Why China is winning the chips race: materials, markets, money, and Moore’s Law
Inside China Business | December 31, 2024
Huawei and SMIC are quickly catching up to global rivals in advanced semiconductor manufacturing, which is surprising to many industry analysts. Chinese tech firms enjoy access to China’s enormous supply chain advantages, such as in refined silicon, and in wafer manufacturing. Chinese companies are also the biggest buyers of semiconductor chips. China is simply too big a market for Western companies to lose, and so they are strongly motivated to go around the export bans, or even set up manufacturing and distribution plants in-country and be outside of US and European oversight. The Chinese central government, a host of local governments, and Chinese companies themselves have invested far over $100 billion in their semiconductor industry in recent years, which is much more than investments made by other countries. But another feature of today’s chip industry is that Moore’s Law is reaching the limits of what semiconductor companies can do. Massive investments in capital and time are required to build the next generation of ever-smaller chips. So companies have turned to “chip packaging” to achieve high productivity gains, using existing chips. Chip Packaging is an area where Chinese companies are already strong, and allows them to employ economies of scale. This plays directly into their industrial strengths. The timing of the semiconductor chips war, therefore, has been beneficial to China. It has allowed Chinese firms to catch up, and fast.
Resources and links:
Substack, for video transcript and direct links https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/why…
Nikkei, The great nanometer chip race https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The…
Nikkei Exclusive: Inside Huawei’s mission to boost China’s tech prowess https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech…
Bloomberg, China Creates $47.5 Billion Chip Fund to Back Nation’s Firms https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…
South China Morning Post, Tech war: Beijing sets up US$1.2 billion semiconductor fund as China splurges on chips https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/ar…
SCMP, Tech war: Shanghai injects US$1 billion into chip fund as China strives for self-reliance https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/ar…
The Diplomat, China’s Big Fund 3.0: Xi’s Boldest Gamble Yet for Chip Supremacy https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/china… Substack, The Semiconductor Trade War https://www.apricitas.io/p/the-semico…
China remains crucial for U.S. chipmakers amid rising tensions between the world’s top two economies https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/12/china…
Semiconductor supply chain: Political and physical challenges in 2024 and beyond https://www.spglobal.com/market-intel…
Bloomberg, US Asks South Korea to Toughen Export Curbs on China Chips https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…
Wafer Pro, China’s Dominance in the Global Silicon Supply https://waferpro.com/chinas-dominance…
Inside China Business, Chinese companies are going around US semiconductor export bans. So are American companies. 
• Chinese companies are going around US…
Denials of Washington’s Links to Murder of Russian General Igor Kirillov Highly-Suspect
By Henry Kamens – New Eastern Outlook – December 31, 2024
The mysterious assassination of General Igor Kirillov raises suspicions of a covert connection between U.S. biolabs, Ukraine, and the broader geopolitical interests of the West, highlighting potential motives linked to sensitive military research.
Maria Zakharova, speaking for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confidently dismissed U.S. State Department claims of no involvement in the killing of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, Russia’s chief of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops. Zakharova had accused the U.S. of creating and funding the Kyiv regime, supplying it with weapons, and failing to condemn its terrorist acts. The suspicious timing of such assassinations can be compared to historic high-profile killings before major events, from WWI to operations in Afghanistan.
Such assassinations, often aimed at demoralizing Russia and targeting those Kyiv considers war criminals, which Ukraine defends as legitimate wartime tactics, raise many questions. Knowing Kirillov’s access to sensitive documents and possessing many of the same and similar materials, I can offer some insights into the “likely motives” behind him and his deputy being blown up in Moscow.
Peter Daszak, Spooky Guy with a Checkered Past
A very spooky guy with a Ukrainian father, Peter Daszak, is President of EcoHealth Alliance, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting wildlife and public health from the emergence of disease. It should come as no surprise that this person is connected with BSL 3 labs Worldwide, Ukraine, Georgia and China.
This was also one of the main players at Lugar Lab, Tbilisi, Georgia too, at least when it comes to bat research and diseases transmitted between animals and humans (zoonosis). It is claimed Daszak is a fellow traveller with the Bat Lady from Wuhan, China. Coincidence or not, the British zoologist and president of EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak provides much revealing information in a video that was originally taken on Dec. 9, 2019, three weeks before the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announced an outbreak of a new form of pneumonia.
EcoHealth Alliance presents itself as a nonprofit that protects the world from the emergence of new diseases and predicts pandemics. Since 2014, Daszak’s organization has received millions of dollars of funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which it has funneled to carry-out research on bat coronaviruses.
There are other suspects to investigate: Daszak was named by the World Health Organization as the sole U.S.-based representative on a team sent to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a team that also includes Marion Koopmans, Hung Nguyen, Fabian Leendertz, and Christian Drosten. This is more than coincidence, especially since many believe COVID is not naturally occurring, and if made in a lab, nature is not picking up where lab workers left off.
Too many ducks are lining up, COVID-19 pandemic. On February 9, 2020, Newt Gingrich invited Daszak as a special guest along with Anthony Fauci on Newt’s World to discuss the coronavirus and how it could potentially evolve into a global pandemic.
A lizard loving kid!
As one source describes, Dasak is not very honest, and the cover face, poster boy, for disguising military research and experiments. He started out in zoology, e.g., a lizard loving kid, who studied reptiles and then was able to help his wife get a job at the CDC in Atlanta, he tagged along unemployed with her and “suddenly” got a job coordinating virus research among seven (7) USAID and DoD universities.
Coincidence or not, Daszak described during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2011,
“Our research shows that new approaches to reducing emerging pandemic threats at the source would be more cost-effective than trying to mobilize a global response after a disease has emerged”.
As the NYT reported, in October 2019, when the federal government “quietly” cut off funding to the ten-year-old program called PREDICT, operated by United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s emerging threats division, much to the dismay of experts like Daszak, He was worried that shutting PREDICT down, could “leave the world more vulnerable to lethal pathogens like Ebola and MERS that emerge from [unexpected places], such as bat-filled trees, gorilla carcasses and camel barns.”
These disease sources can be considered as Red Herrings, and there is still great speculation that many of these Especially Dangerous Pathogens, EDPs, were manipulated in labs, and not only one country may be involved.
Daszak said, “PREDICT” a USAID project, was an approach to heading off pandemics, instead of sitting there waiting for them to emerge, and then mobilizing” in reaction. But in reality it was to seek out potential bio weapons.
EcoHealth also claims that it looks at the nexus between emerging viruses and how they affect public health, and what is underlying that … and it is claimed that “almost” all emerging disease are linked to some underlying drivers, some cause that’s related to people: travel and trade and building roads into forests around the world,
We have this unprecedented population growth. We’re doing things on the planet that we never used to do. We’re building roads into the remotest forests and what we do is we come into contact with wildlife species and pick up those artists. What we do at EcoHealth is to look at the relationship between people and animal, and the environment, and how that [leads] to pandemics and [then] we try and do something about it.
Peter Daszak plays a central role in discussions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. According to an expert collaborating with independent scientists investigating military labs, Daszak is widely viewed as a key figure of suspicion, allegedly disguising his self-interest as humanitarian work. Despite potential conflicts of interest due to his close ties with Wuhan and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Daszak headed up a WHO group in Wuhan and another group under the Lancet to investigate the virus’s origins.
General Igor Kirillov’s death is most likely connected to sensitive documents reportedly involving Ukraine, Georgia, and the Lugar Lab in Tbilisi. These documents, (still classified and under investigation, detail a joint Georgian-U.S. military research project on diseases potentially affecting Georgian and Ukrainian military recruits. The project, primarily funded by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in collaboration with the CDC and other institutions, outlines research objectives, budgets, and criteria for participant selection. Specific pathogens of interest, such as anthrax, are noted for their military relevance.
The WHO’s decision to appoint Daszak to monitor COVID-19 outbreaks in China has been criticized as politically motivated. Articles by Henry Kamens (NEO) and Jeffrey Silverman (Veterans Today ) support the allegation that that Kirillov’s death and the likelihood of U.S.-Ukrainian collusion in bio weapons research are not coincidental.
Silverman, whose work often focuses on Georgia’s unique geopolitical dynamics, has participated in RT documentaries on U.S. biolab activities and foreign policy. These documentaries have faced bans and restrictions on platforms like Facebook, reflecting their controversial nature, and bans for those who share the link with others.
The nexus between Daszak, the Lugar Lab, and broader U.S. geopolitical strategies are more than speculative. The closed-source verification and personally being involved with undisclosed documents, especially some of the actual documents which resonate within the context of broader Russian criticisms of Western intervention and bio-weaponization of animal diseases, (Zoonosis).
Peter Daszak a British zoologist and president of EcoHealth Alliance, which researches emerging diseases and zoonotic pathogens has too many links to controversial funding for bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, raising questions about his role in the origins of COVID-19 and the covert development of new bio weapons for offensive purposes, at various BSL3 labs as being funded and operated by the US government in blatant violation of the 1972 bio weapons treaty.
It is clear that what Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov had access to, as confirmed by others, and his knowledge and role in sharing of these documents may have been the main motivation for his murder.
Kirillov “most likely” had a treasure trove of either highly classified or sensitive information about the links of these labs to the acquisition, development, and potential use of weapons of mass destruction, including but not limited to highly resistant strains of anthrax.
US imposes sanctions on IRGC entity over alleged election interference
Press TV – December 31, 2024
The United States has announced sanctions on an entity it says is affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) over its alleged interference in the 2024 US presidential elections.
The designation was announced by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday and targeted the IRGC subsidiary, which it identified as the Cognitive Design Production Center (CDPC).
A statement on the Treasury’s website claimed the CDPC had planned influence operations since at least 2023 to incite tensions among the US electorate on behalf of the IRGC.
Iran has repeatedly rejected accusations it has interfered in elections in other countries, including in the US.
Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations issued a statement in late August to reject such allegations.
“Such allegations are unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing,” said the Mission after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other American intelligence agencies claimed that Iran had been involved in the hacking of the campaigns of Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris.
“As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the US presidential election,” said the statement.
Iranian authorities say that Washington’s policy of imposing numerous sanctions on the country is solely aimed at forcing the country into accepting political and military concessions.
Numerous US-British airstrikes target Yemeni capital Sanaa
Al Mayadeen | December 31, 2024
A US-British aggression targeted Tuesday the capital, Sanaa, amid continuous airstrikes, Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in Yemen reported.
Our correspondent indicated that the US-British airstrikes targeted the September 21st Park, located in the northwestern part of Sanaa, which previously housed the First Armored Division.
He also noted that the aggression targeted, with eight airstrikes, a complex that includes the Ministry of Defense and military administrative offices in the Bab al-Yemen area in central Sanaa, as well as the May 22nd Military Industrial Complex in the al-Nahda neighborhood, northwest of Sanaa.
The spokesman for the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, Mohammad Abdelsalam, pointed out that the aggression against Yemen represents “a blatant violation of the sovereignty of an independent state” and comes in support of “Israel”.
Abdelsalam affirmed that “Yemen will continue to defend itself against any aggression and remains steadfast in supporting Gaza.”
The latest aggression comes a couple of hours after the spokesperson of the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF), Brigadier General Yahya Saree, announced that the YAF missile force carried out two top-tier military operations against Israeli targets.
The first targeted Ben Gurion Airport in the city of Yafa (Tel Aviv) in occupied Palestine using a hypersonic ballistic missile of the Palestine-2 type, Saree said, adding that the second operation targeted a power station in southern occupied al-Quds with a Zulfiqar-type ballistic missile.
According to the spokesperson, both missiles successfully hit their targets.
Saree pointed out that the two operations coincided with a joint operation conducted by the YAF’s naval, missile, and UAV forces, targeting the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman with a large number of drones and cruise missiles, while US forces were preparing to launch a major aerial attack against Yemen.
He confirmed that the operation successfully achieved its objectives, thwarting the planned American aerial assault on Yemen.
Elsewhere, Saree reiterated that the operations of the YAF will only cease with the cessation of the Israeli aggression against Gaza and the lifting of the blockade imposed on the Palestinian strip.
US Treasury’s hacking accusation unfounded, China opposes disinformation out of political purposes: FM
Global Times | December 31, 2024
In response to US Treasury’s claim that a China state-sponsored actor infiltrated Treasury workstations in what US Treasury officials are describing as a “major incident,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that regarding these unfounded accusations lacking evidence, we have repeatedly stated our position.
“China has always opposed all forms of hacking attacks, and we are even more opposed to the dissemination of false information targeting China for political purposes,” Mao said on Tuesday at the routine press briefing.
Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached the US Treasury Department’s computer security guardrails this month and stole documents in what Treasury called a “major incident,” according to a letter to lawmakers that Treasury officials provided to Reuters on Monday.
The US has recently amplified accusations of hacking activities allegedly linked to China. Xin Qiang, director of the Taiwan Studies Center at Fudan University, told the Global Times that some US departments, in order to demonstrate their effectiveness, are emphasizing vigilance against China and claim to have discovered “dangerous vulnerabilities.” This kind of hype is actually aimed at enhancing their own presence or even securing budget support.
The H-1B program is about corruption and fraud, not ideology
Instead of selecting for the “best and brightest,'” the program facilitates the interests of a power cartel of middleman agencies.
By Jordan Schachtel | The Dossier | December 30, 2024
Proponents of the H-1B program argue it’s an essential opportunity to import workers with underrepresented occupational skills into America. Detractors say it serves to undermine and displace the American worker.
But before we even engage in an ideological debate between conservatives, liberals, libertarians, and socialists about the merits of H-1B, we must first recognize that the program, in its current 2024 form, is corrupt and fraudulent beyond recognition. Over the last 35 years, massive bureaucratic institutions and middlemen have formed to hijack H-1B, establishing a monopoly that wildly overrepresents certain groups of people over the rest of the world.
First, a bit of history:
The H-1B visa program was established under the Immigration Act of 1990. It was designed to enable U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in specialized occupations requiring at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. Initially, the program was intended to fill skill gaps in the U.S. workforce, particularly in sectors like technology, engineering, medicine, and education, where there was a perceived shortage of American talent.
The annual cap for H-1B visas started at 65,000, but the program evolved significantly over the years. In 1998, the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act increased the cap to 115,000 visas, responding to the booming tech industry’s demand for skilled labor. This was followed by further adjustments; for instance, the H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004 added 20,000 visas for foreign nationals holding a master’s or higher degree from U.S. universities.
Over the years, various legislative efforts have ostensibly aimed to reform the program. The H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2009 increased fees to fund retraining programs for American workers, but critics say it failed in its implementation.
The H-1B program saw its cap reached almost immediately after applications opened in the early 2000s due to high demand, leading to a lottery system for allocation. One well-known lottery-busting tactic from middleman hiring companies in India, which continues to this day, involves submitting multiple applications under different aliases for the same individual to increase their chances of selection.
Today, the H-1B visa allows holders to work in the U.S. for up to three years, extendable to six and has provisions for “dual intent,” allowing visa holders to pursue permanent residency.
According to recent data and analyses, the breakdown of H-1B visas by country of origin shows a significant concentration among two nations, with India and China leading the numbers:
India dominates the H-1B approvals list, accounting for almost three-quarters of all H-1B visa recipients.
With a billion and a half people, India is still wildly overrepresented in the “talent pool,” especially because the H-1B pipeline in India tends to exclude 95 percent of the country.
India’s caste system is a complex social structure that has shaped the country’s society for millennia. Rooted in ancient Hindu scriptures, the system originally divided people into four social classes: Brahmins (priests and scholars), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (merchants and farmers), and Shudras (laborers). In 2024, India remains a highly stratified society where one’s caste determines not only occupation but also social status, marriage prospects, and even dietary habits.
Brahmins, the elite caste Indians, only amount to about four percent of India’s population, but H-1B caters almost exclusively to Brahmins, especially when it comes to managerial roles.
The issues begin in the American university system, which continues to accommodate foreign students as an increasing percentage of total enrollment, forcing Americans to compete with the entire world for admission into elite STEM programs. The State Department hands out around half a million student visas each year, and there is seemingly no plan to roll back student visas.
Based on available data, there’s a large discrepancy between student visa holders and H-1B holders. Here’s a breakdown of student visas by country of origin in terms of percentage, focusing on the academic year 2022-2023, based on available data:
- China: Approximately 27.4%
- India: Around 25.4%
- South Korea: About 4.1%
- Canada: Roughly 2.6%
- Taiwan: About 2.1%
- Nigeria: Around 1.7%
- Japan: Approximately 1.5%
- Brazil: About 1.5%
- Saudi Arabia: Roughly 1.5%
- Mexico: About 1.4%
Around one-third of H-1B holders are U.S. university graduates, and about half come into the American workforce directly from their country of origin.
Because of the massive corruption and fraud in the talent pipeline, many current H-1B workers lack the social, cultural, and technical aptitude to mesh into an American workplace despite their claimed qualifications, leading to a major headache for their employer and the prospective American applicant who was left behind in the process.
Massive corporations like Infosys, Tata, Cognizant, Wipro, and HCL Technologies exist to facilitate this “talent” pipeline, and they have enormous influence on U.S. foreign labor policy. With a pooled value of hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization, they monopolized the H-1B program into a centralized cartel that recruits, hires, and fills roles in major American companies, freezing out applicants outside of the pipeline.
So, instead of finding the “best and brightest” in tech, three-quarters of all of America’s H-1B imports are likely to come from a social caste of around 50 million people, leaving behind 1.35 billion Indians in the process. In a world of 8 billion, the centralization of three-quarters of the H-1B program does no favors to Americans on either side of the debate.
Two Senior South Korean Military Officials Indicted Over Martial Law — Reports
Sputnik – 31.12.2024
SEOUL – Two high-ranking South Korean military officials have been indicted over their role in the president’s failed attempt to impose martial law, the Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday.
Capital Defense Commander Lee Jin-woo is suspected of sending troops to the National Assembly on December 3 and ordering the arrest of 14 people, including opposition party leaders, while Defense Counterintelligence Commander Yeo In-hyung is accused of ordering troops to the parliament and telling the police commissioner to dispatch officers to detain lawmakers.
The officers face accusations of inciting insurrection to overturn constitutional order, the prosecutors reportedly said.
The parliament voted 191-71 on Tuesday to launch a special committee investigation into President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration to assess the legality of a cabinet meeting that was held shortly before the martial law was imposed, as well as the role of the military and police. The probe is expected to end by February 13, 2025.
On December 3, President Yoon declared martial law, claiming that the opposition was sympathizing with North Korea and plotting a “rebellion.” The parliament defied the presidential declaration and voted to lift martial law hours later. Yoon obeyed and apologized to the nation. On December 14, the South Korean parliament voted to impeach Yoon over his controversial declaration of martial law.
The Constitutional Court will make a final decision on the matter by June 11, 2025. Yoon will be suspended from office pending the ruling and will not be able to leave the country, while an interim president will be in charge until the final verdict is passed.
Israel’s collateral killing of civilians is finally in the spotlight
The New York Times’ recent “bombshell” presents facts that have been known for a long time – and does its best to sanitize them
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | December 30, 2024
The New York Times recently published a piece admitting that an unprecedented amount of “collateral damage” was permitted by the Israeli military. However, it omits key statistics that were previously revealed in order to sanitize the revelations it claims to be uncovering.
Presented as a bombshell piece, the December 26 article reveals that Israel had sent through an order that permitted killing up to 20 civilians for each low-level Hamas target. “The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in Israeli military history,” the article reads.
However, in early April of 2024, an Israeli media outlet called +972 Magazine had not only published this fact, citing sources within Israel’s military, but uncovered much more damning figures detailing what was to be considered “acceptable” collateral damage.
The +972 article revealed that the Israeli airstrike that killed Hamas’ Shujaiya Battalion Commander, Wisam Farhat, was authorized to kill 100 civilians. Even more shocking was the infamous case of Ayman Nofal, the commander of Hamas’ Central Gaza Brigade, where, according to the sources, “the army authorized the killing of approximately 300 civilians.”
The +972 report was mentioned in passing by The New York Times, with the caveat that Israel’s military had denied it. However, +972 Mag’s investigative work on this topic did not begin in April. In fact, a piece published in November of 2023 cited a source who claimed the following:
“The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage.”
So, while a big deal is made of the fact that such high numbers of collateral damage have “no precedent in Israeli military history,” the IDF has been knowingly writing off civilians as collateral damage for years. One need only look at literally any UN report on Israel’s past military conduct to see it.
It isn’t only in Gaza that such horrendous “collateral damage” has been normalized, it has also been the case in Lebanon. When Israel carried out the assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, it openly announced that it estimated the total death toll to be around 300, as a result of leveling a number of civilian buildings in southern Beirut.
There is literally nothing in the article published by The New York Times that is new; all it does is affirm what has already been reported, yet it is done in a way that works to water the killings down by omitting key facts and repeating old tropes.
For example, it repeats as proven fact the widespread allegation that Hamas purposely embeds itself amongst civilians to use them as human shields, a point that has been found at least questionable before.
What is undeniable however, is that Israel uses Palestinians as human shields, as has been copiously documented throughout the war and used to be an accepted part of Israel’s military doctrine.
“From November 2023 onward, amid a global outcry, Israel began to conserve ammunition and tighten some of its rules of engagement, including by halving the number of civilians who could be endangered when striking low-ranked militants who posed no imminent threat” states the NYT. The question here is, where did this information come from? According to the article itself, the sources are all Israeli soldiers and officials.
The only evidence presented is the words of the Israelis. Was there any analysis done or examples cited to prove that the IDF would only kill ten civilians on average for every low-ranking Hamas fighter? Absolutely not, because not even Israel can present this information to the public, nor the names of the thousands of supposed “Hamas fighters” it has targeted.
If we go by Israel’s official figures for the number of alleged Hamas militants killed, they rise at such a rate that it doesn’t match the death toll figures accepted by the United Nations. While the official death toll in Gaza is nearly 46,000, with 10,000 missing and presumed dead, the only way Israeli “Hamas fighter” figures make sense is if the toll is much higher. However, accepting a higher death toll in order to give Israel’s claims about Hamas fighters more legitimacy would mean that The New York Times would face another issue: they would then have to wrestle with the fact that the killing only escalated in November of 2023.
In addition to this all, the +972 article from April 3 provides a much more in-depth insight into the artificial intelligence systems used by the Israeli army and points out that the targets it generated were highly inaccurate. The investigation discovered that when the Lavender system chose junior Hamas targets, the Israeli army would actually use its more lethal unguided munitions, because “you don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people.”
Furthermore, +972 noted that while a human has to verify targets chosen by the AI before a strike is ordered, eventually this boiled down to simply making sure the target is male – spending about 20 seconds on average before pulling the trigger.
Nowhere in the New York Times article is there any mention of the slaughter of civilians where no military target is located, there is no mention of the mass torture, sexual abuse, or demolition of homes for the pure vanity of soldiers. Everything is framed as a military that went a little overboard after the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.
More than Dozen Martyred in Israeli Strike on Syria’s Adra
Al-Manar | December 30, 2024
At least ten people were martyred on Sunday in an Israeli strike on Syria’s Adra Industrial City in rural Damascus, Syrian and Arab media reported.
Reports said there was an explosion in the city of Adra, on the eastern outskirts of the capital.
An Israeli drone had reportedly fired two missiles at a building in the vicinity Adra industrial zone.
Arab media outlets reported that 11 people were killed, while other reports put the death toll at 17, with a number of others being injured.
A video shared on social media showed the aftermath of the attack. The video showed a building reduced to rubble with several bodies scattered among the debris.
The Zionist entity has been taking advantage of the former Syrian regime’s fall earlier this month, with the occupation military launching hundreds of strikes in the last weeks on several areas across the Arab country, and seizing positions including the summit of a mountain with an uninterrupted sightline to the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new leadership receives Ukrainian FM in Damascus
The Cradle | December 30, 2024
Syria’s de facto ruler Ahmad al-Sharaa, better known as former Al-Qaeda chief Abu Mohammad al-Julani, and the country’s new Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaybani hosted Ukraine’s top diplomat in the capital, Damascus, on 30 December.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha arrived in the capital at the head of a high-level delegation, which included President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s special envoy.
“We seek to cooperate with the new Syrian administration in several areas. We share with Syria the suffering from unjust regimes,” Sybiha was quoted as saying. “We are ready to help Syria in collecting evidence and investigating the crimes of the former regime and Russia.”
“Russia and Assad regime are partners in committing atrocities in Syria. We believe that relations between our two countries will witness great development,” he added.
The foreign minister went on to say, “If you can expel the Russians from your lands, you will ensure your security and the security of neighboring countries.”
Shaybani said during the meeting that his country is “turning the page” on the era of the former government of Bashar al-Assad, stressing that there will be a “strategic partnership” between Damascus and Kiev.
Sharaa’s organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as the Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda’s offshoot in Syria), appointed a transitional authority following the collapse of the Syrian army and the fall of Damascus on 8 December after an 11-day shock offensive that took the region by surprise.
Over the past few years, Ukraine has provided crucial support to HTS and other extremist factions under its command – who were based in Syria’s northern Idlib governorate before the assault that ended the Assad government.
HTS militants and fighters from ISIS and other extremist groups have also been deployed in Ukraine to fight Russian forces.
Before the launch of the offensive on 27 November, Ukrainian drone experts had been training and equipping extremist militants in Idlib.
The Russian military intervened in Syria in 2015 in support of Assad’s government, helping the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) turn the tide against several groups who had taken over large swathes of the country – including the Nusra Front, which became HTS.
Moscow and the former Al-Qaeda branch have established a line of contact since Assad’s government fell in early December.
“Russia is an important country and is considered the second most powerful country in the world. There are deep strategic interests between Russia and Syria. All Syrian weapons are Russian, and many power stations are run by Russian expertise,” Sharaa said on 29 December. “We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way some people would like.”
Russia has said that the future of its presence in Syria will depend on the outcome of talks with the country’s new authorities following the transitional period.
Collapsing Empire: RIP ‘Overt Operations’
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | December 30, 2024
In recent months, a remarkable development in the Empire’s decline has gone almost entirely unnoticed. The National Endowment for Democracy’s grant database has been removed from the web. Until recently, a searchable interface allowed visitors to view detailed records of Washington-funded NGOs, civil society, and media projects in particular countries – covering most of the world – the sums involved, and entities responsible for delivering them. This resource has now inexplicably vanished, and with it, enormous amounts of incontrovertible, self-incriminating evidence of destructive US skullduggery abroad.
Take for example NED grant records for Georgia, the site of recent repeated color revolution efforts, at the forefront of which were Endowment-bankrolled organizations. While still accessible via internet archives, they were deleted during the summer. Today, visitors to associated URLs are redirected to a brief entry simply titled “Eurasia”. The accompanying text describes in very broad terms the Endowment’s aims regionally and the total being spent, but the crucial questions of where and on what aren’t clarified. In a comic hypocrisy too, the blurb boldly states:
“The heart of NED’s work in the region is the need to maintain access to objective information for local populations. Across the region, government actors are attempting to limit the space for citizens to distribute information and communicate freely online.”
Resultantly, independent academics, activists, researchers, and journalists have been deprived of an invaluable resource for tracking and exposing the Empire’s machinations. Yet, the Endowment incinerating its public paper trail can only be considered a significant victory for these same actors. NED’s explicit and avowed raison d’être was to do publicly what US intelligence did – and in many cases still does – covertly. Now, after 40 years of wreaking havoc worldwide in service of the Empire, the CIA front has been forced underground, defeating its entire purpose.
‘Spyless Coups’
NED was founded in November 1983, after the CIA became embroiled in a series of embarrassing public scandals. Then-Agency director William Casey was central to its construction. His objective was to create a public mechanism to conduct traditional CIA meddling overseas, except out in the open. Ever since, the Endowment has financed countless opposition groups, activist movements, media outlets, and trade unions to the tune of millions to engage in propaganda and political activism, to disrupt, destabilize, and displace ‘enemy’ regimes the world over.
The NED’s true nature was openly acknowledged by the mainstream media for many years. In June 1986, Endowment’s president Carl Gershman told the New York Times, “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world” to be subsidized by the CIA. The exposure of such connivances meant they had been “discontinued”, and farmed out to NED. Several high-ranking interviewees strenuously denied there was any connection between NED and the Agency, although the outlet acknowledged many Endowment programs seemed “superficially similar” to past CIA operations.
At this time, NED was hard at work killing off Communism in the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and Yugoslavia. This included for instance enormous investment in Poland’s famous Solidarity trade union, which became a global emblem of anti-Communist resistance. In September 1991, the Washington Post published a highly laudatory appraisal of these efforts, stating the “political miracles” the Endowment achieved in the former Soviet sphere had ushered in a “new world of spyless coups” and “innocence abroad”:
“The old era of covert action is dead. The world doesn’t run in secret anymore. We are now living in the age of Overt Action… When such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection. Covert funding for these groups would have been the kiss of death, if discovered. Overt funding, it would seem, has been a kiss of life.”
NED proceeded to take down a number of governments throughout the 1990s and 2000s, very overtly. In many cases, mainstream outlets published highly revealing accounts detailing precisely how. In Ukraine in November 2004, Endowment-trained and bankrolled activists forced a rerun of that year’s presidential election. As The Guardian jubilantly reported, the entire effort was “an American creation” and “sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing,” which had been repeatedly deployed in the new millennium to “topple unsavoury regimes”:
“Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations…the operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections.”
‘Kiss of Death’
The next year, USAID published a slick magazine, Democracy Rising, bragging extensively about how it and NED were fundamental to a wave of revolutions in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere during the first years of the 21st century. Fast forward to February 2014, and Ukraine’s government once again fell victim to an Endowment-orchestrated coup, in the form of the Maidan ‘revolution’. Yet, the media either ignored the irrefutable US role in fomenting the upheaval or dismissed the proposition as “Russian disinformation” or conspiracy theory.
This is despite contemporary polls never showing majority Ukrainian support for the Maidan protests; ousted President Viktor Yanukovych remaining the most popular politician in the country until his last day in office; every actor at Maidan’s forefront, including the individuals who started the demonstrations, receiving NED or USAID funding; leaders of US-financed organizations in the country openly advertising their desire to overthrow Yanukovych in the years prior; and the Endowment pumping around $20 million into the country in 2013 alone.
This mass omertà, which has intensified since, may be attributable to ever-rising hostility towards NED by foreign governments and populations, and associated efforts to restrict or outright proscribe the organization. The reality of the Endowment’s raison d’être and modus operandi has thus not only become unsayable but must be vehemently denied by Western journalists. Representatively, a July 2015 Guardian report on Russia banning NED quite unbelievably relied on a brief quote from the organization’s own website to describe its operations.
While the mainstream media may have remained silent on the NED’s mephitic influence overseas over the past decade, the same is not true of independent academics, activists, researchers, and journalists. The Endowment grant database served as an invaluable tool for keeping a close eye on Washington’s international intrigues and mapping the personal and organizational connections of agents and entities of influence. Meanwhile, NED’s status as a CIA front could be simply proven, via multiple public admissions of its own leaders.
Whenever protests erupted somewhere in the world and received widespread Western news coverage, concerned citizens could consult the NED grant database and find in the overwhelming majority of cases, most if not all individuals and groups quoted in media reports were in receipt of Endowment funding. While impossible to quantify, it would be unsurprising if dissident voices calling attention to this fact have averted color revolution efforts, disrupted external meddling campaigns, protected popular governments and political figures, and more.
Of course, despite NED brazenly purging evidence of its vast operations from the web, that conniving continues apace regardless, covertly. One might even argue the Endowment’s chicanery is all the more dangerous now, given individuals and organizations can conceal their funding sources. But the move amply shows NED today cannot withstand the slightest public scrutiny, which its very existence was intended to exemplify. It demonstrates that “overt operations” with open US funding are now the “kiss of death” the Endowment was meant to replace.
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‘Zero Carbon Is A Crime Against Humanity’
By David Wojick, Ph.D. | PA Pundits – International | March 21, 2020
I recently got an intriguing email from Professor Guus Berkhout, president of the Climate Intelligence Foundation or CLINTEL. It contained this striking paragraph and the last sentence really got me thinking:
“The past 150 years show that affordable and reliable energy is the key to prosperity. The past 150 years also show that more CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth and increasing the yields of crops. Why do governments ignore these hard facts? Why do they do the opposite and lower the quality of life by forcing high-cost, dubious low-carbon energy technologies upon their citizens? The zero-emission act is a crime against humanity.”
So I looked into the law on crimes against humanity and Professor Berkhout may have a strong case. At its simplest, a crime against humanity is a government policy that systematically and knowingly harms a specific group of innocent people.
Zero carbon emission laws like the Green New Deal in the EU and the US will deprive poor people of affordable energy worldwide. This fact has been well established by numerous studies. Thus these policies knowingly harm a specific group of innocent people. And as CLINTEL points out in its World Climate Declaration, there is no climate emergency that might justify this harm. What we have are governments deliberately harming their citizens. … continue
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