US shuts down ‘disinformation’ agency
RT | December 25, 2024
The US State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) has shut down after Republicans cut its funding. The agency was responsible for spreading propaganda abroad and, according to conservatives, censoring dissident thought at home.
The GEC announced on Monday that it would cease operations by the end of that day. “The State Department has consulted with Congress regarding next steps,” the statement added.
The organization employed around 120 people and had an annual budget of $61 million. Established in 2016, its stated goal was to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.”
In practice, the GEC spearheaded complex propaganda campaigns of its own. In two campaigns, the agency funded video games aimed at teaching children about the supposed dangers of anti-American narratives, releasing them in the UK, Ukraine, Latvia, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the GEC funneled money to a range of NGOs which then compiled lists of social media accounts supposedly spreading “disinformation” about the virus and its origins, which were then presented to the platforms to be banned or removed. Many of the accounts belonged to what Twitter’s former trust and safety chief, Yoel Roth, called “ordinary Americans,” raising concerns among conservatives that the GEC was violating its prohibition on operating within the US.
In 2023, the GEC was forced to cut ties with George Soros’ ‘Global Disinformation Initiative’, after it emerged that the agency was paying Soros’ organization to compile lists of “high risk” news outlets to use in an advertiser boycott campaign. These news sites were predominantly right-leaning and American-based.
X owner Elon Musk called the GEC a “threat to our democracy” last year, describing the agency as the “worst offender in US government censorship [and] media manipulation.”
Musk was instrumental in finally shutting down the GEC. A mammoth 1,547-page spending bill put before the House of Representatives by Speaker Mike Johnson last week would have preserved funding for the agency, until Musk threatened to fund primary election challenges to any Republican who voted for it.
Musk decried the bill – which also included pay raises for lawmakers – as “criminal,” “outrageous,” “unconscionable,” and ultimately “one of the worst bills ever written.” President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance then released a joint statement against the bill, forcing Johnson to replace it with a trimmed-down piece of legislation totaling less than 120 pages.
This Musk-approved bill failed in a 235-174 vote, with 38 Republicans joining 197 Democrats to block its passage. It eventually passed after Republicans added a section suspending the US debt ceiling for two years, a move that will add trillions more to the federal government’s $36 trillion debt.
Decline of German Greens the result of stupid energy policy and war madness
By Patrick Poppel | December 25, 2024
The Green Party is currently preparing for the federal election. To this end, they also put original green concerns up for discussion. The Greens’ entire election campaign is now tailored to their top candidate, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck, a special election campaign where a personality is put in the foreground.
Criticism of the minister should be avoided as much as possible, at least until the date of the federal election. But the concept didn’t fully work. Some Greens close to the climate movement, such as Luisa Neubauer, noted that Habeck simply questioned a central goal of green climate policy in an interview.
In an interview that Habeck gave at the industrial summit, he answered the question of whether the date of the coal phase-out was in question: “Yes. For me, energy security is always the current priority.” Now the answer is also fodder for the many Habeck opponents in the parties, who have for years accused Habeck of an ideological energy policy that leads to the de-industrialization of the country.
In mid-December, when Habeck gave the interview, the price of electricity on the exchange had risen massively due to the dark season, no wind and hardly any sun. Even a steelworks in Saxony had to be disconnected from the energy grid for a short time because of this. Of course, this is not good news for a Green candidate for chancellor.
But Habeck avoided discussing his statements further. He preferred to talk about the fact that the construction of new gas-fired power plants was intended to compensate for the electricity loss caused by nuclear and coal-fired power plants being taken off the grid.
However, due to the premature end of the federal coalition, the Power Plant Act can no longer be implemented during this government period. Whether it will be back on the Bundestag agenda after the new elections also depends on whether the Greens will return to government responsibility.
According to current surveys, the CDU/CSU (Union Party) is likely to become the strongest party and could enter into an alliance with the SPD (Social Democrats) or the Greens. At the same time, there are politicians in the CDU and even more so in the CSU who almost see Habeck as their main opponent and, above all, no longer want to see him in the Federal Ministry of Economics.
But it’s not just about the reputation of the party’s top candidate. So now everyone asks themselves the question; what are the themes of the party, which at the beginning of its existence campaigned for peace in Europe and the protection and improvement of the ecology.
When it comes to peace and weapons disarmament, the Greens have finally switched to the other side since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict in 2014. No other party is as committed to escalation with Russia as the former green “Peace Party”. Both the Union Party and the Greens want to send Ukraine even more and accurate weapons against the Russian army.
But this course is also causing more and more Green voters to think, as this decision goes exactly against the party’s original direction. But in addition to the peace issue, the failure and unclear approach to energy policy is certainly also a point that will have a negative impact on the election.
First the party was against nuclear energy, then for solar power and wind turbines, then against coal-fired power plants and now against gas from Russia. Many voters are no longer familiar with this issue and are confused.
It is particularly tragic that the Greens are completely failing on exactly these two core issues of peace and energy. If this course continues, the future of this party is very uncertain.
Of course, the Greens are always a very interesting junior partner for large parties, as the current situation shows that they make a lot of compromises in order to be able to become part of a government. But with this behavior they regularly lose favor with their voters and always receive poor results in the following elections. All surveys show this clearly.
Since the Greens lost a lot of power, especially in the last regional elections in eastern Germany, it is clear that this party is unlikely to be successful in the federal elections. The Green Party of Germany has put itself in a situation from which it will be difficult to get out.
The only role this party can play in the future is as an extremely small, compromise-ready junior partner of other parties, which are trying by all means possible to prevent the patriotic forces from participating in the government.
Patrick Poppel is an expert at the Center for Geostrategic Studies in Belgrade.
Four Killed, 5 Injured in Ukraine’s Shelling of Lgov Town in Kursk Region
Sputnik – 25.12.2024
As a result of Ukraine’s shelling of the town Lgov in Russia’s Kursk Region four people have been killed and five have been injured, Governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Wednesday.
“According to preliminary information, three people were killed as a result of the barbaric shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine of the town of Lgov, and another person died later in hospital. Five victims were hospitalized, including one woman in serious condition. They are currently receiving all the necessary medical and psychological assistance,” Khinshtein said on Telegram.
Three residential buildings were seriously damaged, Khinshtein added.
“A five-storey residential building, two one-storey residential buildings, as well as a detached one-storey beauty salon were seriously damaged. Windows were blasted in neighboring private residential buildings, and at least 12 vehicles were damaged. Also, an insignificant section of the gas pipeline was destroyed due to the blast,” Khinstein said.
The operational headquarters of the government of the Kursk Region has been deployed in Lgov after the shelling, the governor added.
According to preliminary data, the attack was carried out using a HIMARS multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), a spokesperson for the military investigative authorities told Sputnik at the scene of the incident.
“During the inspection, fragments and shrapnel of a shell were discovered, presumably from a HIMARS MLRS. All of them will be seized and subsequently sent for examination to determine the specific type and kind of the shell,” the spokesperson said.
Mauritian Prime Minister Rejects Blinken’s Call to Sign Deal With UK on Chagos – Reports
Sputnik – 25.12.2024
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Mauritian Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam to sign the deal with the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos archipelago, which was agreed by the previous Mauritian government, but he was refused, a news portal reported, citing sources.
Ramgoolam made it clear that he did not agree with the original agreement reached in October and told Blinken that he had sent a counter-offer to London, the report said on Tuesday.
The report noted that Ramgoolam thus confirmed his desire to achieve a better deal for Mauritius.
On October 3, the United Kingdom agreed to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Under the deal, the UK also promised to create a new trust fund and provide other support for the benefit of Chagossians, as well as to provide a package of financial support to Mauritius, including an “indexed annual payment for the duration of the agreement” and infrastructure investment, according to the UK-Mauritius joint statement. The UK however will retain control of the US-UK base on the Diego Garcia island for an initial period of 99 years. To enter into force, the deal must be ratified in the British parliament, which is expected next year.
Mauritius and the Chagos Islands had been colonial possessions of the British Crown since 1845. In 1968, Mauritius gained independence, but the islands remained a British overseas territory. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Chagos population was deported to the Seychelles and Mauritius. In 1966, the UK leased the largest island, Diego Garcia, to the United States for 50 years. The lease was extended for 20 years in 2016.
Covid-19 Vaccines White Clots Results – 2024
Medical Embalmers Across The Country
Dr. John Campbell | December 21, 2024
Former Air Force Major Thomas Haviland surveyed embalmers in 2024 about unusual clots being found in the bodies of vaccinated deceased.
NEW YORK – I’ve seen the clots vary from case to case, since the covid shot came around, we have had many young deaths i.e.: 50-60 year-olds with massive heart attacks and every one of them has had clots as discussed in this survey, seems many people just want to turn a blind eye to it all, it’s a shame. As someone who’s been around this for about 12 years, I have never seen anything like this.
VIRGINIA – I’m finding a lot of the white rubbery clots and had been taking pictures of them but it’s become the new normal… I don’t use a drain tube anymore because of all the clots. blood clots and the fibrous white ones. My angular forceps is my to go instrument to help remove them…
OHIO – The past few years I have seen a significantly larger percentage of clotting in almost all embalmings. These white fibrous clots are definitely unusual having never seen them before 2021. Although not seeing the white fibrous clots or micro clotting in a larger percentage of deceased, the number of grape jelly clots has significantly increased from years past in all decedents.
IDAHO – Sometimes I am given the information about if someone has had a certain vaccine. Sometimes I am aware they have had 5-6 doses of it. These are the people we are seeing with the abnormal clots or significant amount of clots.
FLORIDA – With many embalmings that I have seen these clots in, I have had to inject in multiple points. Both with case’s refrigerated and prep done within a couple of hours after death.
FLORIDA – Seems like traditional “chicken fat clots” are less frequent being replaced with Jelly, Fibrous, Micro-clotting.
IOWA – Very thick and large, I have had some the whole diameter of the arteries and longer than a foot long.
LOUISIANA – Some of these fibrous blots come out as a whole, if done carefully, that mimic the arterial system. These clots are clearly the cause of demise of these decedents, but were legally labeled as heart issues, which are not typically autopsied to fully determine actual cause of death.
NORTH DAKOTA – I have had SEVERAL cases in 2020-2023 of the white fibrous clots and most had COVID listed as a factor on their death certificates. However, in each case the family did not know if the decedent was vaccinated.
FLORIDA – Unusual clots has changed since COVID vaccine I only took 2 vaccine Pfizer refuse to take booster nor vaccine again.
Exclusive: 70% of Embalmers Report Finding Strange Blood Clots Beginning in Mid-2021
Covid Vaccine Injury Global Study: http://www.react19.org/study
Covid vaccine injury medical expense fund: http://www.react19.org/donate
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Pentagon’s African Biolabs: Russia Warns of Global Pathogen Threat
Sputnik – 24.12.2024
The US military-biological presence on the African continent is growing at a rapid pace, Deputy Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces of the Russian armed forces Major General Aleksey Rtishev said on Tuesday.
“The documents at our disposal confirm that the US military-biological presence on the African continent is increasing rapidly,” Rtishev told a briefing.
The United States deployed branches of naval military medical center in Ghana and Djibouti, Rtishev added.
“Active work in the region is being carried out by research organizations of the US Department of Defense. For example, branches of the military medical center of the naval forces are located in Ghana and Djibouti, where active work is being carried out in natural foci of diseases, isolation and sequencing of pathogens,” Rtishev said.
American specialists capable of enhancing the pathogenic functions of microorganisms are actively working in Africa, Rtishev said. He added that the US government views the region as a rich reservoir of dangerous infectious agents and a testing ground for experimental drugs, and Washington is using a biological risk management system in Africa that has already been tested in Georgia and Ukraine.
The US is actively engaged in:
- Nigeria: A joint medical research center and a military medical laboratory for the armed forces were established in 2024.
- Kenya: The US Army Military Medical Center has deployed a network of field stations to monitor the spread of infectious diseases throughout Equatorial Africa.
- Senegal: A new $35 million laboratory facility is nearing completion. This project involves the same Pentagon contractors that have worked in the former Soviet Union, including Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.
- Ghana and Djibouti: The US. has established branches of the National Naval Medical Center and is actively addressing natural disease outbreaks and isolating pathogens.
- The United States is conducting a project in 18 African countries to study the characteristics of infection occurrence and the resistance of pathogens to medical treatments.
According to Aleksey Rtishev, Washington is deliberately exploiting the economic challenges African nations face in the health sector to organize research initiatives, the general warns. Rtishev noted that the US fears that Russia and China could expose American military and biological programs.
The United States often does not disclose the ultimate goals of its experiments to partners, who are often unaware of the risks involved, he said.
Israel seeks to occupy south Lebanon past 60-day truce period
The Cradle | December 24, 2024
Israeli forces are unhappy with the Lebanese army’s efforts to implement the ceasefire agreement announced on 27 November and are planning to maintain a presence in south Lebanon, according to exclusive information.
“The French conveyed to the Lebanese army that the Israeli military is not satisfied with what is happening [in south Lebanon] and that it will not leave before destroying all of Hezbollah’s infrastructure [south of Litani River, even after the 60-day implementation period ends],” Lebanese security sources told The Cradle on 23 December.
The information came as an Israeli attack killed two people in the town of Taybeh in southern Lebanon’s Marjayoun District.
The Lebanese National News Agency’s (NNA) correspondent in Marjayoun reported on Monday afternoon that “two people were killed and another was injured in an enemy raid that targeted a group of people near the official school in Taybeh.”
Israeli ground troops continued their campaign of mass detonations and destruction of homes and buildings across southern Lebanon, blowing up houses in Al-Bustan and Al-Zaloutieh in the Tyre District.
They also put up an Israeli flag on a hill in the Naqoura area overlooking the main entrance to the town, in violation of the ceasefire announced last month.
Israeli troops are required to withdraw from Lebanon within 60 days of the ceasefire’s announcement. So far, it has been four weeks, leaving only a month before the Israeli army must withdraw, according to the agreement that is based on UN Resolution 1701.
The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has deployed across south Lebanon with the aim of dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure south of the Litani River – which is required to take place within the 60-day period.
Tel Aviv has violated the ceasefire over 100 times since it took effect with deadly airstrikes, arrests of Lebanese citizens, troop advancements, and mass detonation campaigns in southern villages.
Israeli forces have exploited the ceasefire to advance into areas they were unable to during recent ground battles with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah responded once to dozens of violations in early December with a limited rocket attack on an Israeli site in occupied Lebanese territory, prompting a massive and deadly Israeli response in south Lebanon.
Israel claims it is acting in line with the ceasefire agreement by targeting what it says is Hezbollah infrastructure. However, according to the agreement, dismantling the resistance’s presence in southern Lebanon is the responsibility of the Lebanese state and army. Earlier this month, the Israeli army bombed Khiam after the LAF entered the city to clear rubble and prepare for civilian entry.
A secret side letter between Washington and Tel Aviv reportedly guarantees that Israel can act with force against “threats.”
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed on 22 December that Tel Aviv would “crush” Hezbollah’s “head” if the Lebanese resistance group violates the ceasefire, coming during a visit to an Israeli army position in southern Lebanon.
Two days earlier, Hezbollah MP Ali Fayyad said that “the resistance will not be dragged into confronting Israeli violations and aggressions militarily, because its priority is the Israeli withdrawal from our land without giving it any pretext to exceed the 60-day deadline, and because we take into consideration the situation of our people who need shelter, reconstruction, and to clean up the effects of the war.”
“We want the Lebanese government and army to play their role in protecting the land and preserving sovereignty, based on the [agreement] based on Resolution 1701,” Fayyad added.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and UNIFIL called on Israel on Monday to hasten its withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Mikati called for the US and France to pressure Israel on the matter.
Frustrated by Incessant Missile Attacks, Israel Threatens to Start Assassinating Houthi Leaders
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 24.12.2024
Israeli terror bombing attacks targeting Yemen’s port and energy infrastructure and a year-long US-led naval deployment in the Red Sea at Tel Aviv’s urging have failed to deter Ansar Allah (better known as the Houthis) from launching increasingly impactful drone and missile attacks.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has threatened to start targeting the Houthis’ leaders.
“We will inflict a devastating blow to the Houthi terrorist organization in Yemen,” Katz said.
“Just as we took care of Sinwar in Gaza, Haniyeh in Tehran and Nasrallah in Beirut, we will deal with the heads of the Houthis in Sanaa or anywhere in Yemen,” Katz warned, referring to the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah assassinated by Israel this year. “We will act both against their infrastructure and against them to remove the threat.”
Katz also took a pot shot at Iran, whom the US and Israel have regularly accused of backing the Yemeni militia, warning that “whoever sponsors the Houthi terror in Hodeidah or Sanaa will pay the full price.”
Iran, which has long denied providing direct military support for the Houthis, said Tuesday that the militia’s operations have forced Israel and the US to alter their calculations.
“Even under the heaviest bombardments from the American-Israeli coalition, they target the heart of the occupied territories with their homemade missiles,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said at a press conference in Tehran. “The Yemenis have proven they need no external assistance. Despite dire economic and military conditions, they have stood firm and resisted,” he added.
The Israel Defense Forces reported early Tuesday morning that they had intercepted a Houthi missile outside Israel’s airspace. Sirens wailed across central Israel amid fears of the missile reaching its target, with over two dozen people injured (one seriously) while running for cover in the panic.
Houthi official Hezam al-Asad vowed the group would continue its attacks “until the aggression against our people in Gaza stops.”
On the diplomatic front, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Monday instructed Israel’s diplomats in the EU and the UK to label the Houthis as a terrorist organization (currently, only Israel, the US, several Gulf states, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Malaysia do so).
“The direct threat to freedom of navigation in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes is a challenge to the international community and the world order. The first and most basic thing is to define them as a terrorist organization,” Sa’ar said in the directive.
On Tuesday, Sa’ar sent a letter to US UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield asking her to convene an emergency session of the Security Council to condemn the Houthis for their “flagrant violation of international law.”
In addition to their drone and missile campaign, the Houthis have done major damage to Israel’s merchant shipping fleet by imposing a partial blockade of the Red and Arabian Seas targeting Israeli-linked and Israel-allied shipping.
A Houthi missile penetrated Israel’s much-touted missile defenses Saturday, injuring 16 people in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv. The IDF probe into the incident found that the warning system “was activated late for reasons that cannot be detailed.”
Another Houthi missile landed a direct hit in Tel Aviv last week, again overwhelming air defenses, with the militia characterizing the attack as their “natural and legitimate” right to respond to Israeli aggression.
The militia also scored a major PR victory against Israel’s US allies last week, reporting the shootdown of an F/A-18 jet during an attack on the USS Harry Truman supercarrier. The Pentagon said the jet was downed in a friendly fire incident. Whatever the case, the Houthis have confirmed kills of nearly a dozen US Reaper drones, and are known to have downed a number of US and NATO-made helicopters and fighter jets from the mid-2010s onward in their war against a US-backed Gulf State coalition.
Sednaya: Investigating Syria’s most notorious prison
The Cradle | December 24, 2024
When militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by former Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani – who now goes by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa – finally toppled Bashar al-Assad’s government on 8 December 2024, they quickly released the prisoners in Sednaya.
A flood of new media reports about the horrors of the prison quickly emerged.
But which reports about the crimes of Assad’s government are true, and which are fabricated as part of a new propaganda campaign to legitimize Julani’s rule and whitewash the opposition’s similar past atrocities?
Vast underground prison complex?
On 9 December, one day after Assad’s fall, The Guardian journalist William Christou was among the first journalists to reach Sednaya.
Christou claimed that a day after Julani’s forces had taken control of the prison, a door had been found leading to a “vast underground complex, five stories deep, containing the last prisoners of the Assad regime, who were gasping for air.”
He reported rumors that there “were 1,500 prisoners trapped underground that needed rescuing; perhaps your loved ones are among them.”
As a result, hundreds of panicked Syrians rushed to the prison, located 30 kilometers outside Damascus, to search for loved ones missing from the war. Due to the crowds, “Cars were ditched by the roadside and people began to walk,” Christou wrote.
In subsequent days, numerous fake videos professing to show prisoners in the underground complex went viral, while CNN journalist Clarissa Ward faked the discovery of a prisoner in a detention facility in Damascus.
“We came to see the prisons under the ground,” one woman wandering the halls of Sednaya told The Cradle during its visit to the prison.
She said her brother had been missing since 2018. She first went to the Mezzeh military prison in Damascus, and now she was looking for any sign of him at Sednaya.
However, despite efforts by the White Helmets and Turkish rescue organizations, no secret underground complex holding thousands of prisoners has been found.
During its visit to Sednaya, The Cradle was able to walk freely through the facility and verified that there is just one underground basement level containing small individual isolation cells and an adjoining toilet.
Human slaughterhouse?
In the days after Assad’s fall, more and more western journalists visited Sednaya and filed reports. Virtually all begin by citing a 2017 investigation by Amnesty International, which called the prison a “human slaughterhouse.” The investigation claimed up to 13,000 civilians were executed in mass hangings over a four-year period.
The US State Department tried to reinforce the findings of the Amnesty report by claiming the bodies of the executed were burned in a “crematorium” located in a building adjacent to the main prison.
However, the State Department gave zero proof of the crematorium, and no one has claimed to find it since the prison was opened.
Further, Amnesty’s report acknowledges the number killed was just an “estimate” (between 5,000 and 13,000) based on testimony from alleged former guards and prisoners taken by the rights group in Turkiye. The report said the mass execution process was “secret” but then somehow claimed to reveal its intimate details.
The report also ignores that the Syrian government was detaining people during this period in the context of facing an Al-Qaeda-led insurgency, including from the Nusra Front and ISIS.
When The Cradle asked a Syrian who is supportive of the opposition about his view of the Sednaya issue, he noted that the prison is Syria’s “Guantanamo.” In other words, the prison is reserved for high-security prisoners from Islamist armed groups detained on terrorism charges.
This is evident by the famous Sednaya prison uprising in 2008, in which primarily Islamist prisoners revolted against their guards.
But Amnesty claims that the prisoners were held in Sednaya and mass executed “as part of an attack against the civilian population.”
Iraqi and US forces have also long held large numbers of Al-Qaeda militants in prisons in Iraq, such as at Abu Ghraib. However, the fact that the Syrian government was holding Al-Qaeda militants in its prisons is somehow ignored by Amnesty and others.
Psychological operations
Another question is whether the testimony of the former alleged prisoners and guards given to Amnesty in 2017 and to western media outlets after the prison was opened in 2024 is reliable.
A Spanish journalist who visited Sednaya in the days after Assad’s fall told The Cradle that he was suspicious of the testimony given to him by alleged former prisoners. Fixers associated with Julani’s new government had arranged the interviews, he said, and some of the details of their testimony seemed too fantastic to be true. “But there was no way to verify if they were true or not,” the journalist said.
As a case in point, recent western media reports almost all include interviews with Omar al-Shogre, an alleged former Sednaya prisoner who was the star witness of the 2017 Amnesty report.
However, a close review of Shogre’s testimony shows it was clearly fabricated.
For example, he told Amnesty the guards would regularly force the prisoners to rape each other while being escorted from their cells to the bathroom.
“As we walked to the bathroom, [the guards] would select one of the boys, someone petite or young or fair. … They would then ask a bigger prisoner to rape him … No one will admit this happened to them, but it happened so often,” Shogre claimed.
However, during its visit to Sednaya, The Cradle observed that each cell has its own toilet and sink. In one cell, The Cradle observed items of clothing hanging on lines above the sink to dry after washing. There was no possibility that the guards were escorting prisoners out of their cells to go to the bathroom, as Shogre’s scenario claims.
Over the years, Shogre has made many wild and completely implausible claims, which further undermine his credibility.
The Nation wrote that according to Shogre, “Guards would deliberately execute a prisoner right before serving inmates their only meal of the day, often placing the corpse’s head over the platter of food, so that it would bleed into the daily mound of bread and potatoes.”
The former prisoner’s fabrications have long been part of a broader propaganda campaign to impose crushing sanctions on Syria.
Shogre works for the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a group established and funded by the US government to facilitate the overthrow of the Syrian government. SETF provided alleged non-lethal aid to US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups that fought the Syrian army starting in 2011.
While working for the SETF, Shogre advocated for the US Congress to impose the Caesar sanctions on Syria, which helped strangle his home nation’s economy and resembled the US sanctions on Iraq, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in the 1990s.
The Caesar sanctions were themselves named after a psychological operation claiming that a Syrian military photographer had smuggled 55,000 photographs out of the country, documenting the torture and killing of some 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government.
But as journalist Rick Sterling observed, Human Rights Watch (HRW) acknowledged that almost half of the photos do not show people tortured to death by the Syrian government. Instead, they show dead Syrian soldiers and victims of car bombs and other violence from the opposition groups. Such deaths are normal for any government to document in a time of war.
Syria’s missing
Despite the propaganda surrounding Sednaya, there are many indications that the Syrian government detained large numbers of Syrians during the war who were either tortured to death or shot and killed.
While in a restaurant in Damascus shortly after Assad’s fall, The Cradle witnessed two employees, a father and his son, emerge from the back room in tears. They told the owner and fellow staff that they had just received word that the names of their three uncles, taken by the government and missing since 2014, had been found in the records at Tishreen military hospital, confirming their deaths.
One reason that many Syrians may have been detained and disappeared is because Syrian intelligence operated in many ways like a mafia. The feared ‘mukhabarat’ often abused their power to extract bribes from Syrians in many aspects of everyday life.
One Syrian from Damascus told The Cradle that there was little rule of law in Syria. Instead, Syrians lived by the “rule of the phone numbers.” Your privileges and ability to protect yourself depended on whether you had the phone number of someone powerful to call if the local security agents tried to extort you, or worse.
Those with money or political connections were often released, including those detained on terrorism charges, while others continued to rot in prison. As a result, many were tortured and killed.
Writing for Al-Akhbar in 2013, journalist Qassem Qassem stated it is an “undeniable fact” that the Palestinian filmmaker from the Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus, Hassan Hassan, was “killed in the regime prisons.” He said that Hassan was not a terrorist or “takfiri,” and “never carried a gun nor blew himself up with an explosive vest,” but was killed anyway.
The “Repentance” prison
But in addition to those who disappeared or were tortured by the government, the armed opposition groups also tortured and disappeared huge numbers of people.
When asked about the issue of those gone missing in Assad’s prison, one Syrian from Aleppo told The Cradle that the militant groups fighting the former president ran mafia-style kidnapping rings of their own.
“The opposition, since the start of the war, has killed tens of thousands of Syrians, and the ones they didn’t bury in mass graves, they sent, in parts, to several families when the ransoms weren’t paid. Try also asking them where the missing are.”
While walking through Sednaya prison, The Cradle spoke with a man who was looking for his missing son – a commander in a militant opposition group called Burkan al-Sham in the eastern Ghouta area of Damascus.
The man said he and his son were accused of being Syrian government agents by another armed opposition group, the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam.
Led by Zahran Alloush, the son of a prominent Salafist preacher in Ghouta, the group was described by the UK foreign office as part of the “moderate armed opposition.”
The man told The Cradle that he and his son were both held at Jaish al-Islam’s “Tawba,” or “repentance,” prison in the town of Duma, in the Ghouta region. He said they were tortured in ways “worse than in Sednaya.”
The father said he was later released, but his son remains missing. He later heard rumors his son had ended up in a government prison in Mezzeh. After looking there and finding nothing, he came to Sednaya to search.
Pro-opposition Enab Baladi reported in 2017 that while there is a large network of activists in Duma, there are no accurate statistics on the number of detainees in Tawba.
Abu Khaled, a 31-year-old media activist from Duma, told the outlet he was surprised by the absence of such reports.
“Random arrests take place all around Eastern Ghouta,” he stated. These prisons, especially Tawba, “are as bad as those of the Syrian regime, and, according to former prisoners, many detainees stay in prisons for months without trial.”
“A man’s body was recently returned to his family three days after his arrest,” pro-opposition Syria Direct reported in 2017. “Jaish al-Islam directly threatened them, telling them that if they spoke to the media or published pictures of the body, they would all be killed.”
Julani’s prisons
Abu Mohammad al-Julani’s Nusra Front also imprisoned and tortured many Syrians. We know this from the testimony of Theo Padnos. A freelance journalist from the US, Padnos was kidnapped by the FSA in 2012 and handed over to Nusra. He remained a hostage for two years before Qatar paid a large ransom to release him.
While imprisoned at the Eye Hospital, the Nusra guards beat and shocked the journalist with an electric cattle prod. Other prisoners were hung by their wrists from ceiling pipes. Their feet mimicked the riding of a bicycle in the air.
When Julani’s Nusra conquered Idlib province in 2015 and formed a National Salvation government, the group established new prisons where torture was also common.
An opposition media activist, Jawdat Malas, was imprisoned by the group in a dark and dirty cell, Enab Baladi reported.
For hours every day, he would be tortured until his body was heavily bruised. “I reached a point where I was constipated. My whole body was dark blue,” he said. “Other detainees were taking care of me. I had no idea what I did wrong. I was terrified.”
In April 2020, Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) issued a report stating that women were detained and killed in Idlib, including for “insulting deity,” “espionage” for the benefit of the Syrian army, and “adultery.”
Conclusion
No one in Syria now knows what the future holds. But what is sure is that Syrians have suffered from more than a decade of horrific war and economic sanctions. Violence has been inflicted on Syrian civilians by the former government under Bashar al-Assad, but also by the foreign-backed extremist groups who functioned as tools of the US and its allies to topple Assad. Most crucial to recall is that the vast majority of this violence occurred after 2011, when the US launched its covert war on Syria on Israel’s behalf.
The strange case of Didier Reynders and Ursula von der Leyen
By Sonja van den Ende | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 24, 2024
On December 5, various Western media reported that Didier Reynders, a former Belgian EU Justice Commissioner, had been buying lottery tickets with dubious funds in the Belgian National Lottery for approximately ten years in order to launder the winnings into his account. Didier Reynders, who served as European Commissioner for Justice under the current Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, until December 1, 2024, is currently under investigation by Belgian authorities.
This raises questions about Ursula von der Leyen’s awareness of her closest colleague’s money laundering activities. Moreover, this is not the first time such a scandal has surfaced, raising questions about the integrity of EU-MEPs.
We start with Didier Reynders, as the so-called “laundering of lottery money” is just the tip of the iceberg for this extremely corrupt individual. Another investigation into Didier Reynders, former EU Justice Commissioner and a pillar of the Belgian establishment, has linked him to a wider probe into money laundering through state-owned institutions. This has sparked fresh interest in allegations of Belgium’s political interference in Congo and Libya and associated arms deals.
In 2019, Nicolas Ullens, a former undercover Belgian agent, accused Reynders of corruption and money laundering in connection with several projects, including the construction of the Belgian embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo and arms trafficking.
Nicolas Ullens de Schooten is the full name of this former Belgian undercover agent and criminal, who apparently enjoyed high regard in noble circles. This royal criminal and former member of State Security shot his stepmother, Myriam Lechien, dead on March 29, when she and her husband, Baron Guy Ullens, left the driveway of their villa in Ohain, Walloon Brabant. He was acquitted at the request of Didier Reynders, according to the Belgian media. The reason for the shooting was that he did not receive enough inheritance from his stepmother according to her will, which sounds like an old-fashioned crime plot from a real-life crime series.
“The Congo Free State” was a privately governed state by King Leopold II of Belgium through the so-called Association Internationale Africaine, supposedly for humanitarian purposes. However, it was actually a form of colonialism, and to this day, the traces of this brutal Belgian rule can be seen in Congo.
Under the rule of King Leopold II, the so-called Congo Free State became the site of one of the most infamous international scandals of the early 20th century. Colonists brutally exploited the local population in order to produce rubber, which was in high demand due to the growing international market for automobiles and rubber tires. The crimes committed were brutal, and there are no words to describe the suffering endured by the people.
But that’s not all. After the fall and assassination (by Western-sponsored terrorists) of Muammar Gaddafi, the late president of Libya, in 2011, pressure was increased on the then Belgian government over payments of hundreds of millions of euros to unknown recipients. We now know that Didier Reynders received parts of these euros, but how much is not exactly clear. The money came from frozen accounts in Brussels that once belonged to Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi.
These payments from Libyan accounts in Brussels were also used for arms deliveries, according to opposition Belgian politicians. Mr. Reynders also has to explain the disappearance of valuable African artworks (from Libya and the Congo) that came into his possession.
Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders has been accused of involvement in the loss of Libyan funds from Belgian banks. — The Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Didier Reynders, was directly cited by an ex-undercover agent of Belgium, Nicolas Ullens. He accused Reynders of being involved in the disappearance of Libyan funds in Belgium. The media reported that the UN had placed these funds in several banks, including $14 billion in Belgium, where they were frozen.
Despite the ban imposed on banks to lift the freeze on these assets years ago, Belgium ordered the transfer of $1.4 billion, representing 10% of the interest generated by half of the funds placed in Belgian banks. In other words, the Libyan money was stolen and used for weapons deals and private goals, as Didier Reynders allegedly did.
But the story of this individual goes back even further. In 2012, he served as the Belgian Foreign Minister and paid a private visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met with Prince Najef bin-Fawaz al-Salan. In 2007, a French court sentenced the prince to ten years in prison for smuggling two tons of cocaine into France during a diplomatic flight. Despite this, the prince remained loyal to Saudi Arabia, as leaked documents from the United Nations show.
Now, we can draw a parallel with the current situation, where frozen assets (money) from Russia were used to purchase weapons for Ukraine and for the so-called “reconstruction” of Ukraine. Additionally, we see the case of Ursula von der Leyen, who is proud of stealing Russian funds with which more weapons are being purchased, just as they were back in Libya. It is likely that there are still millions of euros remaining for corrupt European Union members like Ursula von der Leyen.
The revelations about Didier Reynders supposedly sent shockwaves through Brussels, coinciding with the start of Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as President of the European Commission. She has made it clear that one of her priorities is to strengthen the rule of law in order to protect fundamental rights and ensure the integrity of the EU budget.
But is this really the case? It seems unlikely that she was unaware of Reynders’ criminal activities. After all, she herself has been implicated in criminal activity and money laundering scandals, such as the Pfizergate affair.
Pfizergate is the scandal involving Ursula von der Leyen, the current President of the European Commission, and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer regarding the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines. The controversy revolves around the lack of transparency in communication and negotiation processes regarding the purchase of a significant number of vaccine doses during the pandemic. Von der Leyen allegedly purchased too many vaccines, and it is alleged that she did not know if they were reliable, safe, or tested for use on humans. However, as it turns out, these vaccines are not safe or reliable, and they are actually biological weapons designed to reduce the population, as demonstrated by the murdered Russian Lieutenant General Kirillov, as several articles have reported.
Even if prosecutors believe they have sufficient evidence to bring a case to trial, Reynders’ political background may protect him. As a former minister in Belgium and European commissioner, he would still need to have his immunity lifted if the authorities wanted to arrest him. In Belgium, money laundering carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. Of course, Reynders has done much more than simply laundering money. He has stolen money from Muammar Gaddafi, the former Libyan president and his people, and more recently, from the Russian government. Freezing funds is illegal, as well as using them for weapons in Libya.
But Reyners and von der Leyen are not the only ones in the EU engaged in money laundering or deleting emails containing suspicious texts and evidence of their criminal activities. In 2015, the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, reached a new low with accusations about Greece and its bailout, with compromising texts. Former Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, (now head of NATO), waited outside closed doors with other European leaders and sent a text message to the European Council President, Donald Tusk, proposing a compromise that would appeal to all parties involved. Within an hour, a deal was reached and the euro was saved. However, according to undisclosed documents, the Greek prime minister was blackmailed by Merkel, Rutte, and most other EU leaders.
In May 2022, a Dutch newspaper reported that Prime Minister Mark Rutte had developed a habit of regularly deleting his text messages. He only forwarded the messages he considered important to his staff, and called this process “real-time archiving”. However, it could more accurately be described as “real-time deletion”. The prime minister is known by the nickname “Pinocchio” in the Netherlands, as he often lies and continues to do so.
We can safely assume that Ursula von der Leyen, as head of the EU, was aware of the criminal activities of Didier Reynders, as she is also involved in Pfizergate, and both of them can be blackmailed. Her husband, Heiko von der Leyen, is also involved in Pfizergate through his role in a biotech company. He is a director of Orogenesis, an American biotech firm, and has benefited from EU funds on two separate occasions. Together, they buy each other’s silence and blackmail one another with money from public funds or simply steal money from state budgets. They have stolen money from Libya, the Congo, and now Russia.
Violence at recruitment centers in Ukraine escalating
By Lucas Leiroz | December 24, 2024
Ukraine’s draconian recruitment policies are reaching intolerable levels of violence, resulting in more and more victims. Recently, a man was murdered by the military while trying to prevent his son from being forcibly sent to the front. This is just one of many scandals involving the brutal way in which recruitment officers treat ordinary Ukrainian citizens, which shows how Kiev is completely lost, with no chance of continuing the war in the long term.
Recently, a video began circulating on the internet showing the murder of a man inside a Ukrainian training center. According to reports from photographers and internet users, the motive for the murder was that the man was trying to prevent the forced recruitment of his son by Ukrainian officers. The case was reported by Artyom Dmitruk, a former Ukrainian parliamentarian exiled in London who has become a critic of Zelensky’s policies. Ukrainian authorities are still silent about the incident, neither confirming nor refuting Dmitruk’s claims.
The video is absolutely disturbing. A woman can be heard screaming as soldiers force a man to walk down a stair. Two shots are then heard, with the man falling to the ground and the woman screaming desperately. According to Dmitruk, the incident took place in Odessa. He claims that not only was the recruit’s father killed, but the soldier himself is now at risk of death, as the Ukrainian military may want to eliminate him to prevent the truth about the case from coming to light.
Dmitruk also claims that incidents like this have become commonplace in recruitment centers. The use of force to recruit new soldiers is becoming a serious problem in the country, as soldiers’ families repeatedly try to prevent their relatives from being captured by officers, resulting in cases of extreme violence, with recruiters often beating and apparently even killing ordinary civilians who do not want to see their loved ones sent to the front.
It is important to emphasize that the case was not reported by any pro-Russian source, but by ordinary Ukrainians, who filmed the incident, and by Artyom Dmitruk, who is a radical nationalist activist, although a critic of Zelensky. Dmitruk is an example of how the Zelensky dictatorship acts violently against any Ukrainian citizen, even officials and parliamentarians loyal to the regime, who dare to criticize any policy implemented by the president. In Dmitruk’s case, he was persecuted along with his family simply for opposing the infamous law that banned the Orthodox Church in the country. Previously, Dmitruk was a recruiter for a nationalist battalion in the Odessa region, being a fierce supporter of the regime, but this was not enough to save him from persecution.
In other words, Ukrainians themselves, both ordinary citizens and nationalists critical of Zelensky, are showing the truth about the regime’s recruitment policies. There seems to be a consensus among all sides that the regime’s draconian measures to supply the front lines are causing more problems than strategic benefits. Poorly trained young people are being sent to certain death while their families turn against the Ukrainian authorities, generating instability, social polarization and a serious crisis of legitimacy.
It is shocking how international organizations remain inactive in the face of this reality. Clearly, Ukraine is experiencing one of the most serious humanitarian crises in recent times, with thousands of young people being forcibly sent as cannon fodder to the front lines – which have already become an actual meat grinder, where most of the conscripts die within a few days, if not hours, due to the high precision of Russian artillery and aviation.
Maintaining a policy of total mobilization in the current conditions in Ukraine is unfeasible and anti-strategic. The regime no longer has a chance of victory, considering the constant territorial losses and the low capacity to replace military personnel. Instead of contributing to operations on the battlefield, the policies of forced conscription seem like a strategic suicide, since they worsen the morale of the troops and the collective psychological conditions among the soldiers, in addition to destabilizing society as a whole by generating friction between the families of the conscripts and the authorities. In practice, Kiev is actually accelerating its own collapse with such measures.
This is further proof that the only hope for the Ukrainian people is a quick Russian military victory, as the Kiev regime does not care about the lives of its own citizens.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
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