A New Year’s Resolution: Let’s Get the United States Out of the Censorship Business
By Jonathan Turley | December 31, 2024
On this New Year’s Eve, billions of people will gather with friends to ring in 2025 with the hope of a better year to come. For the first time in many years, free-speech advocates have a reason to celebrate.
With 2024, we will say goodbye to one of the most reviled offices in the Biden Administration: The Global Engagement Center. I discuss the Center in my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage as one of the most active components in the massive censorship system funded by the Biden Administration. The demise of the GEC is a good start. However, like weight loss resolutions, it will take much more of a commitment if we are going to restore free speech in the United States. It is time to make the ultimate resolution to rip out the censorship root and stem from our government.
This month, the Biden Administration fought to keep the GEC funded, but Republicans refused to include it in the continuing resolution for the budget. However, even with the closure of this one office, Biden will leave behind the most comprehensive censorship system in the history of the United States.
Over the last three years, many of us have detailed a comprehensive system of grants to academic and third party organizations to create blacklists or to pressure advertisers to withdraw support for targeted sites. The subjects for censorship ranged from election fraud to social justice to climate change.
I testified at the first hearing by the special committee investigating the censorship system funded or coordinated by the Biden Administration. It is an unprecedented alliance of corporate, government, and academic groups against free speech in the United States. The Biden Administration established the most anti-free speech record since the Adams Administration.
House investigations showed the critical role played by government officials in “switchboarding,” or channeling demands for removal or bans in social media. Officials evaded the limits of the First Amendment by using these groups as surrogates for censorship.
Even with the elimination of the GEC, other offices remain in various agencies, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security, which emerged as one of the critical control centers in this system.
CISA head Jen Easterly declared that her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure would be extended to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” That includes not just “disinformation” and “misinformation,” but combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”
These groups form a censorship consortium where the suppression of speech attracts millions in federal dollars. Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was created in association with Stanford University “at the request of DHS/CISA.”
EIP supplied a “centralized reporting system” to process what were known as “Jira tickets” targeting unacceptable views. It would include not only politicians but commentators and pundits as well as the satirical site The Babylon Bee.
Stanford’s Virality Project pushed to censor even true facts since “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. Emails show government officials stressing that they could not be seen as “openly endors[ing]” censorship while other groups sought to minimize public scrutiny of their work.
For example, one article featured the work of Kate Starbird, director and co-founder of the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public. In one communication, Starbird cautioned against giving examples of disinformation to keep them from being used by critics, adding “since everything is politicized and disinformation inherently political, every example is bait.”
Likewise, University of Michigan’s James Park is shown pitching that school’s WiseDex First Pitch program, promising that “our misinformation service helps policy makers at platforms who want to . . . push responsibility for difficult judgments to someone outside the company . . . by externalizing the difficult responsibility of censorship.”
The system has layers of interconnected grants and systems. For example, the EIP worked with the Global Engagement Center that contracted with the Atlantic Council in censorship efforts.
The censorship system included scoring groups through a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to the British-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The index targeted ten conservative and libertarian sites as the most dangerous sources of disinformation, including sites like Reason which publishes conservative legal analysis. Conversely, some of the most liberal sites were ranked as the most trustworthy for advertisers.
The system is still in place, but on December 23, 2024, the GEC closed its doors. That is something to celebrate but not something to take as great comfort. This is a redundant and overlapping system created precisely to allow for such attrition.
Years ago, some of us wrote about the creation of the infamous Disinformation Governance Board at Homeland Security under its so-called “Disinformation Nanny,” Nina Jankowicz. When the Biden administration caved to public outcry and disbanded the Board, many celebrated. However, as I previously testified, the Biden Administration never told the public about a far larger censorship effort in other agencies, including an estimated 80 FBI agents secretly targeting citizens and groups for disinformation.
The system has functioned like a multiheaded hydra where cutting off one head only allows two more to grow back. These censors will not simply walk away and become dentists or bartenders. They have a skill set for censorship and this is now a profitable industry supporting scores of people who now market themselves as “disinformation specialists.”
Shutting down the GEC will eliminate a $61 million budget and 120 employees. However, these employees will find ample opportunities not just in other agencies but in academia and state agencies. There are also pro-censorship sites like BlueSky, which are becoming safe spaces for liberals who do not want to be “triggered” by opposing views . (Notably, BlueSky hired a former Twitter employee who was fired after Musk cleaned out at what is now X).
They are not going anywhere unless the Trump Administration and the Congress makes free speech a priority in eliminating each of these funding sources.
As I wrote in the book, we need to get the United States out of the censorship business by passing a law barring any federal funds for the use of censorship, including grants to academic and NGO groups.
Rooting out this censorship system will require a comprehensive effort by the new Trump Administration. So here is a resolution that I hope many in the Trump Administration will share: let’s get the United States out of the censorship business in 2025.
Ukraine Violates Draft Rights, Restricts Religious Freedom, and Tortures PoWs – UN Report
Sputnik – 01.01.2025
Ukraine has been violating its own constitution by unduly restricting the right to conscientious objection to military service during mobilization, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a report published on Tuesday.
“The right to conscientious objection to military service has continued to be subjected to undue restrictions in law and practice … Domestic law in Ukraine unduly restricts this Constitutional right only to some forms of religion or belief, excluding others, contrary to applicable obligations of equality before the law and non-discrimination under the ICCPR,” the report said.
For example, five men faced arbitrary detention and torture in Ukraine for attempting to exercise their right to conscientious objection to military service, the UN rights watchdog said.
“During the reporting period, OHCHR documented the cases of five men who were assigned to military duty and transferred to a military training facility after attempting to exercise their right of conscientious objection to military service. In all cases, the men were arbitrarily detained between two to four days by military personnel responsible for conscription and subjected to ill-treatment or torture.” the report said.
Religious Freedom Under Attack
The UN report also found that Ukraine’s new legal provisions restricted religious freedoms by prohibiting the Russian Orthodox Church.
“In territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine, new legal provisions regarding religious organizations entered into force; these prohibit the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, as well as Ukrainian religious organizations found to be affiliated with counterparts in the Russian Federation. The law introducing these provisions established disproportionate restrictions on the freedom to manifest one’s religion or belief,” the report read.
Torture of PoWs
Furthermore, almost all Russian PoWs in Ukraine interviewed by the UN from September to November 2024 were subjected to torture, the report said. Fourteen soldiers were subjected to sexual violence.
“During the reporting period, OHCHR interviewed 25 Russian POWs in Ukrainian internment facilities, including in the newly opened camp ‘Zakhid-4’ in Lviv [Lvov] city. All but one reported experiencing torture or ill-treatment in 2024 at one or several stages of captivity,” the OHCHR said.
The UN agency said it verified the killing by first-person-view drones of three Russian and one Ukrainian servicepersons who were “hors de combat” and severely wounded on the battlefield. It cited drone video footage that showed a heavily wounded, unarmed Russian serviceman being killed by a drone while lying on the ground.
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.
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The Balfour Declaration – A Century of Jewish Power
By Gilad Atzmon | May 17, 2017
This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
For Palestinians, The Balfour Declaration was the beginning of their plight: a century of ethnic cleansing at the hands of European newcomers who claim Palestine as their historic home. Yet, for some reason, supporters of the Palestinians are desperate to suppress discussion of the motivation for the Balfour Declaration – how and why did it come about? … continue
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