France’s chief rabbi urges Israel to ‘finish the job’ in Gaza
The Cradle | August 28, 2024
France’s chief rabbi, Haim Korsia, justified Israel’s brutal war on the Gaza Strip in a television interview on 26 August, urging the Israeli army to “finish the job.”
Korsia told French network BFM TV that he supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The rabbi described Israel’s indiscriminate strikes on the besieged enclave as “acts of war” and said all of Israel’s actions in the strip are necessary to “protect its nationals.”
“It’s an act of war that no country in the world would conduct like Israel is doing, and I have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in how Israel is conducting the fighting,” Korsia said in response to a question on the civilian casualties.
When asked if he was critical of Netanyahu’s policy in Gaza, he said, “I’m never uncomfortable with a policy that consists of defending one’s citizens.”
In response to a question on whether he condemns Israeli massacres against civilians as he condemned Israeli deaths on 7 October, the rabbi said, “They are not of the same order.”
A member of the French parliament, Aymeric Caron, blasted the rabbi’s comments, calling them an “apology for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
“Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia calmly declares that he supports the ongoing genocide in Gaza, that it is deserved, and makes clear his hatred of the Palestinians,” Caron added.
“These are crimes punishable by law … And here I thought religious men were supposed to defend moral values and the sanctity of life,” the MP went on to say.
The toll of confirmed deaths in the Gaza Strip has risen to 40,534, a majority of them women and children. Another 93,778 Palestinians have been wounded as a result of the war.
The Israeli army has repeatedly targeted schools and UN facilities housing displaced Palestinians.
Disease has spread across the besieged enclave due to the war. UN experts, the EU, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have all said Israel is using starvation as a weapon against the people of Gaza.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced in May that it has decided to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a move backed by the French government. The ICC decision also includes warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammad Deif.
Israel is also being accused of committing genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Zelensky’s Gas Threats Making Europeans ‘Realize It’s Not Profitable to Go to War with Russia’
Sputnik – 28.08.2024
Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Tuesday that Kiev has no plans to “extend the [gas transit] agreement with Russia” after the current arrangement expires December 31. Unable to find alternatives to Russian energy, landlocked Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and the Czech Republic have expressed serious concerns about the fate of the Gazprom-Naftogaz deal.
A decision by Ukraine to cut Central Europe off from access to Russian natural gas via Russia’s only remaining operational gas pipeline to the region “will seriously harm the interests of European consumers who still want to buy Russian gas,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
“They will simply have to pay much more, which will make their industry less competitive,” Peskov said.
The five-year Gazprom-Naftogaz transit agreement signed in 2019 is set to expire at the end of the year, and Kiev has announced that it has no plans to extend it.
“After the Hungarians, the Slovaks, the Austrians, the Italians, and even the Germans are beginning to realize that it is not profitable to go to war with Russia, pump money into Ukraine, and cut the umbilical cord between the eastern and western half of Europe,” Hungarian Community for Peace president Endre Simo told Sputnik, commenting on Kiev’s threats.
“The European Union has fallen victim to its own policy, as the announcement by… Zelensky fits perfectly into the European Union’s policy of sanctions against Russia,” Simo said.
“Nevertheless, Kiev will probably not be thanked for the move, since the gas will bypass Ukraine, presumably through Turkiye, and from there through the Balkans and Hungary to EU western countries, and will be much more expensive. As a result, consumer goods and services will become even more expensive. Its price will be paid by Western European consumers. It is a question of how much they will accept the further reduction of their purchasing power and the further deterioration of their standard of living,” he added.
“We actually owe Zelensky a debt of gratitude for his decision, as he proved to the country and the world who is a reliable economic partner and who is not. While Ukraine stops the gas supply for political reasons, Russia sees no obstacle to continuing it in other ways,” Simo suggested, emphasizing that the EU will never turn away from Russian gas completely, even if it becomes more expensive thanks to Kiev’s decision, since it will “still” be “cheaper than American liquefied gas.”
Ukraine Announces Partial Halt to Payments on Its Gargantuan Debt
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 28.08.2024
Kiev is notoriously dependent on foreign military and economic support and debt-based spending fueling the NATO proxy war with Russia, with its national debt nearly doubling under Volodymyr Zelensky to over $152 billion. A World Bank official warned this spring that Ukraine could declare bankruptcy in 2025 unless its sponsors bail it out.
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers issued a resolution on Tuesday ordering a partial halt to the servicing of its obligations on Eurobonds, sovereign GDP warrants and other loan instruments, driving the country one step closer to formal financial ruin.
Starting September 3, Ukraine will stop servicing its roughly $700 million debt to Cargill Financial Services International, a Minneapolis-registered agribusiness giant. From November 9 on, Kiev will halt servicing state national power company Ukrenergo’s ‘green and sustainability-linked’ Eurobonds, issued in 2021 and worth about $830 million.
Payments on GDP warrants – a financial instrument linked to economic growth, will be stopped May 31, 2025. Ukraine owes some $2.6 billion on this instrument, according to US banking giant JPMorgan.
The above debt reportedly fell outside a large-scale debt restructuring agreement announced earlier this month and designed to allow Kiev to stave off defaulting on its obligations.
The government decree instructs the State Treasury to temporarily suspend operations with GDP warrant-related funds, with Kiev last making an 2.89 billion hryvnia ($70.52 million US) payment, corresponding to the deferred payment of earnings and interest accrued from 2021, on July 31. On August 1, the treasury paid a 5.33 billion hryvnia ($130 million) fee for a separate debt restructuring deal reached in 2022. In 2023, Kiev agreed to defer GDP warrant payments to August 1, 2024 with 7.75% interest.
Kiev announced on July 22 that it had reached agreements in principle on the restructuring of some $23 billion in Eurobond debt with a committee of debt holders, with the deal reportedly involving the write-off of up to 37% of the debt, minus 12% if a high level of GDP growth can be restored by 2028.
The remaining debt is set to be reissued as new Eurobonds maturing in between 2029 and 2036, with interest increasing from 1.75% to 7.75% over time. Investors ready to participate in the Eurobond exchange have been offered a 1.25% bonus, with agreements requiring consent of 2/3 of debt holders. The deadline for deal was August 27, 5 pm New York time.
Settlements are expected to be paid out by August 30.
Big Three credit agency S&P Global Ratings downgraded Ukraine’s credit rating earlier this month from CC/C (‘vulnerable/highly vulnerable’) to SD/SD (‘selective default’) after Kiev missed a payment on its Eurobonds. “We do not expect the payment within the bond’s contractual grace period of 10 business days,” S&P said, pointing to Kiev’s July measure “that authorizes the government to suspend payments” on some debt.
A month earlier, Fitch Ratings downgraded Ukraine’s rating from “CC” (‘default imminent with little prospect of recovery’) to “C” – one notch above default.
An anonymous World Bank official told Russian media in March that Ukraine could formally declare bankruptcy in 2025 if Western creditors don’t write off its debts, including obligations to private entities and banks. Ukraine’s budget deficit is expected to hit a record $43.9 billion in 2024, notwithstanding the fact that the country has received upwards of $200 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian aid from Western countries since early 2022.
IAEA head confirms that Ukraine has struck Russian nuclear plant with drones
By Dénes Albert | Remix News | August 28, 2024
As the expanding frontline inches within just a few kilometers of the Kursk nuclear power plant in Russia, there are fears there could be a major nuclear disaster.
“There is a risk of a nuclear incident at the Kursk nuclear power plant,” said Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), after visiting the facility in Kurchatov, in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine, on Tuesday.
He added that he had seen evidence of drone strikes during his visit to the plant.
“I was told today that there have been several cases of drone attacks on the site (the site of the Kursk nuclear power plant), on the facilities. The fact that there is fighting a few kilometers away from the nuclear power plant raises great concerns and anxiety about the security system,” Grossi added.
He stressed that under no circumstances should a nuclear power plant be the target of military action, nor should it be used by either side for military purposes. The director general also said that the security systems of a plant must be fully operational under all circumstances.
Grossi noted that the IAEA delegation was shown the traces of the Ukrainian attack on the Kursk nuclear power plant. Based on the evidence his team gathered, he said there could be no doubt that Ukraine carried out these strikes and where they came from.
Putin also announced on Thursday that Ukraine had attempted a drone strike on the Kursk nuclear power plant.
Grossi, who said that he had visited the reactor hall, the engine room, and the control room of an operating power plant unit — as well as the spent nuclear fuel storage — found that the Kursk plant was operating at what is very close to “normal” mode.
He stressed that the IAEA is responsible for maintaining nuclear safety and security in nuclear installations worldwide. He said that he had accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invitation to visit the Kursk nuclear power plant with his team to assess the situation personally and to find solutions together with his Russian counterparts. Earlier in the day, the IAEA director general was received by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
He said that he intends to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky next week to discuss, among other things, the situation at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and the IAEA’s intention to extend its observer presence to other nuclear facilities in Ukraine, as requested by Kyiv. … Full article
UK backs Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles inside Russia – media
RT | August 28, 2024
The UK is in favor of allowing Ukraine to use its Storm Shadow missiles for strikes deep inside Russia but is keeping its support out of the public eye so as not to cause a rift with the US, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday, citing sources.
Ukraine already has the greenlight from Britain to use Storm Shadows to strike Crimea and other areas claimed by Kiev, but not to target internationally recognized Russian territory. Amid Kiev’s ongoing incursion into Kursk Region, Vladimir Zelensky has stepped up his calls for the country’s Western backers to lift the restrictions on the use of their weapons for strikes in Russia. This is particularly the case for the British missiles, which can avoid enemy radar and hit targets up to 305km (190 miles) away.
However, according to The Telegraph, the decision on how Ukraine can use the missiles is not just up to London, as they are produced in close cooperation with France and the US, and are generally used alongside classified American systems.
While French President Emmanuel Macron previously said that Ukraine can use the missiles to strike sites in Russia from which the latter launches its own attacks, US officials have been reluctant to grant similar authorization. A White House source told the news outlet that the US administration is concerned that the use of long-range missiles, even without Washington’s outward approval, could escalate matters and lead to US troops being drawn into the conflict.
The UK has so far not made a formal request to Washington about Ukraine’s use of the missiles inside Russia, the news outlet claimed. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is reportedly reluctant to provoke a dispute over the issue, despite his own earlier claim that Kiev was free to use UK-supplied weapons as it saw fit.
Starmer, who refused to comment on the missile issue at a briefing on Tuesday, now wants to try a “consultative approach” and discuss the matter with allies before he makes any decisions, sources told the news outlet.
“The US fear escalation more than we do because they have to deal with it. We don’t… They, after all, would have to pick up the pieces. Little Britain cannot fight Russia,” a senior military source told The Telegraph.
Moscow has long criticized the West for providing military aid to Ukraine, and warned against allowing it to strike targets deep inside Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin previously said that such attacks would amount to direct Western participation in the conflict.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov slammed discussions on the use of long-range missiles against Russia as “a ruse” to create the impression that the West wants to avoid excessive escalation, whereas the opposite is true.
The arrest of Durov isn’t just about Telegram
By Fyodor Lukyanov | Russia in Global Affairs | August 27, 2024
The arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, when he had decided to take a little trip to Paris, has caused a stir in various spheres – from the business and tech world to media and politics. We will focus on the latter, especially as the incident is becoming another milestone in a wider political reorganization.
Durov comes from a niche that claims transnational status above all else. Information and communication technologies seem to have turned the world into a common space and abolished sovereign jurisdiction. The enormous influence that the IT giants have acquired has been converted into gigantic amounts of money, which has in turn increased their influence further. Transnational corporations have always existed – in areas such as mining, engineering, and finance. But despite their international character, they were still tied to particular states and their interests. The global communications industry, and its associated innovation sector, has dared to break that link.
The period of globalization that lasted from the late 1980s to the late 2010s favored this sort of attitude. It encouraged the creation of a level playing field on which the most developed countries had a clear advantage. They benefited the most. The costs associated with the techno-giants’ growing ability to manipulate societies – including their own in the West – were not seen as critical.
The crisis of liberal globalization has led to a change in the international reality (you could also invert that statement and say the reverse without changing the essence). Thus, the willingness to play by common rules has rapidly and universally diminished. What is fundamental is that this applies even where these laws were originally written, in the leading states of the Western community.
The previous era has not disappeared without a trace. The world has become fiercely competitive, but it remains closely interconnected.
Two things hold it together. The first is trade and production, the logistical chains for which were created during the globalization boom and have qualitatively transformed the economy. They are extremely painful to break. And the second is a unified information field, thanks to ‘nationally neutral’ communications giants.
But there is something strange that separates us. It is not a desire to grab more of the pie – in the sense of what Lenin called the expansionist “imperialist predators” – but rather a sense of internal vulnerability that is growing in various states.
Paradoxically, this is more of a factor in the bigger and more important countries, because these are the powers that are involved in the biggest game. This explains their impulse to minimize any factor that might affect internal stability. First and foremost, this pertains to the channels that serve as conduits for influence (read: manipulation), either from outside or from certain internal forces.
Structures that operate transnationally – understandably – immediately look suspect. The view is that they should be ‘nationalized’, not through ownership but in terms of demonstrating loyalty to a particular state. This is a very serious shift, and in the foreseeable future this process could dramatically weaken the second pillar of the current global interconnectedness.
Durov, a committed cosmopolitan liberal, is a typical representative of the ‘global society’. He has had tensions with all the countries he has worked in, starting with his homeland and continuing throughout his more recent travels. Of course, as a big businessman in a sensitive industry, he has been in dialectical interaction with the governments and intelligence services of different countries, which has required maneuvering and compromise. But the attitude of avoiding any national entrenchment persisted. Having passports for all occasions seemed to widen his scope for action and increase his confidence. At least for as long as this very global society lived and breathed, calling itself the liberal world order. But it’s now coming to an end. And this time the possession of French nationality, along with a number of other things, promises to exacerbate rather than alleviate the predicament of the accused.
The ‘transnational’ entities will increasingly be required to ‘ground’ themselves – to identify with a particular state. If they do not want to, they will be affixed to the ground by force, by being recognized as agents not of the global world but of specific hostile powers. This is what is happening now with Telegram, but it’s not the first and it will not be the last such instance.
The struggle to subjugate the various actors in this sphere, thus fragmenting a previously unified field, is likely to be a key component of the next global political phase.
The tightening of control over everything to do with data will inevitably increase the degree of repression in the information sphere, especially since it is not easy in practice to block unwanted channels. But if relatively recently it seemed impossible to dig up the world’s information superhighway and make it unusable for travel, this no longer seems so far-fetched.
The most interesting question is how the likely shrinking of the global information realm will affect trade and economic connectivity, the remaining pillar of world unity. Judging by the pace of change, there will soon be newsworthy developments there too.
This article was first published by Russia in Global Affairs, translated and edited by the RT team
Kiev failed to achieve its objectives with Kursk invasion
By Lucas Leiroz | August 28, 2024
Ukrainian authorities are admitting their failure in Kursk. Recently, the commander of Kiev’s armed forces stated that the operation’s objective was not achieved, acknowledging Russia’s success in preventing Ukraine from diverting Russian attention from other fronts. Such statements show how wrong the Western media are in trying to propagandize the Kursk case as a “Ukrainian victory.”
Colonel General Aleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, stated that Kiev failed to achieve its objective in Kursk. According to him, the operation was mainly aimed at diverting Moscow’s attention, forcing the Russians to withdraw troops from Donbass and send them to the northern border. In this way, the Ukrainians hoped to make significant territorial gains in Donbass, facing unguarded Russian positions.
Syrsky acknowledges that the real result of the Kursk invasion was different: Russia further expanded its positions in Donbass, gaining new territories and deploying even more troops in the region. The Ukrainian commander believes that currently the main fronts in the Donbass are Pokrovsk and Kurakhovsk, in the west of the Donetsk People’s Republic. These cities have key strategic positions for the supply lines to Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk. Since 2014, Kiev has been concerned about maintaining military fortifications in both cities, but constant Russian attacks threaten Ukrainian stability in the region.
“One of the tasks of conducting an offensive operation in the Kursk direction was to divert significant enemy forces from other directions, first and foremost the Pokrovsk and Kurakhovsk directions (…) Of course, the enemy understands this, so it continues to focus its main efforts on the Pokrovsk direction, where its most combat-ready units are concentrated (…) The enemy is trying to withdraw units from other directions, while in the Pokrovsk direction, on the contrary, it is increasing its efforts,” he said.
In other words, Kiev’s maneuver in Kursk was a desperate Ukrainian attempt to prevent – or at least delay – the inevitable Russian victory in Donbass. Kiev expected a Russian withdrawal from strategic cities in the disputed zone in order to strengthen the border positions in Kursk, which sounds like a serious strategic mistake on the part of the Ukrainians.
The calculation made by Kiev was based on a reality of military weakness, which corresponds to the current situation of the Ukrainian forces, but does not reflect the military conditions of Russia. If Ukraine is attacked on a different front, Kiev can only withdraw troops from other directions to protect this new area. Ukraine is operating in a regime of full mobilization, having already spent all its military resources and depending on strict management of what is left of its troops and equipment.
On the other hand, the Russians are still using a small percentage of their defense apparatus in the special military operation. There is no need for Russia to withdraw troops from one front to protect a new attacked region. Moscow can simply send troops from the rear to this new front, without disrupting the supply of the previous lines. Moreover, Russia can simultaneously increase its presence in both the new and old positions, since there is still a large army of reservists and volunteers ready to be mobilized if necessary.
In Kursk, Russia spared the troops already involved in the main fronts of the operation and, instead of redeploying them, simply used its rear forces to neutralize the invasion. The main contribution in Kursk came from the troops of the PMC Wagner Group that had been stationed in the Republic of Belarus since June last year. Meanwhile, seeing that the Ukrainians are desperate to protect Pokrovsk and Kurakhovsk, Moscow has sent even more troops to these fronts, which is why final victory in these directions is expected soon.
By admitting the failure and revealing Ukrainian plans in Kursk, Syrsky made clear the strategic inability and military inexperience of Ukrainian decision-makers. Kiev simply ignored the fact that Russia still has thousands of troops and equipment available to protect any point on its borders without having to withdraw any of its already mobilized soldiers.
It is also interesting to emphasize how the Western media was mistaken in hurriedly reporting the Kursk invasion as a “game changer.” According to Western “analysts”, Kiev had succeeded in “bringing the war into Russia,” but the commander of the Ukrainian army himself admits that this was never the real goal of the operation.
The cost of this mistake was massive for Kiev. In the end, the situation was reversed: it was Kiev’s troops who retreated from Donbass to invade Kursk, leaving key areas of the main conflict zone vulnerable and allowing Russia to advance further.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.
Теlegram’s Durov vs Meta’s Zuckerberg: How Do They Stack Up on Censorship?
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 27.08.2024
While Telegram founder Pavel Durov waits to be formally charged by French prosecutors for multiple charges relating to the platform’s lack of moderation, no such fate is likely to befall Mark Zuckerberg. The CEO of Meta has admitted his company opted to accede to the US government’s demands to censor content.
While Telegram founder Pavel Durov waits to be formally charged by French prosecutors for multiple charges relating to the platform’s lack of moderation, no such fate is likely to befall Mark Zuckerberg.
Unlike Durov, the Meta CEO has admitted to what was an open secret anyway: that he caved to repeated White House demands to throttle content on his platform. Senior Biden administration officials, “pressured” Meta to “censor” content, acknowledged Zuckerberg in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on August 26.
Elon Musk was quick to note there’s be no arrest for Zuck as he “censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data.”
Let’s see how the two platforms and their CEOs line up:
Pavel Durov
The Russian-born IT entrepreneur co-created Telegram – a blend of private messaging and public channels –with his brother in August 2013. Durov vowed to champion encryption in messaging, not allow the moderation of messages, deny requests to store records of confidential data, telephone messages and internet traffic of clients, or hand over keys for decrypting users’ correspondence upon request.
“Telegram has historically had problems with regulators in some parts of the world because, unlike other services, we consistently defended our users’ privacy and have never made any deals with governments,” Durov wrote in 2017.”
Telegram’s unlimited in size “channels” and group chats are encrypted using a combination of 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption, and Diffie-Hellman secure key, per the Telegram team. Telegram doesn’t provide end-to-end encryption for common private and group chats, but does provide a secret chat feature. Telegram lets users post files enjoying unlimited cloud storage. There is no targeted advertising or algorithmic feed. The platform’s audience exceeded 950 million users by July 2024.
The US government wanted to get its hands on Telegram’s code to infiltrate the system and spy on its users, Durov revealed in an April interview with ex-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. The entrepreneur rejected pressure to allow a “backdoor” in the app for Western intelligence. Durov resisted personal “pressure” in the US, where law enforcement officials approached him, seeking to “establish a relationship to in a way control Telegram better.”
“[But] for us running a privacy-focused social media platform, that probably wasn’t the best environment to be in. We want to be focused on what we do, not on government relations of that sort,” Durov said.
Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg turned his Meta (formerly Facebook) into a tool for US censorship. The platform with its standard for messaging apps end-to-end (e2e) encryption and non-open source algorithm has served up documented cases of censorship and manipulation of public opinion proven by whistleblowers and information leaks. After the 2016 US elections, conservative viewpoints were suppressed under the pretext of “hate speech” while liberal ones were elevated.
In 2018 it was revealed that UK-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica engaged in the harvesting of tens of millions of Facebook profiles in 2014. They were used to target users with personalized political ads, including during the 2016 US presidential campaign. The company engaged in similar harvesting and vote manipulation operations in nations across the globe.
Posts criticizing everything from US foreign and immigration policy, climate policies, to vaccines were occasionally deleted outright, but more often hidden or deranked.
Used as an election manipulation tool, whistleblowers have documented Facebook’s skewed content moderation directives regarding candidates and their supporters, in direct violation of the company’s policy on protecting political speech.
Facebook barred Donald Trump from the platform in the wake of the 6 January Capitol riot after being accused of “incitement of violence”. He was reinstated his account had “new guardrails in place.”
Biden officials “repeatedly pressured” Facebook for months to “censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire” during the pandemic, Zuckerberg has admitted. As a result, in April of 2020 Facebook announced that it was imposing limits on “harmful misinformation about COVID-19.” The decision was reversed a year later.
On the eve of the 2020 presidential elections Facebook suppressed the New York Post story based on damning files in Hunter Biden’s laptop containing evidence of a pay-to-play corruption scheme by the Biden family.
Mark Zuckerberg admitted that in an interview with Joe Rogan in 2022, claiming he was ordered to censor the story by the FBI. He has now conceded that the Hunter laptop story was not “Russian disinformation,” as it was alleged at the time by the Democrats and the mainstream media.
While Meta admitted in 2021 that Palestinian posts using words like “martyr” and “resistance” were inaccurately labeled as incitement to violence, the platform revealed its hypocrisy the following year. Meta openly supported calls for violence against Russian citizens after the start of the special military operation. In March 2022 it loosened prohibitions on violent speech for users in Eastern Europe, allowing the placement of ads with such content.
Gaza and Polio
By Richard Hugus | August 27, 2024
On July 30, 2024 the Health Ministry of Gaza declared a polio epidemic in Gaza. The World Health Organization then said it would send more than a million polio vaccine doses to Gaza. On August 16, according to Al-Jazeera, the first case was reported and the UN’s Antonio Guterres called for a ceasefire to make a vaccination campaign possible. This call was supported by Hamas.
Health authorities rightly point out that the cause of the horrific health conditions in Gaza is the ongoing Israeli genocide – the bombing of homes and infrastructure, the shelling, the withholding of food and medical supplies, the sadistic evacuations — and the authorities of course call for all these things to end. But the involvement of globalist agencies like the UN and WHO raise suspicions that the polio declaration may be just another attack on the people of Gaza concealed under a cloak of humanitarianism.
According to Al-Jazeera, the announcement of the alleged outbreak came on August 7 from one Dr. Hamid Jafari, a World Health Organization polio specialist who claimed the polio virus was found in wastewater samples in Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis. Dr. Jafari is currently employed by the US Centers for Disease Control, a deeply corrupt organization which has spent the past three years pushing vaccines for another purported virus – covid 19 – in spite of clear proof from the very beginning of multiple harms caused by the vaccine. This harm is not limited to the US. Denis Rancourt and colleagues have recently offered statistical proof of almost 31 million excess deaths globally for the period 2020-2022, deaths which they attribute to the strangely universal worldwide public health response to covid 19, to include lockdowns, business closures, isolation, harmful hospital protocols, and particularly the mRNA vaccines.
Regarding Dr. Jafari in Gaza, The CDC website tell us that he “is a graduate of CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) program, class of 1992. . . currently serving as the Principal Deputy Director, Center for Global Health, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The website goes on to say that “Dr. Jafari served as the project manager of World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) National Polio Surveillance Project in India from 2007-2012. As the project manager, he was the main technical advisor to the government of India in the implementation of the nation’s large scale polio eradication, measles control, and routine immunization activities, and he directed WHO’s extensive network of more than 2000 field staff.”
Thus Dr. Jafari was in in charge of a vaccination campaign in India where, in one study, researchers found that between 2000–2017 there were “an additional 491,000 paralyzed children” above normal. The ambitious “polio eradication” program in India was funded and led by the Gates Foundation and the WHO. The number of paralysis cases was found to be proportional to the number of vaccine doses administered. The Gates Foundation and WHO are not exactly separate entities – Gates is a major funder of the WHO. Dr. Jafari’s employment at the CDC, his authoritative declaration of a polio epidemic in Gaza, and WHO’s immediate announcement of the shipment of over a million vaccines should raise red flags.
Polio is a condition that is often confused with the catchall “acute flaccid paralysis.” Acute flaccid paralysis may even be the result of injection of polio “vaccines, but it is not polio. The polio vaccine can and does cause acute flaccid paralysis. From experience in the US since the 1950s it is known that what was often called polio was not the gut virus that humans have lived with more or less uneventfully throughout history, but a form of paralysis caused by human exposure to neurotoxins introduced in the 20th century — for example, mercury and aluminum adjuvants used in vaccines, leaded fuel, fluoridated water, pesticides and herbicides like arsenic, DDT, dioxin, and glyphosate. DDT was in widespread use in the 1950s. When it was banned, the high numbers of “polio” cases went down. The famous Salk and Sabin vaccines had little to do with it, though the medical establishment claimed victory. Indeed, as we know from what is called “the Cutter incident” in 1955, vaccines produced by Cutter Laboratories ended up causing 40,000 cases of polio, severely paralyzed 200 children, and killed 10. Later iterations of the vaccine were found to contain a cancer-causing agent called SV-40 (SV being short for ‘simian virus’). Bernice Eddy, the scientist who discovered this, was hounded out of her job at the US National Institute of Health. Lest one think that things are surely more advanced now than in the 1950s, as recently as April 2023 a well-known scientist named Kevin McKernan found SV-40 in samples of the Pfizer covid -19 vaccine. A new term was coined to describe a common effect of the covid injections — “turbo cancer” — perhaps attributable to the SV-40 and the normally forbidden DNA plasmids also found in the samples.
In an emergency involving a projected 2,700 aid workers delivering 1.6 million doses over a short period of time (between bombings), will the parents of the one million children in Gaza be given complete information about the contents of the polio vaccine their children are about to be given? Will there be a full explanation about risks and possible side-effects? Will the parents have any understanding of the negative history of polio vaccines or of vaccines in general? Will they have the informed consent required in any medical intervention? Will they be given redress for any injuries? No, not a chance. The instructions will be “here’s your dose, now move along.” To be fair, it’s the same all over the world.
Dr. Suzanne Humphries is a well-known kidney specialist who spent years of her professional life coming to grips with organized medicine’s ignorance of the fact that vaccines may cause rather than cure disease. She found that high numbers of polio cases mysteriously went away when polio came to be named other things, like poliomyelitis, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, enteroviral encephalopathy, traumatic neuritis, and Reye’s syndrome. A similar trick was played when influenza suddenly disappeared between 2020 and 2023 and “covid” took its place. Incidentally, one of the common effects of the covid vaccine was facial paralysis, or Guillain-Barré syndrome. Vaccines contain neurotoxins. Neurotoxins cause paralysis and myriad other problems. When it comes to Gaza, we might ask: is the confirmed case there actually polio, or is it one of the many distinct diseases under the umbrella of acute flaccid paralysis? Does a vaccine designed for one strain of polio address some, all, or even any of the mimicking diseases? Is there documentation that the confirmed case was actually polio, or do we just have to take Dr. Jafari’s word for it?
According to Dr. Humphries, “no vaccines are safe. Having “efficacy” means an antibody response is generated, not that they keep you from getting sick. There are many other ways to keep children healthy other than injecting them with disease matter, chemicals, animal DNA, animal proteins, detergents and surfactants that inflame and weaken the blood brain barrier, potentially causing inflammation and other problems.” One way would be to stop bombing them.
The Gaza Health Ministry and Hamas are surely busy enough dealing with zionist genocide, but they need to know that in the last few years public health has been revealed as a very effective weapon of war. The US Department of Defense had a leading role in the worldwide biowarfare operation known as “covid 19 countermeasures.” The WHO and the UN were very much involved in this operation. They are not to be trusted. Like the US government, these supposed humanitarian organizations speak from both sides of their mouth – calling for ceasefire while doing nothing to stop the weapons that every day kill more Palestinians. They know that the best way to protect the children of Gaza is to bring good nutrition, clean water, clean air, housing, and an end to the trauma of psychopath Israel’s daily bombing, yet they do nothing meaningful to bring this about. They are not offering aid with their polio vaccines; they are offering more poison.
US Military Escort for Philippine Ships in South China Sea ‘Reasonable Option’ – Admiral
Sputnik – 27.08.2024
WASHINGTON – The US military said Tuesday that it is “an entirely reasonable option” for it to accompany Philippine vessels during resupply missions in the disputed South China Sea region, US media reported.
“Certainly within the context of consultations, every option between two sovereign nations in terms of our mutual defense — escort of one vessel to the other is an entirely reasonable option within our Mutual Defense Treaty,” Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Romeo Brawner said his country’s armed forces would escort the ships when they could and “seek other options when we are already constrained from doing it ourselves.” He added that the Philippines also cooperated with countries other than the US.
Their comments followed a collision between Philippine and Chinese ships near the disputed Sabina Shoal on Sunday, amid recurring clashes.
The territorial affiliation of a number of islands and reefs in the South China Sea has been the subject of disputes between China, the Philippines and several other Asia-Pacific countries for decades. Significant oil and gas reserves have been discovered on the continental shelf of those islands, including the Paracel Islands, Thitu Island, Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands, with the Whitson Reef being part.
Do We Finally Have a Peace Ticket?
By Ron Paul | August 26, 2024
Just as the Harris/Walz campaign was looking for a boost from the content-free Democratic National Convention last week, real drama broke out that pulled the country’s attention back toward Republican candidate Donald Trump. Rumors had been swirling for days that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might suspend his independent run for the White House and endorse Donald Trump and on Friday he did just that.
In his powerful speech explaining the decision, RFK, Jr. made it clear that suspending his run was difficult, as was leaving a Democratic Party that has been almost synonymous with the name “Kennedy” for many decades. On both issues RFK, Jr. explained that he was guided by principles and values over party orientation and the fluff that has increasingly come to characterize American electoral politics.
It seems the more “polarized” much of American society becomes over which political party they support, the more the rest of us continue to see less and less difference between the two when it comes to actual policy. Both parties support the warfare/welfare state. Both pursue policies leading to poverty and war instead of peace and prosperity. Both are deluded into believing that the Federal Reserve can effectively manage the economy while we amass unimaginable levels of debt.
Americans are seeking authenticity and politicians who put principles above political parties and that is exactly what RFK, Jr. did last Friday. In his speech at the Trump rally, RFK served up severe criticisms of the Democrats for their embrace of endless war.
He said: “Judging by the bellicose, belligerent speech last night in Chicago, we can assume that President Harris will be an enthusiastic advocate for this and other neocon military adventures. President Trump says he will reopen negotiations with President Putin and end the war overnight as soon as he becomes President. This alone would justify my support for his campaign.”
It was a well-aimed blow at the Biden/Harris Administration, which pretends to be seeking peace while pouring gasoline on the numerous conflicts overseas.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed in her speech to the DNC that Vice President Harris is “working tirelessly” toward a ceasefire in Gaza literally as the Biden/Harris Administration announced another huge shipment of bombs to be used by the Israeli military to kill more Palestinians.
What can we hope for in RFK, Jr.’s bold move? For one, we should hope that coming out in favor of principles instead of hollow party identification can reduce the power of political parties altogether. Already in the Republican Party we are seeing a “new guard” emerge that is ready to break with the tired neocon stranglehold on the party.
So does RFK Jr.’s endorsement of Trump on principles rather than parties mean that we finally have a “peace ticket” to support? The short answer is “no,” we don’t have a peace ticket. Many of us who hoped that the first Trump presidency would be that peace ticket were disappointed to see the likes of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo litter the Administration. There is always the chance of a repeat of these mistakes. And neither Trump nor RFK seem reliably in favor of an end to the slaughter in Gaza.
So no, this is not a “peace ticket.” But at least with what we have seen this past week with RFK and Trump, we get the feeling that peace is on the menu. It’s a start.
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Oil and the Israel Lobby
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