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There’s no protection from genocide in the colonial framework of international law

Palestinian children wait to get water amid clean water and food crisis due to Israeli attacks and imposed blockade in Rafah, Gaza on March 16, 2024. [Yasser Qudaih – Anadolu Agency]
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | March 19, 2024

The entire Palestinian population in Gaza has been declared “acutely food insecure” by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. “The famine threshold for household acute food insecurity has already been far exceeded,” explained the IPC.

Very belatedly, the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell has declared that Israel is provoking famine in Gaza, and that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. What happens now that Borrell has spoken? Palestinians spoke out long before this catastrophe, remember, and — quite intentionally — not a single EU diplomat listened.

What’s more, the statistics seemed to have influenced US Secretary of State Antony Blinken enough to make a statement acknowledging the famine as having affected all Palestinians in Gaza. “This only underscores both the urgency, the imperative, of making this [humanitarian aid] the priority,” Blinken said during a press conference in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. “We need more, we need it to be sustained, and we need it to be a priority if we’re going to effectively address the needs of people.” Of the US halting its weapons exports to Israel, or joining forces to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza, not a single syllable, never mind word, was uttered.

Israel’s response, of course, was to weaponise starvation even further. As Al Jazeera reported yesterday, the settler-colonial state asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to refrain from issuing emergency orders as requested by South Africa, describing these as “an abuse of procedures”. South Africa’s legal recourse of 6 March, declared Israel’s lawyers, is “wholly unfounded in fact and law, morally repugnant, and represents an abuse both of the Genocide Convention and of the court itself.”

And there you have it in a nutshell: Israel’s twisted logic. The slightest measures to prevent genocide are “morally repugnant.” That tells you all you need to know about Israeli morality. It is probably only a matter of time before the apartheid state deems genocide to be in accordance with international law as long as it suits its own colonial interests.

Israel’s intention is for famine to work as a weapon of genocide. 

It blocks and hinders the entry of humanitarian aid, and its illegal settlers block the border crossing to prevent aid trucks getting past. Israel does nothing to stop this. The meagre amount allowed through was weaponised as a death trap, as Israeli soldiers massacred Palestinians for merely attempting to take some food home. This morning, Israel killed Major Raed Al-Banna and his family in an air strike. Al-Banna was involved in taking humanitarian aid into northern Gaza.

On the sidelines of its massacres, Israel has told the ICJ that it “has real concern for the humanitarian situation and innocent lives, as demonstrated by the actions it has and is taking,” with reference to Gaza.

It beggars belief that Israel’s quest for normalising all of its actions has reached such a level of contempt for international laws and conventions that it is allowed to waste the court’s time by lying so blatantly. The international community’s complacency, as if its only power rests in waiting for statistical updates to include in their speeches, is equally horrendous.

The genocide in Gaza is exposing all that is wrong with the colonial concept of human rights and international law, both of which only exist as foundations to protect the violators and collaborators. There is clearly no protection from genocide for its victims in the colonial framework of international law.

March 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

How the Democrats Plan to Steal the Election

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. | March 18, 2024

Biden and Trump have clinched the nominations of their parties for President. Everybody is gearing up for a battle between them for the election in November. It’s obvious that Biden is “cognitively impaired.” In blunter language, “brain-dead”. Partisans of Trump are gearing up for a decisive victory. But what if this battle is a sham? What if Biden’s elite gang of neo-con controllers won’t let Biden lose?

How can they stop him from losing? Simple. If it looks like he’s losing, the elite forces will create enough fake ballots to ensure victory. Our corrupt courts won’t stop them. They have done this before, and they will do it again, if they have to.

I said the Democrats have done this before. The great Dr. Ron Paul explains one way they did this in 2020. The elite covered up a scandal that could have wrecked Biden’s chances:

“Move over Watergate. On or around Oct. 17, 2020, then-senior Biden campaign official Antony Blinken called up former acting CIA director Mike Morell to ask a favor: he needed high-ranking former US intelligence community officials to lie to the American people to save Biden’s lagging campaign from a massive brewing scandal.

The problem was that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had abandoned his laptop at a repair shop and the explosive contents of the computer were leaking out. The details of the Biden family’s apparent corruption and the debauchery of the former vice-president’s son were being reported by the New York Post, and with the election less than a month away, the Biden campaign needed to kill the story.

So, according to newly-released transcripts of Morell’s testimony before the House judiciary Committee, Blinken “triggered” Morell to put together a letter for some 50 senior intelligence officials to sign – using their high-level government titles – to claim that the laptop story “had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

In short, at the Biden campaign’s direction Morell launched a covert operation against the American people to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election. A letter signed by dozens of the highest-ranking former CIA, DIA, and NSA officials would surely carry enough weight to bury the Biden laptop story. It worked. Social media outlets prevented any reporting on the laptop from being posted and the mainstream media could easily ignore the story as it was merely “Russian propaganda.”

Asked recently by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) why he agreed to draft the false sign-on letter, Morell testified that he wanted to “help Vice President Biden … because I wanted him to win the election.” Morell also likely expected to be named by President Biden to head up the CIA when it came time to call in favors.

The Democrats and the mainstream media have relentlessly pushed the lie that the ruckus inside the US Capitol on Jan. 6th 2021 was a move by President Trump to overthrow the election results. Hundreds of “trespassers” were arrested and held in solitary confinement without trial to bolster the false narrative that a conspiracy to steal the election was taking place.

It turns out that there really was a conspiracy to steal the election, but it was opposite of what was reported. Just as the Steele Dossier was a Democratic Party covert action to plant the lie that the Russians were pulling strings for Trump, the “Russian disinformation campaign” letter was a lie to deflect scrutiny of the Biden family’s possible corruption in the final days of the campaign.

Did the Biden campaign’s disinformation campaign help rig the election in his favor? Polls suggest that Biden would not have been elected had the American electorate been informed about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop. So yes, they cheated in the election.

The Democrats and the mainstream media are still at it, however. Now they are trying to kill the story of how they killed the story of the Biden laptop. This is a scandal that would once upon a time have ended in resignation, impeachment, and/or plenty of jail time. If they successfully bury this story, I hate to say it but there is no more rule of law in what has become the American banana republic.” See here.

But the main way the election can be rigged is by fraudulent “voting.” It’s much easier to do this with digital scanning of votes than with old-fashioned ballot boxes.

Dr. Naomi Wolf explains how electronic voting machines make it easier to steal elections:

“People could steal elections in this ‘analog’ technology of paper and locked ballot boxes, of course, by destroying or hiding votes, or by bribing voters, a la Tammany Hall, or by other forms of wrongdoing, so security and chain of custody, as well as anti-corruption scrutiny, were always needed in guaranteeing accurate election counts. But there was no reason, with analog physical processing of votes, to query the tradition of the secret ballot.

Before the digital scanning of votes, you could not hack a wooden ballot box; and you could not set an algorithm to misread a pile of paper ballots. So, at the end of the day, one way or another, you were counting physical documents.

Those days are gone, obviously, and in many districts there are digital systems reading ballots.” See here.

This isn’t the first time the Left has stolen an election. It happened in the 2020 presidential election too. Ron Unz offers his usual cogent analysis:

“There does seem to be considerable circumstantial evidence of widespread ballot fraud by Democratic Party forces, hardly surprising given the apocalyptic manner in which so many of their leaders had characterized the threat of a Trump reelection. After all, if they sincerely believed that a Trump victory would be catastrophic for America why would they not use every possible means, fair and foul alike, to save our country from that dire fate?

In particular, several of the major swing-states contain large cities—Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta—that are both totally controlled by the Democratic Party and also notoriously corrupt, and various eye-witnesses have suggested that the huge anti-Trump margins they provided may have been heavily ‘padded’ to ensure the candidate’s defeat.” See here.

In a program aired right after Biden’s pitiful State of the Union speech, the great Tucker Carlson pointed out that Biden’s “Justice” Department has already confessed that it plans to rig the election. It will do this by banning voter ID laws as “racist.” This permits an unlimited number of fake votes:

“If Joe Biden is so good at politics, why is he losing to Donald Trump, who the rest of us were assured was a retarded racist who no normal person would vote for? But now Joe Biden is getting stomped by Donald Trump, but he’s also at the same time good at politics? Right.

Again, they can’t win, but they’re not giving up. So what does that tell you? Well, they’re going to steal the election. We know they’re going to steal the election because they’re now saying so out loud. Here is the Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer of this country in Selma, Alabama, just the other day.

[Now Carlson quotes the Attorney General, Merrick Garland:]

“The right to vote is still under attack, and that is why the Justice Department is fighting back. That is why one of the first things I did when I came into office was to double the size of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division. That is why we are challenging efforts by states and jurisdictions to implement discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes and voter ID requirements. That is why we are working to block the adoption of discriminatory redistricting plans that dilute the vote of Black voters and other voters of color.

[Carlson then comments on Garland:]

“Did you catch that? Of course, you’re a racist. That’s always the takeaway. But consider the details of what the Attorney General of the United States just said. Mail-in balloting, drop boxes, voter ID requirements. The chief law enforcement officer of the United States Government is telling you that it’s immoral, in fact racist, in fact illegal to ask people for their IDs when they vote to verify they are who they say they are. What is that? Well, no one ever talks about this, but the justification for it is that somehow people of color, Black people, don’t have state-issued IDs. Somehow they’re living in a country where you can do virtually nothing without proving your identity with a government-issued ID without government-issued IDs. They can’t fly on planes, they can’t have checking accounts, they can’t have any interaction with the government, state, local, or federal. They can’t stay in hotels. They can’t have credit cards. Because someone without a state-issued ID can’t do any of those things.

But what’s so interesting is these same people, very much including the Attorney General and the administration he serves, is working to eliminate cash, to make this a cashless society. Have you been to a stadium event recently? No cash accepted. You have to have a credit card. In order to get a credit card you need a state-issued ID, and somehow that’s not racist. But it is racist to ask people to prove their identity when they choose the next President of the United States. That doesn’t make any sense at all. That’s a lie. It’s an easily provable lie, and anyone telling that lie is advocating for mass voter fraud, which the Attorney General is. There’s no other way to read it. So you should know that. You live in a country where the Attorney General is abetting, in fact calling for voter fraud, and that’s the only chance they have to get their guy re-elected.” See here.

Because of absentee ballots, the voting can be spread out over a long period of time. This makes voting fraud much easier. Mollie Hemingway has done a lot of research on this topic:

“In the 2020 presidential election, for the first time ever, partisan groups were allowed—on a widespread basis—to cross the bright red line separating government officials who administer elections from political operatives who work to win them. It is important to understand how this happened in order to prevent it in the future.

Months after the election, Time magazine published a triumphant story of how the election was won by “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”  Written by Molly Ball, a journalist with close ties to Democratic leaders, it told a cheerful story of a “conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes,” the “result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”

A major part of this “conspiracy” to “save the 2020 election” was to use COVID as a pretext to maximize absentee and early voting. This effort was enormously successful. Nearly half of voters ended up voting by mail, and another quarter voted early. It was, Ball wrote, “practically a revolution in how people vote.” Another major part was to raise an army of progressive activists to administer the election at the ground level. Here, one billionaire in particular took a leading role: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg’s help to Democrats is well known when it comes to censoring their political opponents in the name of preventing “misinformation.” Less well known is the fact that he directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an organization led by Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla, gave more than $400 million to nonprofit groups involved in “securing” the 2020 election. Most of those funds—colloquially called “Zuckerbucks”—were funneled through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a voter outreach organization founded by Tiana Epps-Johnson, Whitney May, and Donny Bridges. All three had previously worked on activism relating to election rules for the New Organizing Institute, once described by The Washington Post as “the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry.”

Flush with $350 million in Zuckerbucks, the CTCL proceeded to disburse large grants to election officials and local governments across the country. These disbursements were billed publicly as “COVID-19 response grants,” ostensibly to help municipalities acquire protective gear for poll workers or otherwise help protect election officials and volunteers against the virus. In practice, relatively little money was spent for this. Here, as in other cases, COVID simply provided cover.

According to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Georgia received more than $31 million in Zuckerbucks, one of the highest amounts in the country. The three Georgia counties that received the most money spent only 1.3 percent of it on personal protective equipment. The rest was spent on salaries, laptops, vehicle rentals, attorney fees for public records requests, mail-in balloting, and other measures that allowed elections offices to hire activists to work the election. Not all Georgia counties received CTCL funding. And of those that did, Trump-voting counties received an average of $1.91 per registered voter, compared to $7.13 per registered voter in Biden-voting counties.

The FGA looked at this funding another way, too. Trump won Georgia by more than five points in 2016. He lost it by three-tenths of a point in 2020. On average, as a share of the two-party vote, most counties moved Democratic by less than one percentage point in that time. Counties that didn’t receive Zuckerbucks showed hardly any movement, but counties that did moved an average of 2.3 percentage points Democratic. In counties that did not receive Zuckerbucks, “roughly half saw an increase in Democrat votes that offset the increase in Republican votes, while roughly half saw the opposite trend.” In counties that did receive Zuckerbucks, by contrast, three quarters “saw a significant uptick in Democrat votes that offset any upward change in Republican votes,” including highly populated Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb counties.

Of all the 2020 battleground states, it is probably in Wisconsin where the most has been brought to light about how Zuckerbucks worked.

CTCL distributed $6.3 million to the Wisconsin cities of Racine, Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, and Kenosha—purportedly to ensure that voting could take place “in accordance with prevailing [anti-COVID] public health requirements.”

Wisconsin law says voting is a right, but that “voting by absentee ballot must be carefully regulated to prevent the potential for fraud or abuse; to prevent overzealous solicitation of absent electors who may prefer not to participate in an election.” Wisconsin law also says that elections are to be run by clerks or other government officials. But the five cities that received Zuckerbucks outsourced much of their election operation to private liberal groups, in one case so extensively that a sidelined government official quit in frustration.

This was by design. Cities that received grants were not allowed to use the money to fund outside help unless CTCL specifically approved their plans in writing. CTCL kept tight control of how money was spent, and it had an abundance of “partners” to help with anything the cities needed.

Some government officials were willing to do whatever CTCL recommended. “As far as I’m concerned I am taking all of my cues from CTCL and work with those you recommend,” Celestine Jeffreys, the chief of staff to Democratic Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, wrote in an email. CTCL not only had plenty of recommendations, but made available a “network of current and former election administrators and election experts” to scale up “your vote by mail processes” and “ensure forms, envelopes, and other materials are understood and completed correctly by voters.”

Power the Polls, a liberal group recruiting poll workers, promised to help with ballot curing. The liberal Mikva Challenge worked to recruit high school-age poll workers. And the left-wing Brennan Center offered help with “election integrity,” including “post-election audits” and “cybersecurity.”

The Center for Civic Design, an election administration policy organization that frequently partners with groups such as liberal billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, designed absentee ballots and voting instructions, often working directly with an election commission to design envelopes and create advertising and targeting campaigns. The Elections Group, also linked to the Democracy Fund, provided technical assistance in handling drop boxes and conducted voter outreach. The communications director for the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, an organization that advocates sweeping changes to the elections process, ran a conference call to help Green Bay develop Spanish-language radio ads and geofencing to target voters in a predefined area.

Digital Response, a nonprofit launched in 2020, offered to “bring voters an updated elections website,” “run a website health check,” “set up communications channels,” “bring poll worker application and management online,” “track and respond to polling location wait times,” “set up voter support and email response tools,” “bring vote-by-mail applications online,” “process incoming [vote-by-mail] applications,” and help with “ballot curing process tooling and voter notification.”

The National Vote at Home Institute was presented as a “technical assistance partner” that could “support outreach around absentee voting,” provide and oversee voting machines, consult on methods to cure absentee ballots, and even assume the duty of curing ballots.

A few weeks after the five Wisconsin cities received their grants, CTCL emailed Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, to offer “an experienced elections staffer that could potentially embed with your staff in Milwaukee in a matter of days.” The staffer leading Wisconsin’s portion of the National Vote at Home Institute was an out-of-state Democratic activist named Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein. As soon as he met with Woodall-Vogg, he asked for contacts in other cities and at the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Spitzer-Rubenstein would eventually take over much of Green Bay’s election planning from the official charged with running the election, Green Bay Clerk Kris Teske. This made Teske so unhappy that she took Family and Medical Leave prior to the election and quit shortly thereafter.

Emails from Spitzer-Rubenstein show the extent to which he was managing the election process. To one government official he wrote, “By Monday, I’ll have our edits on the absentee voting instructions. We’re pushing Quickbase to get their system up and running and I’ll keep you updated. I’ll revise the planning tool to accurately reflect the process. I’ll create a flowchart for the vote-by-mail processing that we will be able to share with both inspectors and also observers.”

Once early voting started, Woodall-Vogg would provide Spitzer-Rubenstein with daily updates on the numbers of absentee ballots returned and still outstanding in each ward­­—prized information for a political operative.

Amazingly, Spitzer-Rubenstein even asked for direct access to the Milwaukee Election Commission’s voter database: “Would you or someone else on your team be able to do a screen-share so we can see the process for an export?” he wrote. “Do you know if WisVote has an [application programming interface] or anything similar so that it can connect with other software apps? That would be the holy grail.” Even for Woodall-Vogg, that was too much. “While I completely understand and appreciate the assistance that is trying to be provided,” she replied, “I am definitely not comfortable having a non-staff member involved in the function of our voter database, much less recording it.”

When these emails were released in 2021, they stunned Wisconsin observers. “What exactly was the National Vote at Home Institute doing with its daily reports? Was it making sure that people were actually voting from home by going door-to-door to collect ballots from voters who had not yet turned theirs in? Was this data sharing a condition of the CTCL grant? And who was really running Milwaukee’s election?” asked Dan O’Donnell, whose election analysis appeared at Wisconsin’s conservative MacIver Institute.

Kris Teske, the sidelined Green Bay city clerk—in whose office Wisconsin law actually places the responsibility to conduct elections—had of course seen what was happening early on. “I just don’t know where the Clerk’s Office fits in anymore,” she wrote in early July. By August, she was worried about legal exposure: “I don’t understand how people who don’t have the knowledge of the process can tell us how to manage the election,” she wrote on August 28.

Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich simply handed over Teske’s authority to agents from outside groups and gave them leadership roles in collecting absentee ballots, fixing ballots that would otherwise be voided for failure to follow the law, and even supervising the counting of ballots. “The grant mentors would like to meet with you to discuss, further, the ballot curing process. Please let them know when you’re available,” Genrich’s chief of staff told Teske.

Spitzer-Rubenstein explained that the National Vote at Home Institute had done the same for other cities in Wisconsin. “We have a process map that we’ve worked out with Milwaukee for their process. We can also adapt the letter we’re sending out with rejected absentee ballots along with a call script alerting voters. (We can also get people to make the calls, too, so you don’t need to worry about it.)”

Other emails show that Spitzer-Rubenstein had keys to the central counting facility and access to all the machines before election night. His name was on contracts with the hotel hosting the ballot counting.

Sandy Juno, who was clerk of Brown County, where Green Bay is located, later testified about the problems in a legislative hearing. “He was advising them on things. He was touching the ballots. He had access to see how the votes were counted,” Juno said of Spitzer-Rubenstein. Others testified that he was giving orders to poll workers and seemed to be the person running the election night count operation.

“I would really like to think that when we talk about security of elections, we’re talking about more than just the security of the internet,” Juno said. “You know, it has to be security of the physical location, where you’re not giving a third party keys to where you have your election equipment.”

Juno noted that there were irregularities in the counting, too, with no consistency between the various tables. Some had absentee ballots face-up, so anyone could see how they were marked. Poll workers were seen reviewing ballots not just to see that they’d been appropriately checked by the clerk, but “reviewing how they were marked.” And poll workers fixing ballots used the same color pens as the ones ballots had been filled out in, contrary to established procedures designed to make sure observers could differentiate between voters’ marks and poll workers’ marks.

The plan by Democratic strategists to bring activist groups into election offices worked in part because no legislature had ever imagined that a nonprofit could take over so many election offices so easily. “If it can happen to Green Bay, Wisconsin, sweet little old Green Bay, Wisconsin, these people can coordinate any place,” said Janel Brandtjen, a state representative in Wisconsin.

She was right. What happened in Green Bay happened in Democrat-run cities and counties across the country. Four hundred million Zuckerbucks were distributed with strings attached. Officials were required to work with “partner organizations” to massively expand mail-in voting and staff their election operations with partisan activists. The plan was genius. And because no one ever imagined that the election system could be privatized in this way, there were no laws to prevent it.

Such laws should now be a priority.” See here.

Let’s do everything we can to publicize the steal. That way, we have a chance to prevent it.

March 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Niger broke military pact with US after being ‘warned’ about Iran, Russia ties

Press TV – March 19, 2024

Niger’s junta decided to suspend a military agreement with the United States after a delegation of senior US military officials visited the Western African country and “expressed concerns” about its growing relations with Russia and Iran.

The Pentagon said on Monday that the officials traveled to the Nigerien capital Niamey last week to discuss the matter with the country’s military leadership, seeking clarification about the way ahead.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh asserted that the US government had “direct and frank” conversations in Niger, and was continuing to communicate with the country’s ruling military council – known as the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP).

“The US delegation was there to raise a number of concerns. … We were troubled (about) the path that Niger is on. And so these were direct and frank conversations, to have those in person, to talk about our concerns and to also hear theirs.

“US officials expressed concern over Niger’s potential relationships with Russia and Iran,” Singh said.

Niger’s junta announced on Saturday that it had canceled a 2012 defense cooperation agreement with the US.

“The government of Niger, considering the aspirations and interests of its people, responsibly decides to denounce with immediate effect the agreement that permitted US military personnel and civilian employees from the American Department of Defense on Niger’s territory,” Nigerien government spokesman Amadou Abdramane said in a statement on national television.

The move followed a visit to Niamey by a delegation of senior US military officials led by Under Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee.

Abdramane accused US officials of not following diplomatic protocol and not informing Niger about the composition of the delegation.

He added that Niger regretted the “intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right of choosing their partners and partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism.”

High-level Russian military officials, including Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov, have visited Niger and met with the country’s military leadership.

The prime minister of the ruling junta, Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine, visited Iran in January.

Foreign Minister of Niger, Bakary Yaou Sangare, visited Tehran in October 2023 to explore opportunities for strengthening political and economic ties, as well as boosting cooperation in scientific and technological sectors between the two countries.

Commending Iran’s skills in various economic, scientific, and technological sectors, the Nigerien diplomat underscored that Iran’s capabilities are well-matched to cater to Niger’s requirements in the energy and industrial domains.

March 19, 2024 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Germany: Green Party demands TikTok ban of popular AfD party

By Denes Albert | Remix News | March 19, 2024

To keep people away from Alternative for Germany (AfD) content, the Green-affiliated campaign network Campact wants to ban the AfD from TikTok. With the AfD the second most popular party in the country, part of the party’s appeal may be tied to its popularity on TikTok, where it is more popular than all the other German parties and has twice as many followers as all other parties combined.

The ruling left-liberal government is desperate to stop the AfD, including using anti-democratic means. While the government works towards banning the party entirely, a part of this all-out effort against AfD means cutting it off from the marketplace of ideas, where the other parties are outright losing.

Campact is working to collect signatures in this effort, calling for the AfD to be banned from TikTok. They will deliver this petition to representatives of the company’s headquarters in Berlin.

The reason given is: “The right-wing extremist slogans reach children and young people in particular.” The Green-backed organization claims this is “dangerous.”

The campaign network is aiming to obtain 200,000 signatures before it delivers its petition to the Berlin branch of the short-form video platform. However, Campact has overshot this mark, earning around 250,000 signatures in what it describes as a campaign against “hatred and agitation.”

AfD’s popularity is a major problem for rival parties on the platform, where AfD features over 409,000 followers, while the Social Democrats (SPD), the Left Party, Free Democrats (FDP), the Christian Democrats (CDU), and the Greens only have a combined total of 220,000 followers. AfD videos are also wildly popular in comparison, earning twice the number of views of all other parties combined.

The former campaign manager of the Green Party and an influential political advisor, Johannes Hillje, is warning about the party’s success.

“The TikTok generation is threatening to become an AfD generation,” he said to Der Spiegel. He said that AfD’s strong showing in state elections is tied to younger people voting for the party, which is due in part to the AfD’s successful TikTok strategy.

Teens and young people are also openly backing the AfD on TikTok. Notably, this week, a freedom-of-speech scandal erupted after reports that a 16-year-old, Loretta B., posted comments on TikTok supportive of the AfD party. When three officers pulled her out of her school in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, it resulted in a major scandal and warnings of a repressive police state. The scandal has made international news, with billionaire Elon Musk even defending the girl on X.

Remix News’ TikTok channel faces a shadowban on TikTok after earning millions of views. The account featured numerous warnings for news content and multiple suspensions, showcasing TikTok’s willingness to ban or shadowban news platforms and opinions. However, AfD’s channel has so far avoided such censorship.

March 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

NATO troops active in Ukraine – El Pais

RT | March 19, 2024

Active and former military personnel from NATO states have long been operating in Ukraine, overseeing Kiev’s use of Western-supplied weapons, El Pais reported on Monday.

The US-led military bloc has been involved “in virtually every possible aspect” of the hostilities aside from active combat operations, the Spanish newspaper claimed. That includes supplying weapons, providing targeting information, and training Ukrainian soldiers inside the country, El Pais reported, citing interviews conducted throughout the conflict.

Retired foreign military service members who have joined the Ukrainian armed forces as “volunteers” are also serving as de facto agents for their home nations, El Pais said. They provide “knowledge about the situation on the front, to identify the effectiveness of the weapons supplied and possible problems in their use, as well as to detect possible cases of corruption concerning the aid provided,” the outlet claimed.

The presence of current and former NATO troops has been tacitly admitted by officials, the Spanish newspaper reported. It described recent suggestions by French President Emmanuel Macron that Western nations could send soldiers to Ukraine as “taboo-breaking,” in the sense of proposing active combat roles for Western military personnel.

While a handful of Western leaders have backed Macron’s position that deployments to aid Kiev in the conflict with Russia cannot be ruled out, numerous officials – including NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – have dismissed the idea.

Moscow perceives the Ukraine conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainians serve as ‘cannon fodder’ for Western interests. It considers foreigners fighting for Kiev as “mercenaries” who are doing the bidding of Western governments.

“We hear both French and English speech there [in the Ukraine conflict]. There is nothing good in this, first of all for them, because they die there and in large numbers,” President Vladimir Putin said last week, commenting on Macron’s remarks on potential Western troop deployments.

Senior Russian officials have suggested that more complex weapon systems provided to Kiev are highly likely operated by NATO staff, as there was not sufficient time to train Ukrainians on how to handle them.

Last month, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz revealed the involvement of British and French forces in preparing Ukrainian missile launches, as he explained why Berlin would not supply similar weapons to Kiev.

March 19, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Russia Considers US Proposals to Start Arms Control Talks ‘Hypocrisy’

Sputnik – 18.03.2024

Moscow considers Washington’s proposals to hold arms control talks “hypocrisy,” the Russian Foreign Ministry told Sputnik on Monday.

“American officials are declaring their alleged desire to enter into arms control discussions with Russia without preconditions but they clearly did not bother to read the February 29 address of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly, which has our fundamental assessments of this kind of hypocrisy and demagogy amid Washington’s desire to inflict ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia,” the ministry said.

Earlier in the day, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that the United States stands ready to engage in bilateral arms control talks with China and Russia without any preconditions.

“The United States is willing to engage in bilateral arms control discussions with Russia and China right now, without preconditions. All they have to do is say ‘yes’ and come to the table in good faith,” Thomas-Greenfield said during a UN Security Council meeting.

Russia’s policy has not changed, and the country is ready to discuss arms control altogether with focus on issues that directly involve Moscow’s security interests, the Russian Foreign Ministry added.

“In the meantime, we are invited to conduct dialogue exclusively on US terms and only on those issues that are of interest to Washington,” the ministry said.

Deputy Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy in turn said that the strategic dialogue between Russia and the United States on arms control is only possible if the US and NATO revise their anti-Russian course.

“Any interaction will only be possible if the United States and NATO review their anti-Russian course and when they show that they are ready to participate in comprehensive dialogue taking into account all of our strategic stability factors and removing all of the concerns that we have,” Polyanskiy said at the UN Security Council meeting.

He stressed that the strategic dialogue between the US and the Russian Federation cannot be separated from the general and military context.

At the same time Russia stands ready to negotiate on the issue of nuclear disarmament with interested countries during the new Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) Review conference, Polyanskiy added.

“We expect that our Western colleagues will abandon their very dangerous and destructive course. We are open within the new NPT Review conference to a constructive dialogue with all countries interested in reaching a consensus understanding on how we can create preconditions for further nuclear disarmament,” he said.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Major Studies Find No Evidence of Brain Injury in Alleged ‘Havana Syndrome’ Patients

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | March 18, 2024

Two studies conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) on scores of people claiming to have Havana Syndrome did not find any evidence of brain damage. Purported victims of Havana Syndrome claim they were targeted by a foreign power with a mysterious weapon that caused undetectable neurological issues.

Havana Syndrome was first reported among American diplomats in Cuba in 2016 who claimed to be exposed to a sonic weapon that caused headaches. An investigation published by JASON, a group of scientists who advise the US government, concluded that crickets native to Cuba were making the noise, causing neurological symptoms among American officials in Havana.

Since, scores of diplomats have reported symptoms in a range of countries including Vietnam, Russia, and China. The self-identified victims claim they were targeted with some form of microwave, sonic, or direct energy weapon that caused a myriad of symptoms, including headaches, as well as problems with sleep, vision, and hearing.

On Monday, NIH published two studies that concluded Havana Syndrome was not caused by directed energy weapons. Additionally, in both investigations, researchers were unable to detect any signs to indicate the patients had suffered neurological damage.

“In this exploratory neuroimaging study, there was no significant MRI-detectable evidence of brain injury among the group of participants who experienced [anomalous health incidents] compared with a group of matched control participants,” the authors wrote. However, researchers did not dismiss the possibility that somehow the claimed victims were actually targeted with a mysterious weapon.

Robert E. Bartholomew and Dr. Adam Gaffney argued that Havana Syndrome, rather than being caused by weapons, is a mass psychogenic illness. In an essay published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Bartholomew explains, “As is typical in mass psychogenic illness outbreaks, as news of the ‘attacks’ spread among the diplomatic community, more US Embassy staff were affected, including members of the Canadian Embassy.”

He continues, “The irregular patterning of the ‘attacks’ is not typical of an infectious agent. Many ‘incidents’ were said to have occurred in homes and hotels. Why were some people affected, while others either standing or sleeping next to the ‘victim,’ were not?”

Still, allegations of attacks causing Havana syndrome continued to impact American officials around the world into the first years of the Joe Biden administration. The claims of attacks have led to the demonization of Russia, the breakdown of diplomatic relations with Cuba, and the delay of high-level visits to foreign nations.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Supreme Court Appears Wary of Blocking Biden Admin-Big Tech Censorship Collusion

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | March 18, 2024

During oral arguments in a major First Amendment case on Monday, the Supreme Court expressed reservations about restricting interactions between the Biden administration and social media platforms. This concern emerged during the Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v. Biden) case, which delves into the extent of governmental influence over online content.

Brian Fletcher, Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, presented oral arguments for the petitioners in the case, Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy and several other current and former members of the Biden administration.

The respondents in the case, the States of Missouri and Louisiana, and several other individuals who were subject to social media censorship, allege that the federal government had pressured platforms to block or downgrade posts on various topics, including some related to Covid and the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Several lower courts agreed with the respondents, with a district judge describing the Biden administration’s Big Tech-censorship collusion as “Orwellian” and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finding that the Biden admin likely violated the First Amendment when pushing for social media censorship.

During the oral arguments today though, the justices displayed skepticism towards a broad prohibition on governmental communications with social media platforms. They raised concerns that such a ruling could unduly restrain the government’s ability to address pressing issues.

Fletcher defended the Biden admin’s actions and framed them as the government exercising its right to “speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers.” He argued that the government is entitled to communicate with social media companies to influence their content moderation decisions, as long as these interactions do not veer into coercion. According to Fletcher, the litmus test for legality should be the presence or absence of threats from the government, asserting that using the bully pulpit for exhortations is a right protected under the First Amendment.

Fletcher also tried to argue for the significant power and autonomy of social media companies, noting their capability to resist governmental pressures.

The solicitor general of Louisiana, Benjamin Aguiñaga, representing one of the Republican-led states behind the lawsuit, argued that the government’s actions amounted to coercion, effectively leading to censorship by social media platforms. He highlighted a significant shift in the focus of government-led content moderation. Initially aimed at tackling foreign interference and misinformation, these efforts increasingly targeted speech by American citizens, particularly around the contentious topics of the 2020 election and the pandemic.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson challenged Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga’s viewpoint. “And so I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country. And you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information. So, can you help me? Because I’m really worried about that.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett also voiced concerns, questioning whether the FBI could legally request social media platforms to remove content, such as posts revealing personal information about officials.

Aguiñaga’s argument was that such actions could potentially suppress constitutionally protected speech.

The oral arguments went off into the weeds and into the nuances of what constitutes “coercion” by the government in its interactions with social media platforms, rather than directly addressing the core text of the First Amendment. This focus on “coercion” rather than the First Amendment’s explicit wording – prohibiting the “abridging” of the freedom of speech, or of the press – played into the Biden administration’s hands.

Justices Kavanaugh and Kagan drew a comparison between the case and the interactions that often occur between administration officials and news media. They proposed that efforts by officials to shape media coverage should be seen as constructive dialogue, not necessarily an attempt at censorship, and suggested such actions don’t violate the First Amendment’s provisions.

Kagan challenged the lawyer from Louisiana to demonstrate that the removal of the contentious posts was the result of government intervention rather than actions taken by the social media companies themselves.

“What distinguishes this as an act of the government rather than a decision made by the platforms?” Kagan inquired.

The discussion among the justices also ventured into the standing of the plaintiffs – Missouri and Louisiana, accompanied by five individuals – to bring the lawsuit. They questioned whether these parties had experienced a direct injury that would justify their legal challenge. Furthermore, the justices expressed doubts about the appropriateness of a wide-ranging injunction that would bar various officials from contacting social media platforms as a remedy to the alleged issue.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor specifically addressed concerns regarding the approach taken by the plaintiffs in presenting their case. Directing her comments to Aguiñaga, Justice Sotomayor criticized the framing of their argument. She pointed out that the plaintiff’s brief seemed to leave out crucial information, thereby altering the context of certain claims, a point which she found particularly troubling.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared to concur with the notion that the federal government’s diverse array of agencies, which often lack a unified stance, weakens the argument of coercion. During a dialogue with the attorney from Louisiana, he observed, “It’s not monolithic.” He then posed a question that implied this multiplicity of voices in the federal government could substantially diminish the idea of coercion: “That has to dilute the concept of coercion significantly. Doesn’t it?”

While the justices mostly appeared skeptical of prohibiting the federal government from pressuring social media platforms to censor speech, there were some moments where they questioned the Biden admin’s arguments.

Justice Sotomayor pressed Fletcher to give her specifics on how the injunction that prohibits officials from coercing or significantly encouraging a platform’s content-moderation decisions would harm the government.

Fletcher responded by claiming that the injunction would prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from flagging foreign “disinformation” to platforms, prevent White House officials from criticizing the platform’s practices on “misinformation,” and prevent officials complaining about or flagging various other types of legal content on social media.

Justice Samuel Alito also noted that two lower courts have found or accepted that some examples of Big Tech censorship that were highlighted in this case were “traceable to the government’s actions.”

He added: “We don’t usually reverse findings of fact that had been endorsed by two lower courts.”

Additionally, Justice Alito expressed skepticism about the White House and other federal officials constant “pestering” of Facebook and other social media platforms.

“And I thought, wow, I cannot imagine federal officials taking that approach to the print media,” Justice Alito said. “I thought, you know, the only reason why this is taking place is because the federal government has got Section 230 and antitrust in its pocket, and it’s…to mix my metaphors, and it’s got these big clubs available to it. And so it’s treating Facebook and these other platforms like their subordinates.”

After the hearing, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), one of the legal groups representing the respondents in this case, urged the justices to recognize that the Biden admin’s censorship pressure violated the First Amendment.

“Our clients, who include top doctors and scientists, were censored for social media posts that turned out to be factually accurate, depriving the public of valuable perspectives during a public health crisis,” Jenin Younes, Litigation Counsel at the NCLA said. “We’re optimistic that the majority will look at the record and recognize that this was a sprawling government censorship enterprise without precedent in this country, and that this cannot be permitted to continue if the First Amendment is to survive.”

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Scholz won’t congratulate Putin on election victory – Berlin

RT | March 18, 2024

The Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz will not send a message of congratulations to Russian President Vladimir Putin on his re-election victory, which Berlin has branded as “undemocratic,” government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann told a media briefing on Monday.

Putin won the ballot by a wide margin, receiving 87% of the votes, according to the Russian Central Election Commission. This year’s vote also saw the highest turnout in Russia’s modern history, which surpassed 74%.

Hoffmann claimed that the vote was not democratic and “no real opposing candidates were allowed.” She went so far as to brand Russia a “dictatorship” ruled “in an authoritarian manner” by Putin, and added that Scholz shares such an assessment.

Russia’s election saw four candidates present on the ballot. Apart from Putin, who ran as an independent with support from three political parties, all other candidates were nominated by major parliamentary opposition parties: the left-wing Communist Party of Russia, the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and the New People Party, which entered the State Duma in 2021.

Berlin decried an alleged “climate of intimidation” and a lack of “freedom of expression” in Russia, as it justified Scholz’s decision not to congratulate Putin on his landslide victory.

“We see this so-called election in Russia last weekend as neither free nor fair,” Hoffmann said, in a statement that was similar to one earlier offered by the US.

She called it “extremely problematic” that votes were also held in the four former Ukrainian territories – the two Donbass republics as well the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions – which joined Russia following a series of referendums in autumn 2022 that Kiev and its Western backers have not recognized.

The Russian national election of 2024 prompted a flurry of critical statements in the West, which were dismissed by Moscow as expected but irrelevant. “This is not an opinion for us to heed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday, referring to remarks made by Washington and other Western nations.

Earlier, Putin himself responded to Western criticism of the election results, calling them “predictable,” considering that those nations “are fighting against us, including with arms,” referring to the West’s constant stream of weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Dissecting the ultra-Zionist cult Chabad and its complicity in genocide in Gaza

By David Miller | Press TV | March 18, 2024

In December last year, in the town of Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, a Jewish religious outpost was established in a partially destroyed building. It was described as the ‘first Chabad House’ in the besieged, war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

Chabad is an ultra-orthodox Jewish cult. It has many adherents in the genocidal Israeli occupation forces. Many of them wear Chabad patches on their uniforms. Here is a Zionist tank flying the distinctive Chabad flag in Gaza.

In addition, there are also Chabad Rabbis attached to the Israeli occupation forces. One notes that the genocide is actually about “rooting out evil”. Here two Chabad Rabbis erected the Jewish religious symbol, the Menorah, in Gaza.

But what is Chabad? It styles itself as a friendly outgoing Jewish movement dedicated to helping Jews reconnect with Judaism. However, in reality, it is a supremacist, hate-mongering Zionist cult.

In the past it was anti-Zionist, but back then, even as far back as 1929, its adherents in Al Khalil (or Hebron as it is called by Zionists) were involved in spying on the Palestinians for the Haganah terror militia as well as storing weapons for them.

Chabad is now so ultra-Zionist that it called in December for Gaza to be recolonized with Jewish settlers. Worse, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, its adherents believe – as laid out in the Tanya, Chabad’s key religious text – gentiles have only animal souls, not human souls.

In January, the Tanya was printed out by the Israeli occupation forces in Gaza. This supremacism is carried over into its attitude to the Palestinians.

Followers of a Chabad Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh are known as the ‘hilltop youth’. Two of his followers wrote the hugely controversial King Torah, which was also recommended by Ginsburg.

The book states that it is permissible to kill Palestinian children, including babies.

“There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”

Ginsburg was even detained by police over his promotion of the book.

It’s not just words. Ginsburg’s followers in the so-called ‘Hilltop Youth’ are said by the Zionist intelligence agency Shin Bet to be responsible for most ‘price tag’ revenge attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

In 1988, Israeli regime premier Benjamin Netanyahu famously met with the leader of Chabad in New York where the notorious Zionist cult has its global headquarters.

Netanyahu has maintained a strong relationship with Chabad ever since. Here he is seen addressing them at an event in 2014.

These are the forces – supported and aided by the United States and the United Kingdom – unleashed as part of the genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

In December, it was revealed that a Chabad group in the UK was fundraising to support the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has already claimed the lives of more than 31,700 Palestinians, 70 percent of them children and women, since October 7.

Rabbi Aryeh Sufrin of Chabad claimed back in October that the Hamas resistance movement is “worse than ISIS (Daesh)” in full conformity with Zionist entity talking points. He also disclosed that his son is a British recruit to the occupation forces and was in occupied Palestine at the time.

The Chabad appeal read “Vital equipment needed by the IDF… Funds raised will go directly to equipment needed by Aron DovSufrin’s reserve unit, up in the North of Israel, and Support Units.”

Aron DovShufrin is of course the son of the Rabbi, serving actively in the genocidal occupation forces.

Chabad-Lubavitch is an ultra-orthodox Hasidic sect that also happens to be a Zionist supremacist and genocidal cult. It originates in Liubavichi in Russia near the border with Belarus and is a global movement with more than 5,000 offices in over 100 countries and in all 50 states of the US.

The cult even has offices in seemingly unlikely places such as China, Belarus, Tunisia, Morocco and Venezuela.

It has prominent supporters in many places. For example, the new Argentinian president Javier Milei is a Chabad devotee. Donald Trump donated to Chabad, though not as much as his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who played a pivotal role in the normalization of the Zionist entity.

Obviously, Chabad has been highly organized in Ukraine and its followers were amongst those recruited to the Nazi Azov Battalion, which it is important to recall, was co-founded by a former member of the Israel occupation forces.

Press TV’s flagship weekly show Palestine Declassified previously reported how Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky bankrolled Chabad in Ukraine as well as the Nazi Azov and Aidar battalions.

Back in the UK, there are around one hundred Chabad groups or offices. It flies under the radar and is widely regarded as well-meaning if a little eccentric.

In reality, it is an extremist group that is building support for genocide in the UK.

Ironically, the Community Security Trust has aided Chabad – giving them security advice after an edition of Palestine Declassified exposed some of their activities.

The CST has ‘educating about extremism‘ as one of its charitable objectives, but it is unwilling to educate us on the extremism of Chabad.

There is a very good reason for that. Gerald Ronson, who created and runs the CST, is himself a Zionist extremist and has been supporting Chabad for more than half a century.

Here he is in 2013 as a guest of honor at one of their events.

Zionist extremists are widely scattered across the UK and form a mutually supportive network. This is a key element of the justification and support for genocide in Gaza.

David Miller is the producer and co-host of Press TV’s weekly Palestine Declassified show. He was sacked from Bristol University in October 2021 over his Palestine advocacy. 

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza Genocide Exposes Fraud of U.S.-led NATO’s Humanitarian Wars

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 17, 2024

Twenty-five years ago, the United States and the NATO military alliance launched an illegal war on former Yugoslavia.

It was a watershed event that led to a series of US-led NATO wars around the world over the next quarter century until today – all on the basis of some lofty principle about “defending” human rights or democracy.

In the former Yugoslavia, the 10-week aerial bombing campaign that began on March 24, 1999, caused hundreds of civilian deaths and destroyed the infrastructure of what was then a well-developed socialist country.

The rationale for the military intervention was declared to be a “humanitarian” one – allegedly to protect civilians in a civil war.

International lawyer and author Dan Kovalik says that the “humanitarian” pretext for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was a sham.

The real objective, he says, was for the United States and its Western imperialist partners to create a precedent for systematically violating international law.

Kovalik is the author of the book ‘No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using Humanitarian Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests’.

The NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia did not have legal authorization from the United Nations Security Council. It was a unilateral action more accurately defined as an illegal aggression – a war crime.

Kovalik notes that the historical period was a crucial one. During the 1990s, the United States was reconfiguring its imperial power in the post-Cold War era (1945-90). With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington was proclaimed to be the sole superpower. He says that the United States wanted to establish its prerogative in the post-Cold War world of using its military power and that of its NATO partners wherever and whenever it needed for the purpose of advancing its strategic interests.

The US-led aggression against Yugoslavia was thus an opening to a new world order for American and NATO military power to be used at will in total disregard of international law and the United Nations Charter that had been drawn up in 1945 to prevent the kind of aggression that Nazi Germany had waged.

In short, it was a reinvention of imperialism dressed in a cloak of virtue.

Following Yugoslavia, which was balkanized as a result of the NATO aggression, the United States and its military partners embarked on a 25-year orgy of illegal wars and covert interventions. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and other places in the Middle East and Africa. Endless wars costing the Western public trillions of dollars and fomenting a litany of socio-economic problems from mass migration to mass poverty – all of these wars have been engaged in by successive US presidents, including Democrat incumbent Joe Biden and his Republican rival Donald Trump.

The current war in Ukraine – the biggest since World War Two – can be attributed to NATO’s relentless expansion towards Russia’s borders over the past 25 years. Washington and its Western partners claim to be defending democracy, human rights and international law in Ukraine against alleged Russian aggression. This Western narrative ignores the reality that the US and its NATO partners have militarized a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine for at least eight years before the current conflict erupted on February 24, 2022.

Daniel Kovalik concludes with a devastating argument: if the United States and its NATO allies are so concerned by humanitarian principles and democracy then why are they not intervening to stop the genocide in Gaza against Palestinians? Over 30,000 people – mainly women and children – have been killed by Israeli military offensive. Far from intervening to protect civilians from Israeli slaughter and starvation, the United States and its NATO partners are fully complicit in supporting Israeli war crimes – militarily, politically and diplomatically.

Western “humanitarian intervention” so readily embarked on elsewhere is exposed as a grotesque fraud to cover for US imperialist crimes.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

SpaceX’s spy satellite network deal a major step toward ‘space militarization,’ poses new threat to global security: experts

By Fan Anqi and Guo Yuandan | Global Times |March 17, 2024

SpaceX’s increasing involvement in US’ military deployment poses a new threat to world peace and stability, and may even impact the everyday lives of ordinary people around the world, experts warned after the company is reportedly building a powerful spy satellite network using hundreds of its satellites for US intelligence agencies.

In an exclusive report from Reuters on Saturday, the commercial space giant is allegedly building a network of spy satellites under a classified contract worth $1.8 billion with a US intelligence agency called the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Reuters said, citing sources familiar with the program.

A special business unit under SpaceX, Starshield, is undertaking the project, the sources revealed, and if successful, it would significantly advance the US military’s ability to quickly spot potential targets “almost anywhere on the globe,” the reports said.

The reason the NRO chose SpaceX was mainly due to the company’s advantage in the number of small satellites it has in orbit, which allows for maximum coverage of more orbital levels, Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military expert and media commentator, told the Global Times on Sunday.

“The large number of satellites can enable the monitoring of a certain area without any blind spots, not only in coverage but also in time duration, thereby creating an all-encompassing spy network above the heads of all countries around the world,” Wei said.

Starshield was established in December 2022, when the company announced it was “expanding its Starlink satellite technology into military applications.” The target customers of Starshield includes the Pentagon and other national security agencies.

While the company tried hard to separate the two units to calm public worries, it is clear to all that the line is not so clear. Starshield will utilize the Starlink satellite constellation in low-Earth orbit to meet the growing needs of the US defense and intelligence agencies, media reports said, further blurring the boundary between civilian and military use.

Prior to this program, the Pentagon was already a big customer of SpaceX, using its Falcon 9 rockets to launch a dozen military payloads into space, according to media reports.

“This move is very dangerous,” Wei said, as once space becomes another arena for arms race, the company’s assets could be in jeopardy. In addition, if this spy satellite network gets involved in a US-instigated “space war” and thus poses threats to other countries, SpaceX may become a target for retaliation or counterbalance.

Wang Ya’nan, chief editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, believes that countries and regions will definitely take countermeasures once the network become operational, such as by moving facilities underground or using optical camouflage for concealment. As a result, obtaining sensitive information would still not be “a piece of cake” for US intelligence agencies, Wang told the Global Times.

Nevertheless, observers believe the spy network will pose a new threat to global peace and security. “The US’ extensive intelligence reconnaissance of countries or regions of interest will inevitably make some hot-button issues more sensitive or even escalate, and it will also make already complex international relationships more difficult to handle,” Wang said.

Wei warned that the satellite system will not only monitor military targets but civilian targets as well, potentially exposing the daily lives of ordinary people to surveillance, which will have significant negative implications for information security and personal privacy protection worldwide.

While the US incessantly hypes China’s “growing threat” in space and advocates for “demilitarization,” it has not stopped building up its military capabilities in the field, with the true aim of achieving a dominant position in space technology to support its superiority. “Due to the US’ instigations, we may eventually have to face the fact that space has become a new battleground,” Wang noted.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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