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Canada helps Israel in broadening its definition of ‘anti-Semitism’

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | November 26, 2024

Once again, anti-Semitism was the catchphrase for political rhetoric denouncing the protest in Montreal against NATO’s complicity with Israel’s genocide. NATO delegates met in Canada for the 70th annual session of its Parliamentary Assembly, and protesters called for Canada’s withdrawal from the organisation, even as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the country is on track to increase its military spending, which NATO has established as two per cent of the country’s GDP.

“We need to commit ourselves every day to NATO and the principles that keep us safe in this uncertain world,” said Trudeau, acting as if former colonial powers were not responsible for “this uncertain world” and, along with Israel, the genocide in Gaza.

Activists at the protest thought otherwise, of course. As the gathering outside the meeting turned violent, Israeli and mainstream media were swift to label the protest as “anti-Semitic”, as did Trudeau. Montreal’s police, however, said that they did not receive reports of anti-Semitic violence or hate crimes. Mayor of Montreal Valerie Plante condemned the violence, but said that she did not believe that the protest was anti-Semitic.

The protest was organised by Divest for Palestine and the Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles, with the purpose of exposing NATO’s complicity with Israel’s genocide.

However, as Israel increasingly targets any criticism of its actions as “anti-Semitism”, Trudeau followed suit.

“As a democracy, as a country that will always defend freedom of speech, it’s important for people to be able to go out and protest and express their anger, their disagreements in free and comfortable ways,” he declared. “But there is never any room for anti-Semitism, for hatred, discrimination, for violence.”

Canada’s Defence Minister Bill Blair took a similar position. “Those behaviours are unacceptable and we can condemn them, and in particular the hatred and anti-Semitism that was on display, in the strongest possible terms.”

According to reports in Israeli media, a protestor referenced the “Final Solution” which was a Nazi euphemism for the Holocaust.

What stands out is the discrepancy in responses to two different scenarios – Israel’s internationally-approved genocide and a protest against NATO – which showed clearly that the latter’s manifestation of violent action, directed against a transatlantic military alliance, was deemed to be more disturbing than Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza and the Palestinian people.

Besides this discrepancy, Israel is also extending the “anti-Semitic” label to include any form of protest directed even at organisations that are not Jewish, but prioritise allegiances to Zionism and Zionist colonial violence. The target audience of the protest in Montreal was clearly the NATO delegates.

NATO members have supported Israel’s genocide through purchasing the occupation state’s military technology (“as field-tested against Palestinian civilians”) and also by selling weapons to Israel. Since 2017, Israel has also benefited from its permanent official mission established in NATO headquarters in Brussels. In January 2023, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at NATO headquarters, noting that,

“NATO and Israel have worked together for almost 30 years.”

Calling out NATO’s complicity in genocide is not anti-Semitic by any stretch of the imagination. Trudeau has confirmed recently that Canada will abide by the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. What message is Trudeau sending to the Canadian public about his government picking and choosing what part of colonial violence it deems worthy of support, while vilifying protestors for drawing attention to government-level hypocrisy?

November 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | 1 Comment

‘Genocide’ vs ‘Bigger Genocide’ in Gaza: Time to decolonise our minds

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | November 27, 2024

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well,” wrote Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1961). What the iconic anti-colonial philosopher and psychiatrist was essentially arguing is that the mind must be decolonised first, in order for the undoing of colonialism to succeed in all aspects of our liberation.

Many in the Global South, but especially intellectuals and analysts concerned with Middle East affairs, are still struggling with their relationship with the United States. Although all signs indicate a rapid decline of America’s global status, many among our intelligentsia, possibly unwittingly, still believe that Washington holds all the cards, and that whoever controls the White House must naturally also rule the world.

Of course, US domestic and foreign policies are relevant to global affairs, as financial decisions by the US Federal Reserve, for example, will affect US-global trade volumes, and will have an impact on the interest or disinterest in purchasing US treasury bonds. Some countries that are keen on standing at an equal distance between the US and China often jockey to refine their positions and to protect themselves in case of seismic political changes in the US.

The vibe radiating from many in the Middle East is that the doomsday scenario is real, and that the big war is upon us.

However, they ignore the fact that for many nations around the world, from Gaza to Lebanon to Ukraine to Sudan and elsewhere, wars have already arrived, many of which are bankrolled by western funds and political blank cheques. To warn of war while tens of millions are already suffering the outcomes of western-funded wars reflects the degree of desensitisation and opportunism of the followers of western order.

Some of those crying over the supposedly imminent doom had initially presented the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, as the best worst-case option for Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. Although they may have acknowledged the genocide in Gaza, and even criticised the Joe Biden administration for enabling it, they recoiled at the mere suggestion that the Democrats must be punished for their many sins in the Middle East and beyond.

Another crowd presented Donald Trump as the saviour, the strong man who, with a stroke of a pen, will end all wars, the one in Gaza included. They cited the man’s repeated claim that, “I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop the wars.” They even went on to argue that Trump, who would be serving a second and final term in office, is now immune to political manipulation from the pro-Israel lobby and all other pressures.

Trump won, of course.

His crushing defeat of the Democrats on all fronts, including in the popular vote, indicates that he would have won regardless of those who considered ending the war in Gaza to be a top political priority. However, the early announcements that Trump’s administration come January will be a who’s who of the pro-Israel Republican circle has reignited the debate about the “bigger genocide” awaiting Palestinians and other scare-mongering tactics.

Both sides of this inconsequential debate conveniently ignore obvious facts: that America’s ruling elites are rooted in pro-Israel political allegiances; that although there might be a difference in style, US foreign policy under Democratic Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Trump’s future hire, Marco Rubio, is likely to be identical; and that the Biden-Harris administration gave Israel all the help it needed to sustain its wars in the Middle East over the course of 13 months and counting.

This stifling debate, however, misses some of the most critical points that should be discussed, and urgently so. For example, the Middle East region is not a single political monolith. It has its own political calculations, conflicts, alliances and options that include other political heavyweights, such as China and Russia, among others.

Moreover, several Middle Eastern countries are joining the increasingly influential BRICS alliance. The latter is not just a trade club, but also a powerful economic alliance with a strong political discourse to match.

Thus, the future and survival of the Middle East does not hinge on US economic policies.

Finally, the war in Gaza is a war that also involves the Palestinians, the Lebanese and their Arab and international allies. The people of occupied Palestine and Lebanon have agency, choices and strategies that are not wholly dependent on the ideological identity or political inclinations of a lone American ensconced in the White House.

If the political views of the US president were indeed the most decisive aspect in the fate and future of the Palestinian people, Palestinian aspirations would have been suppressed decades ago due to America’s inherent pro-Israel bias. They weren’t, not because of any compassion on the part of US administrations, but due to the sumud, resilience, of the Palestinian people.

It is time that we abandon the archaic thinking regarding our collective colonial past, or present, that views western leaders as our masters, and our people as mere subjects, struggling to survive, imploring, though never obtaining, prudent western foreign policies.

The world is changing, vastly, and it is time for us to change as well. Fanon gave us the cure decades ago: We must clinically detect and remove the rot, not only from our land but from our minds as well.

November 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden administration advancing $680m arms sale to Israel, source says

MEMO | November 27, 2024

The Biden administration is pushing ahead with a $680 million arms sales package to Israel, a US official familiar with the plan said on Wednesday, even as a US-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah has come into effect, Reuters reports.

The package, which was first reported by the Financial Times, includes thousands of joint direct attack munition kits (JDAM) and hundreds of small-diameter bombs, according to the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The news comes less than a day after the ceasefire agreement ended the deadliest confrontation in years between Israel and the Hezbollah group, but Israel is still fighting its other arch foe, the Palestinian group, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip.

However, the package has been in the works for several months. It was first previewed to the congressional committees in September then submitted for review in October, the official said.

The package follows a $20 billion sale in August of fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel.

Reuters reported in June that Washington, Israel’s biggest ally and weapons supplier, has sent Israel more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs and thousands of Hellfire missiles since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.

The conversations about the latest arms package had been going on even as a group of progressive US senators, including Bernie Sanders introduced resolutions to block the sale of some US weapons to Israel over concerns about the human rights catastrophe faced by Palestinians in Gaza.

The legislation was shot down in the Senate.

Biden, whose term ends in January, has strongly backed Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people has been displaced and the enclave is at risk of famine, more than a year into Israel’s war against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave. Gaza health officials say more than 43,922 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive.

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

Ceasefire with Hezbollah ends Israel’s illusion of reshaping West Asia by force: Hamas

Press TV – November 27, 2024

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says the ceasefire Israel eventually clinched with Hezbollah has shattered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “illusion” of reshaping West Asia by force.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu finally accepted the deal, which is expected to end the regime’s months-long deadly escalation against Lebanon.

It came after a meeting of his “security cabinet” to discuss a proposal put forward by the United States and France.

“The enemy’s acceptance of the agreement with Lebanon without fulfilling the conditions it set is an important milestone in shattering Netanyahu’s illusions of changing the map of the Middle East by force,” Hamas said in a statement published on its Telegram channel on Wednesday.

It said Netanyahu’s “illusions of defeating the Resistance forces or disarming them” were also sent to the oblivion.

The Israeli regime has killed more than 3,700 people in Lebanon, including 42 who perished across the country on Tuesday, besides wounding nearly 15,700 others.

“We commend the pivotal role played by the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, in support of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian resistance, and the great sacrifices made by Hezbollah and its leadership, led by the late Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.”

“We appreciate the steadfastness of the brotherly Lebanese people and their constant solidarity with the Palestinian people in confronting the Zionist occupation and its brutal aggression, asking God Almighty to protect Lebanon and its people from all harm and evil,” Hamas said.

Israeli military commanders had pledged to eradicate Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. However, they were ultimately compelled to accept the ceasefire agreement without achieving any of those goals.

“We affirm that this agreement would not have been achieved without the steadfastness of the Resistance and the popular support around it. We are confident that the Resistance Axis will continue to support our people and back their battle with all possible means,” Hamas said in its statement.

Hezbollah has been responding to the Israeli aggression with hundreds of successful retaliatory strikes against various sensitive and strategic military targets across the occupied territories.

The Lebanese resistance movement recently announced killing more than 100 Israeli troops and injuring upwards of a thousand others during the strikes.

November 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | 3 Comments

Ceasefire Deal: Netanyahu’s ‘Focus on Iran’ Could Mean ‘Serious Regional War’ if Backed by US

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 27.11.2024

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday there are three reasons why Israel concluded a ceasefire deal with Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah: to focus on Iran; to replenish weaponry stocks; and to isolate Hamas.

“It is not clear how Israel would focus more on Iran,” Dr Marco Carnelos, a former Italian diplomat and Middle East adviser of Prime Ministers Prodi and Berlusconi, tells Sputnik. “Probably the Israeli prime minister hopes that with the incoming Trump administration a direct military pressure on Iran might be increased together with the US.”

Dr. Tamer Qarmout, associate professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, dubs Netanyahu’s focus on Iran as “cheap talk.”

“How would the Israelis engage with Iran if they were not able to eliminate Hezbollah,” Qarmout asks while talking to Sputnik. “We’ll have to see the new [Trump] administration’s take on Iran. But if this happens for whatever reason, this means a serious regional or even could be a global war.”

The experts allege Netanyahu has been cornered by the military leadership over heavy losses sustained by the Israeli Defense Forces in southern Lebanon, and snubbed his hawkish cabinet members to implement the deal.

“My feeling is that the Israeli military echelon cornered Netanyahu on this point because on the battleground in Southern Lebanon the Israeli Army was able to advance only a few km and incurred in severe losses. Israel erased Hezbollah’s leadership but it did not defeat the movement on the ground… And because Hezbollah has not lost the battle, by default it will be perceived as the winner,” Carnelos says.

It is clear that Netanyahu will use the “breather” to double down on attacking Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to Qarmout: “Israel would be able to shift its military power on to sources to continue its genocidal war on Gaza,” he says.

Still, the future of the ceasefire deal is hanging in the balance, according to the pundits.

“The devil is still in the details. We still have 60 days to see if this agreement will hold,” Qarmout concludes.

November 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

American mines sent to Ukraine will kill and maim civilians. That’s exactly what the West wants

By Eva Bartlett | RT | November 27, 2024

A former British army general, now the CEO of the largest Western NGO focused on demining efforts, has decided it is a good idea for the United States to send deadly anti-personnel mines to Ukraine (which will almost certainly use them against Russian civilians). This is absolutely insane logic.

The US government recently confirmed rumors that it intends to send such land mines to Ukraine. So-called “non-persistent” mines. More on these later.

On November 21, James Cowan, CEO of landmine clearance charity the HALO Trust, published an article in the London Standard titled ‘Don’t blame the US decision to supply anti-personnel mines to Ukraine’, in which he wrote that “the deployment of landmines is a grim necessity.”

Just one day prior, HALO issued a press release regarding an upcoming “critical international landmine ban meeting that will see some 164 states gather in Cambodia.” In the press release, Cowan said: “It is appalling that so many children in conflict and post-conflict zones around the world continue to be maimed or killed by indiscriminate weapons that lay waiting in the ground, often for decades.”

“This report must surely be a reminder of the need for states to hold firm on achieving the aims of the Landmine Ban Treaty.”

Are we seriously meant to believe Cowan thinks Ukraine will not use the mines against civilians, including children? Because there are already countless cases of Ukraine using a variety of mines in Donbass, including dropping them onto civilian areas in Donbass cities.

On November 2, TASS reported that “Ukrainian troops mined everything they could while fleeing Selidovo in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), including private homes and apartment buildings,” noting that demining the city may take several months.

In March 2022, I went to Volnovakha (about halfway between Donetsk and Mariupol). The chief physician of the main hospital there said definitively that the Ukrainian army had occupied the hospital and before leaving they mined the entrance to the intensive care unit.

In June 2022, in Mariupol I saw Russian sappers demonstrate how they cleared buildings of mines left as booby traps by Ukrainian forces to maim or kill whoever first entered, be they military or civilian. This was a tactic that terrorists in Syria also used, as I heard in the town of Madaya after it was liberated in 2017, as well as when visiting the old city of Homs shortly after it was liberated in 2014.

The Ukrainian army has already used a variety of mines to deliberately kill or maim civilians. So to imagine that the next batch of mines shipped to Ukraine won’t be used against civilians is either hypocritical, delusional, or just plain stupid.

War correspondent Andrey Rudenko on November 20 wrote of how in addition to Ukraine’s bombing of Donbass civilians for the eight years before Russia began its special military operation, they were constantly in danger from mines: “Mined roadsides, fields, forests, cemetery areas. For the entire eight years, citizens were asked not to visit such areas, and sappers regularly demined agricultural lands, buildings and residential areas.”

He noted that “the use of anti-personnel mines on the combat line is out of the question, because the Ukrainian Armed Forces would then expose themselves to attack” since on the front line, many areas “often change hands during fighting.”

The US knows this, yet it is sending more landmines to Ukraine.

Petal mines continue to maim civilians

As one of the more insidious uses of mines, Ukraine has fired rockets containing hundreds of “petal” (PFM-1) mines onto heavily populated areas of Donbass cities. In 2022 they were fired onto central Donetsk. I saw them the next morning, scattered in the streets and parks of Donetsk, and later in nearby Makeevka.

I’ve written extensively about these internationally prohibited mines. They are tiny, but powerful, and extremely difficult to see if not actively looking for them. Children and the elderly suffer the most, generally not recognizing them as a severe danger, but ordinary citizens thinking their region is clear of the mines have fallen victim as well.

As I wrote in 2022, according to Konstantin Zhukov, chief medical officer of Donetsk Ambulance Service, a weight of just 2 kg is enough to activate one of the mines. Sometimes, however, they explode spontaneously. An unspoken tragedy on top of the already tragic targeting of civilians is that dogs, cats, birds and other animals are also victims of these dirty mines.

As of now, 169 civilians have been wounded by the nasty little mines, three of whom died of their injuries. Those who don’t die usually have a foot or hand blasted off, as was the case of (then) 14-year-old Nikita, who I met in late 2022. The teen, who formerly did breakdancing and Mixed Martial Arts, lost his foot after stepping on a petal mine in a playground in Western Donetsk.

A point that bears repeating: Ukraine is party to and in violation of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (or Ottawa Treaty), which it signed in 1999.

Defending the indefensible

In his explanation on why he supports sending landmines to Ukraine (to be used against Russian civilians), Cowan waffles on about principles of the laws of war, including:

1) “Distinction” between combatants and civilians: In other words, trying to convince readers that Ukraine would not use these against civilians. Recall we heard this dishonest argument last year when the US sent cluster munitions to Ukraine, after which, to nobody’s surprise, there were new reports of Ukraine firing cluster munitions onto Donbass civilians.

The disingenuous last part to his first point is that the mines the US would send are “non-persistent” that “can be deactivated” to mitigate harm to civilians. That doesn’t help civilians who come across them before they are “deactivated,” does it?

2) “Proportionality,” minimal collateral damage, “placement away from populated areas.” Well, given the evidence outlined above, it is clear that it was never a question of “collateral damage” but Ukraine directly inflicting death and injuries on the civilian population of Donbass. Ukrainian forces have already laid and drone-dropped so many mines in populated areas that the notion that they would suddenly stop doing so is nonsensical.

3) “Humanity,” respecting fundamental rights of all people… no comment, see above.

4) “Military Necessity.” I’m no military expert, but I highly doubt Cowan and the US think sending Kiev more landmines will be the game changer enabling Ukraine to triumph over Russia. The reality is they know these dirty mines will not help Ukraine “win” but will certainly kill and maim more Russian civilians. And they’re not only fine with that, they want that.

The Mines Advisory Group released a condemnation of the decision to send Ukraine anti-personnel mines, noting:

“While the types of AP mines which would be used in Ukraine are described as non-persistent, that does not mean they are harmless. All landmines are indiscriminate and have the potential to cause civilian harm.”

Decision-makers in the West should be made to see first-hand the bloody consequences of their actions. This is yet another example of the US and its allies prolonging civilian suffering while pretending to try to “save Ukraine” from a conflict created by NATO in the first place.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). 

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

New Russian Missile Delivers Six Warheads and Three Messages

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | November 27, 2024

On November 21, just two days after Ukraine acted for the first time on American permission to fire Western supplied long-range missiles deeper into Russia, Russia launched a missile attack on a military base in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. That base houses the missile and space company Pivdenmash, which produces missiles, rockets, satellites and engines.

The attack included six cruise missiles and a Kinzhal hypersonic missile. There is nothing new or unusual about hitting that military target or about using those missiles. But there was something very unusual about the 9M729 Oreshnik missile that was also included in the attack.

The Oreshnik is a new intermediate range ballistic missile that has never been seen or used before. Ted Postol, professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls it an “absolutely new weapon.” Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Orseshnik “experimental” and said that the strike was a test fire.

Though intermediate range ballistic missiles like Oreshnik are typically designed to carry nuclear warheads, the missile used in this attack was armed with conventional warheads.

What is remarkable about the demonstration of the Oreshnik is that it flew at around Mach 10 or 11, making it a hypersonic missile. Unlike ordinary ballistic missiles, this one seemed to increase its range by gliding parallel to the earth during part of its flight path instead of maintaining the expected inverted U-shape ballistic trajectory.

Hypersonic missiles are very hard to hit with air defense systems. This missile may be even harder to hit because it carries six warheads, each of which carries six submunitions, which means that the missile releases thirty-six warheads, probably with the addition of several decoys. Analysts say that each of those thirty-six submunitions may take a different trajectory before hitting the same target. That, and the ability of the thirty-six warheads to overwhelm a missile defense system, make it very hard to intercept all the warheads.

In his televised address, Putin said, “There are no means of countering such weapons today.” Certainly, there are no air defense systems in Ukraine that can defend against them. Putin says that the missile defense systems deployed by the United States in Europe are powerless against them. Analysts suggest that most American air defense systems are not up to the challenge of the Oreshnik missile and that, those that might be, could be overwhelmed by the multiple payload, especially if the first missile was followed by a second.

Russia’s Defense Ministry says that all of the missile’s warheads hit their target, and Putin says that after the successful operational test the Oreshnik missile will go into serial production.

The mainstream media has reported that video evidence suggests that the missile may actually have been carrying only dummy warheads. Ukrainian authorities are investigating that possibility. Postol told me that this interpretation is not quite correct. The missiles were not dummies, but they were not armed with explosives possibly because they did not need to be. At the speed these submunitions are flying at, they liquify when they hit the ground and then expand rapidly. Like a meteor impact, this creates a massive explosion without the need to arm the missiles with explosives.

As the missile delivers multiple warheads, so the warheads delivered multiple messages.

The first is a response to the United States calling Putin’s bluff on declaring Ukraine’s firing of Western long-range missiles deeper into Russian territory with American guidance a red line. The Oreshnik missile ups the ante and shows that Russia was not bluffing.

“Putin made clear,” The New York Times tells the West, “that the Russian missile test was a response to those strikes.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “The main message is that the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries that produce missiles, supply them to Ukraine, and subsequently participate in strikes on Russian territory cannot remain without a reaction from the Russian side.”

Most pointedly, Putin said, “We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”

The second reason is a response to the American withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. That treaty, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1987 and negated by Donald Trump in 2019, would have rendered missiles like the Oreshnik obsolete.

When discussing the first use of the Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile, Putin said, “It was not Russia but the United States that destroyed the system of international security,” referring to the American withdrawal from the treaty. He said that by clinging onto “hegemony,” the United States is “pushing the whole world toward a global conflict.”

In a televised address, Putin said, “It is a mistake on the part of the United States to destroy the system that was established by the [INF] missile treaty in 2019. We see that the United States and their allies are now considering, and have successfully tested, their capabilities to deploy advanced missile systems in different parts of the world, and their exercises routinely include the use of such systems…The use of the novel [Oreshnik] system, which was essentially an operational test, was carried out in response to the decisions made by the United States and their allies.”

And that leads into the third reason. Firing the Oreshnik missile was a response to the official U.S. opening of an air defense base in Redzikowo in northern Poland. The Aegis Ashore missile system is capable of intercepting short and intermediate range ballistic missiles. But it is also capable of firing nuclear tipped Tomahawk missiles that would take only minutes to arrive in Russia. Russia also sees it as a provocative move to weaken Russia’s nuclear deterrent potential.

The United States has long claimed that the missiles are not a threat to Russia and that their purpose is to intercept missiles fired from Iran. Russia has never believed that claim. Russia’s suspicion was confirmed when, at the opening ceremony, Polish President Andrzej Duda announced, “The whole world will see clearly that this is not Russia’s sphere of interest anymore.”

Russia has now added the Polish military base to its list of “priority targets for potential destruction.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, called the opening of the base another step in the “decades-long destructive policy of bringing NATO military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders.”

Peskov said that Russia would respond to the base by “adopting appropriate measures to ensure parity,” while Zakharova said that military bases like the one in Poland could be destroyed by “a wide range of the latest weapons,” a possible reference to the Oreshnik missile.

Putin seemed to specifically include the Polish base as a motivation for demonstrating the abilities of the Oreshnik missile when he said that “[m]issiles like Oreshnik are our answer to NATO’s plans to deploy medium- and shorter-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.”

Though the United States and its Western partners continue to make escalatory decisions on the bet that Vladimir Putin is bluffing with his talk of red lines, the powerful demonstration of the Oreshnik intermediate range, hypersonic ballistic missile is a caution, once again, that the confidence behind that bet might be unfounded.

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

Biden seeking extra $24bn for Kiev – Politico

RT | November 27, 2024

Outgoing US President Joe Biden has quietly asked Congress to allocate an additional $24 billion in Ukraine-related spending, according to a report by Politico on Tuesday.

The funding pitch includes $16 billion to backfill US stocks depleted by deliveries of weapons to Kiev and $8 billion to pay US arms producers for contracts in support of the Ukrainian military, the news outlet said, calling Biden’s bid a “long shot”.

The report is based on a document produced by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which was sent to lawmakers on Monday, according to Politico’s sources on Capitol Hill.

The Biden administration previously vowed to spend every dollar already approved for Ukraine before the president leaves office on January 20. Last week, he also wrote off some $4.7 billion in forgivable loans given to Kiev. The money was part of a tranche approved by Congress in April, with $9.4 billion provided as a “loan” to appease lawmakers, who opposed continued funding of the Ukraine conflict.

President-elect Donald Trump claimed during the election campaign that he would end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours if voters grant him a new term in office. Some of his allies have accused the “lame duck” Biden of trying to corner the next administration into a continued conflict with Russia.

Republican Senator Mike Lee reacted negatively to the new funding request from the White House, especially as it came days after Biden’s unilateral move on the loan.

”Congress must not give him a free gift to further sabotage President Trump’s peace negotiations on the way out the door. Any Biden funding demands should be DOA,” he wrote on X.

Elon Musk, a key Trump supporter, who will lead an effort to reduce government waste in the incoming administration, has called the request “not ok” and said the money would be “funding the forever war,” if lawmakers authorize the spending.

November 27, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Germany Tightens Grip on Online Speech as Vice Chancellor Defends Arrest of Online Critic

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | November 26, 2024

Germany’s authorities continue to double down on their crusade against all manner of free speech on the internet: from the right of citizens to criticize them, to satirical content like memes.

Instead of considering apologizing to a pensioner whose home was recently raided by law enforcement for an online post unflattering of his person, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck is now urging even stricter regulation of social media.

And it’s clear what kind of regulation Habeck – who was referred to as “an idiot” in the post that got 64-year-old Stefan Niehoff in hot water with the prosecution – wants to see more of.

The Green Party politician cited the EU’s controversial, sweeping censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), as a tool that could be used to “regulate” algorithms used by social media.

According to the German press, Habeck told the ARD broadcaster not only that he wouldn’t apologize but went on to try to explain – or, justify – why he filed a criminal complaint against the pensioner in the first place.

Habeck suggested that being called an “idiot” was just the straw that broke the camel’s back; his grievance supposedly originates from a previous “racist” post by Niehoff.

That’s not what the prosecutor said when they sent the police to the man’s home, however; only the post branding the high-ranked official as “idiot” was mentioned as the reason for the search – as it was allegedly intended “to defame Robert Habeck in general and to make his work as a member of the federal government more difficult.”

In Germany, those found guilty of such offenses can end up in prison for up to three years, or be forced to pay a fine.

Habeck mentioning a previous “racist” post, meanwhile, stems from the prosecution saying the pensioner “could be suspected of incitement to hatred” (but this was not the reason for sending the police to Niehoff’s home).

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

Germany expels Russian journalists

RT | November 27, 2024

The German government has ordered the closure of the Russian public broadcaster Channel 1’s bureau in Berlin and told its staff to leave the country by early December.

According to the broadcaster, correspondent Ivan Blagoy and cameraman Dmitry Volkov received official notification on Tuesday that they would be expelled, with German authorities citing national security concerns.

The move, which comes amid rising tensions between Europe’s two most powerful states, has sparked outrage, with the network calling it the latest attempt to silence independent reporting in the EU.

“The activities of Channel One pose a threat to public order and security in Germany and the EU,” the authorities reportedly stated, adding that the network’s content continues to influence Russian-speaking audiences in Germany despite its website being blocked.

Channel One, which is funded by the Russian government, has long been accused in the West of spreading pro-Kremlin narratives. The expulsion of its journalists follows a report by Blagoy on the detention of German citizen Nikolai Gaiduk, arrested by Russian security services on suspicion of espionage. Gaiduk, according to Russian officials, was involved in a plot by Ukrainian intelligence to sabotage gas facilities in the Kaliningrad region.

Moscow quickly responded to the German decision, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warning that retaliatory measures would be announced shortly. “We will not leave this without a response,” she told TASS.

The Russian broadcaster cited a document it received from the German authorities, which reportedly stated that “the activities of Channel One represent a significant immediate threat to public order and security in Germany and the EU as they pose a threat to the process of the formation of the public opinion and decision-making in the member states.”

The document also said that despite the Russian TV station’s website being blocked in Germany, its content “is still available on the Internet, is distributed via Telegram channels and continues to influence the Russian-speaking population of Germany.”

“Russian media has promoted the decline of the West and the economic collapse of Europe. This narrative and other far-right narratives have taken root among many Russian speakers, causing mistrust of the structures of the German state, the EU, and influencing far-right groups in Germany,” the document added, as cited by Channel One.

The expulsion of Channel 1’s journalists is the latest in a series of actions taken by Western European governments against Russian media outlets since Moscow’s military offensive against Ukraine in 2022. In March of that year, most Russian news sources were banned in the EU, including RT and Sputnik.

“We were simply doing our job by reporting on the events in Ukraine, and now we are being punished for it,” Blagoy said. “This is not just an attack on Channel One; it’s an attack on the freedom of the press itself.”

In late September, a couple from the German city of Karlsruhe was arrested on suspicion of broadcasting RT and other Russian TV channels via the internet. They may face at least one year in prison if found guilty of violating the Foreign Trade Act.

November 27, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

The Silver Bullet – An Address by Dr Mike Yeadon

Dr Mike Yeadon and Tim West | November 25, 2024

Hello, my name is Dr. Mike Yeadon, and in the next 15 minutes or so, I would like to address those of you who’ve been vaccine injured or bereaved, and also those of you who are involved in the political process in Northern Ireland, as well as anywhere else in the world who might hear me. At the end of this process, I hope you will believe what I’m going to tell you, which, shockingly, is that the materials masquerading as vaccines were designed intentionally to harm the people who received them. I’m probably the most qualified former pharmaceutical company research executive in the world speaking out on this matter, and since I spent my entire career in the business of working with teams designing molecules to be new potential medicines, I think I am qualified to comment on it, and that is my shocking judgement that has been only reinforced over the last almost four years since I first said it.

I’ll also have some suggestions for what we can do together to fight against the global crime which is ongoing. So, just a little bit about me so you can decide whether or not to believe me. So, I’m a career-long research scientist.

I’ve worked all of my life in the pharmaceutical industry and in biotech. My first degree included a training in toxicology, so that’s an understanding of how materials can injure human beings at a molecular level, and what the relationship is between the structure of them and the toxicity. In my second degree, a PhD, I did research in respiratory pharmacology, control of breathing and control of respiratory reflexes.

So, and then after that, I joined the pharmaceutical industry in 1988, and I worked until very recently on new medicines for allergic and respiratory diseases. In my corporate career, I was for a long time responsible at Pfizer, then the biggest research-based drug company in the world, for everything to do with allergic and respiratory diseases in the research field. So, that was my responsibility.

And in the last 10 years, after leaving in 2011, I was an independent and I became the founder and CEO of a biotech company, which was eventually acquired by Novartis, which was then the biggest drug company in the world. So, I have had a good career, and I was well regarded in the industry for my scientific acumen and judgments, until, of course, I started speaking out against the nonsense, the COVID pandemic, and especially the so-called vaccines. I’ve become persona non grata.

It was my former colleagues after that. So, I’m well qualified to comment on the toxicological principles, properties of molecules, and the kind of effects you might see from certain structures. So, just very briefly, before I talk about the so-called vaccines, what happened in 2020? It’s taken me a long time to get there, and I haven’t made everybody happy with the decision I’ve reached, but there was not a pandemic or a public health emergency.

I don’t think there was anything at all, apart from lies, propaganda, fear-based information, fake diagnostic tests called PCR, and then, as it were, misattribution of real illnesses that people did have, which were called COVID when there was no such thing. But what happened, shockingly, was that after the World Health Organisation’s chairman called a pandemic, which was not true. There’s never been a pandemic.

There won’t be pandemics. They’re immunologically impossible. But after he called them, many countries in the world changed radically their medical management practises for people in hospitals, also in care homes, and in the community.

And very briefly, in hospitals, many people were sedated, had a plastic tube put down their airway, and unconscious, put on mechanical ventilators. I can assure you that is not ever an appropriate treatment for someone with an influenza-like illness, whatever you might think COVID was. But that would not be something you would do, and if applied to frail and elderly people, they will die in large numbers, which they did.

So that was the first crime. It’s not a mistake. There are no mistakes here.

Mistakes were not made. They were told to do this by figures at supranational level. We don’t know exactly who, but we know this because these mad procedures changed in many countries all at the same time.

So that’s hospitals, in care homes, assisted living, old-age people’s homes, and so on. Many people were given drugs like Midazolam, which is an injectable form of a drug like Valium, a sedative. But they were also given injections of pain-relieving drugs like morphine, even if they weren’t in pain.

My PhD was in the field of understanding what opiate drugs like morphine do to the respiratory reflux, and I can assure you it suppresses and suppresses it and depresses it. So if you give an elderly person on their own an injection of Midazolam, they will become sedated and sleepy, and if you give them an injection of morphine, their breathing will slow. I can tell you, it’s absolutely forbidden to give a person those two drugs together, those two drug classes together, unless they are under intense ongoing medical monitoring.

And the reason is they’re likely to fall asleep and stop breathing. That, of course, is what happened. So that’s hospitals and care homes.

Your relatives were killed by the medical procedures that were imposed. Now, it’s quite possible early on that not everybody involved knew what was happening, but I’m afraid after a few days, you’d have to be a blockhead not to realise that it was what you were doing to your charges, your patients, that was resulting in their deaths. So I’ve completely lost any trust in the medical profession because virtually no one has spoken up four and a half years later.

This happens to lots of people. If you listen to the recordings, heartbreaking recordings given to the Scottish COVID Enquiry, I think that’s probably the only place where there’s been an official taking of evidence from people. And what I just described is exactly what happens to lots of people’s relatives and no doubt happens to some people in Northern Ireland as well.

It certainly happens in England. There were worse things as well. People in the community were deprived of medical care that would have saved their lives.

And there’s plenty of evidence to say that not being given antibiotics when they had incipient bronchial pneumonia also killed thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people. And there, ladies and gentlemen, was your pandemic. All of those deaths were attributed to COVID and you were told this is this terrible pandemic, you need to lock down, wear masks, do what you’re told.

Nothing was happening at all apart from medical murder and propaganda from the television and the newspaper, politicians and many public, well-known public figures who are doing what they were told. So of course one conclusion I’m going to come to later is stop listening to liars. The people who’ve lied to you shouldn’t listen to them ever again.

Stop listening to them today. But for me, I think the worst thing, because it comes out of my industry and because it’s so deliberate, it requires such a lot of forethought, are the so-called vaccines. Now we were told there was this new infectious disease, so far so good ladies and gentlemen, but then they said don’t worry we’ll rustle up a vaccine and they did so at least in about 10 months, something like that.

I can tell you after spending a career in this industry, you can no more make a baby in one month with nine women than you can make a complicated biological product in 10 months. It cannot be done. It was not done.

They did something else. They created materials which were essentially injected poisons. They were not vaccines.

There was never anything to vaccinate against. And when you’ve listened to what I’ve just told you, you know that must be true because you can’t do something in 10 months that normally takes 6 to 12 years. Medicines are not put together randomly.

They are built. And they’re built by people who are discussing with colleagues, work out what kind of materials, what kind of structures, what kind of formulations, what kind of doses you would need to add in order to hit a particular molecular target to have a chance of a particular therapeutic goal being reached without unacceptable side effects. That’s called rational design.

And that is my whole career, ladies and gentlemen, from my undergraduate days to today. So when I look at the design of the medicine, whatever kind it is, and look at the design on paper and its composition structures and so on, it is as if I’m looking over the shoulder of the designer, someone like me, someone with my qualifications designed these things. So when I look at them, I’m looking over the shoulder of the designer and I can discern something of what their objectives were, what were they trying to do? And I came quickly to the conclusion that they wanted to bring about toxicity that would injure, kill and reduce fertility.

There aren’t any other alternatives. And remember, there was no public health emergency. So I’ll just give you three examples.

I’m not going to be too scientific, but three things so you can check them. The objective of these so-called gene-based vaccines was to inject you with a genetic sequence for something called spike protein. Now, it doesn’t really matter what spike protein is, if it’s real, where it came from.

The point is, it’s a genetic sequence for a protein that doesn’t belong in your body. It’s non-self, it’s foreign. Your immune system is a wonderful work of God and nature.

It distinguishes self, things that are meant to be inside you and are fine from anything else, foreign, non-self. If you inject a person with a genetic sequence that instructs your body to become a factory for some protein that doesn’t belong in you, your immune system will detect that and it will attack every cell that’s done that instruction and kill it. Now, these materials, when injected in your arm, didn’t stay in your arm, they travelled around your heart, your lungs, your kidneys, your brain, your ovaries.

And in every place it landed, if it was taken up and expressed, your body registered that as foreign invasion and it attacks and kills every cell doing it. There is no other possible consequence from doing that. So that’s step one and no one can argue that’s not what they did.

That is the design of them. It also picks a particular protein. I’m not really sure where spike protein came from, if it’s really real, but proteins like the one they claim was encoded in these gene-based materials are known to be toxic.

There are loads of experiments, lots of published experiments, showing that proteins like that one cause blood coagulation, damaged nerves, damaged heart tissue. So they injected you with something that would make your body make a protein that doesn’t belong there, knowing axiomatically, automatically, unavoidably, your immune system would attack that. It would be like rejecting an organ transplant.

Your body would say, that’s foreign, got to go, uses your immune system to kill it. And then they also inject you with something that’s inherently toxic. So if it got out into your body or wherever it was made, it would harm you.

And I’ve got a third one that cannot be argued with. At least the mRNA products from Pfizer and Moderna were encapsulated in something called lipid nanoparticles. It’s really a blob of fat, complicated, technical blob of fat, that’s what it is after all.

And what that material did is allowed your injection to glide all around your body across all biological barriers and get everywhere in your body. So of course, it’s not what you would want, is it? For something that they told you was inhaled into your nose and lungs. But no, it went all around your body, into your brain, blood vessels.

But in particular, I need to tell you, there were publications that are now more than 10 years old in peer-reviewed journal articles. I’m sceptical about whether they’re always very honest, but there were peer-reviewed journal articles showing that lipid nanoparticles were recognised over a decade ago of having a particular property, which you’re not going to like to hear, which shocked me when I learned it. They tend to deposit their payload into the ovaries.

That is exactly what happened with these injected materials. There was at least one study performed with the Pfizer agents, with the Japanese regulatory authorities. Lo and behold, the material accumulated in the ovaries of the test animals.

That is what’s happened, ladies and gentlemen, every woman and girl injected with these materials. Remember what I said about designing molecules to do things deliberately with objectives in mind? They picked lipid nanoparticles, knowing they accumulate the payload in ovaries. It’s not an accident.

Mistakes were not made. So I tell you, as a professional who spent his whole honest scientific career in an industry I did not realise was corrupt, trying to make experimental medicines for respiratory and allergy diseases, that my experience tells me that there are multiple independent, unnecessary and obvious mechanisms of toxicity built into these so-called vaccines. And then by sheer luck, all four companies, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Pfizer, all chose basically the same formula for their so-called vaccines.

That would never happen if it was real. For a start, I would call my opposite numbers and say, we should do different things because if something goes wrong, if we’re wrong in an assumption, all of the so-called vaccines will fail for the same reason. We should do different things.

It’s called diversification. But no, they all did the same things because they’re just lying. They were making intentionally dangerous material, passing them off as vaccines to having you and your children.

And that’s what they did. Of course, I didn’t get injected and neither did my children and most of my relatives. Some of them didn’t believe me.

I’m afraid they’ve been injected too. So big picture, what happens, I think from the research I’ve done, and of course, I’m an expert in research and development, not in politics, but I believe that very wealthy people, the kind of people who run foundations with names, have planned, as have their antecedents for a couple of generations, to take over the world, to remove the freedoms of ordinary people like us that they regard as useless eaters. They don’t want us around anymore.

And their intention is to strip us of our freedoms by persuading us that there are very frightening events occurring in the world, and we need them to lead us to safety. There are documents you can find from a group called the Club of Rome, who in the late 1960s were commissioned by some of these people who run the nameless global foundations that have hundreds of billions of pounds of worth. They were asked to come up with scenarios that would produce challenges for countries that couldn’t be solved by countries on their own, so they would have to look outwards and upwards to supranational solutions.

Now guess what? The two things they came up with, pandemics of infectious diseases, which I know as an immunologist are not possible and have never happened. The other thing they said to account for or plan for were climate change crises. I’ve done enough research now, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve spoken to people who have spent as long in climate atmospheric research as I have in pharmaceutical R&D, and they have explained to me, and I understand very well, that there’s all of this nonsense about carbon dioxide, global boiling, net zero.

It’s all a complete scam from the same people who bought you the Covid scam and the dangerous injections. It’s the same people. They want one world government, they want to be deprived of your liberty, and then I’m afraid I think they will kill us using these injections because they’re going to do it again.

All over the world, factories to make mRNA-based materials are being thrown up, billions of doses are being made, and if we let them they will sicken in our arms and people will sicken and die. So those of you who have been injured or bereaved, in my mind no blame whatsoever attaches to you. How could you know that people you trusted and thought you could trust were lying to you? Well, you didn’t know, but if you let them inject you again, you have no sympathy for me because they have lied to you, you’ve been injured or killed, and I’ve explained to you that they’re liars and they have attacked us.

So if you go along with it, you cannot be saved. All we need to do is enough of us continue to speak out about this and say we’re not having it anymore, get lost, don’t listen to liars anymore. People who’ve lied to you forfeit their trust forever, in my view, and so anyone who’s in the political process, for example in Northern Ireland looking at this so-called public health bill, which if you pass it would allow these supranational criminals to take you from your house, to inject you by force if necessary, they are aiding and abetting a global crime.

And I saw someone online say recently that if you pass that legislation, I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to interpret that as an act of war. It’s as serious as that. So politicians, you may well be under pressure from shadowy figures, but if you go along with it and hope for like an easier time of it, you will have unlocked the doors of hell and pushed everybody in it and you as long with it as well.

So this is your time to do what I’m doing, which is to speak out no matter the consequences. I say to you if you’re frightened about what happens, if you speak out, you should be absolutely terrified about what’s going to happen if you don’t. So really that’s all I’ve got to say.

I do think these criminals are going to do it again, they’re continuing to threaten us with pandemics like bird flu, monkey pox and so on. It is all nonsense. Stop listening to liars right now.

Put things right between you, the people you love, and between you and God if you haven’t already. And for goodness sake, be one of the people who speaks out no matter what the consequences, because if you don’t, we’ll lose our freedom and then our lives. Thank you.

November 27, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 1 Comment

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Picked For NIH Chief as Free Speech Takes Center Stage in Science

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 26, 2024

With a decision that has garnered the attention of both supporters and skeptics of America’s public health establishment, President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health. For a nation battered by years of pandemic policies, conflicting narratives, and public mistrust, there’s more to this nomination— it’s a declaration.

Dr. Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor and a leading voice in health policy, has been a consistent advocate for evidence-based decision-making and open scientific discourse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he gained national attention for his principled stance against lockdowns and sweeping mandates, which he argued caused more harm than good. Now, he’s poised to bring that same conviction to one of the most influential scientific institutions in the world.

Rather than being welcomed as a critical voice, Bhattacharya faced vilification from a system allergic to dissent.

Fighting for Free Speech in Science

Perhaps Bhattacharya’s most defining moment came when he fought back against censorship. The Stanford professor became a plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of colluding with Big Tech to silence dissenting voices on public health.

The suppression of ideas, Bhattacharya argued, isn’t just an affront to the First Amendment; it’s antithetical to the scientific method. By standing up, he wasn’t just defending his views but ensuring that future debates about public health policy could happen in the open, where they belong.

A New Era for the NIH

With his appointment as NIH director, Bhattacharya is stepping into a role that carries enormous responsibility. But for a man who has spent his career challenging conventional wisdom, this is an opportunity to turn the page on a period of public disillusionment with science.

In an X post following the announcement, Bhattacharya, who was once blacklisted from Twitter under the old regime, promised to reform America’s scientific institutions to make them “worthy of trust again” and to ensure that NIH-funded research would focus on improving health outcomes for all Americans.

President Trump underscored this vision, calling Bhattacharya a leader who will restore the NIH to its “Gold Standard” while addressing America’s greatest health challenges. Paired with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another advocate for reform, Bhattacharya is set to tackle systemic issues such as chronic illness, skyrocketing healthcare costs, and the erosion of public trust in science.

November 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment