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The scourge of prosocial censorship

By John Ridgway | Climate Scepticism | January 25, 2025

On 30th April 2014 a Swedish meteorologist caused shock waves to reverberate across the international community of climate scientists. This was not because he had made a major discovery, nor had he been involved in a scientific scandal. But what he had done was to commit the cardinal sin of joining the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The reason why to some this was so shocking was because he wasn’t just any old Swedish meteorologist; he was Professor Lennart Bengtsson, the former head of research at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts before becoming its director until 1990. He had then moved on to become director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. Amongst his many accolades he had been awarded the Milutin Milankovic Medal in 1996, the René Descartes Prize for Collaborative Research in 2005, and the 51st International Meteorological Organization Prize of the World Meteorological Organization in 2006. In 2009 he was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society in recognition of his contribution to meteorology.

Only a fortnight later the same Swedish meteorologist caused an aftershock by resigning from the same foundation. The self-appointed guardians of scientific truth at DeSmog will tell you that it was because he hadn’t quite realised what a shower of reprobates he had joined and so he quickly learned to regret his actions. However, this is what Bengtsson said in his resignation letter:

“I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF… Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.”

Bengtsson’s censorious colleagues seemed quick to prove his point by denouncing his accusation that they had denounced him. Gavin Schmidt, for example, dismissed his reference to McCarthyism as being “ridiculous”, suggesting instead that it was the brave scientists such as himself who were the real victims of a witch hunt.

Appalling though it may seem that Professor Bengtsson should have been treated this way, he cannot claim to have not seen it coming. Earlier that same year a paper, in which he had the temerity to suggest that the projected warming was unlikely to be anywhere near as bad as others had maintained, was rejected by the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters on the basis that his findings were “less than helpful“. By way of clarification, the peer reviewer concerned added the reproof, “actually it [the paper] is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of ‘errors’ and worse from the climate-skeptic media side“. When Bengtsson and others, such as meteorologist Hans von Storch, condemned the rejection as scandalous, the journal’s publisher was eager to play down the comments made by the peer reviewer, claiming instead that the paper simply did not meet the journal’s high standards. Yes, that old chestnut.

What Bengtsson had in fact been subjected to is prosocial censorship. It is a form of censorship in which work is rejected, and individuals cancelled, not because the work is substandard or flawed, but because it threatens to undermine a cherished ideology or someone else’s concept of societal safety and harmony. Such censorship is never portrayed as such, of course; the reason given is always that the individual(s) concerned were peddling substandard work leading to harmful misinformation.

For example, if you were to be an Emeritus Professor of Risk with an international reputation for expertise in forensic statistics, but you then produced work that called into question government figures that seemed to be misrepresenting the severity of a pandemic or the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, you could expect your career to be cancelled on the basis that you are peddling harmful misinformation.

If, for example, you were to be a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist with more than fifteen years of experience pioneering psychotherapy for patients with gender dysphoria, but you then dared to say that everything in your professional experience had led you to the inescapable conclusion that transgender activists were guilty of promoting inappropriate physical interventions to deal with a basically psychological problem, then you could expect to be denounced as “the most evil dangerous Nazi Psychiatrist in the world” — and a transphobe for good measure.

If, for example, you were a physicist at CERN with a bright future ahead of you, but were then to suggest that the unbalanced gender representation within your field had nothing to do with patriarchy and everything to do with inherent gender traits, then you could expect to be vilified as a misogynist and ostracised by your fellow scientists.

And if, for example, you were to be a prominent climate scientist who had pointed out that self-censorship was rife within your field and that it was responsible for the absence of papers published in prominent journals that quantify both the climatic and non-climatic causations of wildfires, then you could expect the likes of the Grantham Institute’s Bob Ward to bleat that “Unfortunately, his bogus narrative has predictably been seized upon by the opponents of action to tackle climate change“. Worse still, none other than Professor Ken Rice (think poor man’s Sabine Hossenfelder) would be moved to refer to you as if you are now dead to them:

“Given that there can be preferred narratives within scientific communities, it is always good for there to be people who are regarded as credible and who push back against them. Even if you don’t agree with them, they can still present views that are worth thinking about. In my view, Patrick used to be one of those people.” [His emphasis]

Oh, the shame of it all!

In the above examples, the common narrative is one of a previously respected expert who had sadly fallen from grace because they couldn’t help themselves and had allowed their toxic opinions to compromise their ability to stick to the truth. As a consequence, they instantaneously transform into incompetent bad actors who are a danger to society, heartily deserving of prompt and emphatic prosocial censorship.

To be clear, these are not isolated examples. A recent research paper published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argued that both self-censorship and the prosocial censorship of colleagues are commonplace within the sciences — and the problem is only getting worse. Some of the figures make for grim reading:

A recent national survey of US faculty at four-year colleges and universities found the following: 1) 4 to 11% had been disciplined or threatened with discipline for teaching or research; 2) 6 to 36% supported soft punishment (condemnation, investigations) for peers who make controversial claims, with higher support among younger, more left-leaning, and female faculty; 3) 34% had been pressured by peers to avoid controversial research; 4) 25% reported being “very” or “extremely” likely to self-censor in academic publications; and 5) 91% reported being at least somewhat likely to self-censor in publications, meetings, presentations, or on social media.

There are, however, trends to be observed. Censorship is more of a problem in the social sciences than within STEM faculties. Women are keener to censor than are their male colleagues. And whilst right-leaning academics are more likely to engage in self-censorship, the left-leaning are far more likely to approve of the prosocial censorship of a colleague. Since prosocial censorship biases both the selection and promotion of staff members, it follows that the system is currently structured in such a way as to entrench the preponderance of left-leaning academics in senior positions. Worse still, the appetite for prosocial censorship is greater within the ranks of the PhDs than it is within faculty staff, suggesting that – to borrow a turn of phrase favoured by climate scientists – the problem is baked in for the future.

As the terminology suggests, those who advocate prosocial censorship will often do so for what they perceive to be the best of possible motives. Most commonly, the intention is to prevent research from being appropriated by “malevolent actors to support harmful policies and attitudes”. Sometimes the research is considered too dangerous to pursue, and in many other cases the censorship is aimed at protecting vulnerable groups. However, no matter how well-intended, the censorship comes with many obvious risks, the clearest of which is the possible suppression of the truth in the cause of a ‘greater good’.

At its most petty, all that may be at stake is one person’s reputation at the expense of a competitor. At its most extreme, prosocial censorship could involve a “wilful blindness of authorities” covering up a heinous crime for fear of offending a section of society, or for fear of giving encouragement to a right-wing that is assumed to be looking for any excuse to destabilise. Somewhere in the middle are the concerns harboured by the climate sceptic. Whilst we understand that science is not supposed to operate by consensus, we would, nevertheless, like to believe that an emergent consensus is the result of a developing common knowledge, rather than the result of social engineering enabled by prosocial censorship. Unfortunately, knowing that Professor Bengtsson’s experiences are far from unique does nothing to encourage such a belief. And, when all is said and done, that is the greatest shame of all. Prosocial censorship may seem a good idea, but it isn’t in the least bit desirable when it undermines the integrity of a discipline and causes widespread distrust amongst the wider community.

January 28, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

NY Times, Again, Tries to Normalize Injecting Kids With Neurotoxins

By Jefferey Jaxen | January 26, 2025

Normalizing neurotoxic vaccine adjuvants has been a bread and butter staple for corporate media for over a decade. 15 years ago it was local KEYE TV CBS Austin who, with a straight face and The Science™-like authoritative tone, told you that injecting mercury ‘helps kids.’

Now, our friends at the New York Times just ran the headline, Yes, Some Vaccines Contain Aluminum. That’s a Good Thing.

In the article, the NY Times admits, “… aluminum adjuvants are found in 27 routine vaccines, and nearly half of those recommended for children under 5.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, aluminum adjuvants are literally toxic to the human body, causing cellular and nerve death. The corporate media and public health experts will tell you that the aluminum is just in the shots for a little bump… just to kick up the inflammation a notch.

Aluminum adjuvants also cause immune dysregulation, and are used in labs to induce autoimmunity in mice.

Yet aluminum adjuvants are included in 27 shots for children under 5 boasts the NY Times.

Harmful… helpful… or both?

To settle some of the controversy, attorneys representing the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) asked the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to produce the studies relied upon to claim injected aluminum is safe.

It took HHS (CDC’s parent agency) nearly three and a half years to come up with its final response in 2022, stating it could not locate a single study.

ICAN’s attorneys also sent the same request to the NIH, which responded the same way, conceding that no records were found.

If the science is ‘robust’ and ‘settled’… where is it?

As far as amounts, we know it’s just a small, precise amount of neurotoxin to kick off inflammation in the body… right?

Back in 2021, top aluminum researchers measured the aluminum content of thirteen infant vaccines and compared it to what the manufacturer’s data claimed was in the shots. The researchers found the following:

If researchers were able to independently verify the neurotoxic aluminum content in test samples, surly the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is actively monitoring them to ensure both efficacy and safety. Right?

In 2021, ICAN submitted a petition asking the FDA to:

“… publicly release documentation sufficient to establish that the aluminum content in each Subject Vaccine is consistent with amount provided in its labeling”

The FDA has yet to release said documentation.

Until manufactures are able to switch the current class of vaccine tech over to next- generation mRNA platforms, the aluminum-adjuvanted shots appear to need defending at all costs.

Disingenuous corporate media outlets and public health experts are using the public’s lack of understanding on this subject to construct hit-pieces in the run-up RFK Jr’s confirmation hearing this Wednesday and Thursday.

Meanwhile, another longtime staple of deceptive media has made a sudden comeback this week as the inaccurate and ignorant slur ‘anti-vax’ is being slung across headlines.

No real journalist would use that word… especially now post-pandemic in the wake of failed shot mandates and delayed compensation for harms caused by the COVID shots in the CICP.

The ‘anti-vax’ industry talking point has become an intellectually lazy attempt to neutralize opposition to greater inconvenient truths. No serious person uses it anymore and expects to not endure rightful scorn and ridicule. It most likely is having the opposite effect whenever it is floated.

January 28, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Klaus Schwab Labels “Misinformation” a “Critical Challenge,” Urges Elites to Develop Solutions

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 27, 2025

WEF Founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees Klaus Schwab has spoken at this year’s event in Davos to reiterate the globalist group’s recently revealed priority targets.

A report published ahead of the gathering elevated “misinformation and disinformation” among the world’s top critical challenges and risks (others being armed conflicts, and climate-related issues).

Now, Schwab made sure to repeat that point in front of an audience of powerful elite members from around the world.

At the same time, he urged them to be the ones that will come up with “practical steps” that would deal with what the WEF has decided are “critical real-world challenges.”

Schwab opened with a warning that tech innovations, including AI, are ushering in what the WEF dubs “the intelligent age,” then swiftly went from praising that for economic and other potentials to warnings about the developments representing “unprecedented risks for humanity.”

Schwab’s intent here seems to be to drum up support for the “keyword” of this year’s event – “collaboration.” Namely, for tackling those “critical challenges” in a way that will always promote a globalist approach.

To this point, the WEF founder remarked that he was addressing 3,000 people from the world of politics, media, business, civil society, etc., whom he referred to as decision-makers – and whom he reminded that “commitment and engagement of all stakeholders of global society” are needed to, essentially, keep the goings-on in the upcoming “intelligent age” under control.

The rhetoric Schwab chose at times comes across as extraordinarily outlandish – such as suggesting that those gathered in Davos are there to come together around their “common mission” that should result in no less than “improving the state of the world.”

And Schwab doesn’t want those in his audience to “simply” deal with the challenges he presented, which he blames for “erosion of hope and confidence” – but also act proactively, so as to be the ones in control of how the world develops, and do this “in strategic, innovative, and constructive ways.”

Schwab’s opening address, other than appearing to attempt to create a sense of urgency and encourage the elites that everyone’s future is still in their hands, did not go into the specifics of how to deal with “the foremost risks” – like “misinformation.”

But there’s little doubt this will resurface during WEF’s many panels.

January 28, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

IRIB head confirms journalist held by Israeli forces in occupied territories

Press TV – January 28, 2025

The head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, Peyman Jebelli says an IRIB journalist has been detained by Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

Jebelli on Tuesday revealed that following extensive inquiries, it has been confirmed that the journalist is currently imprisoned and held captive by the Israeli regime.

Highlighting the sensitivity of the matter, the IRIB chief noted that the family of the detained journalist had preferred not to publicize the matter, which has complicated efforts to secure the release.

He emphasized that the journalist remains in captivity in the occupied territories and is not in Gaza.

Jebelli said, “We are hopeful that he will be freed from captivity soon.”

Journalists working within the Palestinian territory encounter heightened risks while covering the genocidal war, particularly in light of Israeli ground assaults and airstrikes, as well as challenges such as disrupted communications, shortages of supplies, and power outages.

Despite these dangers, Palestinian journalists continue to document the atrocities of the war, serving as the eyes and ears of the global community during one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century.

Last month, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the deliberate targeting and killing of journalists and media professionals by Israeli forces in Gaza, labeling such actions as a “war crime.”

The statement emphasized that such attacks are meant to “terrorize Palestinian journalists and prevent them from performing their role in exposing the crimes and atrocities being committed by the occupation army against our people and land.”

Since the start of the Israeli war, an unprecedented number of journalists and media workers have been arrested — often without charge — in what they and their attorneys say is retaliation for their journalism and commentary.

More than 200 journalists have also been killed since Israel unleashed its strikes in October last year.

Nonetheless, media workers remain committed to reporting developments in Gaza, even in the aftermath of the recent ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

January 28, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Switzerland releases, deports pro-Palestine American journalist

Press TV – January 28, 2025

Swiss officials have freed and deported prominent Palestinian American journalist Ali Abunimah, whom they arrested in the city of Zurich and held in police custody for three days, raising concerns about freedom of speech in the European country.

Abunimah, executive director of the online Electronic Intifada publication covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, confirmed his release in a post published on the X social media platform on Monday.

He said Swiss authorities detained him because of his advocacy for Palestinian rights.

“My ‘crime’? Being a journalist who speaks up for Palestine and against Israel’s genocide and settler-colonial savagery and those who aid and abet it,” the Palestinian American journalist wrote.

He was arrested in Zurich on Saturday before he was set to deliver a speech in the city. UN human rights experts and activists condemned the arrest.

The Reuters news agency, citing the Swiss police, said on Sunday that an entry ban and other measures under the country’s immigration law were the reason for Abunimah’s arrest.

The 53-year-old journalist said that when he was questioned by police officers, they accused him of “offending against Swiss law,” without providing specific charges.

He said he was “cut off from communication with the outside world, in a cell 24 hours a day”, adding that he was unable to contact his family. He added that he was only given back his phone at the gate of the plane that flew him to Istanbul.

Abunimah noted that during the period when he was taken to prison like a “dangerous criminal”, Switzerland welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“This ordeal lasted three days but that taste of prison was more than enough to leave me in even greater awe of the Palestinian heroes who endure months and years in the prisons of the genocidal oppressor,” Abunimah said.

“More than ever, I know that the debt we owe them is one we can never repay and all of them must be free and they must remain our focus.”

UN experts denounced Abunimah’s detention as an assault on free speech.

The UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, called the arrest “shocking news” and urged Switzerland to investigate and release him.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, also called for an investigation into the incident.

“The climate surrounding freedom of speech in Europe is becoming increasingly toxic, and we should all be concerned,” Albanese wrote in a social media post.

The detention of Abunimah took place against the backdrop of intensified restrictions on pro-Palestinian advocates in Europe, amidst the catastrophic war on Gaza.

In April, Germany canceled a conference intended for advocates of Palestinian rights and barred British physician Ghassan Abu Sittah, who had provided medical assistance in Gaza, from entering the country.

January 28, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Israelis are shocked that they didn’t beat Hamas, here’s why they failed

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | January 28, 2025

Contrary to what has been presented to the Western public, the Israeli military did not fight a war that targeted Hamas, instead they pursued their genocides and employed cowardly tactics that aimed to minimize their soldier casualties.

Ever wondered why the Israelis never had any real combat footage that featured their soldiers engaged in battles with Palestinian fighters? One explanation could be that no battles were actually fought in the Gaza Strip, yet that is contradicted by the near daily stream of clips, produced by some dozen Resistance groups, that featured attacks against the invading army.

Through analyzing the videos released by the Palestinian armed groups like al-Quds Brigades, al-Qassam Brigades, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the Mujahideen Brigades, the Salah al-Din Brigades, and others, we can deduce that there were three main categories of attacks: Ambushes, Sniper Operations, and mortar/artillery strikes.

According to both the communiques and video documentation published by the groups in Gaza, the most frequent style of attacks was mortar/artillery operations; that would occur daily. Over 10,000 rockets were also used, but as the war progressed, most of the rockets fired were short-range munitions. Although this style of attacks used largely inaccurate weapons, it was indeed constant over the course of 15 months.

Then we have the steady stream of videos throughout the war, which featured ambushes, which could also be separated into two primary subcategories: Ambushes of convoys and ambushes on stationary Israeli army positions.

The first kind, against convoys, included the use of the now famous Yassin-105 Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) against tanks, bulldozers, jeeps, and Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs). Guided Anti-Tank systems and drones were occasionally used against military vehicles too, but appeared to be in much lower supply.

The spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, announced in his ceasefire speech that over 2,000 Israeli tanks were damaged or destroyed by the group’s fighters. Despite the Israelis not having admitted to the number of tanks, bulldozers, jeeps, and APCs that were damaged/destroyed, reports published in Israeli media suggested that tanks were in short supply. In fact, several requests were made by senior Israeli military officials to deploy tanks into the West Bank after their assessments concluded the Resistance groups there had acquired heavy explosives, but were rejected due to the need to use those tanks in Gaza or Lebanon.

Another tactic that ended up proving more effective at neutralizing Israeli tanks later on in the war were Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) strategically planted in roads where military convoys would pass through. Groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)’s al-Quds Brigades and Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades even repurposed many of the unexploded ordnances, including the infamous 2,000-pound bombs, to use against Israeli military convoys.

Then we had the attacks on Israeli forces who were either entering areas to set up positions or who were already utilizing a space as a temporary military base or command node. These ambushes used IEDs that were pre-planted in an area, but also incorporated other kinds of weapons. For instance, sniper attacks were used throughout the war, and there are many such attacks filmed, some showing headshots and armor piercing rounds hitting two soldiers in a single shot.

The variations of the RPG warheads used were also different, when in sufficient supply, for these kinds of assaults that would often target gatherings of soldiers or those holed up inside buildings. A thermobaric RPG round was frequently featured in the published videos of such ambush operations. Something we also saw was the use of automatic and semi-automatic guns in such confrontations. There were also some knife attacks and occasional use of feda’i bombers.

The Israeli military has admitted to suffering an average of 1,000 soldier injuries per month during the course of the war, yet this even appears to contradict earlier announcements on the total number of injuries their forces sustained. These numbers have changed throughout the course of the conflict and do not appear to be reliable, especially due to Tel Aviv’s military censorship surrounding such issues. Regardless, judging by the Israeli total soldier death toll, set around 800, the injury to death rate is separated by an enormous gap.

So far, the Palestinian armed groups have not provided their own estimates as to how many Israeli soldier casualties they inflicted. Therefore, attempting to come up with numbers is rather difficult, but if we are to work with the statistic of 1,000 injuries each month in Gaza, this would equate to 33 Israeli soldiers injured every day. Provided that most of the time the occupying military was only launching full invasions in a couple of areas at once, this indicates frequent resistance.

However, with the exception of a handful of examples where the Palestinian Resistance fighters chose to try and hold certain areas, or delay an Israeli entry to a specific neighborhood – like what occurred during the second major invasion of the Jabalia refugee camp in May of 2024 – the opposition to the invading army was almost entirely surprise attacks and artillery strikes.

The Palestinian fighting made sense for a number of reasons. To begin with, it was obvious that even in the event that the Israeli military had sought to fight the Palestinian groups directly and engage in fierce battles with them, the ability to hold off the invading army that is backed by the world’s top military superpower was always a terrible choice. Therefore, the idea of being able to work in a similar manner to Hezbollah, holding back the advances of the Israeli army, would have been a suicidal strategy.

Even if the Palestinian Resistance would have proven temporarily successful, the massive loss of fighters would have been a disaster. This leads us to the next reason that explains their actions, that being the lack of any supply lines into Gaza. The Palestinian groups were forced to use weapons that were primarily manufactured inside the Gaza Strip, and thus had to preserve the ammunition they had carefully, which they managed to do. Their strength was in their use of a complex web of tunnels that the Israelis were simply not interested in bothering to enter on foot in most cases.

Tel Aviv and Washington still have no clue how extensive the tunnel system is under Gaza and only provide guess estimates. Other than in a few rare circumstances, the Israelis never bothered entering the tunnels and when they did, they would either use Palestinian hostages to go in ahead of them or attack dogs. The vast majority of uncovered tunnels were already abandoned, were bombed first, and rendered useless anyway, or the entrances were simply sealed with explosive charges. Attempts to flood the tunnels with seawater and gas both failed.

Not only do the Israelis themselves admit that most of the tunnels weren’t destroyed, but even in areas where the invading army had been stationed for over a year and destroyed every structure in sight, were sites from which long-range rockets were fired. In December, the Qassam Brigades even fired M75 rockets at Israeli settlements in occupied al-Quds from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. Tellingly, the first Israeli prisoners were also released by the Qassam Brigades’ elite Shadow Unit out of northern Gaza, which surprised the Palestinians and Israelis alike.

The real reason why the Israelis didn’t defeat the Palestinian Resistance factions, is because they weren’t really there to fight them. The primary target of each of their invasions, throughout the Gaza Strip, was always civilian infrastructure. Each invasion would culminate with the takeover of a hospital like Al-Shifa, Kamal Adwan, or the Nasser Medical Complex for example. They rounded up civilians who were either held hostage in their homes prior, or were displaced and living in UN schools, hospitals or stadiums.

Israeli airstrikes were totally indiscriminate, and while there were some more targeted operations, they were anomalies. Simply looking at drone or satellite footage of the Gaza Strip proves this beyond any reasonable doubt. The vast majority of their soldiers deployed into Gaza never saw a Palestinian fighter, even when fired upon, they were simply there to vandalize and destroy buildings, while shooting indiscriminately at whoever they chose. They behaved lawlessly like a horde of 13th century Mongolian raiders, minus having to actually fight battles against a modern army.

It was clear from the language employed by every Israeli, from its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right down to its soldiers who filmed TikTok videos of themselves detonating buildings and wearing women’s underwear, they were committing a genocide against those they called “Amalekites”. Their true purpose was not to pursue a military victory over Hamas, which we can prove through the absence of any clear plans at any stage of the war, it was just uncontrolled slaughter and destruction. They sought to pulverize and terrorize, with the propaganda behind them to justify it in their own minds.

While the lie was sold to the world that the war was specifically designed to destroy Hamas, it never was, they sought to destroy the people of Gaza and their livelihoods. They didn’t invade in order to fight Palestinian resistance groups and that’s why there is virtually no footage documenting this, even the few examples of combat footage they filmed ended up making the Palestinian fighters they killed look like heroes from an action film.

Now that the ceasefire holds, the Israeli society appears baffled, believing that their regime’s murderous assault on Gaza was going to crush Hamas and return their captives by force. Instead, they witnessed Palestinian fighters and police officers quickly deploy throughout Gaza, with weapons, vehicles and military/security-force attire, seemingly un-scathed. Yet, to those who have been closely following the conflict, this made complete sense and it is also one of the reasons why the Israeli leadership feared a ceasefire.

The Israelis employed a strategy of maximum cowardice in order to minimize their own combatant casualties at all costs. For instance, under the US/”Israel” doctrine of counter-insurgency, tanks would traditionally follow infantry units heading into an urban warfare zone, or at least there would be soldiers on the ground accompanying the tanks, yet this was not the case in Gaza. The Israeli soldiers hid inside their heavily armored tanks and vehicles, betting on the armor and Active Protection System (APS) to guard them.

Despite our inability to accurately estimate Israeli military casualties, it does appear that the difference between the deaths and injuries is a ratio that portrays far more injuries to deaths than in other similar urban warfare environments. This is because the Israelis hid in fortified areas or inside heavily armored vehicles most of the time. The reality is that even in the event that a tank is damaged, it doesn’t necessarily mean soldiers were killed in that attack and could have sustained injuries alone.

Most of the time, after arriving in new areas or buildings, a drone or robot would be sent in first to inspect the scene, prior to the soldiers that stormed the area. However, this didn’t always work and there would occasionally be ambushes after a failure to locate explosives, or tunnels. Most of the work the soldiers did required little real courage or combat capabilities. They were also careless throughout, as videos over the span of the 15 months war repeatedly showed soldiers casually standing in open windows, in one case an Israeli was filmed smoking out of a bong before he was hit with a thermobaric warhead.

Tel Aviv wasn’t looking to sacrifice its soldiers in the way that would have been required had they actually fought a war against Hamas, so they took the coward’s way out instead, and its population that believed in every lie they were sold are now shocked that the tactics employed proved ineffective at achieving the publicly stated goals of the war. With every known military advantage, destroying or damaging almost every single building in Gaza and slaughtering its people in such a manner that has constituted perhaps the worst atrocity since the Second World War, the Israelis couldn’t even come out of Gaza with the image of victory.

This speaks to the utter cowardice of the genocidal regime, contrasted by the stunning steadfastness of Gaza’s people as a whole. The Israelis didn’t fight a war against Hamas or any of the other Palestinian Resistance groups, note that they don’t even produce any statistics on the number of alleged fighters they have killed from any specific group other than Hamas; with the exception of occasionally adding mention of PIJ to the Hamas death toll figures. Palestinian Resistance groups fought, using the limited tools they had, against an Israeli military that was committing a genocide, that is what really happened.

January 28, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Nvidia suffers record one-day stock market value drop

RT | January 28, 2025

Nvidia’s stock plummeted 17% on Monday, erasing approximately $589 billion from its market capitalization and marking the largest single-day loss in US corporate history. The sharp decline follows concerns over mounting competition from the Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek.

The selloff was part of a broader tech downturn that saw the Nasdaq Composite fall 3.1%, its worst day since December. Nvidia shares closed at $118.58, marking their most significant drop since March 2020 during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Monday’s plunge also dethroned Nvidia as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, at $2.9 trillion, pushing it back to third place behind Apple and Microsoft.

The downturn was triggered by DeepSeek’s launch of an open-source R1 model, which the company claims was trained in just two months at a fraction of the cost required by US-based firms like OpenAI. This development has raised questions about the sustainability of high AI-related spending, particularly on Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) that dominate the AI chip market.

Nvidia itself described DeepSeek’s innovation as “an excellent AI advancement,” but argued that it expects demand for its chips to increase rather than diminish. “Inference requires significant numbers of Nvidia GPUs and high-performance networking,” a company spokesperson said in a statement on Monday.

Beyond Nvidia, the selloff extended to other tech and semiconductor companies. Broadcom saw its stock drop 17%, wiping out $200 billion in market value. Data center companies heavily reliant on Nvidia’s chips, such as Oracle, Dell, and Super Micro Computer, also experienced sharp declines of at least 8.7%.

Oracle’s chairman, Larry Ellison, saw his net worth fall by $27.6 billion, the most among affected billionaires, according to Forbes. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s personal fortune dropped by $21 billion, ranking as the second-largest personal loss.

The AI-fueled stock surge of the past two years has made companies like Nvidia central to market confidence. Nvidia’s shares soared 239% in 2023 alone, driven by demand from tech giants like Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon.

The latest development comes amid growing tensions in the AI race between the US and China. Despite US export restrictions on high-end chips, DeepSeek has managed to deliver competitive performance compared to OpenAI’s o1, relying on lower-spec GPUs.

US policymakers have taken note of the competition. Venture capitalist David Sacks, who was appointed as the White House’s AI and crypto advisor under President Donald Trump, called for renewed focus on innovation to counteract China’s advancements.

“DeepSeek’s success shows that the AI race will be very competitive,” Sacks wrote on X, urging the US to avoid complacency. Another billionaire venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen, has described DeepSeek’s emergence as a “Sputnik moment” for American tech.

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

John Helmer and spitting out the red, white, and blue Skripal pills

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook and John Helmer January 15, 2025 

In today’s podcast from Canada, Chris Cook and I discuss the reasons for the failure of Novichok to kill anyone, and its success at brainwashing everyone, or almost everyone.

The contrast with other media campaigns of resistance to western information warfare is a glaring one. For example, the campaign to defend Julian Assange and free him from a British prison and trial in the US has turned out to have been a popular success. However, Assange himself, his Wikileaks platform, and his London advocates have done nothing to expose the Novichok deception operation. They are good men who have done nothing — their media success has failed to deter or stop the Anglo-American march to war in the Ukraine; Assange’s lawyers are supporters of the war against Russia. Assange’s alt-media reporters have pretended they are the only truth-tellers in the present discontents; their war is against their media competitors.

For their names; for the truth of the Novichok story; and for the after-life of the Novichok poison in the coming war against Russia, click to listen.

John Helmer and spitting out the red, white, and blue Skripal pills in the second half. Begin at Minute 31:00. Source: https://gradio.substack.com/

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Audio program, Deception, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

WEF 2025: Calls for Tighter Social Media Censorship to Combat Antisemitism

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 27, 2025

At the 2025 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting, a session titled “Confronting Antisemitism Amid Polarization” featured prominent speakers who advocated for stronger measures to compel social media platforms to censor content they consider harmful. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT); and Jennifer Schenker, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Innovator, expressed concerns about the influence of platforms like TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook on public discourse and the spread of antisemitism.

Jennifer Schenker set the tone for the discussion by claiming, “The flames of antisemitism are being fanned every second by TikTok and social media,” and lamenting that “the Jewish community has not been able to effectively combat that online.”

Jonathan Greenblatt labeled social media platforms “a super spreader of antisemitism and hate” and criticized their impact on younger audiences, stating, “Young people… get their news from TikTok, which is fairly terrifying, or from X or from Instagram.” He also called Meta “a gigantic problem,” highlighting the challenges posed by the platforms’ size, business models, and governance structures.

Greenblatt further criticized Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), describing it as “a loophole… which exempts [social media companies] from liability.” He called for regulatory and reputational pressure to compel these companies to act, suggesting that social pressure could deter top engineers from working for platforms perceived as unethical: “If their engineers feel like going to these companies and participating in something, you know, an evil enterprise, if you will, they don’t wanna do that.”

Randi Weingarten shared examples of how the AFT has used its influence to pressure social media platforms. “We have used the economic power sometimes against a place like Facebook or others to say, actually, you have to stand with what is moral and what is legal,” she said, acknowledging the union’s role in leveraging pension funds and other economic tools to advocate for what they consider the fight against hate.

Weingarten also expressed concerns over the influence of social media on young people’s perceptions of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Recounting interactions with high school students in Boston, she noted that “every question [they asked] because of what they see and what they’re on” focused on the actions of the IDF, implying that platforms like TikTok and X should be more active in censoring such content.

Greenblatt emphasized the need for a broader coalition to address antisemitism, stating, “The Jewish community needs to recognize we can’t do it alone. We need institutions like government… and individuals, non-Jews, to realize antisemitism isn’t just a Jewish problem, it’s everyone’s problem.”

Weingarten echoed this sentiment, advocating for grassroots efforts to build understanding and combat hate: “There has to be a way that good people of the world end up fighting against hate.”

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Egypt’s Parliament rejects plans for Palestinian resettlement after Trump’s call

MEMO | January 27, 2025

The Egyptian Parliament reiterated rejection, on Monday, of any plans aimed at relocating the Palestinian people from their land, warning that such actions pose “a grave threat” to regional security and stability, Anadolu Agency reports.

“We cannot overlook the significant danger posed by the proposals being circulated regarding the relocation of Palestinians from their land,” Parliament Speaker, Hanafi Gebali, told a parliamentary session.

“These ideas completely disregard the well-established fact that the Palestinian cause is not merely a population issue or a geographical dispute, but a cause of a people striving for their legitimate and historical rights.

“Everyone must realise that the Palestinian people are not merely a group seeking shelter. They are a people with a rich history, sacred land and inalienable rights that cannot be erased with time. They will never relinquish these rights, nor will the Arab nation before them,” Gebali affirmed.

The Egyptian Speaker warned that any proposals bypassing Palestinian rights “pose a grave threat to regional security and stability”.

“The only solution for achieving lasting peace is implementing the two-state solution, which ensures the Palestinian people can establish their independent state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, while also ensuring the security and stability of the entire region.”

“Egypt, which has sown the seeds of peace in the region for many years, reaffirms today that it will continue to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and firmly reject any attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause or infringe upon the rights of this great people,” he said.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump called to “just clean out” Gaza and resettle Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan, describing the enclave as a “demolition site” after Israel’s genocidal war.

Egypt, Jordan, the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation issued statements and immediately rejecting any call for the displacement or relocation of Palestinians from their land.

Trump’s proposal came a week after a ceasefire agreement took effect in Gaza on 19 January,  suspending Israel’s genocidal war that has killed more than 47,300 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured more than 111,000 since 7 October, 2023.

The Israeli onslaught has left more than 11,000 people missing, with widespread destruction and a humanitarian crisis that has claimed the lives of many elderly people and children in one of the worst global humanitarian disasters ever.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in November for Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tens of thousands of Palestinians return to north Gaza after one year of displacement

(Photo credit: MEE/Ahmed Aziz)
The Cradle | January 27, 2025

Tens of thousands of Palestinians began returning to the northern Gaza Strip via the Netzarim corridor on 27 January after over a year of displacement and a genocidal Israeli war.

Video footage documented the first moments that the displaced civilians flooded through the Netzarim corridor to return to their homes in the north.

“Vehicles continue to enter via the Netzarim corridor through Salah al-Din Street after undergoing electronic inspection [in accordance with the ceasefire agreement],” Al Jazeera’s correspondent reported on 27 January.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are expected to return for the first time since being displaced at the start of the war in October 2023 and in the months that followed.

“The scenes of the return of the masses of our people to the areas from which they were forced to flee, despite their destroyed homes, confirm the greatness of our people and their steadfastness in their land, despite the depth of the pain and tragedy,” Hamas said in a statement.

Member of the Hamas political bureau Ezzat al-Rishq said the return of Palestinians to their homes “shatters all the dreams and illusions of the occupation in displacing [the Palestinian] people.”

Israel had been blocking the return of the displaced after the second round of prisoner exchanges took place on Saturday – demanding the return of a female Israeli soldier Arbel Yehud as part of the swap and accusing the resistance movement of obstructing the deal. Yehud is being held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement.

It was agreed over the weekend that she would be released on Thursday in exchange for Israel allowing the return of the displaced to northern Gaza, which, along with other areas in the enclave, was destroyed and ethnically cleansed throughout the war.

Israeli authorities released 200 Palestinians from Israeli prisons on 25 January as part of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas. The resistance movement released four female Israeli soldiers as part of the deal earlier that day.

One hundred fourteen Palestinian prisoners were transferred from Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank for release in Ramallah, 16 were returned to Gaza, and 70 were exiled outside Palestine, WAFA news agency reported. Egypt will host them for 48 hours before they are sent to Tunisia, Algeria, and Turkiye – which all agreed to receive them.

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

In Lebanon, civilians amass to secure liberation

By Khalil Harb | The Cradle | January 27, 2025

Ignoring a foreign-imposed ceasefire ‘extension,’ southern Lebanese residents are reclaiming their villages from Israeli occupation, exposing the failures of both the invasion and US mediation – and it’s happening in both Gaza and Lebanon at the same time.

The image that Israel sought to project – both to its settlers and to the wider Arab world – of a resistance subdued, a nation defeated, and a broken will crumbled at dawn on 26 January as the 60-day deadline for the implementation of the ceasefire with Hezbollah approached. 

The shattering moment came as the Lebanese people triumphantly returned to their recently occupied villages with unrelenting resolve, putting an end to two months of perceived acquiescence and Israeli ambitions to extend its occupation of the country beyond the truce. 

Scrambling to attach legitimacy to Israel’s continuing violations beyond the ceasefire deadline, the White House issued a very brief statement on Sunday evening, announcing that the agreement would remain in effect until 18 February. 

Within hours, the Lebanese presidency’s X account posted: “There is no truth to the news about Israel informing Lebanon that it will remain at five border points for 15 days.”

Israel’s miscalculated strategy

The occupation state, once again miscalculating the realities on the ground, appeared to have banked on its extensive aggression in southern Lebanon, coupled with a brutal two-month rampage through southern villages under the guise of implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1701, to craft a facade of victory. 

During this time, villages south of the Litani River – spared military occupation during the war thanks to the fierce resistance – were ravaged through relentless bombing and destruction right up until the deadline. Tel Aviv seemed confident this violence, shielded by the ceasefire agreement, would entrench its control and bolster its narrative of dominance – a narrative it had deceived itself into believing. 

The arrogance of Israel’s leadership, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his far-right political allies and opposition leaders, underestimated the resilience of the Lebanese. The illusion that the war and its aftermath had crushed the will of the southern villagers or forced new terms upon Hezbollah was put to an unanticipated test.

During Lebanon’s observance of the ceasefire – marked by the deployment of its army south of the Litani and Hezbollah’s adherence to truce terms – Israel misread this restraint as weakness. Toward the end of the truce period, Israeli leaders openly discussed prolonged occupation of southern Lebanon, citing security concerns for northern settlers who had yet to return home. 

What Israel did not foresee was the convergence of two historical moments: the Lebanese reclaiming their villages and Palestinians in Gaza defying displacement by returning northward from the strip. This dual movement after two ceasefire agreements, powered by an unyielding indigenous attachment to the land despite a genocidal campaign against its natives, exposed the failure of Israeli calculations and those of its allies in the west and West Asia. 

A ceasefire undermined by violations 

The recklessness of the US-led armistice committee, chaired by US General Jasper Jeffers, compounded the situation. By treating Israel’s numerous violations of the ceasefire lightly, the committee allowed Tel Aviv to interpret the agreement as it pleased. 

Under this pretext, Israeli forces executed airstrikes, demolished entire residential neighborhoods, and bulldozed agricultural and forest areas, electrical network lines, water wells, and numerous roads. The occupation army uprooted infrastructure and disrupted civilian life in southern Lebanon at a scale rivaling the destruction during the 15-month war itself. 

According to estimates by Lebanese authorities, there were over 800 violations during the ceasefire, yet the armistice committee offered no meaningful condemnation. Civilians attempting to return home were targeted indiscriminately; as of Sunday night, the Lebanese Ministry of Health recorded 24 more martyrs and over 134 wounded across 21 southern villages, many of them women and children, in addition to the nearly 100 lives lost since the ceasefire began.

Complicit silence of ‘mediators’ 

Israel’s actions, enabled by international complicity, emboldened it to extend its occupation and deepen the suffering of the Lebanese. Meanwhile, General Jeffers, tasked with overseeing the ceasefire and implementing Resolution 1701, remained a bystander to these crimes. 

His silence showed, yet again, Washington’s inherent bias, which – far from being a neutral mediator – has historically aligned with Tel Aviv’s interests. This raises a pertinent question: can the US genuinely claim impartiality in Lebanon’s political and security affairs?

A political source close to the resistance in Lebanon, speaking to The Cradle, says this bias risks destabilizing the country and rendering the truce meaningless.

The resistance, represented by Hezbollah, set things straight with its statement last Thursday, which warned against “a continued violation of Lebanese sovereignty.” 

Hezbollah insisted that these violations must be dealt with “by the state using all means and methods guaranteed by international conventions … to reclaim the land.”

“While we will follow the developments of the situation, which are supposed to culminate in a complete withdrawal in the coming days, we will not accept any violation of the agreement and commitments, and any attempt to evade them under flimsy pretexts.”

Hezbollah’s warnings realized 

Sunday’s events confirmed Hezbollah’s warnings. As civilians re-entered their villages en masse, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) followed, deploying in areas where Israeli troops were reluctant to surrender. This mass mobilization dismantled Israel’s scorched-earth strategy, which sought to make the region uninhabitable and reconstruction efforts near impossible. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, desperate to balance internal political pressures and its failed Gaza offensive, miscalculated again. Instead of breaking the Lebanese spirit, it was met with a formidable display of unity and defiance.

In exchange for the Lebanese commitment to implement the requirements of the ceasefire, Hezbollah parliamentary representative Ali Fayyad says that this was met with “Israeli treachery, international complicity, and indifference.”

A source close to the resistance also tells The Cradle that the presence of Israeli occupation forces on even a single inch of Lebanese territory serves as a justification for continued resistance.

The source elaborates that the Netanyahu government, by attempting to circumvent the truce deadline, is pursuing several interconnected objectives. Chief among them is the strategy to intensify pressure on Beirut, both politically and militarily, with the aim of forcing it into submission to Israeli demands.

Additionally, Israel seeks to establish a so-called “burned zone” along the border, creating a buffer area that would further entrench its occupation. This maneuvering, the source adds, also serves Netanyahu’s domestic agenda. 

By maintaining a foothold in southern Lebanon, he aims to deflect criticism from opposition figures within Israel who are pressuring him to avoid a full withdrawal. Moreover, Netanyahu is using the situation to attempt a rehabilitation of his government’s tattered image. 

After the Gaza ceasefire exposed severe cracks in Israel’s political and military apparatus – especially as Palestinian resistance fighters emerged with renewed confidence and resilience – the embattled Israeli prime minister is desperate to project strength, particularly in the Lebanese context, as a way to recover from these reputational blows.

Unified resistance 

This synchronized resistance across Lebanon and Palestine serves as a reminder of the region’s enduring struggle against occupation. As Israeli commentators acknowledge divisions within US policy circles – some supporting Israel’s attempts to prolong its occupation while others insist on adherence to withdrawal terms – Netanyahu’s agenda remains in disarray. 

Reports of him lobbying President Donald Trump to permit the retention of five military sites in southern Lebanon show his desperation, but the people of Lebanon have already rendered this strategy futile.

The Lebanese resistance, bolstered by the actions of its citizens, has proven yet again that the occupation can and will be challenged. 

Civilians liberated roughly 30 towns on Sunday, paving the way for the Lebanese army’s advance and signaling an unyielding determination to reclaim their sovereignty. While Israel may seek to manipulate international dynamics, the people of Lebanon have drawn a clear line: their land, their will, their victory.

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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