Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Australia uses ‘illegal surveillance’ against pro-Palestinian student protesters: Activist

Press TV – July 20, 2024

Authorities at a top university in Australia have used illegal surveillance methods against pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who have for several months been protesting against Israel’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip.

Students at the University of Melbourne staged encampment protests and sit-in strikes to force the university to cut ties with weapons manufacturers, divest from Israeli firms, and “end its complicity in the genocide in Gaza,” said protest organizer Dana Alshaer.

Alshaer, one of the main organizers of UniMelb for Palestine, told Turkish news agency Anadolu that along with 20 other students, she is now facing “extremely baseless” allegations of misconduct from the university and the threat of expulsion.

“They targeted five main organizers of UniMelb for Palestine, and they also targeted some prominent students who have been very visibly present during rallies and protests on campus,” said Alshaer.

“In the misconduct allegations,” she said, “the university included CCTV footage and Wi-Fi location tracking as evidence … so there’s been a use of surveillance technologies against students.”

Alshaer said the university clarified in 2016 that “their Wi-Fi tracking cannot and will not be used to identify students.”

“However, what we saw in the misconduct allegations and documents that were sent to us is that Wi-Fi tracking has been used to track students.”

Alshaer also raised concern “over the university’s possible and potential use of facial recognition programs.”

She said the university is using these misconduct allegations as a punishment “for students who defied the university’s ties with weapons manufacturers … and challenged the university’s ongoing complicity in the genocide in Gaza.”

She said that that university “is punishing students for standing up against [Israel’s] genocide” in Gaza.

Alshaer said that after their month-long Gaza solidarity encampment protests, they managed to push the university to disclose in June its links with US weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing and BAE Systems, as well as over $15 million in research partnerships and investments with the US Department of Defense.

Despite being targeted by the university, she said, the students are determined to continue their activities for Palestine.

Pro-Palestine encampment protests that began at Columbia University in the United States in April and spread across campuses nationwide and worldwide, have faced harsh police crackdown and led to hundreds of arrests.

The protesters have been calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the regime’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , | 2 Comments

How western Big Tech giants enable Israel’s occupation

By Kit Klarenberg | The Cradle | July 20, 2024

On 10 July, Hebrew newspaper Maariv reported that 46,000 Israeli businesses have been forced to shut down due to the ongoing Gaza war and its devastating effect on the economy. The outlet referred to Israel as a “country in collapse.”

Regular readers of The Cradle will be well aware of the scale of the occupation state’s economic collapse since the Gaza genocide began. Yet, its effect on the precipitous decline of Tel Aviv’s once-thriving tech sector remains underexplored.

Complicity in occupation infrastructure

In mid-June, mainstream news outlets reported that chip giant Intel was halting expansion of a major factory project in Israel, which was slated to pump an extra $15 billion into the occupation entity’s economy.

Intel is just one tech giant whose fortunes have soured since Palestinian freedom fighters breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls on 7 October 2023.

The same fate has been suffered by many tech companies profiteering from illegal Zionist settlement expansion, which also provide infrastructure and resources used to oppress Palestinians and enforce Tel Aviv’s apartheid.

Multiple consumer-facing western companies that not only profit from illegal Jewish settlement expansion but actively provide core infrastructure and resources used to oppress Palestinians and enforce Tel Aviv’s apartheid could now be subject to lawsuits.

This week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s continued presence in occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible.” Notably, the court opened the door to “reparations” for any illegal actions carried out by Israel and other entities since 1967.

The ICJ’s landmark judgment means the long-term viability of these tech firms’ operations in the occupied territories is moribund – for fear of legal repercussions, if nothing else.

Fittingly, given Germany is currently in the dock at the ICJ for its support and facilitation of the genocide in Gaza, Munich-headquartered tech conglomerate Siemens is among the culprits.

The firm is “focused on automation and digitalization in the manufacturing industries, intelligent infrastructure for buildings and distributed energy systems, smart mobility solutions for rail transport, and medical technology and digital healthcare services.” Its products are profuse throughout the occupation state and its illegal settlements.

Traffic control systems and traffic lights produced by Siemens can be found in areas of the West Bank where Palestinian residents are forbidden from traveling. In 2014, the company’s Israeli subdivision RS Industries won a tender to provide traffic control systems across the Jerusalem Municipality too – East Jerusalem, designated as the capital of the Palestinian state, was occupied in 1967, and falls within the ICJ’s mandate.

Elsewhere, Siemens provides its DDEMU model cars for the Tel Aviv Jerusalem Fast Train and, in 2018, was awarded a $1 billion contract by the entity-owned Israel Railways to supply 330 electric cars as part of Israel’s electrification project, which includes the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem Fast Train (A1).

A highly controversial project that passes through two areas of the West Bank, including privately owned, occupied Palestinian land, it is intended for exclusive use by Israeli Jews.

Don’t Buy Into Occupation (DBIO) states: “Siemens’ activities are of concern, as they are linked to the provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements.”

However, the company’s activities extend far further. Through its Israeli representative, Orad Group, the company provides equipment and technology to the notorious Israel Prison Service (IPS).

In 2004, the Orad Group provided a Siemens technology-based perimeter security system to Gilboa prison — a detention center specifically designated for Palestinian political prisoners. Siemens also supplies the IPS with a sophisticated fire detection and extinguishing system.

Connecting settlements

US brand Motorola is widely recognized for its innovative smartphone devices. However, DBIO has meticulously documented the involvement of Motorola’s Tel Aviv division in settlement expansion over the past decade.

The tech giant has collaborated closely with Israeli occupation forces, the Ministry of Defense, and Zionist settlement councils across the illegally occupied territories. A prime example of this collaboration is the surveillance system “MotoEagle,” designed to monitor settlers on appropriated land, operate within occupation military bases, and oversee the Gaza concentration camp’s separation wall.

Notably, Motorola-produced radar stations have been installed on illegally appropriated private Palestinian land, restricting Palestinian movement in these areas. Furthermore, Motorola supplies the Ministry of Defense’s Zramim System, a smart card operation utilized at Israeli checkpoints to monitor goods transportation.

Palestinian drivers, merchants, and transport companies are compelled to register their personal information in this system, enabling Tel Aviv to monitor all entry and exit points meticulously.

The company is also a preferred contractor for internal security systems in numerous occupation settlements. The Jordan Valley regional council, encompassing more than 20 settlements in the occupied West Bank, employs multiple Motorola products, including command and control systems and surveillance cameras. Additionally, the Population and Immigration Authority in the settlement of Beitar Illit uses Motorola for its security needs.

In 2022, Motorola Solutions secured a contract to provide security cameras and entrance control resources for the Jerusalem Light Rail’s (JLR) entire Green Line. This route links the Gilo settlement in occupied East Jerusalem with the city center and the Ramat Eshkol, Ma’alot Dafna, and French Hill settlements, facilitating connectivity between settler enclaves and supporting settler movement. Consequently, Motorola has been listed in the UN’s database of firms profiting from illegal settlement expansion.

Powering apartheid

Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE), which split from personal computer and printer provider Hewlett Packard in 2015, is one of the most profitable US corporations. However, it is less well-known that HPE supplies and manages much of the technological infrastructure underpinning the occupation state’s apartheid and settler colonialism.

For example, HPE provides “Itanium” servers and maintenance services to Tel Aviv’s Population and Immigration Authority. This computerized Israel’s checkpoint system while storing vast amounts of information on all Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and non-citizen Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem.

HPE directly contracts with the illegal settler municipalities of Modi’in Ilit and Ariel, two of the largest Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, providing them with a range of services. Additionally, HPE maintains the central server system for the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), placing the company at the core of Tel Aviv’s use of mass incarceration to suppress Palestinian resistance. A 1994 Human Rights Watch report highlighted this by noting:

“The extraction of confessions under duress, and the acceptance into evidence of such confessions by the military courts, form the backbone of Israel’s military justice system.”

Moreover, HPE is the primary provider of the Basel system, an automated biometric access control system employed at Israeli checkpoints and the Gaza apartheid wall. ID cards distributed under Basel are integral to the systematic discrimination against Palestinians.

The checkpoints, by design, segregate and fragment the Occupied Palestinian Territories and its inhabitants, separating workers from their places of employment, students from their schools, and families from each other through electrified fences, watchtowers, and concrete barriers.

Electronic counter intifada

This system is part of a broader state of siege under which Palestinians have lived for decades, significantly intensified by the sealing off of Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli navy, another HPE customer, relies on the company’s IT infrastructure and support services. The siege severely restricts the movement of goods and people in and out of Palestinian territories, aiming explicitly to crush Palestinian resistance.

In 2006, Dov Weisglass, an adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explained: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” It was hoped hunger pangs through limited caloric intake might encourage Palestinians to reject Hamas or at least force its fighters to temper their resistance efforts. The starvation of Palestinians has only galvanized their support for Hamas and their yearning for freedom from Israeli occupation.

The occupation state failed to crush the Palestinian resistance via Operation Swords of Iron, an effort so catastrophic that even Israeli media has branded it a “total defeat.”

Following Iran’s successful 14 April retaliatory strikes against Israel, Tel Aviv’s reign of impunity appears to be nearing its long-overdue end. It is only a matter of time before major western tech firms like HPE, which facilitated the oppression of Palestinians, will face consequences for their complicity.

This investigation is the second in a series at The Cradle that examines illegal investments by western corporations in the occupied Palestinian territories and/or that assist Israel in implementing its apartheid system. The first investigation can be found here.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Israel’ attacks Yemeni civilian facilities, Sanaa vows heavy price

Al Mayadeen | July 20, 2024

Israeli war jets launched a series of airstrikes on Saturday targeting Yemen’s province of Hodeidah on the Red Sea coast.

The aggression targeted an oil refinery, leading to a massive fire that can be seen kilometers away.

Al Mayadeen’s correspondent reported that the strikes targeted the Ras Kathib power station in Hodeidah, igniting the oil storage facilities.

The Yemeni Ministry of Health reported martyrs and wounded as a result of the aggression, confirming that civilians suffered severe burns due to the fires.

Israeli Kan 11 channel citing a US official reported that the Israelis conducted an attack in Yemen.

Civil defense teams are battling to extinguish the fires and flames engulfing the targeted zone, our correspondent added, noting that the size of the blaze is making the task extremely difficult.

Yemeni sources informed Al Mayadeen that these airstrikes were coordinated between US and Israeli forces, indicating that the nature of the targets hit by the aggression shows the blindness of the enemy.

They emphasized that there will be a response to the aggression.

Israeli media quoted official American sources stating that 25 F-35 fighters attacked multiple targets in Yemen in several attack waves.

Furthermore, an Israeli media platform mentioned that Italians assisted “Israel” with refueling aircraft in Yemeni airspace.

Following the Israeli aggression, the head of Yemen’s negotiating delegation, Mohammad Abdul-Salam, affirmed that pressuring Yemen to cease supporting Gaza is “a dream that will not come true for the Israeli enemy.”

“The brutal Israeli aggression will only increase the determination and the steadfastness of the Yemeni people and its brave armed forces in an escalating manner.”

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 1 Comment

Ongoing Jewish Influence in the Transformation of Ireland

By Marshall Yeates | Occidental Observer | July 20, 2024

The ‘softening up’ of Ireland for the ongoing scheme of mass population replacement is set to gather pace following the appointment of Nigerian Ebun Joseph in the Orwellian role of “Special Rapporteur for the National Plan Against Racism.” The stated aim of this plan is to “make Ireland a place in which the impacts of racism are fully acknowledged and actively addressed.” In other words, the goal of the plan is to brainwash the Irish population into a sense of White guilt, or as a recent article in The Spectator put it, “the Nigerian-born Special Rapporteur will deliver regular reports to the Irish government about how hideously white and racist Irish people are.” The national Plan Against Racism will begin a process where special rights and privileges are handed to foreigners while the Irish become second class citizens in their own land. The reason for the implementation of the plan, according to Shane O’Curry, Director of the Irish Network Against Racism (INAR), is that “migrants in Ireland are reporting not feeling safe across the board in all areas of life.” Mr O’Curry does not appear to be concerned about the declining sense of safety among Irish women and children thanks to these same migrants, but I suspect that Mr O’Curry is on too high a salary, much of it provided by globalist NGOs, to concern himself with such matters. Nonetheless, as will be explained below, Ebun Joseph is merely the figurehead for something that has a distinctly Jewish complexion, because Ireland’s National Action Plan Against Racism has Jewish origins.

Alice Feldman and the Need for an “Anti-Racist Ireland”

Ebun Joseph is a direct protege of Jewish-American academic Alice Feldman, a sociologist at University College Dublin. It was Feldman who supervised Joseph’s PhD, and it was Feldman who groomed Joseph for her current role as the face of Irish ‘anti-racism’. Athough a whole host of Irish and ethnic minority names have been listed as authors of the “National Plan Against Racism,” even the briefest of research reveals that it was first conceived as far back as 2003 and that the author of a plan bearing this precise name was none other than Feldman herself — a draft document carrying that name is listed among her publications for 2003. According to Feldman’s own profile on the University College Dublin website, “Over the past two decades, I have worked in research, advisory and volunteer capacities with many civic, community and other organisations in Ireland involved in anti-racism, migration and interculturalism work.” In other words, like other Jews to be discussed in this essay, she has invested more than twenty years in opposing the interests of the native Irish. Feldman has also perfected the art of linguistic academic nonsense, once describing her work as drawing “on a trans disciplinary variety of traditions to cultivate and mobilise decolonial praxes that intervene in the global colonial legacies underpinning the current necropolitical moment.”

Ebun Joseph

Looking into the relationship between Feldman and Joseph, it is clear that Feldman is quite the activist, though content to let the Nigerian be the public figure advancing her agenda. A description of one of their partnerships reads:

UCD (University College Dublin) academics Dr. Ebun Joseph and Dr. Alice Feldman led a talk on Thursday 2nd July entitled “So What Next: Becoming Anti-Racist via Zoom.” … Joseph is a race relations consultant, Career Development Specialist and module coordinator for UCD’s Black Studies module. Feldman works in the UCD School of Sociology and is a convenor of the UCD MA Race, Migration and Decolonial Studies and Decolonial Dialogues Platform. The academics commented during the webinar that they already have a long working relationship. Joseph and Feldman focused on two topics: white fragility and anti-racism allyship. Feldman said she believed white fragility needed to be understood by white people so they can do the work of anti-racism allyship. … They discussed how when white people defensively deflect during conversations about race out of discomfort, or the fear that they are being attacked, they put the exhausting responsibility on people of colour to ensure that they feel comfortable and as a result, the conversation is closed. They both believe that if we cannot have open conversations about race and racism, we cannot change it. Joseph stressed that there are only racists and anti-racists; if someone defensively says they are not a racist, that merely means that they are a racist in denial. Joseph added that silent racists are in the majority whereas the loud, violent racists are in the minority. Feldman said that an anti-racist needs to accept that they live in a racist society and they should examine the way racism can be eradicated from the organisations they are a part of. … The academics would like there to be a compulsory anti-racism module in UCD because they feel we cannot expect to have an anti-racist society if we do not teach anti-racism.

Alice Feldman

A 2020 article for Gript rightly pointed out that

the ideology of Doctors Joseph and Feldman, which is corrupting the Irish academy as it has corrupted the universities of other western democracies, is Critical Race Theory. This theory, whatever about those who espouse it, can be used as perniciously as the spurious race theories that have gone before it. It is racialism directed against white people: no more nor no less. Its methods are the boots and petrol bombs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter allied to a craven intellectual capitulation on the part of the deracinated bourgeois liberals and lefties who control much of the institutions where the poison is disseminated.

Laura Weinstein and the Dangers of “Irish Inbreeding”

Feldman is not the first American Jew to arrive on Irish shores and start telling the Irish they have no ethnic interests. Back in 2019, Laura Weinstein, a New York PhD living in Ireland and claiming to be an expert in Irish history and culture waded into Ireland’s growing immigration debate. Of all the aspects of Irish history and culture Weinstein could have chosen to focus on, she decided she was most interested, like Feldman and others, in the “myth” of a homogeneous Irish identity and “right wing Irish nationalism.”

Laura Weinstein

Weinstein employed her Twitter account to the trolling of Irish political figures opposed to mass immigration. In one example she responded to a post by the National Party by implying that Irish opposition to immigration would leave the Irish like “neurotic” “inbred” “dogs.” She wrote: “Gene flow as a result of immigration prevents the negative impact of inbreeding. But, go ahead and constrain migration and gene flow if you want to create a race of humans that reflects the neuroticism of “pure bred” dogs. Just be sure to hold a referendum on inbreeding first.” Not only was Weinstein’s fixation exceedingly strange and unsettling, it was also fanciful. Genetic studies have shown the Irish already possess a diverse gene pool in the form of genetic clusters of Scandinavian, Norman-French, British, and Iberian origin. This is a considerably wider gene pool than that of Dr Weinstein’s Ashkenazi Jews, who are descended from a single group of 350 people. It will come as no surprise to readers of this website that Weinstein is acutely concerned about the preservation of her own people, and is listed by Algemeiner as “an antisemitism analyst at the ADL.” “Inbreeding” for me, but apparently not for thee.

Ronit Lentin’s Deconstruction of the Irish

As well as being a direct protege of Alice Feldman, Ebun Joseph is the ideological child of Ronit Lentin, the Israeli Jew who in 1997 established Ireland’s first “Ethnic and Racial Studies” programme, and thereby ushered in the arrival of Critical Race Theory in Ireland. Lentin was also a colleague and collaborator with Alice Feldman in an early 2008 side project of the National Action Plan Against Racism. From 1997 until 2012 Lentin was Head of Sociology, and acted as director of the MPhil program in “Race, Ethnicity, Conflict.” She was also the founder of the Trinity Immigration Initiative, from which she advocated an open-door immigration policy for Ireland and opposed all deportations, as well as engaging in activism to liberalise Irish abortion laws.[1] As an academic and “anti-racist” activist, Lentin formulated what would become some of the cardinal facets of Irish self-recrimination on matters of race, beginning with her definition of Ireland as “a biopolitical racist state.”[2]  By her own account, before she began her work on stoking Irish race guilt in the early 1990s, “most people were not conscious that Irish racism existed.”[3]

Ronit Lentin

In some senses Lentin introduced the concept of an Irish racism. Her first step in assuring the Irish that they were indeed racist was to deny their existence as a people. She asserted that the Irish were merely “theorised as homogeneous — white, Christian and settled.”[4] Quite who had developed this theory of the Irish, and when, was never specified by Lentin, nor did she attempt to show that the White, Christian, and settled status of the vast majority of the Irish population was anything other than a matter of fact and reality. It appears to have sufficed for Lentin simply to assert that Irishness was nothing but a theory, and to leave it at that. She was particularly aggrieved by the fact the Irish, apparently unaware they were a figment of their own imagination, voted (80 percent%) to link citizenship and blood (ending “birth-right citizenship) by constitutionally differentiating between citizen and non-citizen in a June 2004 Citizenship Referendum. This move was taken primarily in order to stop African “birth tourism” and “anchor babies” by African women, which had become increasingly common by the early 2000s. To Lentin, however, the move was symbolic of the fact “the Irish Republic had consciously and democratically become a racist state.”[5] She concluded that any idea of the Irish as historical victims should be dispensed with, and that “Ireland’s new position as heading the Globalisation Index, its status symbol as the locus of “cool” culture, and its privileged position within an ever-expanding European Community calls for re-theorising Irishness as white supremacy.”[6]

So, in Lentin’s worldview, Irishness is not only a fiction, but a racist, “white supremacist” fiction. Lentin’s advice to the Irish, should they wish to rid themselves of the delusion of peoplehood, was to engage in mass celebrations of “diversity and integration and multiracialism and multiculturalism and interculturalism,”[7] Lentin adds: “I propose an interrogation of how the Irish nation can become other than white.” Keeping up the family tradition, Ronit Lentin’s daughter Alana moved to Australia several years ago, where she quickly established herself as an equally rabid promoter of White guilt and engaged in successive critiques of Australian “racism.” She is now President of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association, and has penned articles for The Guardian asserting that Australian identity is as fictional as that of the Irish, and demanding Australia adopt an open borders policy so that it too can become other than White.

Katrina Goldstone and the Flooding of Ireland

Working alongside Feldman and Lentin on the 2008 collaboration relating to the early National Plan Against Racism was the Irish Jewish writer Katrina Goldstone. Goldstone remains a board member of New Communities Ireland, “Ireland’s largest independent migrant-led national network of more than 150 immigrant-led groups comprising 65 nationalities,” an organisation similar to Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, the Deputy Director of which is the Sephardic Jew Bill Abom. Goldstone has described herself as being “involved in asylum rights and minority issues” for more than two decades.

Katrina Goldstone

Louise Derman-Sparks and The Perils of Racist Irish Children

“Teaching anti-racism” is a top priority for Jewish ethnic activists across the West, and involves inculcating a sense of White guilt and shame about expressing White ethnic interests. The groundwork for the brainwashing of Irish children was laid by Katherine Zappone, an American lesbian who served as Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth from 2016 to 2020. In 2016 Zappone unveiled the “Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Charter, and Guidelines for Early Childhood Care and Education.” The document opens by explaining these guidelines for transforming Irish education in an anti-White direction “are informed by national and international equality and antidiscriminatory educational approaches and practice. They draw heavily on the anti-bias approach developed by Louise Derman-Sparks in the USA.”

Derman-Sparks is an American Jew who “pioneered” anti-bias and anti-racism courses for children in the 1980s through such works as Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for ChangeAnti-Bias Education for Young Children and OurselvesTeaching/Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach, and What If All the Kids Are White? Derman-Sparks travelled to Ireland on at least one occasion, in October 1998, to preach her doctrine, giving a keynote speech at a conference on early-years education with a paper titled “Education without Prejudice for the Early Years.”

A good example of Derman-Sparks’ work, which is being incorporated into the teaching of Irish children, can be found in an article for the American Federation of Teachers in which Derman-Sparks states:

Biologically, there is no such thing as race. All people are members of one race, Homo sapiens, the human race—even though everyone does not look the same. … Diversity does not cause prejudice, nor does children noticing and talking about differences, as some adults fear. … Very early, white children come to value their whiteness, presume it is the definition of normal, and believe that therefore all other skin colors are strange and less than. While early childhood teachers want all children to like who they are, the challenge for an anti-bias educator is to enable white children to like who they are without developing a sense of white superiority.

In What If All The Kids Are White? (2011), Derman-Sparks writes that “White children’s learning to be “White” is part of the maintenance of systemic racism, and “Whiteness” plays a significant role in the behaviour of all White adults.”[8] By incorporating the work of Derman-Sparks into the national education system, Ireland has sealed the fate of its youth, consenting to the ongoing brainwashing of generations.

***

The Nigerian Ebun Joseph is often ridiculed by the right-wing media, both for the extremes of her positions and for her ineptitude at articulating her ideas. She is a figurehead being used by others behind the scenes, and she absorbs much of the jokes and hostility. Joseph is certainly an ideological activist who sees ‘racism’ even in Irishness itself. A good example occurred in 2019 when she was mistakenly served blackcurrant juice instead of house wine at the Galway Bay Hotel. Whereas others might have simply mentioned the mistake to staff, Joseph declared herself the victim of racism. As this affair gathered pace, she took to social media to demand: “Please, more Blacks go there. They can’t discourage us from going where we want!” Ireland now has this person, so militant over a glass of juice, ordering the government to make the nation less ‘racist.’

It would be a mistake, however, to take Ebun Joseph lightly. She has been groomed for her role and she will attempt to perform it with aggression and dedication, to the detriment of the Irish and to the great satisfaction of her mentors. Across the West there has been a pattern of elite-led brainwashing, where ideas cooked up by hostile Jewish academics are fed to students who go on to become the nation’s professional class and from there disperse into the general population. Joseph wants the “anti-racism” material cooked up by her mentors made compulsory in the education system. These ideas infect police forces, the media, and Human Resources departments. They penetrate every aspect of life until they are inescapable. Critical Race Theory isn’t satisfied until everything about European culture and peoplehood is destroyed. There is no set target when it can be agreed that Ireland is sufficiently “diverse,” and there is no point at which the Irish will have the smear of racism lifted from their heads. Under the gaze of Critical Race Theory, the existence of a single Irish family is racist. The Irish will cease to be racist, only when they cease to be; when they are utterly replaced and when nothing of Ireland remains. These are the dictates of new rulers, of a conquering class who have not arrived with swords and guns, but with sob stories, lies and a perverted academic blackmail.


[1] See Lentin, R. (2013). A Woman Died: Abortion and the Politics of Birth in Ireland. Feminist Review105(1), 130

—136.

[2] R. Lentin, After Optimism? Ireland, Racism and Globalisation (Dublin: Metro Eireann Publications, 2006), 3.

[3] Ibid., 1.

[4] Ibid., 2.

[5] Ibid., 55.

[6] Ibid., 107.

[7] Ibid., 165.

[8] Derman-Sparks, Louise., Ramsey, Patricia G.. What If All the Kids Are White? Anti-Bias Multicultural Education with Young Children and Families. (United States: Teachers College Press, 2011), 31.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments

From Clinton Fraud to Trump-Zelensky Call: Recalling CrowdStrike’s Shady Politics Amid IT Outage

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 20.07.2024

A sloppy update to software made by US cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike has taken PCs and servers used by airlines, railways, banks, broadcasters and even medical facilities around the world offline. For anyone following US politics over the past decade or so, the company’s name should be eerily familiar.

CrowdStrike is making global headlines (and causing global headaches) this week after an update released Friday morning afflicted thousands of corporate machines running Microsoft products with the infamous blue screen of death error.

While the company has already put out a fix, the buggy update is expected to cause billions of dollars and hours in lost productivity, and experts say it may take “weeks” for businesses and governments worldwide to fully recover.

But behind the company’s reputation as a major provider of endpoint security products is the odd routineness of its name popping up in US politics.

During the 2016 US presidential election, the Clinton campaign asked none other than CrowdStrike for help investigating the hack attack against the Democratic National Committee – which had revealed embarrassing info about the party’s efforts to rig the nomination process in Mrs. Clinton’s favor.

CrowdStrike’s probe gave rise to the very first claims that Russia was behind the DNC hack, and the company provided its “forensic evidence and analysis” to the FBI, starting the ball rolling on the Russiagate conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was colluding with Russia to “steal” the election.

CrowdStrike executive Shawn Henry admitted under oath in congressional testimony in 2017 that the company had no “concrete evidence” to back up its “Russian hackers” story, but by that point it was too late, and Trump would spend virtually the entirety of his term in office dogged by the “collusion” claims.

CrowdStrike’s name also came up in the infamous 2019 phone call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, with the then-US president asking Zelensky to “do us a favor” and “find out what happened” with CrowdStrike’s server, which Trump said was in Ukraine. The Trump team was convinced that CrowdStrike planted evidence on the DNC server to frame Russia while covering up Ukraine’s own efforts to “weaken the Trump bandwagon” during the 2016 race. Democratic politicians and anti-Trump media dismissed the president’s suspicions as groundless.

The Trump-Zelensky phone call, in which he also asked Kiev to look into then former vice president Joe Biden’s role in firing of a prosecutor probing his son Hunter Biden’s alleged corrupt activities while working for Ukrainian energy company Burisma, wound up sparking the first Trump impeachment in 2019.

CrowdStrike was also one a handful of firms tapped by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2021 to work out a ‘whole-of-nation’ cyber defense plan. The initiative has been criticized as an attempt to strengthen the US intelligence and Big Tech’s surveillance powers using cybersecurity as a cover.

The same year, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz blamed Russian hackers for the 2020 SolarWinds hack attack on the US Federal Government, but curiously admitted the company had no information of its own “to corroborate that finding.”

‘PR Nightmare’

“The PR aspect is of course a nightmare for CrowdStrike,” veteran independent cybersecurity expert Lars Hilse told Sputnik, commenting on Friday’s outage and the impact it’s had on the company’s image and stock price.

CrowdStrike’s market cap plunged by $12.5 billion, and its CEO George Kurtz saw over $320 million shaved from his personal fortune. The company stock’s price fell from about $343 to $302 per share, signaling that about 12 percent of the company’s market value has been wiped out.

Interestingly, not everyone in the company came out of the outage in the red, with Chief Security Officer Shawn Henry selling off 4,000 shares of CrowdStrike Holdings’ common stock on July 15 for $371.32 per share, or $1.49 million total, according to Security and Exchange Commission data.

Hilse says the main “lesson” from the CrowdStrike mess will be the demand that cybersecurity companies improve testing before rolling out critical updates – something especially important if they’re done as “a single update being pushed to a plethora of customers running cloud-based solutions, including those responsible for the flawless operation of critical infrastructure like airports, banks, etc.”

“With increasing reliance on technology comes exponentially increasing impact on society if these technologies fail, whether through a deliberate/targeted attack, or a faulty piece of software, like in this case,” Hilse emphasized.

Russian cybersecurity specialist Alexei Lukatskiy told Sputnik Russia has been able to dodge the CrowdStrike bullet thanks to strong homegrown cybersecurity companies. Friday’s outages thus serve as another important “lesson” for Russia, which has been “gradually switching away from products by foreign vendors to Russian ones,” that it’s on the right track, he said.

Another important takeaway, according to Lukatskiy, is the modern world’s increasingly critical level of dependence on computers. “IT has penetrated into a wide array of different areas, and the owners of companies working in critical industries must understand all the consequences and evaluate the unacceptable events that may occur due to the seeming failure of an ordinary computer…,” he said.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Recall that CrowdStrike Lied About DNC Server “Hack” in 2016

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse™ | July 20, 2024

second I saw the news yesterday that computers all over the world had been taken down—causing widespread disruptions to travel, medical care and an array of businesses—I couldn’t help wondering if it was an implicit reminder of how dependent we are on global computer systems, and therefore how vulnerable we are.

Then I saw the outage was purportedly traced to CrowdStrike—the same Austin-based cybersecurity hired by the DNC in 2016 to investigate the alleged “hack” of its server. The security breach resulted in the leak of incredibly embarrassing e-mails revealing John Podesta, Hillary Clinton, and DNC leadership performing all manner of Machiavellian machinations.

Back then, when I read the Wikileaks e-mails, I immediately wondered, “How are these villains going to change the subject from the content of their e-mails to something else? What misdirection trick are they going to pull?”

Enter CrowdStrike, which the DNC hired to do a forensic cybersecurity analysis of the DNC server. Shortly thereafter, CrowdStrike claimed that Russian agents had hacked it.

It didn’t matter that there was no evidence of this, as CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry admitted under oath in a declassified December 2017 interview before the House Intelligence Committee. The lying mainstream media still ran with the story that became Russian Collusion HOAX—the biggest fraud of the decade.

Even though former NSA Technical Director, William Binney, tried to tell anyone who would listen that the leak must have resulted from a DNC insider who downloaded the e-mails onto a storage device, no major mainstream media outlet would listen to him.

I wondered about Binney’s concept on a DNC insider when I researched the mysterious death of DNC insider Seth Rich (An Extraordinary Unsolved Murder in Washington D.C.) shortly before the accusation of Russian hacking was made.

Did Rich—who was apparently disaffected with the DNC because of its shabby treatment of Bernie Sanders—reveal to someone that he knew that the leak was not the result of an external hack, thereby prompting the perception that he could easily debunk the Russian-Collusion Hoax if he weren’t silenced forever?

Now, less than one week after whoever is running this country allowed a would-be assassin to climb onto a roof and take a shot at Donald Trump on a stage 400 feet away, we are told that CrowdStrike’s defective update to its security software knocked out global IT systems.

It seems to me that CrowdStrike should be viewed with grave suspicion and that businesses should be asking if it is prudent to have CrowdStrike software running on their computer systems.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , | 2 Comments

Retro Israel panel defies ‘America First’ foreign policy

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | Responsible Statecraft | July 10, 2024

The National Conservatism Conference, which professes to represent a new conservatism to “understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence, and to the revival of the unique national traditions that alone have the power to bind a people together and bring about their flourishing,” has a foreign policy problem.

On the one hand the organizers and proponents rail against a globalism dominated by supranational neo-liberal institutions, and progressive litmus tests and ideas, but on the other they want borderless solidarity with other like minded nationalists across the globe. And for some reason this precludes them from talking too much about the biggest U.S. foreign policy issue in years, the Ukraine war, for which there is no panel scheduled over the course of the event, Monday through today.

It also means talking about Israel from a predominantly Israeli nationalist perspective. And talking about the Gaza war purely in the frame of Islamic extremism and the “mullocracy” of Iran. In other words, this is only an American interest insofar as, according to the speakers on Tuesday, U.S. presidents are accused of going too easy on Iran, which in part led to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. And now Washington has to help fix it.

Moreover, American political elites have allowed the “Islamosupremacists” to influence college campuses and Democratic administrations and turn Americans (in this case, Democrats) against not just Israel, but all Jews.

As Ben Weingarten charged in the one Israel panel — “Islam, Israel & the West” — the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas have had a grip on Washington since the George W. Bush administration, where the then-president had the temerity to declare that “Islam is peace.”

If that sounds familiar it is because the same people in the room today, 20 years older and graying at the ears, said the same exact thing after 9/11. But the difference here is that Israel is fighting its own war and making it an American war on terrorism and Islam is not going to work this time. What this national conservatism conference was missing was a true conversation about what is in America’s interest as it pursues policies with Israel, Iran, and the greater Middle East.

Instead we got old chestnuts from Weingarten, an “investigative reporter” for the Federalist, talking about “the troubling views held by large percentages of American Muslims (who) are or subscribe to the same worldview as Islamic supremacists who seek to impose… a theopolitical, Sharia-based ideology on America, wholly antithetical to our constitutional republic; while leftists and Islamic supremacists are in some ways polar opposites, traditional patriotic Americans are the chief stumbling block to each side achieving its objectives.”

To him, American protests against Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which have resulted in at 38,000 (or more) dead, the vast majority of the population displaced and hungry, most of the Strip’s civilian infrastructure (homes, electricity, hospitals, schools) damaged if not destroyed by American-made bombs, is merely the “the predictable consequence of an unholy alliance between progressives and Islamic supremacists that has for several years been fundamentally transforming not only the Democratic Party but America.”

Eugene Kontorovich, an Israeli legal scholar who now teaches at George Mason University’s Anton Scalia Law School, spent his time on the panel railing against international institutions including the United Nations, which he said were dominated by anti-Jewish, pro-Islamist ideologues that were in essence working for Hamas. This conveniently renders, at least to his mind, International Criminal Court charges against Israel, including the deliberate starvation of the Palestinian population, absolutely meaningless (plus, as he has suggested, the U.S. military does it too, a favorite justification among Israeli military apologists since Oct. 7).

Instead he calls the Israel operation in Gaza “clearly the most restrained war in modern times, with the lowest proportion of civilian casualties of any war in modern times.” Again, no conversation about whether the current U.S.-backed strategy will actually protect Israel in the long-term or destroy it from within, or whether it is in America’s interest to push it along.

No doubt, the discussion appealed to the paranoia among this retro crowd that Islamists have more power than they actually have in Washington (which is why Netanyahu is getting a red carpet on Capitol Hill this month, weapons and money slushing to Tel Aviv, and votes sailing through Congress cutting off aid to Palestinians and the very institutions Kontorovich abhors?).

But the National Conservatism conference, founded by the Edmund Burke Foundation under the tutelage of Israeli nationalist Yoram Hazony, should not be confused with the America First foreign policy now being debated in conservative circles today. After three days of programming, that much is clear.

There were a few counterbalances — a thoughtful discussion about the future of NATO, which included realist Sumantra Maitra, and remarks from Elbridge Colby, a self-described conservative realist. During a plenary speech, he said U.S. foreign policy must be rooted in the goals of preserving fundamental American interests of freedom, security, and prosperity, and cast in the lens of prioritization and power balancing. While North Korea, Russia, and Iran pose threats, he contended, they are regional threats to traditional U.S. allies and partners but not existential threats to those aforementioned American core interestsTherefore, he said, they are not foreign policy or security priorities for which the U.S. needs to militarize.

He does suggest, however, that China is a threat to the U.S. economy and the security of our allies in the region, and that requires priority. “Strategy and conservative realism would call for balance of manifest strength in Asia, but also openness to a modus vivendi in China. We must be laser focused on the rightful conservative goal here, to preserve peace, if at all possible, but decent peace, one that ensures Americans are safe, free, and prosperous, and most high necessity prevents China from dominating Asians.”

While not all realists and restrainers agree with Colby’s China perspective here, his brief against the primacist foreign policy of the last 70 years sits well with a growing faction of conservative foreign policy (American interest-focused) today, much to the contrast of the Israel panel dominated by the throw-back ideological rhetoric of the past.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is Editorial Director of Responsible Statecraft and Senior Advisor at the Quincy Institute.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Shirion Collective: Ultra-Zionist troll farm that targets pro-Palestine voices in West

By David Miller | Press TV | July 20, 2024

Shirion Collective is an ultra-Zionist troll farm dedicated to targeting pro-Palestine voices and causing them social harm, including embarrassment, loss of employment or earnings, or in some cases, threats and violence as well.

It was launched in late 2023 and operates in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

It uses the technique known as Doxxing, meaning it publishes personal details, including photographs and home addresses of those it deems to be advocates of the Palestinian cause.

It also offers a bounty for the disclosure of useful information related to pro-Palestine groups.

In late 2023, there were indications that the collective was gaining a foothold in Australia. In December 2023, a Sydney resident named Theo had a picture of his house and his address posted to a Facebook group, which proved it had already infiltrated there.

Theo had raised a Palestinian flag and placed a blackboard with messages critical of the Israeli regime in front of his home in Sydney.

Less than two weeks later, a jerry can with rags stuffed into it, a disposable lighter and large bolts were placed on the bonnet of his car with a message: “Enough! Take down the flag! One chance!!!!”

In February this year, the Shirion Collective launched an infiltration campaign of the pro-Palestine movement promising that Operation Global Insight would recruit infiltrators:

  • Individuals who can maintain cool, calm, and collected demeanors under triggering Jew hate and pressure.
  • Volunteers who are willing to wear keffiyehs and walk in these demonstrations masked.
  • Individuals with Arabic-sounding names and Middle Eastern appearance may be uniquely positioned for deeper infiltration and will receive cash compensation for their vital role in our operation.

Those signing up were promised “an hour-long basic training by one of our ex-Mossad team leads.”

There are indications that the announcement may have been simply intended to intimidate demonstrators as implied by messages on its Telegram channel:

“We won’t need to do anything,” one volunteer wrote. “They [supporters of Palestine] will:

  • Tone down
  • Police their own
  • Maybe even beat up their own just because they think those are us

And all accomplished just by one tweet. Doesn’t even cost a cent.”

There are other indications that the group is involved in psychological warfare such as its claim to be developing a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool to produce fake materials with which to attack pro-Palestine campaigners.

However, the pro-Israel AI, Macabbee, has never been launched.

Shirion seeks to fan the flames of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate while celebrating the carnage in the Gaza Strip, and violence against their supporters in the West.

It has repeatedly celebrated the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, including journalists and children.

This raises a pertinent question: who or what is behind this anonymous group? And to what ideas and ideologies are those running it attached?

So who or what is the Shirion Collective and how does it relate to other Zionist troll groups active in the West? There are many of these, each of which traces back in one way or another to the Zionist regime.

Here’s a select list of a few of them:

  • Canary Mission, a campaign of defamatory attacks on university students and staff who support the Palestinian cause.
  • The Tel Aviv Institute which recruits social media “influencers” to shill for genocide
  •  The Psy-Group, a kind of private Mossad set up by the former regime spooks to conduct psychological warfare against the Palestine solidarity movement.
  • Black Cube is another of these Zionist troll groups, which also specializes in spying having been founded by “former” Zionist spooks.

As with many of these troll networks, it is small digital clues put together in the manner of a jigsaw that can reveal details they want to remain hidden.

A moderator name used by the collective led to a user name “Dantheprompt” which ran a series of other social media accounts.  A match came when the same photo was used for an account on Reddit as on the Multiplex system.

In a message on that system in May 2023, the user introduced himself with his real name ‘Dan Linden’.

Dan Linden, it turns out, is a budding entrepreneur having set up a string of companies and dabbled in AI as well as in pornography.

As the Guardian reported, Linden has displayed a preoccupation with OnlyFans, the platform that allows producers of adult content to monetize their content.

A December 6, 2022 screenshot of one of his personal Facebook accounts shows an OnlyFans payment notification indicating a net quarterly take of more than $155,000.

On Amazon, Linden is credited as co-author of a Spanish-language ebook whose title translates as Master OnlyFans in just 7 days! and whose blurb promises to show readers techniques to build “an account that will give you an average of 2,000 dollars a month”.

According to Stop Zionist Hate, a social media campaign against hate spewed by Zionists, posts from the Shirion Collective disclosed a habit of “lying” and this certainly seems evident in a post about Stop Zionist Hate from the Shirion Collective making outlandish claims about the accountability project.

As can be seen, this was based on claims made by another separate troll network, the Canary Mission.

This raises questions about the extent of connection to the wide range of other troll and doxxing operations run for and often coordinated with or directed by the Zionist regime.

It is well established that the Ministry of Strategic Affairs created (or inherited) a large number of front groups and developed an international and coordinated network of groups.

This has recently been rejuvenated and given a new name – Voices of Israel. This is an extensive network but, as yet, there is only confirmation of some handful of the groups involved in what appears to be a corpus of more than 50 groups.

It is plain that these groups copy from, and at least informally work together, and this provides a force multiplier such that it may be appropriate to discuss the state capture of elements of US society.

David Miller is the producer and co-host of Press TV’s weekly Palestine Declassified show. He was sacked from Bristol University in October 2021 over his Palestine advocacy. 

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | 3 Comments

DONALD TRUMP AND THE TOLL OF VITRIOL

The HighWire | July 18, 2024

Nearly a decade of increasingly dangerous rhetoric and bias from corporate ‘journalists’ and those in power have prepared the grounds for violence. Who is to blame??

July 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | | Leave a comment

Secret Service under suspicion amid contradictions in Trump’s attempted assassination

By Uriel Araujo | July 19, 2024

Contradictions on Trump’s attempted assassination pile up, with serious security breaches and officials claiming an investigation is needed to determine whether it was a matter of incompetence or malice.

To begin with, according to the ABC News, “law enforcement officials investigating the assassination attempt on Donald Trump told lawmakers Wednesday that 20 minutes passed between the time U.S. Secret Service snipers first spotted the gunman on a rooftop and the time shots were fired at the former president.” How can one explain that?

Moreover, it is a well-established fact now that onlookers alerted the authorities about the presence of an armed man on a nearby roof. One witness  reported that to the BBC shortly after the incident.

In addition, local officials in Pennsylvania are complaining that the Secret Service, in an attempt to deflect blame, is throwing them “under the bus”. According to one local police officer: “The Secret Service came out here more than a month ahead of time and met with all the local agencies. They tell us exactly what to do, exactly what they want and exactly how they want it. It’s all on them.”

More intriguingly, several witnesses describe a second shooter, and there seems to be plenty of cell phone footage indicating that – while the Secret Service insist there was only one. According to a Times of India story, “an audio forensic analysis conducted by experts from the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado in Denver suggests the possibility of a second shooter in the incident”. A CNN story in turn reports that “forensic analysis suggests that as many as three weapons were fired at the Trump rally.”

Stephen Bryen, security expert, takes the second shooter allegation seriously, and, in his Substack newsletter, he is calling for a “solid FBI investigation with Congressional oversight” on the matter. He adds that “there is a general consensus that security at the Trump Rally was poor”, and adds: “if the Secret Service actually approved all the security measures … we wonder, like millions of others no doubt, how could they overlook the rooftops.” Bryen is no fringe figure – he is a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, who writes for Newsweek, the Jewish Policy Center, and others.

Cory Mills, a member of the United States House of Representatives, takes the matter a bit furthersaying an investigation on the Secret Service is needed to determine whether this was merely incompetence or rather malice, with an intent to neutralize Trump.

Cory Mills is a former military, and was a member of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) 20 in Iraq. He is also a defense contractor, who has earned a Master of Arts in international relations and conflict resolution from American Military University. Again, this is also no fringe figure, and his allegations raise eyebrows.

Given all the above, it is no wonder suspicions abound – the fact that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is very close to the Biden couple certainly doesn’t help. According to the New York Post, she “landed her role thanks largely to a close relationship with first lady Jill Biden.” In any other country, by the way, after such a scandal, the Secret Service director would have been fired already or would have resigned. One thing that hampers further scrutiny, however, is an American cultural trait, namely the distaste for “conspiracy theories” (which is rather ironic in a country where conspiracies abound). Here, some context is needed.

Most scholars concede that sometimes conspiracy theories (CT) are proven to be at least partly correct. A “true” or ideal CT is supposed to always be false – meaning that its narrative does not describe reality. However, what happens when new data changes the “official” story? For instance, nowadays it is known that in 1962 the US Department of Defense proposed a false flag operation (the Operation Northwoods), calling for CIA operatives to actually commit terrorist attacks against American civilians and military targets in American cities (with bombings and hijackings) and then using those to justify a Cuban invasion. Then President John F. Kennedy rejected the plan, but the proposal existed, and no one denies it.

It is thus not clear at all how a “correct” conspiracy theory (one which later happens to be proven true) differs from a false one. Was it a CT when critics argued that the US government had lied about the real motivations which led it to invade Iraq? Other authors define “conspiracy theories” in a more neutral manner as any hypotheses that try to explain an event by invoking a “conspiracy” – namely, a secret plan carried out by a group of people.

One should also be cautious as to avoid equating a mere CT (about anything) and a conspiratorial way of understanding society and history in general. The latter (conspiracism), implicitly holds that nothing ever happens by chance but rather everything (especially tragedies) happens by design. Conspiracies do exist but not everything is a conspiracy. On the other hand, in the face of a major politically charged event, when various contradictions pile up, it would be naïve to readily dismiss everything as a “coincidence” (I would describe it as a “coincidence theory”).

With Biden’s undeniable senility getting worse, it is becoming increasingly clear he is not fit to run for the presidency again – he can barely participate in a debate or give interviews. Given this, the question then, as I wrote, is how can he govern, or rather how come has he been governing thus? In other words, who has been doing all the governing? Some talk about a “ triumvirate”, referring to Biden’s close advisers Bruce Reed, Mike Donilon, and Steve Ricchetti – the matter is far from being clear, though. One can only imagine the amount of palace intrigue going on amid this “emperor clothes” scenario.

With the ongoing political crisis, any investigation on the Secret Service will be either weaponized by Republicans against Democrats or covered up by the latter, amid a major narrative war and claims about “conspiracy theories”. The crisis is thus also an epistemic one, so to speak.

This state of affairs can only further undermine the legitimacy of American institutions, with serious consequences for the country’s stability. With a suspicious murder attempt on a presidential candidate and an embarrassingly senile incumbent president, the rest of the world holds their breath while the politics within the Atlantic superpower has just gone mad.

July 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | | 2 Comments

Ministry of Truth: Japan’s Communications Ministry Proposes Disinformation Law

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 19, 2024

Only recently, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an influential Washington think tank, outlined how the US and Japan could bolster their cooperation in “combating misinformation.”

In a report, CSIS noted almost in passing that Japan has in general fallen behind in this activity, but also that the group’s representatives had meetings with officials in Tokyo.

Coincidentally or not, news out of Japan this week says that the country’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is looking at introducing new “anti-disinformation measures.” And, a draft report notes that here, “efforts are not sufficient” while transparency and accountability (ostensibly on the part of internet companies) have not been “adequate.”

That would suggest yet another “Ministry of Truth” and “disinformation law” are in the making somewhere in the world, these taking shape as a draft report details possible measures that social media companies would have to adhere to, going forward.

The report, which notably comes from the Interior Ministry (also in charge of Communications), speaks about the necessity of companies behind social platforms setting up “counter-disinformation systems” themselves, that would deal with what is deemed to be “disinformation” by deleting this content, but also, stepping up “screening of advertisers.”

And once again, time seems to be of the essence, because the report states that the reaction would have to be “prompt.”

The next step is for the draft to become subject to some form of public debate, after which the local press says it will become “official;” and the following step will be making it into law.

The situation reads almost like Japan wasn’t aware it had a “misinformation” problem of a magnitude that requires new and stringent rules, but is now just realizing that, and is almost mimicking the tone and language that’s been present around the topic for years already, in many parts of the world.

Thus, there are some vague and broad “definitions” – the content to be promptly dealt with is that which “contains obvious errors, infringes on the rights of others or is illegal (including disinformation).”

The Japanese plan states that once “a request” comes from a governmental agency, “the operators should make a prompt decision and provide notification as to whether they will delete the information or not.”

What about freedom of expression? The report’s authors seem to think this will do the trick: “The draft also requests that the administrative agency disclose information such as the contents of the request.”

One target is repeat offenders accused of peddling “illegal disinformation,” who will have their content deleted and accounts suspended.

July 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

US Missiles in Germany Again: Why Is Berlin Betraying Its National Interests?

By Dmitry Babich – Sputnik – 19.07.2024

The decision of Washington to start in 2026 the deployment in Germany of US missiles aimed at Russia was not even discussed in Berlin. The public was forced to face a fait accompli. This is a clear degradation of Germany’s standing vis-a-vis the US, compared to the ’80s. Then, a similar deployment was met with protests of West Germany’s citizens.

The governments of both the US and Germany confirmed that in 2026, the American side will begin deploying long-range missiles in Germany. This dangerous move, reminiscent of the worst years of the Cold War, is officially explained by the need to contain “resurgent Russia.”

Gunnar Beck, an expert on European law and former vice president of Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament, notes that there was no public discussion of this dangerous development in Germany, specifically no discussion in the Bundestag. No details of the deal have been revealed.

“It’s a fait accompli,” Beck told Sputnik. “The German and the US governments have announced they were considering this… But all of the talk of an imminent Russian threat to Europe, in my view, is just a pretext for justifying further military and financial assistance to Ukraine. And, of course, it is a pretext for intimidating the European population and forcing them to accept even larger amounts of military spending.”

Beck notes the few dissenting voices still audible in Germany belong to the parties, which the European Union and especially the European Commission’s chairwoman Ursula von der Leyen try to marginalize:

“There are people on the right and on the far-left which have been criticizing [the deployment]. The German public, by and large, is not war loving. But, of course, there is a lot of propaganda emphasizing that any attack against Ukraine is an attack against Europe as a whole – it is the position of the EU and German government,” Beck told Sputnik.

The situation is reminiscent of the early 1980s, when the US deployed Pershing missiles in West Germany – presumably countering a possible aggression by the Soviet Union. The only difference is that this time Americans promise not to put nuclear warheads on SM-6 missiles, Tomahawks and even some “hypersonic weapons.” These missiles will be carrying conventional warheads that will still make Germany a target for a Russian retaliation starting from 2026.

Beck indicated that American and West German propaganda of that epoch used the same arguments as now. It was said the ability of NATO allies to protect themselves was the best guarantee for peace, etc., but in both cases it was misleading propaganda based on fears and not facts:

“Up to 1987 the propaganda in West Germany evoked the specter of millions of Soviet soldiers stationed in East Germany … that they would all flood into West Germany and occupy the country within three days,” Beck told Sputnik. “The kind of propaganda we are exposed to now is very reminiscent of this. We know today, and we have known for some time already that everything we were told in the 1980s was a great deal of nonsense. There was no evidence whatsoever of a consistently aggressive strategy by the Soviet Union.”

Indeed, Moscow acquiesced to the reunification of Germany in 1990 and withdrew its troops from East Germany in 1994 without a single shot fired. Unfortunately, it is often forgotten now that these concessions were part of the “Two plus four” agreement, whose terms Germany and three other signatories are breaching now.

It was signed on September 12, 1990, by the two (East Germany and West Germany) plus four (the Soviet Union, USA, the UK and France, former members of the anti-Hitler coalition).

Moscow then obliged itself not to prevent the reunification of Germany and to withdraw its troops by 1994 from the territory of the late German Democratic Republic. Both obligations were fulfilled. Now, here is how the obligations of Western powers were breached, in the words of Beck:

“No foreign weapons could be deployed in East Germany… And both German states then agreed that the united Germany would only deploy weapons on its territory if it is done in accordance with Germany’s constitution and the Charter of the United Nations. So, unless there is a UN Security Council resolution, it is a very debatable issue whether Germany can allow the deployment of new weapons that increase the risk of war.”

It should be noted that the German constitution prohibits the supplies of German weapons to the zones of armed conflict. However, Berlin is officially “pumping up” Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime with weapons worth tens of billions of euros.

Beck states the subsequent events showed the deceitful nature of the Western propaganda of the 1980s: Moscow indeed had no intention of invading Europe and withdrew from Germany at the first opportunity. Unfortunately, its goodwill was abused by Western allies.

Now, many Germans suspect a “remake” of the that deceitful intimidation: a poll conducted by Forsa Institute revealed 47% of Germans think the planned deployment of US weapons will only increase the possibility of a Russia-NATO conflict.

However, Beck notes this substantial part of German public opinion is not organized and its will has no chance of influencing the European Commission – or even the government of Germany.

July 19, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News, Deception, Militarism | , , , | 2 Comments