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The Ways of the Jewish Slave Traders

NOI RESEARCH GROUP • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 8, 2024

“As Mr. Yakub continued to preach for converts, he told his people that he would make the others work for them. (This promise came to pass.) Naturally, there are always some people around who would like to have others do their work. Those are the ones who fell for Mr. Yakub’s teaching, 100 per cent.” — The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, chapter 55 of Message to the Blackman in America titled “The Making of Devil”

“Three blessings a Jewish man is obligated to pray daily: ‘(Blessed art Thou,) Who did not make me a gentile; Who did not make me a woman; and Who did not make me a slave.’” — Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 43b–44a[*]

The story of the Jewish American experience that most Jews want to believe, and want the world to believe, is one of almost endless historical victimhood. They insist that they fled anti-Semitic oppression in Europe, landing safely on Ellis Island long after the Civil War’s end in 1865, and certainly some did. By their hard work, strong religious bonds, and reverence for communal education they succeeded against all odds, becoming, as Isaiah exhorts,[1] “a light unto the world.” As their story goes, they altogether eluded the ugly business of plantation slavery—but had they been here, they assure us, Jews would have been leading the abolitionists. After all, their own alleged enslavement to Pharaoh would have made them—of all the groups of Caucasian people—more sympathetic toward Black suffering.

To a trusting, Bible-believing people this Jewish self-portrait sounds plausible and is consistent with a Christian doctrine that sanctifies God’s Chosen People, the so-called Children of Israel (Deuteronomy 7:6–11). But the people who today call themselves Jews have now collided with their own Jewish scholars and historians who have presented an entirely different and far more troubling story about American Jewish history and the central role of Jews in the greatest crime in world history—the Black African Holocaust.

For the most part, Americans—white and Black—are entirely unaware that when the trans-Atlantic slave trade began in the 1500s, it was focused on shipping enslaved Africans to the sugar plantations of South America and the Caribbean islands centuries before expanding to the cotton fields of the American South in the mid-1700s. In the entire history of slavery in the western hemisphere as many as 9 out of 10 stolen Africans were shipped to those tropical climes—not to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or South Carolina. The map below illustrates by the thickness of the arrows the relative proportions of Africans shipped to the New World, and, as shown, relatively few made it into what was to become the United States.

And all during this unprecedented racial tragedy Jews claim they were preoccupied in Europe, nowhere near the scene of the crime. Dr. Robert Swierenga very directly challenges that oft-repeated Jewish alibi (emphasis ours):

“At the birth of the United States in 1787 the Jews of the slave islands [Caribbean] outnumbered those in North America by five times and may have equaled those in England. Surinam had fourteen hundred Jews and Curaçao fifteen hundred—both nearly one half of the total white population. By contrast, the entire United States in 1790 numbered less than fifteen hundred Jews.”[2]

Seeking Religious Liberty?

But doesn’t this early Jewish presence in the “slave islands” conflict drastically with the prevailing image of the Jews as freedom-loving religious refugees? This is the perfect time to have an adult conversation about the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Jewish role in it, and we must start by putting to bed the infantile notion endemic in this Jewish American fairy tale that Europeans sailed across the ocean “seeking religious liberty.” Every school child learns about the brave and pious Pilgrims who sailed to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620 “seeking religious liberty” from the tyrannical king of England. But the reality is that the “Pilgrims” were under contract with a private business named the Company of Merchant Adventurers, which expected them to acquire lumber, beaver and otter furs, and any other riches to be found or stolen. Thus, the “Pilgrims”—who referred to themselves as “separatists,” not as “pilgrims”—worked under contract to a private enterprise whose investors cared nothing about religion. More than a century before those Separatists, a Spaniard named Christopher Columbus was privately financed for his infamous voyage of discovery in 1492, by a wealthy Jew named Luis de Santangel. According to Simon Wiesenthal, in his book Sails of Hope (p. 168), “But for this man, Columbus’s expedition would never have taken place.” A practiced slave dealer, Columbus captured 600 of the aboriginal people he encountered to auction off back in Spain. And so it is with the Jewish newcomers who were seeking profits in sugar, cotton, tobacco, and other riches of the New World. Jewish scholar Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi describes them:

“[T]hese Jews engaged in an almost untrammeled range of economic activity, bore arms in the militias, owned land and ran plantations, and were represented in local councils. They had arrived at the closest point to full legal equality possible for Jews prior to the emergence of the modern nation-state.”[3]

They were seeking not “religious freedom” but the freedom to trade on an international scale. In fact, when they were first barred from acquiring Black slaves in the colonies they entered, the Jews considered it an act of “anti-Semitism.” The riches they sought could not be extracted without free and forced African labor. And as Jewish merchants followed their Yakubian directive—making others work for them—this is where the Black–Jewish relationship in the West truly begins.

In fact, there are scant references to the Jewish faith, Judaism, in any of the extant records of these early Jewish settlers. Nothing about Moses, Aaron, The Ten Commandments; no mention of the Ark of the Covenant; and nothing about being any “Light unto the Worlds.” If there were no profit in it, there was no “Jew” in it—and there was plenty of profit in Black slavery.[4]

Surinam, located in northeastern South America, holds the distinction of having the oldest Jewish community in the Americas, Jews having formed a synagogue in 1665. British Jewish historian Dr. Cecil Roth tracks them in his History of the Marranos: “The Jews of [Surinam] were also foremost in the suppression of the successive negro revolts, from 1690 to 1722: these as a matter of fact were largely directed against them, as being the greatest slave-holders of the region.

And here is where—unbelievably—we find the first inkling of the Jewish religion. The very first published Jewish prayer in their New World paradise, was a prayer titled “Old Hebrew Prayer in Time of Revolt of the Negroes,” in which the rabbi asked their God to give them strength “to conquer and destroy beneath their feet all cruel and rebellious Africans, our enemies who are planning evil against us…. Amen.”[5]

Roth continues: “These disturbances, together with the inroads of the climate, led ultimately to the abandonment of the settlement, of which nothing but the ruin now remains.” Dr. Roth hits on a theme here that may be difficult for most to comprehend. Not only were Jews present in the Americas long before the actual founding of the United States, but they were “the greatest slave-holders” in one of the major destinations of enslaved Africans. Further, these same “liberty-seeking” Jews actually went to war against the Africans that had escaped from Jewish plantations! Scholar Steven Sallie:

“There is little dispute, however, that Jews were quite often in charge of raiding adventures and the severe punishing of the maroons [escaped slaves]. In response to the cruelty of some Jews, maroons quite often attacked selected Jewish plantations. These Jewish-African conflicts were numerous, well organized, and persisted into the 1800s. Given their names, the leaders of the maroons tended to be Muslims.”[6]

One must also note that the decorated scholars quoted above spoke of “Jews” as a collective, neither making any qualification about the term that would limit responsibility or culpability to “some” or “a party among” or “a portion of” the Jewish community. This is particularly important given the magnitude of the crime they are describing—Black slavery.

Two major Jewish historical associations concur with, and elaborate on, this generally unknown aspect of the Jewish role in Black slavery. The American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) is the oldest and most prominent, having its founding in 1892. Rabbi Marc Lee Raphael was its longtime editor of its publications when he wrote in 1983 that in the Caribbean and South America,

“Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated. This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the ‘triangular trade’ that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies…”

“FREQUENTLY DOMINATED” and “played a major role” are the terms Rabbi Raphael used almost a decade before the Nation of Islam published its never-refuted book on Jews and the slave trade, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. 1. Drs. Swierenga, Sallie, Raphael, and Roth are all addressing a startling duality in the 500-year Black–Jewish relationship—that the Jewish self-image of a biblical people yearning for freedom directly contradicts the actual fact that the Jewish people were attracted to, and often dominated the economies in, the very places where existed the most brutal forms of chattel slavery.

The American Jewish Archives (AJA) was founded in 1947 by the “Dean of American Jewish scholars,” Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus,[7] and is the repository of “ten million pages of documentation” on Jewish history in the Americas. Turns out, the AJA has a lot to say about these early “oppressed” Jews who migrated from Europe and somehow found unprecedented prosperity in the “slave islands.” In several articles the AJA casually makes several references to the interdependent relationship between the most brutal forms of slavery and the Jewish pilgrims: “[I]ndividual Jews can be found on almost every island of the Caribbean prior to the abandonment of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century,”[8] thus firmly linking slavery to the Jews’ very presence.

In the plantation colony of Surinam the AJA points out that Jews “fared well, thanks to the abundance of slaves and plantations…”[9] Rabbi Dr. Raphael adds that

“Slave trading was a major feature of Jewish economic life in Surinam, which was a major stopping-off point in the triangular trade. Both North American and Caribbean Jews played a key role in this commerce: records of a slave sale in 1707 reveal that the ten largest Jewish purchasers spent more than 25 percent of the total funds exchanged.”[10]

A more recent analysis of Surinam’s Jews by Dr. Aviva Ben-Ur only solidifies this linkage and adds to the horrors:

“The liberty Jews enjoyed…was inextricably intertwined with violent coercion….African slaves were routinely tortured on the village’s roadsides or along the fence enclosing the synagogue square.”[11]

The AJA hits on a theme that is repeated over and over again: “the abolition of the slave trade in 1819 and the formal emancipation of slaves in 1863 made plantations unprofitable and so decimated Jewish trade that [the Jews] all but disappeared.” Recognize the import of that statement: the freeing of the Black slaves “DECIMATED” and “DISAPPEARED” the Jewish community.

Jews had a presence on the island of Barbados in about 1628 and historian Stephen Fortune wrote that “the reputed prosperity of the Jews contrasted with the inexcusable and disgraceful plight of the slaves.”[12] Jews flocked to this hell on earth, and here again the AJA sounds the uniquely Jewish refrain: “Unfortunately, economic depression resulting from the earthquake and the emancipation of slaves led to the emigration of many of the island’s Jews.”[13] They pose the freeing of African slaves as a disaster equal to that of an earthquake—causing the “unfortunate” Jews to permanently flee.

The Encyclopedia Judaica (EJ) reports that the island of Curaçao was called the “Mother of the Caribbean Jewish communities,” yet Jewish scholars describe the island as a distribution center for the slave trade[14]— “a large slave depot.”[15] The AJA affirms that “The slave trade helped Curaçao to prosper, and her Jewish community grew rapidly,” even building a synagogue “for the convenience of the plantation owners who lived outside of the city.”[16] In fact, Jews owned 80 percent of Curaçao’s plantations, and Jewish slave traders were responsible for distributing the slaves from Curaçao to the Spanish American ports throughout the Caribbean and South America.[17] In 1765, the Jesurun family owned a record number of 366 Black people; the closest Gentile had 240 slaves. In one documented case in 1701, the Jewish Senior brothers arranged the shipment of 664 Africans; 205 perished en route to Curaçao.[18] And historian of the island Johan Hartog confirms a familiar Jewish theme—that the Jewish community suffered a “steep decline” the same year that the slave trade was curtailed.[19]

When Jews settled in Haiti, the Encyclopedia Judaica admitted,[20] they “specialized in agricultural plantations [but] with the slave revolts at the end of the 18th century, Jews gradually abandoned Haiti for other Caribbean islands or for the United States (New Orleans, Charleston).” Here again Jews are not sticking around for Black freedom; nor were they part of the process of achieving it. As soon as emancipation becomes a reality, Jews abandon Haiti for slavier environs.

Jamaica also had a robust Jewish colony, writes the AJA (p. 151): “The growth of the sugar industry enlarged the Jewish immigration and a number of Jews became plantation owners.”[21] The EJ boasted that “Jews with agricultural plantations controlled the sugar and vanilla industries, and …were the leaders in foreign trade and shipping.”[22] In its section on “Sugar”—the product most responsible for the enslavement of millions of Africans—the EJ puts Jews at the epicenter:

“The Jews of Brazil were not important as proprietors of [sugar] mills but rather as financial agents, brokers, and export merchants. When Brazil came again under Portuguese rule in the second half of the 17th century, many Jews emigrated to Surinam, Barbados, Curaçao, and Jamaica, where they acquired large sugarcane plantations and became the leading entrepreneurs in the sugar trade.”[23]

And then it reveals the other, now predictable, Jewish reality: “The abolition of slavery in the British dominions (1833) lowered the economy and scattered the Jews.” Note here the AJA writes that freedom for enslaved Blacks “scattered” the Jews.

Many of those Jews “scattered” to the North American mainland, says the AJA: “The end of slavery in the Caribbean saw Jews from the islands arriving almost daily…” Many ended up in the colony of Georgia, described as “suffering from the trustees’ idealistic insistence on no slaves or liquor…”[24] As the AJA frames it, “no slaves” meant Jewish “suffering.” In fact, the refusal of the leaders of Georgia to permit Black slavery triggered a Jewish exodus from the colony! By 1740 only three Jewish families were left. They bounced, according to Rabbi Marcus, because “Negro slavery was prohibited, the liquor traffic was forbidden.”[25] Jew Abraham De Lyon said he left for “the want of Negroes…whereas his white servants cost him more than he was able to afford.”[26]

From their own archival documents the most lettered Jewish scholars have painted an alarming portrait of the earliest of their founding fathers. In every case examined, Jewish “liberty” and prosperity were entirely dependent on Black slavery, and once Black “liberty” was achieved the Jewish world imploded and the Jews fled. The Encyclopedia Judaica summarizes nicely:

“A general decline of the Spanish-Portuguese communities in the Caribbean set in during the 19th century. Growing competition in agricultural products, the abandonment of the plantations by the Afro-American laborers due to the abolition of slavery, assimilation, and emigration were the main causes of this decline.”[27]

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote that after being bound in Europe for 1,000 years, “they were loose (free) to travel over the earth and deceive the people.” Further, “They have been here now over 400 years. Their worst and most unpardonable sins were the bringing of the so-called Negroes here to do their labor.”[28]

Jewish scholars have thus affirmed that no one better fits Mr. Muhammad’s description of the traveling deceiver and “unpardonable” slave-making sinner than the Jew.

NOTES

[*] See also Michael Hoffman, Judaism Discovered (2008), p. 375.

[1] Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 60:3.

[2] Robert Swierenga, The Forerunners: Dutch Jewry in the North American Diaspora (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), p. 36.

[3] Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “Between Amsterdam and New Amsterdam: The Place of Curaçao and the Caribbean in Early Modern Jewish History,” American Jewish History, vol. 72, no. 2 (December 1982), p. 190.

[4] Yda Schreuder, Amsterdam’s Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 70. Also, Steven S. Sallie, “The Role of the Semitic Peoples in the Expansion of the World Economy Via the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Literature Extraction and an Interpretation,” Journal of Third World Studies, vol. 11, no. 2 (Fall 1994), p. 173.

[5] “Miscellaneous Items Relating to Jews of North America,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 27 (1920), pp. 223–24.

[6] Sallie, “The Role of the Semitic Peoples,” p. 173.

[7] https://www.americanjewisharchives.org/about/jacob-rader-marcus/

[8] Malcolm H. Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1992), p. 142.

[9] Allan Metz, “Those of the Hebrew Nation…The Sephardic Experience in Colonial Latin America,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1992), p. 226.

[10] Marc Lee Raphael, Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, 1983), p. 24.

[11] Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), p. 76.

[12] Stephen Alexander Fortune, Merchants and Jews: The Struggle for the British West Indian Caribbean, 1650-1750 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984), p. 109.

[13] Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” p. 143.

[14] Lavy Becker, “A Report on Curacao,” Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, December 5, 1969.

[15] Daniel M. Swetschinski, “Conflict and Opportunity in ‘Europe’s Other Sea’: The Adventure of Caribbean Jewish Settlement,” American Jewish History, vol. 72, no. 2 (December 1982), p. 236.

[16] Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” p. 147; Emma Fidanque Levy, “The Fidanques: Symbols of the Continuity of the Sephardic Tradition in America,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1992), pp. 184–85.

[17] Marc Lee Raphael, Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, 1983), p. 24.

[18] Isaac S. and Susan A. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherland Antilles (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1973), p. 77.

[19] Johan Hartog, Curaçao From Colonial Dependence to Autonomy (Aruba, Netherland Antilles, 1968), p. 276.

[20] Second Edition, Volume 4, p. 473.

[21] Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” p. 151.

[22] Second Edition, Volume 4, p. 474.

[23] See also James C. Boyajian, “New Christians and Jews in the Sugar Trade, 1550–1750: Two Centuries of Development of the Atlantic Economy,” in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, eds. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), p. 476.

[24] Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” p. 164.

[25] Jacob Rader Marcus, Memoirs of American Jews 1775-1865, vol. 2 (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1974), p. 288.

[26] Edward D. Coleman, “Jewish Merchants in the Colonial Slave Trade,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 34 (1938), p. 285.

[27] Second Edition, Volume 4, p. 470.

[28] Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 104, 267; “Is There a Mystery God?” Pittsburgh Courier, Aug. 18, 1956.

Republished from Nation of Islam Research Group

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

Israel deliberately destroyed all of Gaza’s hospitals with US approval and support

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | July 11, 2024

While the United States government attempts to lecture the world about its supposed “rules based order,” it‘s aiding, arming and providing diplomatic cover for Israel’s unprecedented assault on Gaza’s already collapsed healthcare system. In fact, Israel’s attacks, justified by Washington in some cases, have resulted in the territory being left without a single functional hospital.

It was only two months into the war in Gaza that no functional hospital was left standing in the north of the territory. One month later, there were only seven out of 12 hospitals in southern Gaza that remained partially functional. Today, there is not a single functioning hospital in the entirety of Gaza, with some medics still trying to use the facilities that haven’t been destroyed by bombardment for shelter in which to treat patients with limited supplies, often to no avail.

After only five months of the now nine-month-long war, over 1,013 Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities were recorded in the occupied Palestinian territories, breaking UN records.

Israel has killed more than 500 Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza since the beginning of the war. To put this in perspective, between 2011 and 2024, 949 medical professionals in total were said to have been killed during the Syrian war, with the worst year on record seeing the deaths of almost 200, according to Physicians for Human Rights. That means healthcare workers are being killed in Gaza at a rate around nine times greater than the yearly average during the war in Syria. According to the UN, “more healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since October than were reported killed in all conflicts globally in 2021 and 2022 combined.”

For those medical professionals who remain, Doctors Without Borders has reported a major mental health crisis, with some doctors being forced to choose between treating their own family members and other patients. In one horrifying case, Palestinian doctor Hani Bseiso was forced to amputate the lower part of his teenage daughter’s leg on a kitchen table without anesthetic and using little more than a pair of scissors and gauze. She miraculously survived. Another Palestinian doctor wasn’t as lucky, as he was forced to watch his son slowly die while amputating his leg without anesthetic.

Perhaps the most concerning fact, however, is that hospitals have openly been declared a primary target of the Israeli military’s ground offensive. In November, Israel built a case to invade Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in the besieged coastal enclave. The Israeli army released a CGI video depicting a multi-layered tunnel system under Al-Shifa medical complex, claiming that it was the primary headquarters for Hamas. The US government then backed Israeli claims that the hospital was being used as a headquarters, as airstrikes repeatedly rained down upon civilians in the complex’s courtyard.

After Israel’s army had violently invaded the hospital, killing dozens of civilians in the process, an analysis published by the Washington Post found “no immediate evidence” that a tunnel complex had been used by Hamas under the hospital. Despite the US-Israeli claims having been debunked, Washington did not even issue an apology, as Israel moved on to invade the city of Khan Younis the next month, claiming it was the “real Hamas headquarters.” At the heart of the Israeli invasion of Khan Younis was the objective of taking over Gaza’s second-largest medical complex, Nasser Hospital.

Israel would then go on to re-invade both the Nasser Hospital and Al-Shifa Hospital a number of times, ultimately putting both out of service and leaving behind mass graves containing more than 300 crudely buried bodies at both sites. The total number of dead, wounded and missing after the latest re-invasion of Al-Shifa Hospital was reported to be over 1,500, around 409 of which had been killed. In total, all 36 hospitals in Gaza have been either completely or partially destroyed in bombing attacks, or are unable to function as regular hospitals due to a lack of fuel, supplies, sanitation and damage to equipment or facilities.

Back in January, the United Nations had declared that the health system in Gaza was collapsing. We are long past that point now. In May, Doctors Without Borders reported that the healthcare system in Gaza had been “systematically dismantled” by Israel. On July 9, UN experts declared that famine had spread across the Gaza Strip, asserting that “Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.”

The experts also attributed this to the collapse of the healthcare system, stating that the deaths of children “from malnutrition and dehydration indicates that health and social structures have been attacked and are critically weakened.”

Even more concerning was a recent study conducted for the Lancet medical journal, which concluded that the true Gaza death toll, including indirect deaths, could plausibly be around 186,000. If this conservative estimate is true, that would mean that Israel’s war on the besieged territory has wiped out around 8% of the total civilian population.

The Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll currently sits at roughly 38,300, with around 88,300 reported injured and more than 10,000 reported missing under the rubble. Now that the health sector has collapsed, it has severely hindered the ability of healthcare professionals in Gaza to calculate the number of deaths each day, as there are no ways of recovering the remains of many who are frequently found scattered across the streets.

The true number of injuries is even more difficult to know, as most people do not have any access to proper treatment, not bothering to register their injuries with healthcare workers already burdened by an unthinkable number of serious and critical cases. In addition to this, more than 1 million cases of infectious disease have spread, affecting around half of the entire territory’s population. Due to the dismantling of the health and hygiene systems in Gaza, even basic illnesses are now potentially deadly. With 500,000 cases of diarrhea, and the return of diseases not seen in recent memory inside the enclave, the UN has warned that 1.1 million children could be at risk of dying due to the spread of disease.

Unprecedented is an understatement, and explaining what is happening to the people of Gaza due to Israel’s systematic targeting of hospitals and medical workers defies the English language. Yet, the US government continues to supply Israel with all the arms it seeks, protecting its actions in front of an international community in shock. Washington knows all of the details listed above and more, but it continues to aid and abet the horror story unfolding inside the Gaza Strip.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pro-Pentagon Media Calls on DoD to Step Up Anti-Houthi Info War Amid Blows to US Navy’s Reputation

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 11.07.2024

The Houthis resumed their attacks on suspected Israel and US-affiliated merchant ships Tuesday after a ten-day pause. Armed with mostly older missile designs and cheap drones and possessing no blue water navy to speak of, the militants have managed to effectively shut down the Red Sea to Western interests, humiliating the Pentagon in the process.

The US Navy’s inability to lift the Houthis’ self-imposed partial blockade of the Red and Arabian Seas or to meaningfully degrade the militia’s missile and drone capabilities in six months of air and missile strikes has given rise to embarrassing questions from allies and adversaries alike about whether the US military is a mere “paper tiger,” and not the “all powerful,” global and “omnipotent force” it’s cracked up to be.

In testimony by senior Pentagon officials on the state of America’s air and missile defenses earlier this year, Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces chairman Angus King complained that the US has proved not only unable to defend against peer competitors like Russia and China, but ineffective against smaller adversaries, including Iran and the Houthis, as well.

His concerns were echoed by media reports that the US has already spent over a billion dollars fighting the Houthis, with the USS Eisenhower supercarrier’s Super Hornet jets racking up tens of thousands of flight hours, and US warships firing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of interceptor missiles to target the militia’s simple missiles, UAVs and maritime drones.

Amid the Houthis’ successes in humbling the American goliath, panicky voices have emerged in Washington and US military-affiliated media calling for something to be done to stop the Yemeni militia’s humiliation of the US Empire in the Middle East from spreading online.

The “Navy should hit back harder against Houthi online disinformation,” Max Lesser, a senior analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a DC neoconservative think tank, wrote in an op-ed that appeared in the Navy Times on Wednesday.

“While the US military and allies regularly hit back with airstrikes against Houthi missile launchers and other assets in Yemen, the Pentagon is less prepared to defend against the online lies and disinformation that the Houthis are spreading,” Lesser complained.

The think tank analyst pointed to a series of social media posts from late May shared by “Houthi supporters” of digitally altered images and videos of damage purportedly done to the USS Eisenhower in one of the militia’s attempts to retaliate to US-UK strikes into Yemen.

The manipulated images apparently proved prolific enough for the carrier’s captain, Captain Christopher Hill, to invite journalists to inspect the warship’s flight deck to show it had not in fact suffered any damage in Houthi attacks.

Lesser suggests that the “deluge of deceptively labeled images” spread by “pro-Houthi accounts” has generally not been sufficiently challenged or debunked by the Pentagon, despite the operation of a DoD Joint Maritime Information Center stood up specifically to report on the situation in the Red Sea region. The analyst urged the military to include any “Houthi disinformation” it finds into its weekly updates, noting that for now, “debunking” the false images is falling to lone “independent” OSINT analysts.

“The challenge is not limited to the Red Sea or the Middle East,” Lesser stressed. “Military forces in every command should have public affairs and open-source intelligence personnel working together to debunk false and exaggerated claims of enemy success on the battlefield.”

Lesser’s calls for the US to step up its game in online disinformation warfare are the latest in a long-running effort by Western officials, media and corporations to rein in the free-flow of information, whether through outright broad brush censorship like the scrubbing of entire websites, comments and social media posts, or ‘softer’ means, like private ‘fact checking’ organizations set up explicitly and exclusively to challenge anti-establishment narratives.

Given the US military’s proven track record of covering up information the Pentagon finds inconvenient, there’s no guarantee that any DoD-led campaign to combat Houthi “disinformation” online won’t result in the creation of new falsehoods spread by the Defense Department.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | | 1 Comment

Canada Allocates $146.6M for New Censorship Commission to Enforce Online Harms Act

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 11, 2024

Canada’s government has decided to spend some $146.6 million (CAD 200 million) and employ, full-time, 330 more people to be able to implement the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63).

That is the monetary cost of bureaucratic red tape necessary to make this bill, which has moved for a second reading in Canada’s House of Commons, eventually happen.

At the same time, the cost to the country’s democracy could be immeasurable – given some of this sweeping censorship legislation’s more draconian provisions, primarily focused on what the authorities choose to consider to be “hate speech.”

Some of those provisions could land people under house arrest, and have their internet access cut simply for “fear” they could, going forward, commit “hate crime” or “hate propaganda.”

If these are found to be committed in conjunction with other crimes, the envisaged punishment could be life in prison. Meanwhile, money fines go up to $51,080. And, to make matters even more controversial, the proposed law appears to apply to statements retroactively, namely, those made before Bill C-63’s possible passage and enactment as law.

The new body, the Digital Safety Commission, Ombudsperson, and Office will be in charge, and this is where the money will go and where the staff amount to 330 people. The spending estimate that has recently come to light covers the five years until 2029.

The office’s task – if the bill passes – will be to monitor, regulate, and censor online platforms, as per the Online Harms Act.

Critics of the law are making a point of the distorted sense of priorities among Canada’s currently ruling regime, where a large amount of money is to be spent here, while vital sectors – such as combating actual, real-life serious crimes face funding restrictions.

Some of the purely pragmatic opposition to the bill has to do with the belief that it will – while violating citizens’ freedoms and rights – actually, prove to be unable to tackle what it is supposedly designed to do – various forms of online harassment.

And that’s not all. “Canadian taxpayers will likely be stuck footing the bill for a massive bureaucracy that will allow Big Tech companies to negotiate favorable terms with non-elected regulators behind closed doors,” is how MP Michelle Rempel Garner articulated it.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

As Zelensky visits Poland, Ukraine’s silence about the Volhynia massacre underscores one-sided alliance

BY GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK | REMIX NEWS | JULY 11, 2024

July 11 marks the 81st anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the most tragic episode of the Ukrainian-perpetrated genocide of Poles in Volhynia, which was a Polish territory before the Second World War in the “borderland” region, but is now part of Ukraine. On this day, tens of thousands of people were slaughtered in 99 villages, and to this day, the exact number of victims remains unknown. These victims have yet to be exhumed and given a dignified burial, a process continuously blocked by Ukrainian authorities, including the current administration.

Last year, on the 80th anniversary of this horrific crime, Poland received not a single word from the Ukrainian president, much less any substantive discussion. The issue of exhuming the victims and providing them with a proper burial remains at a stalemate. Tragically, the steadfast guardian of this cause, Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, is no longer with us.

This year, just three days before the anniversary, Volodymyr Zelensky visited our country. His visits, typically centered on what more Poland can offer Ukraine, did not deviate from expectations. The fact that the Ukrainian leader did not mention the impending anniversary is unsurprising and is reflective of a “Kyiv standard.”

However, it is scandalous that this omission was mirrored by every Polish politician he met. Both the left-liberal Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the conservative President Andrzej Duda seem to prefer that the Volhynia issue be forgotten, wishing away the uncomfortable problems of memory and the unburied dead.

Simultaneously, Poland signed an agreement with Ukraine on defense commitments that, in reality, encompasses much more. The format of this document is crucial: It is not formally an international treaty, thus it does not require legislative approval for ratification. If it were a treaty, such approval would be necessary given it involves a military alliance — a detail highlighted by the content of the agreement. The choice of agreement format also conveniently avoids parliamentary debate, which would likely raise uncomfortable questions about the benefits Poland receives from the arrangement and what it demands in return. Clearly, in this “bilateral” deal, Kyiv is practically the sole beneficiary.

The entirety of the 24-page document is staggering: a litany of Polish obligations to Ukraine, underpinned by a tally of what we have already done. The document does not address a single issue where Polish and Ukrainian interests might conflict, such as in agricultural production. In Poland, based on this agreement, a Ukrainian legion is to be formed, which we are of course expected to equip. No one has clarified how this will affect our security, especially given that Ukrainian soldiers will effectively be entering combat from Polish territory.

Tucked away at the very end of the agreement, on page 14, there is a vague mention of “enhancing cooperation in conducting searches, exhumations, and other activities aimed at the dignified burial of victims of conflicts, repression, and crimes.” Exactly which “conflicts, repressions, and crimes” are referred to remains unclear.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Second NATO country publicly opposes Ukrainian membership

RT | July 11, 2024

Ukraine joining NATO would guarantee a third world war, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said, publicly expressing opposition to the idea.

Fico released a short video message on Thursday while the leaders of NATO countries were meeting in Washington. The draft of the annual summit’s final communique reportedly includes references to Ukraine’s “irreversible path” towards joining the US-led bloc.

“I understand Ukraine’s wishes,” Fico said in the video. “But its membership in NATO guarantees World War Three.”

“Although to be fair, we are not too far from it even without Ukraine’s membership, seeing as how some advanced democracies are stoking the pot,” he added.

Slovakia’s representatives in Washington have been instructed to insist on two conditions for Ukrainian membership, Fico said. Kiev must meet every condition set by the bloc, and every member state has to give its blessing.

“However, as I’ve said many times, Smer and its lawmakers in the National Assembly of Slovakia will not agree to Ukraine’s membership in NATO,” he said, in reference to his ruling party.

Fico campaigned last year on a platform of opposing Ukrainian membership in NATO and further Slovak military support to Kiev. He won the election in a landslide.

In mid-May, a liberal activist reportedly upset with Bratislava’s new policy shot Fico several times and almost killed him. The prime minister underwent a series of surgeries and spent weeks recovering from the assassination attempt, returning to work in person just last week.

On Wednesday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told reporters in Washington that Ukraine’s membership in the bloc “is clearly out of the question,” as it would “foreshadow direct conflict between Russia and NATO.”

The US-led bloc is expected to pledge at least €40 billion ($43.3 billion) in military aid to Ukraine over the next year and endorse its “full Euro-Atlantic integration,” but an invitation to NATO would only be extended “when allies agree and conditions are met,” according to a draft seen by Reuters. The same language was used at last year’s summit in Lithuania.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024

Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.

On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown.

Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody – unarmed, injured, surrendering and/or bound – began circulating on social networks and Telegram channels. However, save for a single incident in April 2022, when Georgian Legion fighters gleefully filmed themselves surveying a scene near Bucha, where they ambushed and killed multiple fleeing VDV soldiers, Western journalists have either ignored these abuses, or outright denied Kiev endorses or engages in such activity.

Georgian Legion chief Mamuka Mamulashvili has nonetheless justified this conduct, openly boasting that his soldiers “tie [POWs’] hands and feet sometimes” before killing them, and “not a single [Russian] will be taken prisoner.” The New York Times probe strongly suggests this strategy is not confined to the Legion. Multiple Chosen Company fighters testified to witnessing sadistic executions of POWs, and their fellow soldiers proudly bragging about carrying them out. A US veteran posted to the unit claimed they were flatly told by their recruiter:

“[It] was OK to kill POWs if they didn’t surrender in the strictest Geneva Convention standards.”

It may be the case that the New York Times revelations are a means of distancing Kiev’s Western backers from the actions of Ukraine’s forces. Yet, as we shall see, the proxy war’s leading sponsors had strong grounds to know precisely the nature of the government, military, and security services they were arming, funding and training long before Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

‘Intentional Strategy’

As an Al Mayadeen investigation of July 2nd made clear, Ukraine’s eight-year-long “anti-terror operation” in Donbass was a savage assault on largely defenceless residents of the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The grim reality of Kiev’s abuses throughout this time was largely shielded from Western public view. Occasionally though, damaging disclosures did emerge. In 2014, Amnesty International publicised horrendous crimes committed by fascist paramilitary group Aidar Battalion in Donbass.

Next year, the organisation reported on “overwhelming evidence” of fighters and civilians taken prisoner by the Ukrainian military and security services being tortured and killed. It branded the activities of Right Sector, an ultranationalist militia at the forefront of the Maidan coup, “especially disturbing”. The group had transformed an abandoned youth camp into “an ad hoc prison,” holding dozens of civilians there as hostages, “brutally torturing them and extorting large amounts of money from them and their families.”

These revelations received meagre mainstream attention, then were promptly ignored. But the abuses continued apace. As a grisly 2016 report submitted to the OSCE starkly concluded:

“Torture and inhumane treatment inflicted by the Security Forces of Ukraine (SBU), Ukrainian armed forces, National Guard and other formations within the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, as well as by illegal armed groups, such as Right Sector, have not only continued but are gaining in scale and are becoming systematic… the extent to which torture is being used and the fact that this is done systematically prove that torture is an intentional strategy of the said institutions, authorized by their leadership.”

The report contains a panoply of deeply disturbing, and frequently difficult-to-read, first-hand testimonies of torture by the SBU and its fascist paramilitary confederates. Many of the victims claimed to be innocent civilians violently snatched off the street by gangs of armed thugs, often associated with the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Right Sector, while going about their daily business. Once in Kiev’s custody, they admitted separatist supporters and fighters were subjected to hideous abuse almost without pause.

Most prisoners were “electrocuted, beaten cruelly and for multiple days in a row with different objects.” This included “iron bars, baseball bats, sticks, rifle-butts, bayonet knives, rubber batons.” “An absolute majority” reported being subject to mock firing squads, and suffered “death and rape threats to their families.” Waterboarding, strangulation, and suffocation were common. Other methods included “bone-crushing, stabbing and cutting… branding with red-hot objects, shooting different body parts with small arms.” Captured women were “frequently raped”.

All along, detainees were kept for extended periods in “freezing temperatures, with no access to food or medical assistance.” Some inmates were reportedly killed by being made to march across minefields, and run over with military vehicles. Others were “forced to take psychotropic substances,” causing them “agony.” Several reported being handcuffed to “hex bars” – weightlifting devices – and hung from ceilings. One victim of that technique reported: “I thought my bones would fall out. My hands still won’t listen to me, here and here.”

‘Risk of Retribution’

The purpose of this, on top of brutalising rebel forces and instilling fear into the civilian population of Donbass, was to secure false testimonies from prisoners. Typically, they were forced to admit to being part of the DPR and LPR defence forces, and committing grave crimes in that capacity. Others signed declarations implicating themselves as Russian assets, and/or validating the fiction that the rebels were controlled and armed by Moscow.

This of course served to reinforce Kiev’s claims its “anti-terror operation” was a righteous, legitimate crusade against Russian invaders in disguise, who were committing perverse acts of “terrorism”. And moreover, that Ukraine was successful in crushing this criminal incursion by their hostile, belligerent adversary. Nonetheless, there was another malign purpose to detaining and abusing so many innocent civilians. They could be traded for Ukrainian soldiers captured by breakaway authorities.

In June 2020, in a case brought by two Ukrainian draft dodgers seeking asylum in London, a British immigration court ruled that Kiev’s frontline forces in the “anti-terror operation” routinely committed grave war crimes. This included “unlawful capture and detention” of a “large number of civilians “with no legal or military justification… motivated by the need for ‘currency’ for prisoner exchanges” with the breakaway republics. The judgment moreover noted “systemic mistreatment of those detained by the Ukrainian military”:

“This involves torture and other conduct that is cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment contrary to Article 3 of the [European Convention on Human Rights] … There is likely to be official indifference to the mistreatment they have received. There is an attitude and atmosphere of impunity for those involved in mistreating detainees. No one has been brought to justice. Pro-Kyiv militia have been rewarded for their work by formal incorporation into the military. Lawyers are afraid of taking on cases due to the risk of retribution.”

Elsewhere, the ruling recorded that Kiev’s “adherence to the principles of distinction, precaution and proportionality when engaging with civilian targets has been poor, despite that being a task which calls for surgical precision.” This included infrastructure such as water installations, “a particular and repeated target” despite enjoying “protected status” under international humanitarian law. It further observed a “widespread civilian loss of life and the extensive destruction of residential property” in Donbass, partially attributable to “poorly targeted and disproportionate attacks carried out by the Ukrainian military.”

We can only speculate whether Kiev was tutored in torture by Western experts in the art. A February New York Times investigation revealed the very first act of Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, appointed SBU chief immediately following the Maidan coup, was to telephone the local heads of CIA and MI6, asking “for help in rebuilding the agency from the ground up, and [proposing] a three-way partnership.” This dark handshake gave rise to Ukraine’s assassination program, which US officials fear could lead to targeted killings the world over.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Iran dismisses NATO allegation it supplies ballistic missiles to Russia to be used in Ukraine war

Press TV – July 11, 2024

Iran has categorically rejected allegations it is providing ballistic missiles and related technology to Russia, raised by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to be used in the military campaign against Ukraine.

In a statement on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said NATO has made “totally baseless and politically-motivated” claims.

In their declaration issued on Wednesday, the NATO leaders claimed that North Korea and Iran were fuelling Russia’s military operation against Ukraine by providing direct military support to Moscow, such as munitions and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), which they said impacted Euro-Atlantic security and undermined the global non-proliferation regime.

They said any transfer of ballistic missiles and related technology by Iran to Russia would represent a substantial escalation.

The Iranian spokesman, in reaction, said the ongoing developments in Ukraine are the result of NATO’s “provocative” policies and measures led by the United States.

Kan’ani added that any attempt to link the war in Ukraine to the cooperation between Iran and Russia is “politically-motivated” with the aim of legitimizing the West’s interference and their military aid to Ukraine.

He once again reiterated Iran’s unwavering strategy to play a constructive role in promoting durable security in the region and across the world.

Iran has never provided Russia with any type of drones during the military conflict in Ukraine and still emphasizes the importance of settling the crisis and establishing lasting peace through political channels, the diplomat pointed out.

Iran has repeatedly rejected accusations that it has supplied weapons to Russia for direct use in the war in Ukraine. It has also discarded allegations of supplying weapons to anti-Israeli and anti-US groups in the region.

Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly warned that a flow of Western weapons to Ukraine will only prolong the conflict.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the US, alone, has provided approximately $51.4 billion in military assistance to Kiev, the US State Department said in early July.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

NATO Declaration Is Stark Neoconservative Recommitment to US Hegemony – Sachs

Sputnik – 11.07.2024

WASHINGTON – NATO’s latest joint declaration serves as a stark neoconservative recommitment to US hegemony, Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned economist and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, told Sputnik.

“The NATO Declaration is a stark neoconservative recommitment to US hegemony. It calls for NATO to back the ‘rules-based order,’ which is actually the US-based order that is often directly contrary to the UN Charter,” Sachs said.

On Wednesday, NATO released a joint Washington Summit Declaration, which outlines the alliance’s efforts to further isolate Russia, bolster the alliance’s security on its eastern flank, increase security assistance for Ukraine, and claim Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” into NATO, among other initiatives.

“It describes NATO as a defensive force despite the fact that NATO is repeatedly engaged in offensive regime-change operations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Serbia, Libya, Ukraine, and others,” Sachs said.

Sachs explains that NATO’s declaration also restates Article 10 of the Washington Treaty, which claims that Russia has no input if NATO expands to surround Russia.

Moreover, Sachs said NATO’s joint statement describes its commitment to advanced biotechnologies, which raises concerns of biowarfare.

Sachs also pointed out that the declaration shows NATO’s intention to continue to deploy anti-ballistic missiles throughout Europe as it’s previously done in Poland, Romania, and Turkiye, which has directly destabilized the nuclear arms control architecture ever since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002.

The White House announced earlier that the United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said US plans to deploy intermediate- and shorter-range missiles to Germany pose a direct threat to international security and increase the risks of a missile arms race.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

US plan to deploy missiles in Germany a ‘direct threat’ – Moscow

RT | July 11, 2024

US plans to deploy long-range missiles in Europe are a threat to global security and could pave the way for an escalation of already tense relations between Moscow and NATO, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov has said.

On Wednesday, the US and Germany issued a joint statement that America “will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.”

Washington also said that the systems will include SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles with ranges of up to 460km and 2,400km, respectively, as well as developmental hypersonic weapons. Those assets have a “significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe,” the statement added.

In a post on Telegram on Thursday, Antonov denounced the move as “a serious mistake by Washington.” “Such extremely destabilizing steps are a direct threat to international security and strategic stability,” he said.

The envoy stressed that the planned deployment “increases the risks of a missile arms race,” adding that it could unleash “uncontrolled escalation amid dangerously soaring Russia-NATO tensions.”

Antonov also said that Russia has always sought to reduce the risks posed by disagreements over missile capabilities. “Instead of the desire for peace that Russia has demonstrated many times, the Americans have embarked on the dangerous path of militarism,” according to the ambassador.

He emphasized that Russia’s tolerance for encroachments on its security is “not unlimited.” “Doesn’t Germany understand that the emergence of American missile assets on German soil will lead to these facilities ending up in Russian crosshairs? This is not saber-rattling, it is the simple logic of a normal person,” Antonov explained.

He went on to blast the US for not thinking about how to minimize the fallout from the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Signed in 1987 at the end of the Cold War, it barred Moscow and Washington from possessing many types of nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500km.

The US unilaterally withdrew from the treaty in 2019, citing alleged Russian non-compliance, a charge denied in Moscow. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov suggested earlier this week that the US pulled out of the agreement to create formerly banned missile systems to put pressure on China.

At the same time, Russia has said that it intends to keep abiding by the INF’s terms, but warned that it could reverse that policy if Washington starts deploying missiles covered by the treaty in any region of the world.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

US to deploy long-range weapons in Germany

RT | July 10, 2024

The US will station long-range missiles in Germany from 2026 onwards, the governments of both countries have announced. These weapons, including the SM-6 and Tomahawk systems, were banned on the continent until Washington tore up a landmark Cold War-era treaty in 2019.

According to a joint statement published by the White House, the US will “begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.”

The statement was released following talks between American and German officials at NATO’s annual summit in Washington on Wednesday.

The weapons systems deployed to Germany will include the SM-6 anti-air missile, which has a range of up to 460km (290 miles), and the Tomahawk cruise missile, which can reportedly strike targets more than 2,500km away.

The White House said that “developmental hypersonic weapons” will also be stationed in Germany, and will have a “significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe.”

The US has yet to successfully field a hypersonic weapon, and has canceled every hypersonic project since its first successful test in 2017.

Land-launched missiles with a range between 500km and 5,500km were banned on European soil under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. Along with the START-I and START-II agreements, the INF treaty helped defuse nuclear tensions in Europe after the West and the USSR came perilously close to nuclear war during NATO’s Able Archer military exercise in 1983.

The US pulled out of the INF treaty in 2019, with the State Department claiming that some of Russia’s cruise missiles had breached the agreement. Moscow denied this, and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned then-US President Donald Trump that the demise of the treaty would “have the gravest consequences.”

Russia continued to abide by the treaty and imposed a moratorium on the development of missiles that it prohibited. However, Putin announced earlier this month that the Russian defense industry would resume development of such armaments, citing the “hostile actions” of the US.

“We now know that the US is not only producing these missile systems, but has also brought them to Europe, Denmark, to use in exercises. Not long ago, it was reported that they were in the Philippines,” Putin explained at the time.

US and Danish forces trained with SM-6 missiles last September, while the Pentagon deployed its Typhon Weapon System – which can fire both SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles – to the Philippines in April.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Top 10 NHS dietary advice FAILS (from a doctor)

Dr Philip Bosanquet | August 4, 2023

The NHS dietary guidelines are not fit for purpose (in my opinion).

Buy The Concise Nutrition and Lifestyle Guide: https://www.bosanquethealth.com/book-… (available worldwide via Amazon).

Visit Bosanquet Health: https://www.bosanquethealth.com The 10 fails are:

10. Approaching healthy eating / nutrition from a calories-in vs calories-out energy balance focus (failing to take into account Leptin).

9. Basing meals on starchy carbohydrates (failing to understand the root cause of insulin resistance, number one driver of obesity and chronic disease).

8. Minimising fat intake (due to it’s calorie density).

7. Promoting seed oils (vegetable oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil) as healthy, whilst stating saturated fat is bad / causes cardiovascular disease (papers on this are listed below, see also video on animal fat:    • Why ANIMAL FAT is the ultimate SUPERF…   ).

6. Advising people not to delay or skip meals, including breakfast (failing to appreciate time restricted eating / intermittent fasting).

5. Advice of healthy snacks.

4. Advice on artificial sweeteners as a substitute for sugar.

3. No mention of the gut microbiome, of organic food being better for humans and the environment than non-organic food, of minimally processed or unprocessed foods in preference to overly processed foods, or the quality or nutritional density of food choices.

2. Switching from full cream / full fat / whole milk to semi skimmed / reduced fat milk to help kids lose weight (!). Failing to take into account fat soluble vitamins including vitamin D.

1. Some of the recipe examples given.

Links to papers on saturated fat: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28864…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24723…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26268…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34796…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34547…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34717…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34509…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27071…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23386…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34290…

Dr Philip Bosanquet The Low-Tech Lifestyle Medic

content (except quotes) copyright to Dr Philip Bosanquet 2023 ©

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 1 Comment