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Israel’s Rule of Law

It exists only for Jews

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • August 1, 2024

Does anyone in Israel in a position of power truly understand what the expressions “human rights” and “rule of law” really mean? Developments over the past ten months in Gaza would suggest “No,” that Israel’s government, its legal system, and its constitution exist solely to empower the state to do whatever it wishes, which in the current version includes the genocidal elimination of the Palestinian people and the theft of their land and property to be incorporated into a Greater Israel that plausibly will include the already annexed Syrian Golan Heights as well as all of historic Palestine running from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

But even given the fundamental dishonesty over the Jewish state and what it represents, there is something truly frightening about some recent developments which suggest that the long running United States government pander to Israel and its presumed interests have poisoned the chalice, making Americans absolutely complicit in the Israeli war crimes and other assorted crimes against humanity. And the level of control over Washington by Israel virtually guarantees that it will only get worse.

I am, of course, referring to the recent state visit of the world’s leading war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, where he was worshipped by both Congress and the White House alike together with considerable fawning from the heavily Jewish-influenced media. Netanyahu, to put it succinctly, spoke for an hour in his address to the US Congress, emitting lie after lie. And the Congress critters responded with an outburst of love combined with total subservience, delivering 53 standing ovations, close to one per minute. The most exuberant ovation occurred when Netanyahu denounced the 50,000 or so demonstrators who surrounded the Capitol building to express their disgust at the Jewish mass murderer’s presence. Bibi called the protesters, some of whom were pepper-sprayed and arrested by a heavy police presence including 360 imported New York City Policemen fresh from their beatings of protesters at Columbia University, “useful idiots paid for by Iran.” That particular lie produced paroxysms of celebration among the leaping and waving Congressmen. Given that performance, does anyone need any confirmation that free speech seems to be off the agenda when it comes to Israel and the clowns who nominally represent the American people in Washington, who once upon time swore an oath to support the Constitution, but now consider speaking ill of the Jewish state to be a “hate crime.” Indeed, bills have been introduced in Congress to that effect.

It is interesting to go through his speech to determine what Netanyahu was trying to accomplish and what lies he thought he could get away with. Actually, he did nothing but lie while blaming most of his neighbors, particularly Iran, for the turmoil that Israel has caused in the Middle East for the past 75 years. And predictably, much of the coverage of the Netanyahu appearance in the mainstream media on the following day was toothless and even laudatory. It generally reflected what was hailed as Bibi’s “fiery speech” that “did not give an inch” which vowed to continue fighting until “total victory” is achieved. “It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.” Ironically, Netanyahu was right about the clash of civilization though he was wrong about who represented which side: Israel backed completely by the US is pure evil. And the Netanyahu visit should be seen as a call to arms. The Jewish state is struggling economically and militarily in its war of extermination in Gaza and it knows it is not in any shape to take on Hezbollah and Iran, so it has decided to let the United States do the heavy lifting. Reading between the lines on what occurred in meetings with the two presidential aspirants as well as with a non-compos-mentis Joe Biden, it is clear that Netanyahu expects American boys and girls to do his fighting for him as well as covering the costs.

American complicity in the genocide in Gaza as well as in two possible wars in Lebanon and Iran due to the Israeli embrace is a tragedy for all parties involved, but the damage being done to future generations of American citizens cannot be remedied. Our country has done many bad things, but this whole hearted alliance with unmitigated evil is a betrayal of the birthright of every American.

So how low can you go, but the tale of Netanyahu visits Congress was soon joined by another truly awful story that demonstrates that there is no bottom to the evil in the minds and hearts of Israel’s leaders as well as among a large majority of the Israeli people, which Mondoweiss calls a “genocide from above and below.” Few Americans are aware of the atrocities that occur by virtue of what the Israelis choose to call their legal system. There is a body of law that is applicable to protect Jews and their interests, but where those interests collide with those of the native Palestinians, be they Christian or Muslim, only one outcome is acceptable even when something comparable to a legal procedure takes place. This has enabled the horrible settlement movement with something like 800,000 Jewish settlers having stolen Palestinian land and other property and has meant that Palestinians who were driven from their homes by force when Israel was founded have no ability to return to their own homes. At its most extreme, severely injuring or even killing a Palestinian, which occurs regularly, often at the hands of the heavily armed settlers, is a crime that is almost never prosecuted. To cite only one recent example, Palestinian-America journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was wearing a clearly visible journalist vest was shot and killed by an Israeli army sniper in May 2022. In spite of repeated demands that her murder be fully investigated, no one was ever identified or punished for the killing. Israel has also killed 20 other journalists in the past several years with no one being punished. Often Israeli soldiers stand by and watch crimes involving Jewish perpetrators, never interceding to help the Arab victim. If the Palestinians resist they are immediately labeled as “terrorists” and have no rights of self-defense against the occupiers, be they army or nominally civilians.

A story that appeared a week after the Netanyahu visit illustrates perfectly the two-tiered justice in Israel and the occupied territories. There are currently nearly 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, the number having increased sharply since the war against Gaza began. Many are Gazans, but an increasing number are from the West Bank, which is also being targeted for “settlement” and eventual annexation. Many are held under what is referred to as “preventive detention,” in which they are not charged with a crime, do not appear in any court, and are held at the will of the Israeli army or police. In jail, they are frequently tortured and starved. If they are ever released, they show the signs of the torture and Israeli human rights groups, among other witnesses, have provided substantial evidence of what is taking place behind closed doors. Israel soldiers are, for their part, not shy about what they do to Palestinians, posting photos and videos online of dead Palestinians, torture in detention areas, and the gleeful destruction of Gazan homes and property.

The story is as follows: There are a number of detention centers run by the Israeli Army that are generally used to torture Palestinians prisoners, not in the old fashioned “intelligence” role to obtain “information,” but just for the entertainment of the soldiers who are the jailers. Sde Teiman, one such center in the southern Negev desert region, recently made the news due to a particularly outrageous bit of torture engaged in by ten of the soldiers in charge of the prisoners. Conditions in Sde Taiman reportedly included “Electric shocks, amputations due to bad conditions, severe beatings, surgery without anesthesia, playing loud music until inmates’ ears bleed, deaths due to bad sanitary conditions, systematic torture and sexual abuse.”

A Palestinian from Gaza was reported serially sodomized and otherwise raped at the detention site using various implements even including a cell phone which was inserted in the man’s rectum and turned on for the amusement of the Israeli soldiers. The victim also had a wooden stick inserted in similar fashion and it was believed that he was only one of a number of other prisoners who were treated in that same way, which appears to be systemic throughout the detention facilities run by the army. The activity was only exposed when the victim began bleeding heavily both internally and externally and was unable to walk with a “serious wound in his rectum area”, which may have occurred if or when the phone was removed from inside of him and he was taken to a hospital where what had taken place was revealed. The army, somewhat uncharacteristically, sent some military policemen to the center to detain the soldiers for questioning but the suspects fought back using pepper spray and building barriers. When nine of the men (one went AWOL) were eventually taken to a nearby military base at Beit Lid, the MPs were confronted almost immediately by an angry crowd of civilians, consisting largely of settlers and ultra-nationalists, led by several Likud party parliamentarians who demanded that the soldiers be set free. Something like a melee ensued. The unruly crowd chanted its support for torture and even called for the summary execution of the Palestinian prisoners, which has been an “option” supported by some in the Netanyahu government.

The rioters were so aggressive that they actually broke into the Israeli military base and there was considerable support for their actions even coming from Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who said he was “shocked” to see IDF troops being detained for questioning “in a way that is suitable for arresting dangerous criminals.” He added that the soldiers were doing a “holy job” at the base. Far-right Knesset member Simcha Rotman called the troops “heroes,” instead attacking Israel’s “justice and enforcement systems” for detaining them.

Typically, later in the day, when asked by the press about the rape accusations, US State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel refused to say whether gang raping and torturing Palestinian prisoners would be considered a war crime, even if conclusively demonstrated by witnesses and other evidence. Patel explained “So the reports of abuse are deeply concerning, and we have been clear and consistent with Israel and the IDF that they need to treat all detainees humanely and with dignity in accordance with humanitarian law.” He said that the US was going to let “due process” play out in this case. The western media that is bothering to cover the story are refusing to even use the word “rape” or “sodomy” in reference to the allegations, with the BBC describing how the soldiers are accused of “severely mistreating a Palestinian prisoner” while the New York Times prefers to call it “suspected abuse”.

At the heart of the discussion is the fact that Israel’s Knesset uniquely has a proposed law that was first formulated in 2022 by current National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir which would give automatic immunity to any soldier or policeman who kills or seriously injures any Palestinian. The immunity does not apply if the victim is a Jew. The law still has not passed through parliament, but many conservatives in Israel believe it is the guideline used by the military and judiciary de facto. Ben-Gvir has, in fact, denounced the questioning of the nine men as “shameful,” adding that the Israeli security establishment should support the soldiers and “learn from the prison service: light treatment of terrorists is over. Soldiers need to have our full support.” Ben-Gvir is also supporting a separate bill that would authorize the systematic execution of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. It also does not apply to Jews. In a video statement, Ben-Gvir said that Israel should be able to kill Palestinian prisoners with a “shot to the head.” He also recommended that Palestinian prisoners be given just enough food to keep them alive until the execution law comes into effect.

So, when it comes to human rights Israel lives in another parallel universe where there is one set of rules for Jews and other for gentiles. Perhaps the easily visible brutality evident in the recent Netanyahu speech to Congress coupled with stories like that out of Sde Teiman and the daily horror inflicted on the Gazans will bring about some kind of wake-up for the American public, which has been heavily propagandized and continues to believe in the myth of the perpetual victimhood of the Jewish people. The real victims of the “miracle of Israel” are those in western countries that the Jewish diaspora continues to buy and manipulate as well as the poor Palestinians who are forced to live under a form of daily repression and humiliation that is almost unimaginable.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

August 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Even when it came to children, German regime ignored own scientists to impose strict COVID vaccine, mask mandates

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 31, 2024

Germany’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was based on political objectives, and the government implemented countermeasures that often contradicted scientific evidence and the opinion of the government’s own scientists, according to documents leaked by a former employee of Germany’s public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

An unnamed whistleblower released the “RKI Files” to investigative journalist Aya Velázquez, who on July 23 published the unredacted files — totaling 3,865 pages — in their entirety on Substack.

The RKI is Germany’s equivalent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S.

According to the German newspaper Schwäbische Zeitung, the RKI Files “contain explosive details” about “child vaccinations and ‘resistance from the population,’” and show “that the RKI took a much more differentiated view of Corona policy than those responsible for politics and most of the media led the population to believe.”

“A whistleblower, a former employee of the RKI, approached me and passed on the data set to me” for reasons of “conscience,” Velázquez wrote on Substack.

According to the files, German regulators sought to skip Phase 3 trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and “go straight into broad application.”

Other revelations include evidence of policymakers targeting and “nudging” children, and knowledge by policymakers and scientists that the COVID-19 vaccines were ineffective and led to severe adverse events.

Despite this knowledge — and for political reasons — government officials pursued measures rewarding the vaccinated and punishing the unvaccinated.

The RKI Files also reveal that policymakers and scientists sought to publicly ignore evidence of a “flattening curve” early in the pandemic, and evidence that masks and mass testing would not be useful in preventing infection.

Although some have questioned the legitimacy of documents contained within the RKI Files, the Robert Koch Institute, in an announcement carried by German news program Tagesschau addressing the publication of unredacted documents, did not confirm or deny the legitimacy of the documents themselves or their contents:

“The Robert Koch Institute has criticized the publication of unredacted minutes of the RKI crisis team on the COVID pandemic. The RKI expressly condemns the unlawful publication of personal data and trade and business secrets of third parties in these data sets and, in particular, any infringement of third-party rights.”

Other German mainstream news media outlets, including the mass-circulation Bild and Zeit newspapers, also reported on the release of the files.

‘Clear evidence that the general public was deliberately deceived’

The RKI Files mirror findings from the United Kingdom’s “Lockdown Files” and admissions last month by Dr. Anthony Fauci during congressional testimony that widespread masking and social distancing measures were enacted despite a lack of scientific evidence.

Widespread “vaccination of children” and policies barring the unvaccinated from many public spaces — for which the RKI “provided supposedly scientific legitimacy” — weren’t based on “rational, scientific considerations” but on “political decisions,” Velázquez wrote.

Stefan Homburg, Ph.D., professor of public finance at the University of Hannover in Germany, was part of a team that worked with the whistleblower to release the unredacted RKI Files. He told The Defender the documents show decisions were made “exclusively by politicians” and that “RKI did not support these measures.”

“We have now clear evidence that the general public was deliberately deceived,” Dutch lawyer Meike Terhorst told The Defender. “Politicians made the decisions, not health authorities.”

Dr. Christof Plothe, a member of the World Council for Health steering committee, told The Defender the files “show that it was never science that initiated ineffective and harmful masking, traumatizing social distancing and lockdowns, or that introduced a novel gene therapy labeled a ‘vaccine’ … It was politicians that demanded the measures.”

Germany’s pandemic-era Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach figures prominently in the documents. Plothe said Lauterbach has “never worked with patients and is a pure lobbyist of Pharma.”

In March 2023, Lauterbach admitted that COVID-19 vaccine adverse events are prevalent and victims are being ignored.

German toxicologist Helmut Sterz, previously a researcher for major pharmaceutical companies — including Pfizer — told The Defender the documents show that pandemic decisions “were made by those who are responsible for the creation of this ‘pandemic’” and that “Real experts ‘disappeared’ from the public debate.”

Germany enacted among the strictest set of COVID-19 restrictions in Europe, according to the Oxford University COVID-19 Government Response Tracker.

“The measures that the German people were subjected to, besides mask mandates and social distancing rules, [include] a ‘lockdown of the unvaccinated’ that banned people from [public places] … Compulsory vaccination was imposed on military members and all people working in the health sector,” Plothe said.

Documents reveal EU discussions to ‘skip the Phase 3 trials’ for Pfizer shot

Pfizer was in discussions with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to “skip the Phase III trials” for the COVID-19 vaccine “and go straight into widespread use,” documents from an April 15, 2020, RKI meeting show.

“Normally, you plan 12-18 months from the start of Phase I. EMA and Pfizer are considering whether to skip Phase III trials and go straight into broad use. If the regulators decide that, then it can go faster than 12-18 months,” the document says.

Minutes from an April 27, 2020, RKI meeting state, “There will be several vaccines that have been developed and tested in a fast-track process. Relevant data will only be collected post-marketing.”

According to German medical magazine Aertzeblatt, RKI documents from January and February 2021, after the first COVID-19 vaccines were introduced and administered, reveal discussions questioning the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, stating it was “less perfect” and its “Ecology needs to be discussed.”

A Jan. 29, 2021 document (page 135), for instance, states that “STIKO [RKI’s Standing Committee on Vaccination] recommends vaccine only for <65-year-olds, as there is a lack of evidence for >65-year-olds, very wide confidence intervals, too uncertain, as two highly effective RNA vaccines are available.”

According to German magazine Tichys Einblick, the documents show that as early as the beginning of 2021,” the RKI knew about serious side effects of vaccinations, for example from AstraZeneca. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, practically all important top politicians were publicly vaccinated with precisely this shot.”

These admissions came despite public rhetoric at the time stating that the shots would protect against both the spread of and infection from COVID-19.

Problems post-vaccination soon began to pop up in the RKI documents. A Feb. 8, 2021, document references a political furor in Germany after 14 fully vaccinated residents of a nursing home tested positive for COVID-19. The same document admitted that vaccination does not prevent less severe cases of the virus.

RKI documents from March 12 and March 15, 2021, referenced the identification of severe adverse events following AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination in Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria, and an April 9, 2021, document discusses a high rate of thrombosis cases tied to the AstraZeneca vaccine, particularly in males.

In turn, an April 23, 2021, document references six cases of cerebral thrombosis connected to the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. but does not propose changes to Germany’s vaccination recommendations.

“It is particularly bad that the RKI recognized many vaccine injuries caused by AstraZeneca, but did not warn the public,” Homburg said. “The constant political pressure is also remarkable.”

‘It must be cool to get vaccinated’

The RKI Files also revealed efforts on the part of the German government and the country’s public health authorities to specifically target children with COVID-19 restrictions — efforts that were marked by political interference:

  • A May 19, 2021, RKI document states, “Even if STIKO does not recommend vaccination for children, [then-Health Minister Jens] Spahn is still planning a child vaccination program.”
  • A May 21, 2021, document states that while pediatric associations “are reluctant to vaccinate children … Politicians are already preparing vaccination campaigns to vaccinate the relevant age groups.”
  • A July 14, 2021, RKI document reveals discussions of an “influencer vaccination challenge on YouTube” and “developing material for younger target groups,” which would “be approached with more humor” — even vaccine reactions and side effects. “It must be cool to get vaccinated,” the document stated.
  • The minutes of a Dec. 15, 2021, RKI meeting reveal that Germany’s health ministry was “considering booster vaccination of children, although there is no recommendation and in some cases no approval for this.”

Such measures were promoted despite early knowledge that children were not significantly affected by COVID-19. A Feb. 26, 2020, RKI document referred to data from China finding that 2% of cases were in children, while a Nov. 30, 2020, document suggested that school settings were unlikely to contribute to the spread of the virus significantly, but that school closures would “exacerbate” the situation.

And a Dec. 4, 2020, RKI meeting examining data from several countries concluded that school reopenings did not lead to significantly greater spread of the virus.

‘The vaccinated must receive privileges of some kind’

Despite such findings, there was political pressure to reward the vaccinated and punish the unvaccinated, according to the RKI Files.

A Nov. 5, 2021, document said that media rhetoric regarding “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” was “not correct from a scientific point of view,” because “the entire population is contributing” to new waves of infection.

Yet, authorities decided to continue blaming the unvaccinated for the spread of COVID-19, because it would serve “as an appeal to all those who have not been vaccinated to get vaccinated,” according to the document.

The document also noted that Spahn “talks of the [pandemic of the unvaccinated] at every press conference … so it can’t be corrected.” The document contains an acknowledgment, though, that “one should be very careful with the statement that vaccinations protect against any (even asymptomatic) infection” because “as the time between vaccinations increases,” infection becomes more likely.

A May 10, 2021, RKI document contained a determination that telling the truth to the public would “cause great confusion,” while maintaining existing vaccination recommendations would serve “to save [the] vaccine.”

Instead, a Jan. 7, 2022, document stated that “the vaccinated must receive privileges of some kind,” including fewer travel restrictions, and that this was an objective that the German Health Ministry desired, while calling for further “testing of the unvaccinated after entry” into the country.

Similarly, a March 10, 2021, document suggested that COVID-19 vaccination should be promoted to the public as a means “to be able to participate in social life again,” for people who were tired of “bans and restrictions.”

Yet, a Dec. 4, 2020, RKI document suggested that the vaccinated should continue to comply with “hygiene measures,” while a Dec. 30, 2020, document suggested that the vaccinated should still wear masks, “as there is still a risk of transmission.”

German authorities wished to ‘avoid drawing attention’ to flattening curve

The RKI Files further reveal that, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, there was political pressure to maintain restrictions, despite the “flattening of the curve.”

A March 25, 2020, document admitted that “the curve is slowly leveling off,” but said, “We should avoid drawing attention to this in our external communications, to encourage compliance with measures.”

A Nov. 18, 2020, document contains an admission that respiratory illnesses were “well below” the previous year’s level, with a downward trend. Similarly, a Nov. 30, 2020, document states that general respiratory illnesses were “well below previous years.” A Jan. 27, 2021, document stated that a “no-COVID” policy is not feasible.

And according to a Feb. 25, 2022, document, RKI was prevented from downgrading its overall risk assessment of COVID-19 from “very high” to “high” even after the mostly mild symptoms of the Omicron wave were evident, due to intervention from Lauterbach and the German Health Ministry.

Use of masks by general public deemed ‘problematic’ — but imposed anyway 

The RKI Files also contain acknowledgments that masking and testing policies were ineffective in limiting the spread of COVID-19 but were pursued for political reasons:

  • A Jan. 27, 2020, document states that masking “does not make sense” for asymptomatic people, as there was no evidence that it would be a “useful preventive measure for the general population.”
  • An Oct. 23, 2020, document stated that FFP2 masks (similar to N95 masks) would be “misused” by the public and not offer protection, but instead might instill a false sense of security in people. “The harms of FFP2 masks may outweigh benefits,” the document states.
  • An Oct. 30, 2020, document says, “FFP2 masks have no added value if they are not fitted and used correctly” and are useless outside of “occupational health and safety.”
  • A Jan. 13, 2021, document states that FFP2 masks “can lead to health problems for people with preexisting conditions and should therefore remain an individual decision” and that “A general FFP2 mask requirement is not considered sensible.”
  • A Jan. 18, 2021, document found “No technical basis for recommending FFP2 masks for the population,” noting the risk of “undesirable side effects.”

Yet, by July 2, 2021, RKI documents contain suggestions, based on the American Academy of Pediatrics, for general mask wearing for children age 2 and older and that “The wearing of masks should be maintained … even at low incidences and should be understood as maintaining basic measures.”

RKI documents also questioned mass COVID-19 testing. A Feb. 3, 2020, document stated that positive PCR results after recovery “do not necessarily mean infectiousness,” while a July 29, 2020, document found that COVID-19 testing was ineffective, but a “political desire” for testing had to be “met.”

Similarly, a Dec. 16, 2020, RKI document suggested the suspension of elective procedures (planned operations), due to “pressure from the state governments.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 1, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Evidence presented to the Scottish Inquiry

Tragic testimonies ignored by mainstream media

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | July 30, 2024 

The Scottish Inquiry has heard repeated testimonies on a wide range of topics, but what has been said in relation to what happened in care homes during lockdown is particularly striking. The stories are those of neglect, abuse, denial of healthcare and repeated misuse of end of life medication resulting in deaths. Witness after witness has given concurring evidence.

These stories have only really reached our attention thanks to the work of an independent citizen journalist (“Dave”) on Twitter and Substack. Neil Oliver has been the only mainstream journalist to have reported on these stories on his show in GB News, including interviews with our two co-chairs, Dr Clare Craig and Dr Jonathan Engler.

Here we publish a summary of the evidence from one woman which manages to encompass almost every aspect of the harm caused in care homes. It is the story of her grandmother who was admitted to a care home for mild dementia in autumn 2020.

“My gran was a very mischievous little old lady who was great fun and very talkative. She used to be a very active person when she was younger and tried to keep that up when she was older but, in her later years, she was less active due to widespread pain, and she was unsteady on her feet.”

After a fall “Social Services then intervened and said that they felt my gran should be in a more regimented type setting.”

“I actually took her to the home and that was very difficult as I just had to hand her over to a care home staff member and leave her as I was not allowed in.”

The staff called her by the wrong name but she didn’t know because she depended on lip reading and they were all masked.

~1st Nov 2020:

Positive test result for covid they called to say “my gran had tested positive but that she was fine and that they would keep us updated.”

2nd Nov 2020:

Granddaughter asked to authorise Do Not Resuscitate:

“My answer first of all was, ‘Well, why are you asking me that, as you said she only had mild Covid?’. My second point was that this was not a decision I would make at the moment as my grandmother was lucid, still talking and it would be a discussion to have with her.”

Despite this, a DNR was put in place without proper authorization.

3rd Nov 2020:

They proposed giving her a “mild sedative” to keep her from removing her nasal cannula. The family agreed, not realising it was Midazolam, which can suppress respiratory function.

“On the 3rd November 2020, about 3 o’clock in the afternoon the care home contacted my mother to explain that her (grandmother’s) oxygen saturation had dropped but that it was generally due to the fact that she had a nasal cannula and that every time she went to the toilet she kept forgetting to put it back in.” 

“At this point my grandmother was eating and drinking by herself, moving to the toilet herself, that there was only mild symptoms and that they were giving her the nasal oxygen just as a precaution as her stats were a little low but, with the cannula in, she was fine. Her stats had actually improved from the previous day according to her medical records.”

“I later found out my grandmother was on a full end of life protocol put on place by the doctor “just in case”. I don’t understand why this was administered as we were at no point informed that she was end of life and if we had been then why had we not been called to be with her? The way I look at it is that I think they have looked at her notes and seen the medication from the earlier shift and thought that she was “end of life”. My mum was never told it was Midazolam when the home asked if they could give my gran a mild sedative.”

4th Nov 2020:

Granddaughter received a call at 4:11 am saying her grandmother had deteriorated. When she arrived at 4:30 am, she was told her grandmother had died at 4:20 am and went in.

“there were only three staff members, including one nurse, caring for 26 residents”

“She was stone cold and, in my opinion, she had been dead a lot longer than twenty minutes.”

“There was no cannula or oxygen tank in the room.”

“The funeral was also difficult because of the numbers that were allowed. I think a lot more would have been there in normal times. The people there had masks and there was no singing. My gran had loved music and she liked singing. Years before, my gran had given me full instructions for her funeral and I could only follow some of them. When you can’t fulfil somebody’s dying wishes because of rules, it’s hard. To go there and not be able to hug your mum or your dad or your brother is really difficult.”

It’s shocking to imagine one person experiencing all these horrific events. Now consider the reality: each of these horrors has actually happened to countless individuals. This widespread suffering is even more disturbing.

August 1, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Disinformation Board Chief Sued Fox News For Alleging She Was Pro-Censorship. A Judge Agreed With Fox News.

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 31, 2024

America’s attempt to set up what critics called the “Ministry of Truth” failed miserably last year when the Disinformation Governance Board was quickly set up as an advisory to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – and then quickly dissolved, under massive public pushback.

The Board’s head was Nina Jankowicz, whose role some of those same critics, among politicians and media among them, summed up as “misinformation czar.”

Let’s say that this is a kind way of saying, “censorship czar.” But, reporting to this effect still personally offended Jankowicz enough to file a defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

And now, a federal judge has dismissed that suit.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

Jankowicz stated in the filing that Fox was making false claims about her intent to censor Americans, denying also that she “wanted to give verified Twitter users, including herself, the power to edit others tweets,” or that she was actually fired (rather than resigning).

The reason she had to leave the Board, Jankowicz asserted, was the “harassment” she endured because Fox published reports that contained those claims.

US District Court for the District of Delaware Judge Colm Connolly, however, dismissed these three arguments. Jankowicz cited 37 statements heard on Fox, but the judge said 36 of them were about the Board in general, not her in particular.

And the one instance that could be construed to refer to Jankowicz (her picture was used to illustrate a report about the Board) doesn’t count, either.

The Fox report said the Board was “dedicated to working with the special media giants for the purpose of policing information.”

The judge decided to express himself plainly: “The statement is not defamatory because it is not false.”

And he didn’t stop there: “The Board was formed precisely to police information and to work with non governmental actors,” Connolly wrote.

The fact that the Board was to “coordinate” with private companies to tackle what they identified as “misinformation”, is an objective that Connolly said is “fairly characterized as a form of censorship.”

As for the claim that Fox lied regarding the Twitter controversy, the ruling reads: “The complaint itself quotes Jankowicz confirming in a Zoom session that she endorsed the notion of having ‘verified’ individuals edit the content of others’ tweets.”

Fox commented on this outcome by saying they were satisfied that the court supported the First Amendment, while Jankowicz told her GoFundMe supporters, who are raising funds for her legal fees, that she would appeal.

The case is just one episode in the legal battles raging in the US, that fall into the broader category of “supercontroversy” that is the the Big Government-Big Tech collusion.

July 31, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Missouri AG Andrew Bailey Advocates for Tech-State Separation Criticizes, Big Tech Censorship Influence

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 31, 2024

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wants First Amendment free speech protections to be bolstered and believes that the separation of Tech and State ( creating a “wall of separation” between them) is in order.

This is to make sure government censorship is efficiently prevented going forward, he suggested.

Bailey sat down with journalist Tim Pool, and went through a litany of other issues plaguing political and social democratic processes, most clearly visible in what critics of the current White House consider to be the government colluding with social media companies to suppress lawful speech.

Bailey spoke about the Missouri v. Biden case (which reached the Supreme Court as Murthy v. Missouri) to say that “government coerced censorship” has already been proven, and now that the case has been referred back to a lower court, the discovery process can be used to fully expose what the state AG called, “that vast Censorship Enterprise.”

Regarding the much contested on both sides of the aisle (but for different reasons) Section 230 of the CDA, Bailey agreed with the host that it should not continue in the current form, since platforms are protected for hosting third-party content – and then allowed to freely censor that content.

But the collusion with the government demonstrated in stark terms why Section 230 should be reformed so that it’s “just a shield” for platforms, without also putting the “sword” of censorship in their hands, the interlocutors agreed.

The issue of social media and internet services becoming so widespread they are arguably the most powerful influence on people’s choices – from shopping to politics – means they qualify as the public square.

And on that square, culture can be “fundamentally reshaped,” Bailey said. Platforms banning “misgendering speech” was mentioned as an example.

And back to Section 230, but this time with regards to Wikipedia. Here, the Missouri AG doesn’t believe immunity from the rules should extended to Wikipedia.

This is because whatever is published on Wikipedia is not clearly marked as written by users (such as on social platforms) – this is only visible in the source of a webpage.

“The byline is, ‘from Wikipedia’,” Pool remarked.

“They look like a publisher,” Bailey said, alleging that Section 230 was not designed to protect those.

July 31, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Shooting down Russian missiles is ‘act of war’ – Ritter

RT | July 31, 2024

Vladimir Zelensky’s idea to have Poland shoot down Russian missiles would get NATO directly involved in the conflict with Moscow, former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has said.

Ukraine’s leader has been asking his Western partners for a “defense shield” for months. He claimed to have finally received a commitment from Warsaw in early July, as part of a security pact. Poland has said it would not target Russian missiles without NATO approval, which the US-led bloc has yet to give.

“Zelensky is operating on the assumption that NATO can have Patriot missiles in Poland that can shoot down Russian missiles that are headed towards militarily sensitive targets in the vicinity of Lviv,” Ritter told YouTube host Danny Haiphong in an interview posted on Tuesday.

“He doesn’t understand: that’s an act of war,” Ritter added. “That’s Russian military equipment, on a Russian military mission, in support of a Russian national security objective.”

Shooting down those missiles, even locking on to them with radar, would make NATO “literally a party to the conflict,” Ritter explained.

The US-led bloc has been trying to maintain a pretense that it’s not directly involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, despite donating billions of dollars worth of weapons, equipment and ammunition to Kiev’s armed forces and in some cases literally paying the salary of Ukrainian government employees.

Kiev is trying to have NATO set up a de facto “no fly zone” over western Ukraine, Ritter argued, which he described as “something Russia simply won’t tolerate.”

“Zelensky is just desperate right now, so he’s trying to invent rules of engagement,” Ritter concluded.

Ukrainian forces have been suffering steady setbacks along the front for weeks, with no prospect of replenishing their losses in either men or materiel.

The first handful of F-16 fighters reportedly arrived on Wednesday and will most likely be armed with modern US missiles. Zelensky has already complained that he would need more than 100 jets to actually make a difference, however.

Ritter is a former US Marine Corps major who served as a UN weapons inspector. He famously disagreed with the foreign policy establishment in Washington in the early 2000s, insisting that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction – a pretext the US later used to invade the country. He has been a RT contributor and saw his passport seized by the US government when he tried to attend the St. Petersburg International Security Forum in June.

July 31, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

EU member suspects Brussels of ‘energy blackmail’

RT | July 31, 2024

The European Commission (EC) may be behind the suspension of some Russian oil supplies into the EU through Ukraine, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto claimed on Tuesday. The move could be directly targeted at Hungary and Slovakia, he suggested.

Kiev halted the transit of crude oil supplied by Russian energy giant Lukoil via the Druzhba pipeline earlier this month, citing sanctions on the company. The measure has directly hit landlocked Hungary and Slovakia, depriving them of crude previously exported by Lukoil.

“Brussels remains silent despite the threat to the energy security of two EU member states and clear violation of EU-Ukraine association agreement,” Szijjarto wrote in a post on Facebook. The diplomat was referring to a deal signed in 2014, after the Western-backed Maidan coup overthrew the then-Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich.

Szijjarto suggested that either the EC is too “weak” to protect the fundamental interests of Slovakia and Hungary, or “it was Brussels, not Kiev,” that orchestrated the move to “blackmail the two states that support peace and refuse to send weapons [to Ukraine].”

Shortly after the halt of oil supplies, Budapest and Bratislava jointly initiated consultations with the bloc and asked EU officials to help resolve the dispute. Brussels has claimed it needs time to “gather evidence and assess the legal situation.”

“The EC, and its President Ursula von der Leyen personally, must come clean immediately: did Brussels ask Kiev to ban oil supplies?” Szijjarto asked. “And if not, why has the EC taken no steps in more than a week?”

Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic – each of which is reliant on Russian energy supplies – were exempted from a bloc-wide ban on Russian oil deliveries in 2022. Slovakia and Hungary are the only EU members that have refused to back the bloc’s policy of supplying Kiev with military aid amid the conflict with Russia. Both have repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Kiev imposed sanctions on Lukoil in 2018, having banned the company from divesting its business in the country, as well as prohibiting trade operations and participation in the privatization or leasing of state property. Lukoil still sent crude via the southern arm of the Druzhba pipeline as the sanctions did not target these flows.

Earlier this week, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico warned that Bratislava would stop diesel exports to Ukraine if Kiev does not restart the transit of Russian oil through, stressing that Slovak shipments account for one-tenth of Ukraine’s consumption of the fuel.

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow is unsurprised that the EU has failed to resolve the issue surrounding Russian oil supplies to its members, claiming that Brussels is using energy resources to blackmail Bratislava and Budapest.

July 31, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Scott Ritter: EU’s Anti-Russian Sanctions ‘Have Boomeranged Back on Europe’

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – July 31, 2024

EU packages of sanctions on Russia have backfired, becoming “one of the greatest economic disasters in modern European history,” former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter pointed out.

“These sanctions, which are designed to punish Russia, have failed to do so. In fact, they’ve boomeranged back on Europe. And Europe continues to move forward, putting more sanctions into more sanctions, all the while Russia gets stronger economically,” the ex-US Marine Corps intelligence officer noted.

He dubbed the EU “the economic arm of a gaggle of organizations and institutions, which include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, all of which serve fundamentally at the behest of the United States.”

“So the sanctions that were implemented by the European Union were done so because the United States wanted Russia to be isolated” and “confronted by Ukraine that was functioning as a de facto proxy of NATO,” Ritter argued.

The former UN weapons inspector insisted that America is using the sanctions “to achieve a larger strategic objective, not only weakening Russia but also weakening Europe, so that the United States emerges from this [Ukraine] conflict stronger.”

“It’s been the goal of the United States for decades to break Europe of its addiction to cheap Russian energy. So the sanctions and the blowback are achieving that result. Maybe Europe doesn’t realize this, or they haven’t woken up to the reality that the United States isn’t their friend,” Ritter concluded.

He was echoed by Gunnar Beck, outgoing member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany party, lawyer and academic specializing in EU law, who told Sputnik that it’s safe to say the EU shot itself in the foot by deciding to impose sanctions on Russia.

“There’s no doubt that the economic impact [from the sanctions] is felt to a much greater extent here in the EU itself compared to Russia. I mean, the Russian economy, according to the official data, is doing very well and it appears to have adapted to the sanctions,” Beck pointed out.

The EU’s sanctions on Russian raw materials, including oil and gas “have hurt primarily the European economies,” which “used to be able to rely on predictable, high quality and cheap gas and oil imports from Russia,” according to the expert.

These economies, he went on, “still cannot do without importing oil and gas from Russia, but they’re now doing it via third countries at much higher prices,” with Russia continuing to sell its oil and gas.

“So the EU has basically harmed itself with these sanctions, or rather to be more precise, the bloc has massively harmed European industry and European consumers. But it [the restrictive measures] don’t appear to have had much impact on the Russian economy,” Beck emphasized.

The sanctions “have not had the impact that the EU hoped they would have,” which was predictable, per the expert.

“The EU probably underestimated the degree to which the Russian government had prepared for the eventuality of sanctions, including far-reaching restrictions on energy imports into the EU, as well as financial transactions. On this occasion, I think the sanctions have proved ineffective and they have failed insofar as Russia is concerned,” Beck summed up.

July 31, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia and China challenge US claims to marine seabed – media

RT | July 31, 2024

US claims to a vast section of potentially resource-rich seabed floor have no basis in international law and should be rejected, Russian and Chinese government representatives have said, according to Bloomberg.

The statements were reportedly made during a session this week of the International Seabed Authority, held in Kingston, Jamaica, and were in response to recent claims by the US that it would be adding about one million square kilometers (386,100 square miles) to its continental shelf in the Bering Sea, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Both the representatives of Russia and China stressed that Washington’s unilateral claims contradict the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which the US has never ratified, Bloomberg wrote on Tuesday.

Adopted in 1982, UNCLOS sets out rules relating to the world’s oceans and seas, covering issues including territorial limits, resources and protection of the marine environment.

Under the law, countries have the right to any resources in the sea or seabed floor within their so-called exclusive economic zones, which can stretch up to 200 nautical miles (370 km) off a country’s coast.

States that have ratified UNCLOS undergo a lengthy process to reach agreement on where the boundaries of underwater continental shelves lie, which will define exclusive economic rights to potentially lucrative seabed resources based there.

The US’ unilateral claims jeopardize a fragile international balance, as well as the integrity of the convention, Russia’s representative reportedly said and added that Moscow rejects Washington’s selective approach to international law.

China’s delegate at the Seabed Authority meeting also argued that the US doesn’t have the right to make such claims unilaterally, and can’t expect to enjoy the benefits of the convention without having ratified it, Bloomberg reported. The unnamed representative described the resources in the international seabed as the common heritage of mankind and said any act that threatens that shouldn’t be accepted. Both Russia and China ratified UNCLOS in the 1990s.

The US representative Gregory O’Brien defended his nation’s position, according to reports, claiming it followed the rules of the convention in making the claims.

The US announced the extensions of its claims on the ocean floor in December 2023, as part of an effort to boost access to so-called critical minerals that are necessary for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy projects. The claims were “about geography, not resources,” the State Department insisted.

The extension “highlights American strategic interests” in securing hard minerals, such as lithium and tellurium, on its seabed and subsoil, “lying sometimes hundreds of miles offshore,” according to an article by James Kraska, chair and professor of International Maritime Law at the US Naval War College.

The latest US Geological Survey, conducted in 2008, estimated that about 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of gas lie inside the Arctic Circle, along with critical metals needed for electrification. However, most of that estimate is based on land studies and the offshore potential is largely unexplored, Bloomberg wrote.

July 31, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Okinawa on Fire: Division Brewing in Japan Over US Militarizing & Nuclearizing

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 31.07.2024

The US and Japan have made further steps towards closer military integration and an extension of Washington’s nuclear umbrella over its ally. Their increased military buildup in the Asia-Pacific region means a greater risk for war, particularly nuclear war, warns Okinawan rights activist Rob Kajiwara.

In the wake of their Security Consultative Committee (“2+2”) July 28 meeting in Tokyo, the US and Japan announced the strengthening of military ties and upgrading of the US Forces Japan (USFJ) to a warfighting command.

“The US and Japan are increasing the threat of war in the region,” Robert Kajiwara, an Okinawan rights activist and founder of the Peace For Okinawa Coalition, told Sputnik, stressing that the military buildup has nothing to do with Japan’s security and national interests.

Actually, the US is using Japan as a bulwark against Russia, China and North Korea in a bid to maintain its dominance in the Asia Pacific region, according to the pundit. “The world is seeking to become multipolar, but the US is intent on doing whatever it can to maintain hegemony,” he noted.

The American and Japanese delegations also discussed extending the US nuclear umbrella over Japan. While the US and Japan have coordinated on the issue since 2010 within the framework of the Extended Deterrence Dialogue (EDD), most recently the US has doubled down on its nuclear umbrella in the region.

It is expected that this year the US and Japan will specify under what conditions the US will use its nukes to “protect” Japan, according to Newsweek.

For its part, Chinese media believes Washington is planning to deploy nuclear weapons in their military bases in Japan, again. The “extended deterrence” means nothing but the US intent to use Japan as an outpost to strengthen its nuclear deterrence in Northeast Asia, according to Global Times.

Between 1954 and 1972, the US bases on Okinawa hosted a staggering 19 types of nuclear arms. In 2015, the US government officially admitted the fact that it stored hundreds of nuclear warheads in Japan during the Cold War. At the height of the Vietnam War, around 1,200 nuclear weapons were stationed in Okinawa.

“If there’s any country that should be against nuclear arms, it should be Japan, given the use of nuclear weapons against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan should be strongly against the storing of nuclear weapons in its territory. Unfortunately, Japan hasn’t learned anything from World War II and appears destined to repeat its past mistakes,” the pundit argued.

Why Okinawa is Important for the US

Okinawa, which is part of the Ryukyu island chain, is of utmost strategic importance for the US as it serves as a stronghold for the Pentagon’s operations in the Western Pacific and deployment of troops directly to the Taiwan Straits and to the Korean Peninsula.

The US military installations in the region – which American troops have occupied since the late 1940s – were crucial for Washington’s invasions of Vietnam and North Korea in the past.

The US air and naval bases on Okinawa are located in close proximity to China’s mainland and even closer to Taiwan Island. Furthermore, the Ryukyu island chain presents a natural “wall”, allowing the US military to “control” China’s passage into the Pacific Ocean.

While Tokyo and Washington name Russia, China and North Korea as potential “threats” to the region’s stability, a considerable chunk of Japanese citizens think otherwise, Kajiwara said, referring to Okinawa Prefecture, a home to numerous US military bases and facilities – over 70% of their total number in Japan.

“The overwhelming majority (somewhere between 70-90%) of Ryukyuans [another name for Okinawans] do not consider Russia, China, or North Korea to be military threats,” the activist stressed.

Okinawans Oppose US Bases and Japan’s Militarization

Ryukyuans have opposed the US militarization of the island for decades, citing security and environmental issues, as well as repeated criminal acts committed by US troops against local residents.

In September 1995, three US soldiers kidnapped and raped a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa, prompting prefecture-wide rallies which brought together 92,000 protesters. This year, two rape cases committed by US soldiers against an Okinawan minor and a woman came to light in June. The first occurred in December 2023 and remained muted by the US military for almost six months.

“The US and [Japan’s central government] covered this up until after Okinawa Prefecture’s recent election,” said Kajiwara. “They wanted to avoid negative publicity before or during the election in order to prevent the [ruling] Liberal Democratic Party from losing votes. Is this democracy? Can the US and Japan rightly call this democratic?”

In another snub of Okinawans’ democratic freedoms, Japan’s central government overruled the Okinawan authorities’ ban on building a new US military base at Henoko-Oura Bay near Nago in 2023. In September last year, Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki sought international backing at a UN session, arguing that the concentration of the US military forces in the prefecture threatens peace.

“My petition against the construction of the military base at Henoko received over 212,000 signatures,” Kajiwara said. “The 2019 Referendum in Okinawa resulted in over 70% of Okinawans voting against the Henoko base. In spite of all this, the US and Japan continually ignore the voices of Ryukyuans.”

Who are Okinawans and Why Do They Differ From Japanese

Okinawa was previously an independent Ryukyu kingdom, which was conquered and annexed by Japan at the end of the 19th century, the expert pointed out.

Ryukyuans have our own history, culture, languages, values, and identity. According to Kajiwara, Ryukyu has a tradition of being a “bridge of nations” with the focus on mutually-beneficial trade and diplomacy. “Whereas Japan has a long history of warfare and samurai bushido culture, Ryukyu banned the public carrying of weapons during the 15th century in order to promote peace,” the pundit remarked.

“In 1879, Japan invaded Ryukyu as the first of its colonial conquests… From 1879 until 1945, Ryukyu had to deal with imperial Japanese militarism,” he said. “During World War II, Japan deliberately placed a heavy amount of military presence in Ryukyu with the intent of sacrificing Ryukyuans in order to ‘save Japan’.”

This resulted in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, which amounted to nothing short of the Ryukyuan genocide, according to the activist.

“At least 123,000 Uchinaanchu (Native Okinawans) were killed during a time frame lasting only around three months, which was around one-third of the population at the time. Japanese soldiers deliberately killed Ryukyuan men, women, children, and elderly, claiming they were ‘Chinese spies,’ using them as human shields, and forcing thousands to commit suicide. It is said that every Okinawan family lost someone during the battle. Many of my own relatives were also killed,” Kajiwara continued.

Those who survived were sent to concentration camps by the US occupation forces. During the period from the end of 1945 to 1947 locals returned to their land to find many of their homes and farms bulldozed flat and turned into US military facilities. According to some estimates, at least 40,000 Okinawan landowners lost their land and were not compensated for the loss. The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty signed between Japan and the Allies “legitimized” the US occupation of Okinawa.

“From 1945 until 1972 Ryukyu was under direct US military rule. Since 1972 Ryukyu has been under joint US and Japanese rule. This, of course, has caused great hardship for Ryukyuans, such as economic deprivation, environmental destruction, water poisoning, military accidents, and crime,” he said.

Currently, Ryukyuans fear that the US-Japanese military buildup will invite another devastating war to their land, as per the expert.

“As we speak, Japan is continuing the construction of a new airfield at Henoko, paving over the coral reef in order to build it. The Okinawan dugong, an endangered creature, is being driven into extinction by this. This airfield, along with missiles being stationed around Ryukyu, poses a direct threat to Russia, China, and North Korea. So you see, the US and Japan really have no intention of decreasing Ryukyu’s military burden at all.”

Kajiwara emphasized that he and his team are continuing to raise awareness about the risks of the US-Japanese growing militarization, adding that Okinawans remain hostages to Tokyo’s warmongering. “We discuss all these things in our upcoming documentary film, ‘Occupied Okinawa.’ The film will be entered into international film festivals around the world starting in September,” the pundit concluded.

July 31, 2024 Posted by | Film Review, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon trying to hide latest hypersonic test failure, says results ‘unclear’

By Drago Bosnic | July 31, 2024

The Pentagon just tested a hypersonic weapon, but refuses to disclose whether it was successful or not. It doesn’t even want to specify which system was involved or if there was an actual launch, as the US military often runs ground tests and presents them as “successful weapon launches”. In a previous test, the US Army’s “Dark Eagle”, a ground-based hypersonic weapon, failed miserably, forcing the Pentagon to go back to the drawing board. The initial plan was to have the weapon ready in the next two months, a year later than originally planned. The US Army and Navy are running a joint Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) program which aims to save costs by using the Common-Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB). However, the US military simply cannot master the technologies needed to make an operational weapon. Apart from dozens of failures, there are also regular cancelations of tests (just last year, there were three scrubbed test launches).

Last month, the Pentagon announced it supposedly conducted a “successful test” of the C-HGB designed for both the US Army’s “Dark Eagle” and the US Navy’s IRCPS (Intermediate Range Conventional Prompt Strike). However, it released no data about the launch, prompting many to question the validity of its claims. US military sources report that “there has been no known full end-to-end test of the missile involving a production-representative launch system”. The latest test of the unknown hypersonic weapon leaves much to be desired, with a US defense official telling The War Zone that “this test was an essential benchmark in the development of operational hypersonic technology” and that “vital data on the performance of the hardware and software was collected that will inform the continued progress toward fielding hypersonic weapons”. The source refused to provide any specifics, including the exact date, which is speculated to be July 25.

Combined with public warning notices and using online flight tracking software, observers concluded that the weapon was launched from Cape Canaveral precisely on July 25. The presence of several US Navy and NASA aircraft tracking the test on that day also supports this hypothesis. Observers and military experts mostly agree that the weapon in question was indeed the LRHW equipped with the C-HGB. Although this is yet to be explicitly confirmed by the US military, the previous aborted “Dark Eagle” tests were supposed to take place at Cape Canaveral. The concept of the missile is essentially a copy of Russia’s “Avangard” HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle), only on a much smaller scale and range. However, unlike Moscow, the US is incapable of producing an operational weapon. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) repeatedly criticized the Pentagon for its incompetence and warned about numerous delays and cost overruns.

The US military is regularly getting ahead of itself and failing to induct new weapon systems. Back in 2021, the US Army reactivated missile units that have been dormant since the (First) Cold War and deployed “Dark Eagle” launchers without missiles, expecting the weapon to be ready in months. However, it’s been three years since then and all data indicates that the missile won’t be ready before 2026 (in the best-case scenario). As a result, the US now lags not only behind China, but even North Korea and Iran. Some experts say that this could partially be because various US companies refuse to cooperate and share data. As for the US inferiority to Russian hypersonic weapons, it’s now measured in decades, a fact that not even Western experts deny. Still, the mainstream propaganda machine regularly talks about the US military’s plans to “dominate hypersonic weapons” with missiles such as the “Dark Eagle”, even though the Pentagon is yet to conduct a verifiable successful launch.

The US Army insists that the weapon will reach speeds of at least Mach 17 and a range of around 2,800 km. This falls within the previously banned intermediate-range missiles that the US is now deploying in Germany, sparking another Cold War-style missile crisis in Europe. However, apart from regular systems such as the “Typhon”, the US is unable to field advanced 21st-century hypersonic weapons, in part because it’s using outdated techniques, as reported by some analysts. Both the US Army and Navy are now uncertain about when (or whether) the LRHW or IRCPS could enter operational service. The previous three test failures were blamed on the launcher rather than the missile itself. However, as previously mentioned, this is a common practice, as the US military is now regularly reporting about either “successful booster tests” (which is not a hypersonic weapon), or simply lying about a “successful launch” which is then followed by several consecutive failures.

The mainstream propaganda machine is trying its best to hide the embarrassment with pompous articles about “Putin fearing US weapons”. The latest such text was published just days before the failed launch of July 25. Earlier this year, US media talked about “unprecedented launches”, only for these chest-thumping titles to be replaced by complete silence to avoid having to give humiliating explanations as to what went wrong. In the meantime, Russian hypersonic weapons keep obliterating illegally deployed NATO personnel across Ukraine. The US military has been having issues with fielding advanced weapons for decades, particularly when it comes to missiles. The long-running problems with its Military Industrial Complex have resulted in its inability to design even basic ICBMs. Approximately half a decade ago, I argued that the Pentagon is approximately 15-20 years behind Moscow in hypersonic technologies and that it won’t field a weapon before 2030.

Although many thought such a prognosis was too far-fetched at the time, it seems this scenario is likelier than ever before. In the last two years alone, there have been at least half a dozen failures, including those reported in GAO’s latest reviews. There are claims of a “successful test” in June, but footage shows that none of the planned ground or sea-based launchers were used, once again prompting the informed public to question the validity of such claims. All this is only reinforcing the fact that the US has fallen decades behind its geopolitical adversaries. The miserable failure of its pompously announced “Super Duper” missile shows just how widespread these troubles are in various US hypersonic programs. After the cancelation of the AGM-183A (better known as the ARRW), the US Air Force stated it would be shifting away from it to “focus its efforts on the development of an air-breathing Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM)”, which is a joint effort with several Australian companies.

However, this program is also running into numerous challenges and is unlikely to be ready any time soon. To ease the humiliation at least a bit, the US has been trying to justify Russia’s advantage in these systems by using rather pathetic excuses, such as the laughable claim that Moscow “stole” non-existent American hypersonic technologies. However, President Vladimir Putin announced that the Kremlin was developing hypersonic weapons back in 2004, when such statements were met with ridicule in the political West. Despite these ludicrous public displays of false “superiority”, the US secretly kept sending spies to steal Russian hypersonic secrets. For years, American intelligence has also been trying to get Russian scientists to sell their secrets or even recruit them to help the struggling US programs. Such attempts have been futile for the most part, but Washington DC doesn’t have much of a choice. In the meantime, all it can do is lie about “shooting down” Russian hypersonic weapons.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

July 31, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

More dead children. More BBC ‘news’ channelling Israeli propaganda as its own

By Jonathan Cook | July 28, 2024

BBC coverage of the attack on a football pitch in the Golan Heights on Saturday has been intentionally misleading.

The BBC’s evening news entirely ignored the fact that those killed by the blast are a dozen Syrians, not Israeli citizens, and that for decades the surviving Syrian population in the Golan, most of them Druze, has been forced to live unwillingly under an Israeli military occupation.

I suppose mention of this context might complicate the story Israel and the BBC wish to tell – and risk reminding viewers that Israel is a belligerent state occupying not just Palestinian territory but Syrian territory too (not to mention nearby Lebanese territory).

It might suggest to audiences that these various permanent Israeli occupations have been contributing not only to large-scale human rights abuses but to regional tensions as well. That Israel’s acts of aggression against its neighbours might be the cause of “conflict”, rather than, as Israel and the BBC would have us believe, some kind of unusual, pre-emptive form of self-defence.

The BBC, of course, chose to uncritically air comments from a military spokesman for Israel, who blamed Hizbullah for the blast in the Golan.

Daniel Hagari tried to milk the incident for maximum propaganda value, arguing: “This attack shows the true face of Hizbullah, a terrorist organisation that targets and murders children playing soccer.”

Except, as the BBC failed to mention in its report, Israel infamously targeted and murdered four young children from the Bakr family playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.

Much more recently, video footage showed Israel striking yet more children playing football at a school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for families whose homes were destroyed by earlier Israeli bombs.

Doubtless other strikes in Gaza over the past 10 months, so many of them targeting school-shelters, have killed Palestinian children playing football – especially as it is one of the very few ways they can take their mind off the horror all around.

So, should we – and the BBC – not conclude that all these attacks on children playing football make the Israeli military even more of a terrorist organisation than Hizbullah?

Note too the way the western media are so ready to accept unquestioningly Israel’s claim that Hizbullah was responsible for the blast – and dismiss Hizbullah’s denials.

Viewers are discouraged from exercising their memories. Any who do may recall that those same media outlets were only too willing to take on faith Israeli disinformation suggesting that Hamas had hit Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital back in October, even when all the evidence showed it was an Israeli air strike.

(Israel soon went on to destroy all Gaza’s hospitals, effectively eradicating the enclave’s health sector, on the pretext that medical facilities there served as Hamas bases – another patently preposterous claim the western media treated with wide-eyed credulity.)

The BBC next went to Jerusalem to hear from diplomatic editor Paul Adams. He intoned gravely: “This is precisely what we have been worrying about for the past 10 months – that something of this magnitude would occur on the northern border, that would turn what has been a simmering conflict for all of these months into an all-out war.”

So there you have it. Paul Adams and the BBC concede they haven’t been worrying for the past 10 months about the genocide unfolding under their very noses in Gaza, or its consequences.

A genocide of Palestinians, apparently, is not something of significant “magnitude”.

Only now, when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians forced to live under its military rule as a pretext to expand its “war”, are we supposed to sit up and take notice. Or so the BBC tells us.

Update:

Facebook instantly removed a post linking to this article – and for reasons that are entirely opaque to me (apart from the fact that it is critical of the BBC and Israel).

Facebook’s warning, threatening that my account may face “more account restrictions”, suggests that I was misleading followers by taking them to a “landing page that impersonates another website”. That is patent nonsense. The link took them to my Substack page.

As I have been warning for some time, social media platforms have been tightening the noose around the necks of independent journalists like me, making our work all but impossible to find. It is only a matter of time before we are disappeared completely.

Substack has been a lifeline, because it connects readers to my work directly – either through email or via Substack’s app – bypassing, at least for the moment, the grip of the social-media billionaires.

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July 31, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

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