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New German government wants to ban ‘lies’

Remix News | March 28, 2025

The new German government coalition, which is likely to be the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) is looking to ban “lies,” according to a working paper that emerged from the group “culture and media” between the two parties.

Bild newspaper received a copy of the working paper, which outlines the goal of combating “fake” news on social media, including restrictions on it.

The paper from the CDU and SPD indicates that “disinformation and fake news” threaten democracy.

In fact, the paper argues that freedom of expression does not apply in such circumstances.

Bild contacted a number of constitutional lawyers, and they are highly skeptical of the law.

“Lies are only prohibited if they are punishable, for example in the case of sedition. Otherwise, you can lie,” said Volker Boehme-Neßler, a professor at the University of Oldenburg.

Even determining a lie is a legal complexity.

“It is not an easy question of what a factual claim and what an expression of opinion is. Most courts interpret freedom of expression very broadly,” he added.

He also took aim at a specific part of the working paper, which addresses “hate and agitation.”

He said, “‘hate and agitation’ — these are ‘no legal terms.” He added, “Basically, the spread of hatred in Germany is protected by freedom of expression. An assertion like ‘I hate all politicians,’ does not yet constitute a criminal offense.”

Another law professor from the University of Augsburg, Josef Franz Lindner, said that the “deliberate spreading of false facts is not punishable, not illegal.”

He said that if the new government moves forward with a law against “fake news,” it would represent a grave threat to freedom of speech.

He said he can only warn against a “fake news” offense being created, saying “Ultimately, it would expose any controversial statement to the risk of criminal prosecution.”

It is also worth noting that Friedrich Merz himself, who is likely to be Germany’s next chancellor, openly lied when he said that his party would [not] support an end to the debt brake. Almost immediately after the election, he said the debt brake would be lifted, and that Germany would take on historic amounts of debt.

Lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel, who has a broad range of clients related to internet censorship, says the CDU and SPD’s goal with the new paper is to “intimidate the unpopular social media” content producers. He said that such censorship already lacks a “constitutional basis.”

March 29, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

From JFK to Donald Trump: How the USA Became Wedded to Zionist Israel

By Rick Sterling | Global Research | March 28, 2025

There are many contrasts between the 35th president, John F. Kennedy, and the 45th and 47th president, Donald J. Trump. One extreme example is regarding U.S. policy toward Israel.

JFK and Israel/Palestine

Unknown to many people today, JFK supported Palestinian rights and sought a sustainable peace in the region.

In 1960, when JFK was campaigning to be president, he spoke at the convention of the Zionists of America. In his speech, Kennedy was complimentary about Israel but frankly said,

“I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate.”

That warning, issued when Israel had only existed for 12 years, was ignored. Israel continued to act in an aggressive zionist fashion. 

Kennedy did not just issue warnings. To the chagrin of the Israelis, JFK established friendly relations with Egypt’s President Nasser. The Kennedy administration provided loans and aid to Egypt.

The JFK administration supported UN resolution 194 which called for the right of return for Palestinian refugees driven out of their homeland. Although Israel committed to abide by UN resolutions when it was admitted to the United Nations in 1949, the Israelis reneged on this commitment and were hostile to the resolution. The day before JFK was assassinated, the New York Times reported (p 19), “Israel Dissents as U.N. Group Backs U.S. on Arab Refugees” and “U.S. Stand Angers Israel.” The second item begins, “Premier Levi Eshkol expressed extreme distaste today for the United States’ position in the Palestinian-refugee debate.” 

John Kennedy’s brother Robert was Attorney General and headed the Department of Justice. For two years, up until the end of 1963, the DOJ made increasingly strict demands that the American Zionist Council (AZC)  register as agents of a foreign country. In response, the AZC stalled, delayed, and created the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The most intense disagreement between Tel Aviv and Washington was regarding the nuclear site under construction at Dimona. JFK was intent on stopping the expansion of countries which possessed nuclear weapons. Although IsraeliPrime Minister Ben-Gurion said the nuclear site was for peaceful purposes, JFK insisted that the US needed to inspect and confirm this. The inspection deadline was December 1963. 

In each of these four areas of contention, US policy changed dramatically after JFK was assassinated and Lyndon Johnson became president. Dimona was never properly inspected, and LBJ did not object to Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons. The demand that the American Zionist Council register as an agent of a foreign country was dropped. Over time, the US withdrew their support of UN resolution 194, and LBJ was hostile to Nasser and ended US loans and support. Details of this process are described in this article and this book. 

Israel Policy Since JFK and Today

With few exceptions, US policy has been subservient to Israel’s wants ever since JFK.  An extreme low point was the treachery of President Johnson in covering up the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty during the June 1967 “Six Day War”. News about the Israeli killing and injuring of over 200 US sailors was suppressed for decades.   

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Damaged USS Liberty on 9 June 1967, one day after attack (Public Domain)

Now we are in a new extreme low point. In his first presidency, Trump flouted international law and longstanding US policy by moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The significant move was driven by mega donor Sheldon Adelson who wanted it announced on Trump’s first day in office. Another prime concern of Adelson was to torpedo the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Trump responded as expected and withdrew the US from the agreement, effectively killing it.

Now President Trump’s administration is trampling on the right to free speech and aggressively suppressing critics of Israel. This repression on behalf of Israel was taking place under Biden but has escalated dramatically. Authorities have imprisoned a perfectly legal resident, Mahmoud Khalil. They have forced Columbia University to punish students without just cause and to impose obvious restrictions and prohibitions on speech and opinion. Why did they do this? It appears to follow the wishes of megadonor Miriam Adelson. She is president and chief funder of the Maccabee Task Force, which has campaigned on these issues for months.

As reported at Responsible Statecraft,

“Adelson’s support for the administration’s campaign to stifle criticism of Israel on college campuses isn’t a new focus but her alignment with the levers of state powers to implement her vision are unprecedented. In fact, tax documents reveal that she is directly overseeing a social media campaign targeting Khalil and Columbia University.” 

In addition to suppressing free speech and punishing critics of Israel, the Trump administration has bombed and attacked an independent country (Yemen) in the service of Israel. They are doing this despite the fact that Yemen did NOT threaten U.S. ships in the region. The Houthi government only threatened Israeli ships after Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire and prevented food and other necessary humanitarian aid getting into Gaza. Israel, with U.S. support, is blatantly defying the International Court of Justice which ordered Israel to “maintain open the Rafah crossing for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” and “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Israel is in violation of this order and the US is complicit by providing most of the weapons. 

President Trump, who campaigned and won election on the pledge to STOP needless wars, has started a new war with Yemen which is of no benefit to the US but serves the interests of Netanyahu’s Israel. Will he authorize attacks on Iran, in further subservience to Bibi? 

Corruption of the Political Process 

When Jewish donors to JFK’s 1960 campaign suggested they should determine his Mideast policy, JFK was shocked and definitively said NO. As reported by Seymour Hersh in “The Samson Option”, Kennedy talked with a friend who described what happened: “As an American citizen he (JFK) was outraged to have a zionist group come to him and say, ‘We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you’ll let us have control of your Middle East policy.” At that time, JFK vowed to change the US electoral system to prevent this corruption if he got elected. As president, he tried, but faced big hurdles and did not succeed.  

Ever since JFK’s death, pro-Israel forces have had undue influence on U.S. policy. If the International Court of Justice decides that Israel is committing genocide, as seems likely, the U.S. will be the primary collaborator in the war crimes. The US is increasingly alone in supporting the zionist state as it practices apartheid within Israel, theft of land in the West Bank, and massacres in Gaza including attacks on hospitals, schools, and UN facilities. Fourteen countries now support South Africa’s charges of genocide against Israel.  

Under Democratic President Joe Biden, U.S. policy to Israel was unwaveringly obsequious. Despite 70% of Democratic Party voters wanting the U.S. to get a ceasefire in Gaza, the Biden/Blinken team refused to do this. The Democratic Party leaders’ zionist ideology combined with zionist financial influence superseded their party members’ wishes. Netanyahu ignored Biden’s “red lines” with impunity.

Republican President Trump has taken this to a new level. His zionist donors determine his Israel policy. To protect Israel, Trump issued an executive order which weaponizes antisemitism. Universities are being compelled to implement a new definition of antisemitism which conflates criticism of Israel with ethnic discrimination. Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” has evolved into “Miriam Adelson Gets All”. 

It is a remarkable descent from the days when JFK did what was best for the U.S. as well as being best for Palestinians and non-zionist Jews. 

Rick Sterling is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com.

March 28, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Some New Tales from the Darkside

Beatings and arrests continue both in the US and the Middle East

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • March 27, 2025

The news cycle over the past week has been dominated by reports and analysis of the Signal group chat involving top national security officials discussing aspects of the recent air strikes which have been directed against the Houthis in Yemen. There are four basic issues that are being examined by both the media and by elected and appointed government officials. First is the apparent ignorance of ordering the strike at all since the panel appeared not to know very much about the target or why the US was escalating the conflict. Second, was the possibly accidental inclusion in the list of participants of a journalist who is closely connected to Zionist Israel, having voluntarily served in the Israeli Army as a prison guard, where he may have tortured Palestinians, and who plausibly is a dual national US-Israeli citizen. Third is the security of the Signal technology itself, which was reportedly initially created to permit such sharing of confidential views online for criminal purposes, but which might be vulnerable to penetration by any professional foreign intelligence service including those of Russia, China, the United Kingdom and, of course, Israel, which would have had a serious interest in what Washington was intending to do in Yemen. Fourth, is the question whether Donald Trump knew about the meeting and approved what was being discussed.

My own experience of secure communications enabling meetings goes back nearly fifty years when nearly every national security-linked facility, including Embassies and military bases, had a so called “bubble” which was enclosed and electronically sealed to prevent outside penetration to learn what was being discussed and by whom. Since that time, there have been huge advances in protecting communications but friends who are still in the intelligence community insist that what is being protected can be made vulnerable by the cyber agencies that exist in various competitive countries that spend billions of dollars to do just that.

The participants in the Signal meeting are now scrambling to make their case that they did nothing wrong, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in particular is arguing that the discussion was not classified even though the issue related to sensitive intelligence regarding the United States plans for escalating a war against a country with which it was not technically at war. The deniers are certainly wrong in making that case, either that or they were incapable of understanding what was on the table. The presence of Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine is more difficult to comprehend as he is no friend of the Trump Administration, but it is now being argued that it was either done absentmindedly by Michael Waltz, the national security director who chaired the meeting, or it was caused by a fit of confusion due to the fact that the “Goldberg” who was supposed to be invited was someone else. In any event, Jeffrey Goldberg first surfaced the story of the Signal meeting and then followed up with a full transcript. Was it all some kind of clever ploy to push Trump into making the decision to go full throttle and attack Iran? It would not be above Netanyahu to arrange something that convoluted and flat out evil and we shall see about Iran soon enough, but certainly Goldberg could only have been there due to manipulation of a situation in which he was pursuing a pro-Israel agenda. Waltz is taking credit for the snafu at the moment but that position might change as he comes under more pressure to resign.

In any event, the Signal story will no doubt be discussed and both embellished and dismissed during the next few days, but one thing it does demonstrate is the relative lack of knowledge that comes across as incompetency on the part of the Trump national security team. And the role of Trump himself will also be hotly debated as he has personally been playing a key role in foreign policy decision making, though so far he is only speaking up to support the work of his subordinates.

Actually there are couple of other stories that surfaced last week that I much prefer. First is the ongoing battle to silence, imprison and actually deport anyone who is critical of Israel or of Jewish group behavior. This has been job number one for the Israel Lobby, which has been eminently successful under both the Joe Biden and Donald Trump administrations, so much so that the sentiment that Israel controls America has been growing among the US public to such an extent that it surfaces regularly.

The Justice Department has reportedly acted on President Trump’s Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, through the formation of a multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. The Task Force’s first priority will be to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses. It is currently on the prowl, visiting four cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Boston) where it will investigate ten elite universities. It has been suggested that Israeli investigators might well be part of the teams that will actually go into the classrooms, dormitories and administrative buildings on campus, all done without search warrants or probable cause. And the universities have basically surrendered over the issue of freedom of speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and regarded by many as the “right” that is most vital if the people are to enjoy fundamental liberties.

A recent arrest of a foreign student took place in Somerville Massachusetts on Tuesday March 25th when Turkish graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was on her way to meet friends at an Iftar dinner to break their Ramadan fast, but she never made it. Instead, the 30-year-old was arrested and physically restrained by six armed plainclothes immigration officers near her apartment, close to Tufts University’s campus where she was a PhD student. Surveillance cameras show how one officer wearing a hat and hoodie grabbed her arms, causing her to shriek in fear while another confiscated her cell phone. The officers reportedly only showed their badges after Ozturk was restrained with her hands cuffed behind her back. According to the University, she was enrolled in a doctorate program at Tufts University on a valid F-1 visa, which allows international students to pursue full time academic studies, in which she was in good standing. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman issued a statement on Wednesday claiming that Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, that relishes the killing of Americans” but didn’t specify what those alleged activities were. In fact, friends report that Ozturk has not even been active in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The DHS spokesman never the less pressed on and explained “A visa is a privilege not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security.” Nevertheless, no actual charges have been filed against Ozturk but the State Department has indicated that her visa has been terminated and she has been transferred to the Central Louisiana Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Basile, where other students are also being held.

It is believed that Ozturk’s actual “crime” consisted of having cowritten a March 2024 op-ed in the school’s newspaper where she criticized Tufts’ response to the pro-Palestinian movement, calling for the school to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and also urging divestment of any holdings in Israeli companies and government. Ozturk was to a certain extent a victim of vigilante justice. Her photo and details appear on a website called Canary Mission, run by a Jewish extremist group that says it is dedicated to documenting individuals and organizations “that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond.” Tufts University officials said the school had no prior knowledge of the arrest and did not cooperate with it. Several professors, speaking off the record, were shocked and described how many on campus are fearing what comes next.

One final tale comes from a place formerly known as Palestine, where armed Israeli settlers descended upon the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank and assaulted Hamdan Ballal. Ballal is the co-director of the film “No Other Land” which recently has been in the news since it won an Oscar in Hollywood for best documentary. As is always the case when Jews assault Arabs, Israeli soldiers were present at the scene and stood by as Ballal was attacked and beaten along with other local residents, only to then detain him and two other Palestinians overnight in a military base, where they endured further abuse from the “Most Moral Army in the World” before being released.

Of course, President Trump did not register a complaint at the treatment of Ballal. What happened to the Palestinian was not just a random encounter. As co-director of a film that documents the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the violent expansion of Israeli settlements in his region, he has used his platform to speak directly and unapologetically about Israeli apartheid and theft. Friends of Israel clearly see that as a threat and they have succeeded in blocking the showing of the documentary in the US, where it has been unable to obtain a distributor. Targeting Ballal is part of a broader strategy by the Israeli government and groups like the settlers of silencing Palestinian cultural figures and truth-tellers, especially those who succeed in establishing prominent narratives worldwide. The underlying message is that if even an award-winning filmmaker isn’t immune to state violence, then Palestinians should rightly walk in fear or get out. The sad part is that international media, which should have recognized something was wrong when Palestinians without global awards and credentials — students, farmers, mothers, teachers — have been arrested and beaten and tortured by Israeli forces every day, ignored their plight. Their stories do not make headlines. Their names are rarely known. In death, all they become is a number, like the tens of thousands who are buried under rubble in Gaza and who will never be commemorated.

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.

March 27, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

The First Amendment Protects Mahmoud Khalil

By Gary Chartier | The Libertarian Institute | March 26, 2025

One of Donald Trump’s first official actions as president was to sign an executive order designed to protect freedom of expression against government pressure. Soon after, Vice President J.D. Vance issued a vigorous challenge at the Munich Security Conference to speech restrictions in Europe. After years of government assaults on freedom of expression, people who cared about First Amendment values were cautiously optimistic.

Then came the administration’s attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil.

Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the United States who is married to an American citizen and who is soon to be a father, was detained by the government after he participated in protests focused on the plight of people in Gaza.

In a court filing supporting the decision to deport him, the administration maintained that his “presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

Obviously, this can’t mean that he was physically impeding the formulation or implementation of foreign policy. He threatened, if he did, to bring about “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” because what he did had the potential to change people’s minds. He was targeted because of the anticipated impact of his actual (and potential) expressive activity.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a similar rationale for Khalil’s deportation. “And if you tell us, when you apply for a visa, ‘I’m coming to the U.S. to participate in pro-Hamas events,’ that runs counter to the foreign policy interest of the United States of America,” according to the Secretary. “If you had told us that you were going to do that, we never would have given you the visa.” (He makes a separate point about Khalil’s involvement in disruptive activities on the Columbia University campus, which I’ll bracket here.)

Rubio’s claim about “the foreign policy interest of the United States” makes sense only if, again, the worry is that the kind of protest in which Khalil was involved risked contributing to changes in policy, or at least signaled Khalil’s personal opposition to the that policy. (Rubio conveniently equates current U.S. foreign policy with “the foreign policy interest of the United States.” But let that slide.)

Khalil has been targeted because of core First Amendment activity: speech and assembly.

Rubio and other defenders of the administration’s position might argue for the legitimacy of Khalil’s deportation by arguing that, as a non-citizen, he’s not protected by the First Amendment. But the Constitution’s language makes no reference to citizens. And there are good reasons for treating it as applicable to Khalil.

The Bill of Rights appears to be intended to apply across the board to those affected by the actions of the U.S. government. Does anyone seriously think that the government could deny non-citizens the protection of the Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury in civil cases, or claim that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of excessive bail is inapplicable to non-citizens? Unless the Constitution explicitly limits a given safeguard to citizens, we should read it as protecting everyone the government can impact.

And permanent residents, like Khalil, seem especially worthy of constitutional protection. After all, they are not tourists or brief visitors. They have established substantial ties to the United States and have demonstrated that they are good neighbors. They are often on the road to citizenship.

Whatever we judge to be the primary focus of the First Amendment, singling our people for sanctions because of what they say is deeply problematic. When the government targets the nonviolent expression of particular ideas, on anyone’s part, it sends the message that those ideas are disfavored and that others expressing them can expect to be penalized. Deporting Khalil because of the potential impact of his expressive acts exerts a chilling effect on the expression of officially disapproved ideas about the Middle East—by citizens as well as non-citizens.

The content-focused rationale the government has offered for Khalil’s deportation is a rationale it could invoke to attack citizens for what they say, too. A U.S. citizen who writes an op-ed criticizing some aspect of current foreign policy and whose action the government believes could influence others to avoid supporting its position could be penalized in multiple ways. Citizens (probably) can’t be deported for political dissent. However, if the rationale the government has offered here is upheld, they could be denied other discretionary benefits.

The First Amendment should also be read as protecting Khalil from deportation for the content of his speech because it doesn’t primarily or exclusively serve the interests of speakers. At least as important is the protection it offers to listeners.

Restricting listeners’ access to information undermines democracy and the free formation of public opinion. The more people have the chance to encounter varied voices, the more they have the chance to weigh arguments, evaluate insights, and assess factual claims for themselves. A government that can filter what people hear can artificially insulate its policies against critical push-back and keep them from being altered in light of relevant facts and norms. (Consider, for instance, how frequently governments that rush to war try to censor not only stories about specific military actions or espionage techniques but also arguments for peace.)

There’s no Middle East exception to the First Amendment. The administration can underscore its commitment to freedom of expression by not acting as if there were. The Constitution weighs strongly against deporting Khalil on the basis of what he’s said. Freeing him will benefit not only him and his family but also all Americans.

March 27, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU candidate’s pro-Western government arrests autonomous region’s leader

RT | March 27, 2025

A vocal critic of Moldova’s pro-Western government, who leads an autonomous region in the EU candidate state, has denounced her arrest on what she claims to be fabricated criminal charges.

Yevgenia Gutsul was taken into custody on Tuesday evening at the international airport in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, with the authorities saying she was on a wanted list. In a statement released through her lawyers on Thursday, she accused the government of pursuing a plan to dismantle the region of Gagauzia’s autonomy through lawfare targeting her administration.

“I am behind bars now under trumped up charges, yet my heart and my soul is with you,” she said, addressing the people of Gagauzia.

”This arrest is not a personal attack. It’s part of Chisinau’s grand plan to destroy our autonomy. Law enforcement officials controlled by the [ruling party] PAS have been trying to put pressure on me with bogus criminal cases for two years,” she added.

According to Moldovan media, Gutsul was taken into custody as part of an investigation into the 2023 gubernatorial election in Gagauzia, which she won. Her campaign was accused of financial irregularities. The Moldovan government claims that Gutsul is part of a Russian influence operation aimed at disrupting the country’s attempts to become a member of the EU.

The Gagauz people are a Turkic-speaking, primarily Orthodox Christian ethnic group living in the southern part of Moldova, Their region, Gagauzia, has been granted broad self-government rights. Moldovan President Maia Sandu has questioned Gutsul’s mandate as governor, denouncing her former party ‘Shor’ as a “criminal organization.” In 2023, a court in Chisinau outlawed it.

Gutsul has called on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to apply pressure on the Sandu administration in defense of Gagauzia’s rights.

On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov condemned the arrest, asserting that Chisinau “has decided to pay no heed to the law, democratic principles and political pluralism and to openly pressure political rivals.”

He compared the approach to that of the Romanian government, where a presidential election was recently overturned after a surprise first round victory by an opposition candidate. The constitutional court’s decision was based on claims that Russia interfered in the process, but media reports suggested that the social media campaign cited by officials originated from the ruling party, which sought to undermine a mainstream candidate by boosting an unlikely outsider.

March 27, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Germany: The AfD party should be banned before the next elections

Remix News | March 25, 2025

The leaders of the SPD and Green Party factions want a ban of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the second-largest party in the country and the top opposition party, before the next election. The Greens in particular are now urging parliament to submit a motion to ban the party as soon as possible.

The Green party wants the Bundestag to submit a new motion to the Constitutional Court, which would have a final say on banning the party. The original ban motion was initiated by CDU MP Marco Wanderwitz, who retired from politics and is no longer in the new Bundestag, but who is still actively urging the party to be banned.

The Green Party’s managing director, Till Steffen, is putting the pressure on to continue the ban motion “as soon as possible.” The Greens have long pursued a ban against the AfD, as Remix News has previously reported.

The last motion was signed by 100 parliamentarians from all parties, with the exception of the AfD and Free Democrats (FDP). In the new parliament, the FDP is no longer represented.

However, there is one current hiccup, which is the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The politicians interested in a ban want the BfV to upgrade the designation of the AfD to a “confirmed right-wing extremist” party. So far, the party has only been labeled a “suspect case” by the powerful domestic intelligence agency, however, in certain states, It is already a “confirmed” case.

The problem is that the BfV currently does not have a president, as the previous one, Thomas Haldenwang of the CDU, already left his position to run as an MP. Haldenwang was blatantly partisan and routinely attacked the AfD in an effort to sink the party.

Due to the absence of a president, the expected report from the BfV to confirm the party as “right-wing extremist” has been delayed. The BfV is unlikely to get a new president before the new chancellor is sworn in. There are worries though from the left that time is running out to ban the party.

The SPD wants to wait for the report to move forward with a ban, but the SPD group manager Katja Mast says the “AfD poses a serious threat to democracy.”

Why is there such a rush when elections are likely four years away? The reason is that the Constitutional Court can take years to decide a case, which means there are fears from the left that the AfD party may be able to run in the next elections.

The CDU and CSU are biding their time and say they will not decide on a ban until the BfV releases their report, but it is perhaps a foregone conclusion they will support such a ban, with a few dissenters.

The Greens are furious that the report is not being submitted fast enough.

The Federal Office for Consumer Protection cited the election campaign as the reason for postponing it. And the election is over,” said Steffen, who says the report not being released yet is “incomprehensible.”

Not everyone believes a ban is possible at this point. In an interview with Remix News, Junge Freiheit editor-in-chief Dieter Stein said he did not believe a ban of the AfD is possible at this point.

The party just hit a new polling high of 23.5 percent in the latest Insa poll, making it difficult to imagine the government banning a party that has nearly a quarter of all voters backing it. However, the EU mainstream may have been encouraged by the results in Romania, which saw the top contender, Călin Georgescu, arrested and banned from running in the presidential election.

March 25, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian MP claims Zelensky tried to kill him

Artyom Dmitruk © Social Media
RT | March 23, 2025

Artyom Dmitruk, a fugitive member of the Verkhovna Rada, has claimed that Vladimir Zelensky directed the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to kidnap and kill him. He said that SBU agents detained and severely beat him during an incident in the Black Sea port city of Odessa in 2022.

Dmitruk was elected to parliament as part of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party in 2019. He was expelled from the party two years later and continued serving as an independent MP.

He fled the country in August 2024, claiming that the authorities had plotted to “liquidate” him.

The Prosecutor General’s Office has since placed Dmitruk on a wanted list on suspicion that he assaulted a police officer and attempted to steal his gun.

In a video posted to X on Friday, Dmitruk detailed his accusations against Zelensky and his chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, as well as sharing photos of his injuries.

“I was brutally beaten, tortured in basements, and nearly killed on Zelensky’s orders for my opposition activities,” the self-exiled politician wrote in an accompanying post. He insisted that the government targeted him because of his “political activities.”

Dmitruk claimed that in 2022, Viktor Dorovsky, the head of the SBU office in Odessa, threatened him over the phone. “We’re going to kill you. We’ll cut your head off,” Dorovsky said, according to Dmitruk.

The politician said that a group of SBU agents abducted him on March 4, 2022 as he was delivering aid to a military checkpoint. According to Dmitruk, the agents put a bag over his head and handcuffed him. “They beat me severely with rifle butts, feet, and hands. I lost consciousness.”

Dmitruk claimed that he was taken to a basement where he was “tortured” and had his nose broken. He said the agents wanted to force him into making incriminating statements. They drove him to several locations, including a regional SBU office, where the threats and beatings continued, he added.

He went on to say that the agents threatened him with a gun and made him promise on camera that he would stop criticizing Zelensky, Yermak, and the government. According to Dmitruk, the agents eventually dropped him off at a parking lot.

“The order to commit these crimes against me was given personally by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Andriy Yermak, and the head of the Odessa SBU Viktor Dorovsky,” Dmitruk wrote on X, using the Ukrainian spelling of the names.

“There are thousands of stories like mine. There are people who have been sitting in the basements of the SBU for more than two years,” he said.

March 23, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

US arrests Georgetown University student for criticizing Israel

Indian citizen Badar Khan Suri has been arrested in the US over criticism of Israel
Press TV – March 20, 2025

Indian citizen and Georgetown University student Badar Khan Suri has been arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents due to his criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Sari, who is a post-doctorate fellow in peace and conflict studies at Georgetown University in Washington, is currently being held at an ICE detention facility in Virginia without contact with lawyers and family.

ICE has detained Sari even though he is a US permanent resident.

After his arrest, the dean of Georgetown University made a statement that Sari had not engaged in any illegal activities or posed a threat to campus security.

In a statement, the University Board of Georgetown Law SJP has called his arrest to be for expressing “constitutionally protected speech,” warning that if such arrests continue “higher education will crumble.”

Sari is believed to have been specifically targeted because of the anti-genocide activism of his wife Mapheze Saleh.

Saleh, a US citizen, is a prominent pro-Palestine activist who has come under attack by pro-Israel political organizations.

Jenin Younes, a lawyer and civil liberties expert, believes that Sari’s arrest is a case of citizens being held guilty by association.

“If they can’t target a Palestinian activist for deportation because they’re a citizen, they’ll target their spouse instead,” Younes said in an interview.

Imprisoning and punishing family members of political dissidents is a common repression tactic used by dictatorial regimes.

March 20, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Google to acquire Israeli firm staffed by former Unit 8200 officers

The Cradle | March 20, 2025

On 18 March, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced plans to acquire the Israeli cloud security startup Wiz in a $32 billion deal, marking one of the largest-ever influxes of former Israeli intelligence officers into a US tech company.

“Google LLC today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wiz, Inc., a leading cloud security platform headquartered in New York, for $32 billion, subject to closing adjustments, in an all-cash transaction,” the US tech giant said on Tuesday.

Reports from western media indicate that following the acquisition, Wiz will keep its brand and operate independently from Google. Additionally, an extra retention bonus will be offered to employees, potentially totaling $1 billion, along with a break-up fee that Google would owe to Wiz if antitrust regulators block the deal.

The Israeli tech company was founded in 2020 by four former members of Unit 8200.

Wiz employs around 1,995 people, with most of its sales and marketing personnel located in North America and Europe. However, most of its engineering staff is based in Tel Aviv, a major hub for cybersecurity talent primarily linked to Unit 8200 alumni.

A 2018 study cited by Haaretz estimated that 80 percent of the 2,300 people who founded Israel’s 700 cybersecurity companies at the time had come through Israeli army intelligence. Two years earlier, Forbes estimated that over 1,000 companies were founded by Unit 8200 alumni.

“There are at least five tech companies started by Unit 8200 alumni publicly traded in the US, together worth around $160 billion. Private companies started by ex-8200 soldiers are worth billions more,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported last year.

“While Unit 8200 alumni once talked about their service in hushed tones, they now tout it in press releases to attract clients and investment money for their startups,” the report highlights.

As an integral part of Israel’s intelligence apparatus, Unit 8200 conducts signal intelligence (SIGINT) and cyber operations, emphasizing advanced technology, cybersecurity, and intelligence gathering.

Unit 8200 played a crucial role in the planning and execution of Israel’s pager terror attacks in Lebanon last year. Specifically, western security sources revealed that the unit was involved in embedding explosives inside the pagers ordered by Hezbollah, with the operation reportedly taking over a year to plan.

The Israeli spy unit is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) tool similar to ChatGPT, which is “capable of answering questions about people it is monitoring and providing insights into the massive volumes of surveillance data it collects.”

“It’s not just about preventing shooting attacks, I can track human rights activists, monitor Palestinian construction in Area C [of the West Bank]. I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing,” an informed source told The Guardian earlier this month.

March 20, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic Magazine & Columbia’s Pulitzer Board advocated killing Palestinian journalists

Why does the “safety” framework never apply to Arab students?

By Adam Johnson | The Column | March 14, 2025

In 2002, Columbia University Pulitzer Prize board member, alleged “anti-authoritarian” expert, and Atlantic Magazine columnist Anne Applebaum explicitly advocated in Slate magazine that Israel kill Palestinian journalists for the crime of making Israelis and Americans look bad. In her article, “Kill The Messenger,” there is little subtlety or equivocation about not only Israel’s right to blow up Palestinian media infrastructure, but to kill reporters for simply doing their job:

“… the official Palestinian media is the right place for Israel to focus its ire. In fact, in the reporting of the Middle East conflict, which almost always focuses on yesterday’s violence and today’s body count, the crucial role of the Voice of Palestine—the official broadcasting arm of the Palestinian Authority—has often been overlooked. Nor is the problem just radio and television. If you want to understand why the Oslo peace process failed, or where suicide martyrs come from, it is worth taking a closer look at all the Palestinian Authority’s official media…

Until then, the Voice of Palestine will remain what it has become: a combatant—and therefore a legitimate target—in a painful, never-ending, low-intensity war.”

This article, which Applebaum has never explained or renounced, is useful when contextualizing the current witch hunt on college campuses targeting anti-Gaza genocide protestors under the Planck Length-thin auspices of promoting “student safety” and “combatting anti-semitism.”

What’s especially noteworthy is that Applebaum never even bothers laundering her promotion of the execution of Palestinians media workers in the language of “terrorism” or “material support for terrorism”—she is simply lobbying Israel kill Palestinian media workers for the mere fact that they are making Israel and the US look bad. Indeed, a key example of coverage justifying their killing Appelbaum cites is an extremely banal political cartoon. As she writes:

… they are subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, anti-American. A recent cartoon in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the Palestinian Authority official daily, showed a blindfolded George Bush aiming missiles indiscriminately at a dartboard covered with the names of Arab states. One of his darts had hit the bull’s eye marked “Afghanistan.” Another had gone astray and hit an Arab man in the back. The caption read, “The war in Afghanistan is only the beginning.” While there is plenty of other anti-Americanism in other Palestinian media, and indeed in Arab media everywhere, this is the voice of the Palestinian Authority, the government of Yasser Arafat, a frequent visitor to the White House.

Applebaum believes a cartoon depicting George W. Bush as a warmonger makes Palestinian media a legitimate target worthy of summary killing. “Anti-Americanism,” one is lead to believe is not only a form of racism but a mode of speech that strips one of their protected civilian status.

This is an extraordinary, illiberal, and racist opinion, yet Applebaum is allowed to remain in good standing among liberal and academic elites because racism and casual bloodlust targeting Palestinians and Arabs simply doesn’t register or matter in the “student safety” calculus.

Imagine, if you will, a Columbia professor or Pulitzer prize committee member advocating the summary killing of Israeli or American media workers because they undermined the cause of Palestinian liberation in their reporting. If this article surfaced it would stir up immediate outrage and condemnation, the academic in question would be quickly fired, apologies would be made and and new policies would be promised. But with Applebaum calling for the killing of Palestinian reporters, an article that goes semi-viral on Twitter every few months, no one cares. Nothing happens. It’s just another routine, normal Serious Foreign Policy opinion from a Serious Foreign Policy Expert.

Columbia University President Katrina Armstrong is currently working with Trump officials, DHS, ICE, and other government agents seeking to deport and imprison anti-Israel protestors for the simple fact that—according to Trump officials themselves— they have ideological viewpoints the Trump regime doesn’t like. Columbia, and many other universities, are maximally complying with these demands ostensibly to promote “campus safety” and “combat hatred.” Indeed, making students “feel safe” has been the high-minded liberal reason for virtually every university administrator cracking down on free speech, both before and after Trump took office. “We are focused,” Armstrong said in a press release last year, “on ensuring [student] safety, supporting their wellbeing, and protecting their ability to learn.”

“I have said it before, and I will say it again,” Armstrong insisted, “discrimination and harassment, including hate language, calls for violence, and the targeting of any individuals or groups based on their beliefs, ancestry, religion, gender identity, or any other identity or affiliation have no place at Columbia.”

Except that it does. Columbia, which manages and awards the Pulitzer prize, has no problem putting someone with a history of advocating the killing of Arab civilians in a position of power, helping determine who in journalism is worthy of its highest award, and creating an atmosphere on campus that makes clear to its Palestinian students that they are subhuman and unworthy of normal protections under the laws of war.

March 19, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Using Medicalization to Suppress the Exercise of First Amendment Rights

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | March 19, 2025

A repugnant tactic of authoritarianism is categorizing people’s desire for or exercise of freedom as illness that government should suppress. An example of this was the deeming of dissidents in the Soviet Union as mentally ill to justify their detention and punishment.

In America, there has long been resistance against an effort to similarly have the United States government medicalize the exercise of gun rights as a means to circumvent the constitutional protection of the right to bear arms contained in the Second Amendment. In the 1990s this resistance led to congressional imposition of a spending prohibition against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) advocating or promoting gun control.

The effort to prevent the US government from using medicalization to crack down on gun rights appears to have had a success in the new Trump administration with the removal from the HHS website of a guns and public health advisory from the preceding Biden administration. Abené Clayton reported Monday at the Guardian :

The Trump administration has removed former surgeon general Vivek Murthy’s advisory on gun violence as a public health issue from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ website. This move was made to comply with Donald Trump’s executive order to protect second amendment rights, a White House official told the Guardian.

The strange thing is that while the Trump administration appears to be taking action to cut off HHS threats to Second Amendment rights, HHS is helping lead Trump administration efforts to expand US government threats to First Amendment rights. Medicalization to restrict free speech, assembly, and petition is on the ascendancy at HHS as demonstrated by a March 3 announcement by HHS, the Department of Education (ED), and the General Services Administration (GSA) concerning the US government’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, created the month before, reviewing actions or inactions of Columbia University relative to “antisemitism” and potential penalties that may be imposed upon that university. This is all justified in the announcement by reference to a January 29 executive order of President Donald Trump that employs a peculiarly expanded definition of antisemitism incorporated into an executive order from Trump’s first term that includes positions against the Israel government in addition to the commonly understood definition that concerns positions against an ethnicity or religion.

“Anti-Semitism – like racism – is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues,” declared HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in the announcement. That is medicalization in a nutshell: Your “bad thoughts” are a plague the government must stop to protect public health.

Four days later — on March 7, HHS, ED, and GSA were back with a new announcement that, due to review by the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, about 400 million dollars in US grants to Columbia University had been canceled, with more grant cancelations expected to follow. Then, on March 13 the HHS, ED, and GSA followed up with a letter to Columbia University using the denial of funding as leverage to demand the university crack down on free speech, assembly and petition, as well as change, and even hand to US government control over, a variety of university policies and procedures.

Meanwhile, the US government is making an example of Mahmoud Khalil who was involved in protests challenging US foreign policy and related to Israel at Columbia University. The US government has arrested and detained him, and is seeking his deportation, because Khalil apparently did nothing more than exercise First Amendment protected rights.

These actions against Columbia University are not one-off. A February 28 press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ) listed ten universities — Columbia University plus George Washington University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California — as subject to visits from the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism because their campuses “have experienced antisemitic incidents since October 2023.” Expect the list to keep growing.

Leo Terrell, described in the February DOJ press release as “[l]eading Task Force member and Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,” made clear in an included quote that the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism means business. He stated:

The Task Force’s mandate is to bring the full force of the federal government to bear in our effort to eradicate Anti-Semitism, particularly in schools. These visits are just one of many steps this Administration is taking to deliver on that commitment.

It looks like we are witnessing the beginning of a major crackdown on First Amendment rights. The US government, however, will claim this development is nothing to worry about because the purpose is to make America healthy again.

March 19, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NSW Premier Chris Minns Calls Free Speech a Government Liability

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | March 18, 2025

Chris Minns, Premier of New South Wales, Australia, has done something that politicians rarely do — he’s said the quiet part out loud. In a rare moment of honesty, he’s admitted that the government sees free speech as a liability.

“I recognize and I fully said from the beginning, we don’t have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States, and the reason for that is that we want to hold together a multicultural community and have people live in peace.”

Meaning: Your rights are negotiable, and the price is social harmony — as defined by the state.

The absurdity of this argument is hard to overstate. Historically, the country thrived on its rough-and-tumble political culture, where disagreements were hashed out in public rather than smothered under layers of legalese. The idea that Australians must now muzzle themselves to accommodate imported conflicts is an outright admission of failure by the political class.

Minns and his allies argue that restricting speech is necessary because multiculturalism has made Australia too volatile to handle open debate. But let’s take a step back. Why is Australia suddenly on edge? Is it because everyday Australians have become more hateful and intolerant, or is it because the government has spent decades encouraging division through identity politics?

The immediate context for Minns’ comments is the recent passage of hate speech laws, pushed through Parliament in a frenzy of moral panic. The justification? A crisis that turned out to be a hoax, reportedly concocted by criminals looking for lighter sentences — something the government allegedly knew early on.

MLC John Ruddick didn’t mince words when he addressed this in Parliament:

“Parliament was misinformed by the Minns government about the urgency of the bills referred to in one A, B, and C… this House calls on the Minns government to repeal the bills… and apologize for both misleading this Parliament, preventing a Parliamentary Inquiry, and further curbing free speech principles by these reactionary bills.”

Minns’ response? Doubling down:

“There have been some that have been agitating in the Parliament to nullify the laws to remove them off the statute books. Think about what kind of toxic message that would send to the NSW community.

“And I think the advocates for those changes need to explain what do they want people to have the right to say?

“What kind of racist abuse do they want to see or to be able to lawfully see on the streets of Sydney?”

This is an old trick — framing any challenge to speech restrictions as a demand for open racism. It’s dishonest, it’s lazy, and it conveniently ignores the fact that these laws will never be enforced evenly.

These laws will be used against dissenters. Against people who question government policies. Against critics of the ruling ideology.

If democracy means anything, it means the right to speak freely — even when that speech is unpopular. Even when it makes politicians uncomfortable. Because when free speech is sacrificed on the altar of “social harmony,” what you’re left with isn’t peace — it’s silence. And that silence is exactly what governments crave.

March 19, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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