military enlistment officers and police to seize eligible conscripts. A ‘bonus’ for the members of such vigilante groups is that they are accorded protection against conscription.

The Strana report explains, “In addition, cooperation with military enlistment officers and the police gives the members of the ‘assistance detachments’ many ways for illegal earnings. For example, they often act as intermediaries in giving bribes to the enlistment officers – naturally, for a certain percentage. There are also schemes to issue, for a fee, taxi cab passes for nighttime travel [which is supposed to be forbidden]. The struggle for such financial flows periodically causes serious clashes between the ‘assistance detachments’ in Odessa.”

The terror inflicted by military recruiters against civilians is dictated not so much by the desire for ‘justice’ on the military front [equality in military service] as by common corruption. ‘Failures’ to issue conscription notices and erasing of computerized conscription data on Ukrainians liable for military service can cost several thousand dollars. Even some children of military commissars are involved in such illegal business in order to avoid service. In mid-June, for example, the son of the head of one of the military enlistment offices in the Vinnytsia region was detained after he was found to be arranging travel abroad for men seeking to escape the country at prices approaching the equivalent of US$20,000. During searches of the son’s premises, authorities found conscription notices and copies of passports of more than a dozen men of the age of military service, plus a lot of cash, including US dollars. He is now facing a possible jail sentence of eight years and the loss of his personal property. It is illegal for men of military age to leave Ukraine unless they have special permission (care of a frail elder, for example).

Ukrainians also know that military recruiters are choosing not to patrol and raid certain vacation spots or shopping locations frequented by wealthy Ukrainians. One restaurant owner told Strana on condition of anonymity, that this is happening largely due to large bribes. A restaurant owner in Odessa told the publication, “Each chain of shopping malls negotiates independently with military recruiters; not directly but through the mediation of the regional governing administration. Naturally, for large payoffs. I can’t tell you the amount of payment for the ‘security zone’, but the sums start from 5-10 thousand dollars and more, per month, depending on the size of the shopping center and its popularity.”

“Each network of shopping and entertainment centers negotiates independently with the military registration and enlistment offices, but not directly. They negotiate through mediation by the regional city administration. Naturally, for large payoffs I cannot say what is the exact fee for protection in a ‘security zone’, but the amounts start at 5,000 to 10,000 [U$] each month, depending on the size of the shopping complex and its popularity.”

Despite all the uproar taking place in Ukraine over conscription, the results on the front line are barely visible, writes a correspondent on Telegram from the ‘Kholodnyi Yar ‘unit of the AFU. “This is partly due to the fact that newly conscripted soldiers are merely replacing the dead and wounded. Corruption and fictitious servicemen who exist only on paper are partly to blame.”

The ‘First War News’ Telegram channel writes on June 18, “In Donetsk region, the accountant of one of the military units along with two other unit members organized a scheme to enter fictitious data about the participation of soldiers in combat operations in order to collect the bonuses for direct military action for all three participants in the scheme.”

A similar scheme operated in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led occupation of the country from 2001-2012. Al Jazeera reported back in 2021 why the Afghan army that was built up painstakingly for years by the occupation forces fell apart so quickly. Its report explained, “First, there was widespread corruption in Afghanistan’s defense and interior ministries, where funds, ammunition, and food deliveries were stolen before reaching the soldiers on the ground… Furthermore, some commanders embezzled money by submitting fund requests for the salaries of ‘ghost soldiers’; that is, soldiers who had never actually signed up for the military. As all this was happening, the soldiers of the Afghan comprador army were left unpaid and frequently denied for months at a time permission to visit their families on leave.

Unsurprisingly, the Afghan armed forces under Western tutelage had one of the highest desertion and casualty rates of armies in the world. One estimate placed the army’s monthly attrition rate at 5,000, while the monthly recruitment rate was 300 to 500.

The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Kartel’ describes how similar schemes are taking place in the AFU. “The simplest schemes are those involving ghost soldiers. Fictitious recruits are enrolled and sent to the frontline and the salaries and bonuses go into the commanders’ pockets. Secondly, commanders record of non-existent ‘destruction’ of enemy equipment in order to earn bonuses. Thirdly, they sell places in the rear and in reserve units, and fourthly, they sell vacations and sick leaves to soldiers”.

The underground Ukrainian Marxist organization Workers’ Front of Ukraine (WFU)  wrote on Telegram on June 13 about the corruption that has permeated much of the AFU. “If you want to be dismissed, you must pay up. If you are found guilty of a crime or misdemeanor, you must pay up. If you don’t want any trouble, you must pay up. Tens of millions of hryvnias are leaking out of the state budget through payments to so-called ‘gray souls’ [ghost soldier] schemes, for which the military unit receives allowances.

“The alcohol trade is also blossoming. If you are caught drinking too much vodka sold to you by your officers, you are fined, further boosting corrupt earnings. And so on. In one of the buildings of the ‘second headquarters’ a mining farm has been organized, the electricity bills of which are covered by our taxes.”

The Ukrainian Telegram channel ‘Resident‘ writes on June 17 that, in essence, the ever-tightening law on military conscription is transforming military recruiters into a new economic elite, and a deeply corrupt elite at that. The already tense atmosphere in Ukrainian society due to conscription is being aggravated by all the reports of corruption and bribery. And despite the corruption scandals, military enlistment officers actually remain quite untouchable in Ukraine. They have become the unspoken and unassigned decision-makers of the fates of tens, hundreds of thousands of human beings in Ukraine. They are assigned the power to manage this diminishing number of potential military recruits, and they are managing this ‘resource’ in their own, personal interest.

In earlier times, Ukrainians paid bribes to officials for any old certificate or license. They would pay bribes for the right to receive medical care from doctors or even for a necessary conveyance in an ambulance. They would pay bribes to the police to avoid a fine for a traffic violation. Now they are paying bribes for the simple act of walking down the street, working, shopping, getting married, or adopting a child–all in order not to end up in a bombed-out foxhole at the frontline.

Recently, fugitive conscription evaders have begun to stage mass breakthroughs in large groups through the Transcarpathia region in western Ukraine and across the border.  The region is Ukraine’s gateway westward into the European Union.

On June 9, 32 people traveling in a transport truck bearing fake military license plates broke through the border to Hungary. The truck was full of fugitives and simply drove off-road at top speed into the neighboring territory. The truck was tracked down by Hungarian border guards and soon after, the fugitives surrendered to the Hungarian authorities near the village of Barabash. Local residents claimed in comments to local media that the fugitives were various Ukraine law enforcement officers who were facing assignments to the war front.

Ukrainian soldiers and officers are also, increasingly, complaining about the ineffective military tactics of their high command. The soldiers are reduced to fighting for every house and every scrap of forested land, even in the most unfavorable situations. This is due to the extreme pressure on military authorities to demonstrate ‘effectiveness’ to the U.S. and NATO military leadership in order for Ukraine may continue receiving military funding and weapons from them.

Ukrainian battalion commander Ivan Mateyko stated in an interview with the Focus newsmagazine that military units are being severely punished for abandoning their positions. For the sake of its public relations, the AFU does not withdraw people even from the last, surrounded house in a village so that the village may still be said by superior officers to be under ‘Ukrainian’ control. “Losing a military position is punished, even when you are holding the last house in a village because as long as you are in that house, the village is considered ours. It doesn’t matter how many people die for the sake of holding that house. It doesn’t matter that that house has been surrounded for a week, cannot safely receive supplies, and cannot safely evacuate the wounded and dead,” he said.

According to Mateyko, when the situation is a stalemate and there are not enough soldiers to mount an adequate defense, commanders decide to indiscriminately send everyone into battle. He believes that commanders are sending people to their deaths in such circumstances out of fear of losing their positions or fear of being penalized.

Alexei Arestovich, a former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine (2020-2023) and a far-right ideologue, notes that the AFU is not learning anything new from its experiences in battle. He compares this to the army of the Soviet Union in Crimea during World War Two. He writes on Telegram, “They tried different methods, from mechanical to moral and psychological from 1941 onward. [Nazi Germany occupied Crimea, after bitter struggle, from late 1941 until liberation in 1944.] By 1943-1944, they had learned to fight. The difference between the Red Army of 1941 compared to the Red Army of 1944 is the difference between heaven and earth. They tried, tried, and tried again. After 30 unsuccessful attempts, the 31st attempt would succeed.”

Arestovich asks, “How does Ukraine’s army today compare? Our valiant armed forces do not want to learn, nothing happens. I am looking at this and asking myself, ‘During two and a half years of struggle against our original [sic] enemy, what changes have occurred in the armed forces? Even organizational changes, reflecting accumulated experience? This army has long been driven by inertia and is simply wearing itself out without trying to make sense of events, without trying to draw any conclusions.”

A leader of the neo-Nazi paramilitary battalion ‘Azov’, Dmytro Kukharchuk, believes that Kiev is losing its war. He believes the Russian Federation has no need at all to sue for peace as it is in a much more favorable position. “Yes, we are losing this war now. It’s obvious. We are losing territories, we are losing the best people. Many people say: ‘Everything is going fine and soon we will conclude a peace treaty with Russia.’ But the main question is, why does the Russian Federation need to negotiate peace?” According to him, the strategy of a creeping offensive (war of attrition) which the Russian army has chosen is serving it very well, while the consequences for Ukraine are not only unpleasant, they are critical.

Notwithstanding these words, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a quite specific proposal for peace in mid-June. It would require the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, renunciation by Kiev of Ukraine’s specious claim over Crimea, and renunciation by Kiev of present or future NATO membership.

The U.S. administration and then Ukraine quickly rejected this proposal, as if on cue. The key stumbling block is not so much control of the regions presently under Russia’s control, but future NATO membership for Ukraine. NATO is using Ukraine as a proxy force in this war and toward the goal of NATO membership.

Former Ukrainian journalist and today a political exile, Rostyslav Ishchenko, comments on June 18: “Russia has declared the need to create a unified security system in Eurasia, without the participation of non-Eurasian states. For the first time, albeit indirectly, Moscow has raised the issue of NATO’s liquidation, since without the U.S. military presence in Europe, the bloc loses its meaning and the USA becomes a non-Eurasian power.”

For his part, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg is promising that Ukraine will join NATO as soon as it defeats Russia, which is to say ‘never’. Despite the grim military situation facing the Ukraine regime, Western leaders are instructing Kiev to refrain from any negotiations with Russia.

Oleh Soskin, a former adviser to Leonid Kuchma (the second, post-Soviet Ukraine president from 1995 to 2004 and today a political analyst) has recently written on Telegram that the West is quite satisfied with the killing of Ukrainian citizens at the hands of the country’s capitalist elite. “They are all very satisfied with the fact that this Zelensky, A.Yermak [head of the Office of the President of Ukraine], D.Arahamiya [head of the legislature faction of Zelensky’s political machine], R.Stefanchuk [speaker of the legislature] and, naturally, D. Shmygal [prime minister since 2020] are very good at using Ukrainians as weapons and cannon fodder.”

Indeed, the Ukraine regime is acquiring yet more funding and weapons from the West and sending yet more Ukrainians to their deaths in order to please the elites of the NATO countries.

From time to time, I personally witness clashes taking place between civilians and Ukrainian military enlistment officers. I have witnessed outraged women trying to wrestle their sons and husbands out of the clutches of military conscriptors. “Let Zelensky go to the trenches!,” they shout. “Let him send his own children off to war! Let Biden himself fight the Russians!” Needless to say, this sharp, civilian erosion of support for Kiev’s and NATO’s war does not bode well for either.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Corruption | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian attack on Russian civilians ‘terrorism’ – RFK Jr

RT | June 27, 2024

Ukraine’s recent attack on Sevastopol using American-made ATACMS missiles was “terrorism” and constituted an act of war by the United States against Russian civilians, US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian military fired five ATACMS missiles at Crimea on Sunday, each armed with controversial cluster munition warheads. While Russian air defenses managed to destroy four of them, the fifth was damaged and detonated in mid-air above the seaside, raining explosives onto beachgoers. Over 150 people were injured in the attack and at least five were killed, including two children.

Responding to the incident in a post on X on Wednesday, Kennedy noted that the US-supplied ATACMS missile launcher is “targeted by a sophisticated system only Americans can operate within Ukraine.”

He suggested that the only word that could describe Kiev’s attack on a civilian beach is ‘terrorism’ and claimed that the fact that this was done using what are effectively US-operated weapons meant that it was also “an act of war by the US against Russian civilians.”

“Only Congress can legally declare war,” Kennedy stressed. “They should stop the unaccountable and reckless hawks directing an impaired President Biden.”

Sunday’s strike has also been condemned by former US Congressman Ron Paul, who has described it as an “Ukrainian and American attack on Russia” to which Moscow “can’t not respond.”

Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also responded to the attack by stating it was something that “should not be happening” and pondered what would have happened if “Russia, using a Russian satellite, fired cluster munitions on a Florida beach.”

Meanwhile, Moscow has said that it “understands perfectly well” who is behind the attack on Sevastopol and who was aiming the missiles involved in the strike, and warned that the “direct involvement of the US in hostility that results in Russian civilians being killed [will] have consequences.”

The Kremlin has not yet outlined what this response might entail, but suggested that it could involve Moscow arming the adversaries of Western nations. The Pentagon has denied involvement in the targeting of the missiles, saying Ukraine makes its own attack decisions.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

The Last Wunderwaffe

F-16 Elephant Walk
By William Schryver – imetatronink – June 27, 2024

F-16s, Romanian bases, and NATO pilots

I shall return yet again to the prospect of “Made in the USA” F-16s sallying forth boldly into eastern Ukraine to “teach the cabbage heads what Airpower (capitalized) really means.”

From what information I’ve been able to glean in recent weeks, it does in fact look as though the US is aggressively setting up air ops housekeeping in Romania, very near the Black Sea coast — ostensibly to serve as the base of F-16 operations against Russia.

I submit that the preparation of this base is implicit proof that they have long-since assembled and, likely for many months, been honing the skills and teamwork of a few squadrons of “NATO-affiliated contractor pilots” — and the plan must be to use them.

You see, if the “true plan” were to put a dozen woefully undertrained Ukrainian apprentice kamikazes behind the wheel of 1980s vintage F-16s, and then wave them off on a glorious one-way mission into the wild blue yonder … well, you don’t need much of a logistical hub for that operation.

So, if they’re really working to prepare what is reputed to be the “largest NATO base in Europe”, the logical conclusion is that it is intended to house, maintain, and sustain at least a couple squadrons of NATO “volunteer” pilots flying much later F-16 models than the European boneyard relics Ukraine has long been promised.

Hey, I say field five full squadrons, and outfit at least a couple of them with the latest model F-16 Vipers.

Go big or go home.

Make it the last “all in” roll of the wunderwaffe dice.

F-16 Viper

Never mind that literally no one in the US air fleet, at any level, has any experience whatsoever in high-intensity air combat operations against an enemy that:

– can match or exceed you with high numbers of superior air frames

– will be flying from interior lines, with well-established logistical infrastructure

– backed by high numbers of the finest layered air defenses on the planet

– with far superior magazine depth

– and will significantly outrange NATO platforms in almost every plausible scenario.

Oh, yeah. And I almost forgot: anyone (including the perpetually catastrophist Russian murmurers) who believes for a moment that Russia will not act to obliterate a NATO base in Romania under such circumstances … well, that’s just silly talk.

Of course they will. They’ll hit it hard. Really hard — with a strike package that exceeds anything ever thrown at a Ukrainian target over the course of this war.

It could well become the most intensely pressure-packed moment in modern times — a situation exceptionally fraught with the possibility of catastrophic miscalculation.

Every time I stop to think about these things, I just shake my head at the obvious stupidity of it all.

If the Imperial Masters of War actually attempt such an air campaign against Russia, not only will the entire operation almost certainly end up being a logistical debacle of truly epic proportions, but the combat results will be shockingly one-sided — disastrous to the point the US will very likely feel compelled to cease operations after just a few days, and try to spin it into some sort of “bold statement” that “achieved its purposes”.

But it will be ugly. Exceedingly ugly. And everybody that is anybody of consequence in power structures around the world will know the score and understand exactly what it means.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

‘The Franco-British Plot to dismember Russia’

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | June 25, 2024

June marks a number of anniversaries, almost completely unknown in the West today, of significant events in the Allied invasion of the Soviet Union. Namely, when the entire wretched project began to spectacularly unravel. The loss of the Allied Powers’ Tsarist ally to the November 1917 revolution, and the embattled Bolsheviks subsequently granting Germany political and economic hegemony over Central and Eastern Europe via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, led to wide-ranging imperial intervention in the Russian civil war, starting from May 1918.

The effort was led by Britain and France. Soldiers drawn from the pair’s respective empires, and Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and the US, were deployed in vast numbers, fighting alongside local “White” anti-Communist forces. Initially prosecuted largely in secret, by June 1919, things were going so badly for the invaders that London formally dispatched a 3,500-strong “North Russian Relief Force” to the Soviet Union. Their ostensible mission was to defend threatened British positions in the country.

Almost immediately though, the “defensive” unit was deployed on offensive missions, to seize key Soviet territory, repel the Red Army, and link up with White Russian forces. This thrust was comprehensively beaten back, however. From that point on, Allied fortunes rapidly worsened. White Russian soldiers violently mutinied against their “allies” and defected to the Bolsheviks, while invading foreign troops simply refused to fight due to horrendous battlefield conditions. All-out Western withdrawal commenced before the month was over.

In failing to crush the Russian revolution, Britain and France lost a historic opportunity to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle,”, in Winston Churchill’s pestilential phrase. The pair had agreed to carve up the Soviet Union’s vast resources while neutralising any prospect of Moscow emerging as a major international anti-capitalist agitator. The failure of invading powers to learn lessons from the debacle, and Russia’s visceral memories of the mass invasion, in no small part account for where we are today.

‘Prolonged Enslavement’

In March 1931, Western-dwelling Russian-born academic Leonid I. Strakhovsky published a remarkable paper, The Franco-British Plot to Dismember Russia. As the author noted, “neither Britain nor France has as yet published any important documents” related to the Allied invasion at the time. This remains the case over a century later. Yet, Strakhovsky was still able to piece together “the startling designs” of Paris and London’s conspiracy “to bring about the complete dismemberment of the Russian realm for their own political and commercial advantage.”

This agreement was cemented in L’Accord Franco-Anglais du 23 Décembre 1917, définissant les zones d’action Française et Anglaise (The Anglo-French Agreement of December 23rd,1917 defining the French and British zones of direct control and extended influence). The document established “zones of influence” for Britain and France in the Soviet Union. London was granted “Cossack territories, the territory of the Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia and Kurdistan.” Paris received “Bessarabia, Ukraine and Crimea.” White Russian military chief General Anton Denikin is quoted as saying “the line dividing the zones” stretched from the Bosporus to the mouth of the Don River:

“This strange line had no reason whatsoever from the strategic point of view, taking in no consideration of the Southern operation directions to Moscow nor the idea of unity of command. Also, in dividing into halves the land of the Don Cossacks, it did not correspond to the possibilities of a rational supplying of the Southern armies, and satisfied rather the interests of occupation and exploitation than those of a strategic covering and help.”

Strakhovsky observes, “a survey of the economic resources in the two zones of influence” lends credence to Denikin’s analysis. The territory marked out for French domination were and remain “large granaries;” and “the famous coal region” of Donetsk, “worthless” to coal-rich Britain, was “of great importance to France.” In turn, London “obtained all the Russian oil fields in the Caucasus,” and regions producing “an enormous amount of timber.” Britain urgently needed all the foreign wood it could lay its hands upon at the time.

Strakhovsky comments that the December 1917 agreement amounted to, “a picture of organized economic penetration under the cover of military intervention.” Elsewhere, he quotes dissident US journalist Louis Fischer, “a parallel agreement disposed in similar fashion of other parts of Russia.” Despite this, France was “not satisfied” with its resource windfall. Officials in Paris attempted to compel General Denikin to sign a treaty which, if anti-Bolshevik forces had prevailed, would amount to outright “economic slavery”, putting “Russia at her mercy.”

Denikin was not persuaded. His successor Pyotr Wrangel was. He accepted extraordinary conditions, which included granting France “the right of exploitation of all railways in European Russia during a certain period,” Parisian monopoly on Moscow’s grain surpluses and oil output for an indeterminate stretch, and a quarter of all Donetsk’s coal output “during a certain period of years.” As a Soviet writer quoted in Strakhovsky’s paper observed:

“France was striving to obtain a prolonged and if possible an all-sided domination over Russia… a means of a prolonged enslavement of Russia.”

‘Half Measures’

Britain’s motivation for invading the Soviet Union went beyond visceral aversion to Bolshevism, and a desire to take the fallen Russian empire’s resource-rich lands into receivership: Namely, London’s “fear of the rising power of Russia” throughout the 19th century, which had produced the “Great Game”. This confrontation in Central Asia was concerned with preventing India – “the jewel in the crown” of the British empire – falling into Moscow’s sphere of economic and political influence.

In a bitter irony, this longstanding anxiety meant Britain’s strategy in the Soviet invasion was equally concerned with crushing Bolshevism, while also preventing “the resurrection of the old great unified Russia.” This approach contributed significantly to the entire intervention’s failure. Strakhovsky notes, “Britain carried out her part of the intervention in Russia by half-measures, which certainly did not help the anti-Bolshevik forces in their struggle for a national government. He cites a Soviet writer:

“In the North as well as in the South and in Siberia, the tactics of the English were clearly denoted by their desire to support the Russian counter-revolution, only as much as it was necessary to prevent a unification of Russia on the one hand under the Bolsheviks, and on the other hand under the [White] supporters of the great one indivisible Russia.”

There was another ironic boomerang to Britain’s simultaneous belligerence and treachery in the Soviet Union. The paper concludes by noting that a contemporary parliamentary “special report of the committee to collect information on Russia,” produced at King George V’s express command, appraised that “the abundant and almost unanimous testimony of our witnesses shows that the military intervention of the Allies in Russia assisted to give strength and cohesion to the Soviet Government”:

“Up to the time of military intervention the majority of the Russian intellectuals were well-disposed toward the Allies, and more especially to Great Britain, but that later the attitude of the Russian people toward the Allies became characterized by indifference, distrust and antipathy.”

Per Strakhovsky, this “was the reward that Great Britain and France received” for attempting to dismember Russia. A similar dynamic is afoot today, as the Ukraine proxy war grinds on. The more genocidal, Russophobic rhetoric issues from EU and US officials, and the more Western-encouraged attacks on Moscow occur, the more united Russians become in opposition to their adversaries, and with each other.

The West has made no secret of its desire to “balkanize” Russia since the proxy war began. In July 2022, a Congressional body hosted a dedicated event on the “moral and strategic imperative” of breaking up the country into easily exploitable chunks. It proposed sponsoring local separatist movements for the purpose. A year later, Italian journalist Marzio G. Mian toured Russia, and was overwhelmed by how the population was unified like never before. A typically mild-mannered academic acquaintance of his had “become a warrior”. They said:

“[Stalingrad] is our reference point now more than ever, an unparalleled symbol of resistance, our enemies’ worst nightmare. Whosoever tries it will meet the end of all the others—Swedes, Napoleon, the Germans and their allies. Russians are like the Scythians: they wait, they suffer, they die, and then they kill.”

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment