Ireland’s Online “Hate Crime” Law Passes, Sparks Major Future Free Speech Concerns
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | November 1, 2024
In Ireland, the controversial Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offenses) Act 2024 has become law.
President Michael Higgins on Tuesday signed the bill – as Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman welcomed the development, and vowed that if still in power after the November election, this party would “certainly” work to get even more “hate speech legislation” adopted.
This remark has to do with a temporary removal of some of the current bill’s controversial provisions, the implication being that those might make a comeback in some “new hate speech” bill.
The parts removed concern some incitement to violence and hatred and hate speech provisions; however, those on hate crime have been left in the text.
Prior to being signed into law, the amended Criminal Justice Act 2024 – known as the “Hate Crime Bill” – cleared the country’s parliament in a 78-50 vote earlier in the month, despite strong criticism both from politicians and free speech groups.
The general argument used by the law’s opponents is that it is criminalizing free speech in a number of ways, with the most ardent critics seeing the legislation as moving Ireland closer to oppression and the rule of tyranny.
One of the controversial parts of the law revolves around the definition of gender, which is both extensive and expansive: “(…) the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female.”
And if the chosen gender – such as it is defined here, is found to be the reason for “hatred” expressed against someone – then from now on, this is to be treated as an aggravating factor, bringing with it a greater sentence than would have been the case had the “protected characteristics” not played a role in the consideration of an offense.
Speaking of protected characteristics, the act defines them as religion – including “absence of religious belief” – race, ethnicity, gender (as defined), sexual orientation, disability, and also, “references to sex characteristics shall be construed as references to the physical and biological features of a person relating to sex.”
During the debate in parliament, the bill’s sponsors made sure to note that this legislation – in the way it criminalizes certain behaviors – is the first of its kind in Europe.
Brazilian journalist fined, ordered to delete posts over criticizing Israeli war in Gaza
Press TV – November 2, 2024
A Brazilian court has ordered renowned journalist Breno Altman, who has frequently denounced Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, to pay a fine and delete a number of his posts on social media platforms.
Judge Paulo Bernardi Baccarat of the Court of Justice of São Paulo said on Thursday that the founder of the independent news portal Opera Mundi should pay a fine of 20,000 Brazilian reals ($3,407) in compensation for collective moral damages, and remove five posts deemed anti-Semitic.
This is yet another lawsuit against Altman, who is facing several cases in São Paulo courts due to his critical stance regarding the Tel Aviv regime’s devastating and bloody onslaught against Gaza.
In this case, the judge considered a request for censorship and compensation filed by the Brazilian Israelite Confederation (CONIB), which is the central organization of the Brazilian Jewish community.
CONIB asked for 80 thousand reals in compensation, the demonetization of Altman’s profile on social media and the payment of a minimum wage to each Israeli in Brazil.
The pro-Israeli lobby group said Altman should be banned from publishing posts about the Gaza conflict, alleging that his conduct exceeded the limits of freedom of expression, and claimed the journalist could incite hatred towards Jews and Israel with his posts.
Baccarat, however, concluded that there was no reason to pay compensation or remove most of the posts, considering that they were not anti-Semitic but rather political comments.
In other posts, however, he purportedly found racist content, such as the use of the term “rats” in reference to the Israeli military offensives against Palestinian Hamas resistance fighters.
The judge considered the reference to be racist, given that the term “rat” has a historical anti-Semitic association. The request for individual compensation for each Israeli in Brazil, however, was dismissed by the judge.
The journalist’s defense, represented by attorneys Pedro Serrano and Anderson Medeiros, said they will appeal the decision.
The objective, according to them, is to “demonstrate the absolute legality of all posts, supported by constitutional rights that ensure freedom of expression and freedom of thought.”
Back in August, Altman was sentenced to three months in prison for insulting Brazilian economist and former Director of International Affairs of the Central Bank of Brazil, Alexandre Schwartsman, and President of the pro-Israel organization StandWithUs Brazil, André Lajst.
The case also involved social media posts about Israel’s atrocious military campaign in Gaza. The sentence was commuted to a fine.
Government Agents Try to Stir Up Fear of Russian Election Interference a Third Presidential Election in a Row
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | November 1, 2024
For a third United States presidential election in a row, US agents are out warning of Russian election interference.
In the previous two elections the warnings were spurious. Still, the government agents succeeded in raising worry in people’s minds regarding candidate Donald Trump. And they suppressed consideration of information damaging to Trump’s opponents, including through indicating the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop were “Russian disinformation.”
This election, the government agents are at it again. Their latest spurt of relating supposed Russian election interference arrived in a Friday joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). This joint statement is one among a series of updates concerning what the press release calls “Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.”
Yeah, whatever, guys. Have you ever read the story about the boy who cried wolf?
House Panel Refers Andrew Cuomo for Prosecution
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 1, 2024
NBC News just reported the following:
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic sent a letter Wednesday to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland accusing the former governor of providing false statements to the panel when he testified on June 11.
In the Republican-led committee’s referral, it says Cuomo “knowingly and willfully made materially false statements” to the panel during its investigation into the New York’s Covid-19 response. The statements in question stem from exchanges about a New York state Department of Health report on nursing home infections and deaths that was released on July 6, 2020.
The report caught my eye because I have long followed the New York nursing home scandal, which I thoroughly investigated for our book The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex.
This particular chapter about the mindbogglingly stupid and criminal pandemic response is so noteworthy that I believe it is worth republishing.
CHAPTER 11: “Cuomosexuals”
On the same day (March 23) that Dr. Bright initiated his scheme to restrict hydroxychloroquine to hospitalized patients, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued the following executive order:
No pharmacist shall dispense hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine except when written as prescribed as an FDA-approved indication; or as part of a state approved clinical trial related to COVID-19 for a patient who has tested positive for COVID-19 with such test result documented as part of the prescription. No other experimental or prophylactic use shall be permitted …
This order prohibited New York pharmacies from filling off-label prescriptions for Covid patients. The exceptionally determined Dr. Zelenko found a way to get around it, but it made his practice much more difficult.
Two days later, on March 25, the New York Department of Health issued the following directive to nursing home administrators:
No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.
As anyone who has ever worked in a nursing home knows, respiratory viruses can rip through the facility and cause severe illness. Virulent common cold rhinovirus outbreaks have resulted in multiple deaths in this setting. By March 25, it was crystal clear that the risk of severe disease and death from COVID-19 is by far the highest for patients over the age of seventy-five. Thus, ordering “confirmed or suspected” Covid patients to be readmitted to nursing homes was the equivalent of forcing foxes into henhouses. What was the New York State Health Department thinking?
On March 27, the United States set the world record of COVID-19 cases, and New York City was the nation’s epicenter—a five-alarm fire of serious infections. On April 10, New York State recorded more Covid cases than any country on earth except the United States in total and its nursing homes were devastated by the contagion. The legacy media was slow to notice this, perhaps because it was blinded by Governor Cuomo’s stardom. He gave daily press conferences in which he spoke about the measures he and his team were taking to keep New Yorkers safe. Millions across the country watched these performances for which he later received an Emmy.
As the spring wore on, reports of mass casualty events in nursing homes emerged, and these drew scrutiny to the Health Department’s March 25 directive. On May 21, the Associated Press reported that over 4,500 Covid patients had been sent back into New York nursing homes. This number would later be revised upward to over 9,000. The AP report coincided with growing suspicion the Health Department wasn’t being transparent about mortality data in these facilities. Suspicion was confirmed on January 28, 2021, when New York Attorney General Latitia James reported that the Department of Health had undercounted nursing home deaths by 50%.
On February 11, 2021, the New York Post published a leaked audio recording of Governor Cuomo’s secretary, Melissa DeRosa, speaking confidentially with the New York State Democratic Committee. On this tape she can be heard apologizing for concealing nursing home data. Though mealy-mouthed, her apology revealed that Cuomo’s team had acted out of fear of getting into trouble with the DOJ.
Basically, we froze because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys and what we start saying was going to be used against us, and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.
After making this confession, she changed the subject to “the context” of their decision—namely, they were concerned that President Trump would try to politicize the incident in the upcoming election.
“Right around the same time, he [Trump] turns this into a giant political football,” she told the Committee.
For many who followed the New York nursing home story, it seemed emblematic of many pathologies afflicting the U.S. political and media class. First was the nepotism of the Cuomo family, with CNN Anchor Chris and Governor Andrew regularly putting on shows for their fawning, sentimental fans, many of whom called themselves “Cuomosexuals.” T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, and even a popular music video appeared bearing the term’s definition: In love with competent, reassuring governance by a leader who uses complete sentences and displays common sense during a pandemic.
The Governor’s cult of personality yielded a $5.2 million book deal with Penguin Random House, initiated by an acquiring editor on March 19, 2020, three days before the state went into lockdown. The deal for American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic stipulated the book be ready for publication before the November elections. Governor Cuomo purportedly wrote a 70,000-word typescript in three months while at the same time executing his duties as full-time “Leader” in handling New York’s Covid crisis. The state ethics board approved the deal on the condition that no state resources were used in the book’s production, but that didn’t stop Cuomo from using his staff and a ghostwriter.
Complementing the governor’s book deal was his Emmy Award. As Bruce Paisner, CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, explained in his announcement of November 20, 2020:
The Governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure. People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.
All these awards and extravagant expressions of adulation for the Governor’s leadership overlooked his executive order impeding access to hydroxychloroquine and his Health Department’s catastrophic directive to nursing homes. Protecting nursing homes was the only contagion control policy for which there was a crystal clear rationale. While general lockdowns did little to stop the spread, extraordinary measures to secure nursing homes probably would have given some protection to society’s most vulnerable. Instead, the New York Health Department sent thousands of Covid patients back into these facilities and then concealed the ensuing death toll. On June 2, 2020, USA Today reported that “Over the last three months, more than 40,600 long-term care residents and workers have died of COVID-19—about 40% of the nation’s death toll attributed to the coronavirus …”
After flying high in 2020, the Cuomo brothers fell back to earth in 2021, when multiple women accused the Governor of sexual harassment. He was then further accused of using his executive power to suppress these allegations. Chris Cuomo was likewise accused of using his powerful media connections to aid and abet his brother in the concealment.
A cynic might be tempted to wonder about the timing of the sexual misconduct allegations—right as reports emerged that New York Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Attorney Seth Ducharme of the Eastern District of New York, and the FBI were opening investigations into allegations of malfeasance resulting in nursing home deaths. Especially disturbing was the allegation that Governor Cuomo provided legal immunity to nursing home executives from whom he received campaign contributions, possibly giving them carte blanche to cut costs at the expense of the care and safety of their residents. As the Attorney General stated in her preliminary findings:
On March 23, Governor Cuomo created limited immunity provisions for health care providers relating to COVID-19. The Emergency Disaster Treatment Protection Act (EDTPA) provides immunity to health care professionals from potential liability arising from certain decisions, actions and/or omissions related to the care of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is reasonable to provide some protections for health care workers making impossible health care decisions in good faith during an unprecedented public health crisis, it would not be appropriate or just for nursing homes owners to interpret this action as providing blanket immunity for causing harm to residents.
With multiple allegations of sexual misconduct made in March 2021, the subject in mainstream media reporting was largely changed from New York State’s possible liability for the preventable deaths of thousands to Governor Cuomo’s inappropriate behavior with women.
On August 7, 2021, the New Yorker published a coda to Governor Cuomo’s rise to superstardom and his crashing fall from grace. In an essay titled, Diving Into the Subconscious of the “Cuomosexual,” reporter Lizzie Widdicombe posed the question:
How could we have witnessed the Governor’s narcissism, bullying, and hackneyed paternalism and found these qualities attractive?
To answer it, she interviewed psychoanalyst Virginia Goldner, who explained that Governor Cuomo “was radiating an eroticized masculinity that has within it hostility and a little tenderness. That combination of soft and hard—mostly hard, but also soft—is what so many women crave in some way.”
Dr. Goldner’s remarks pointed to a key feature of how the public responded to official Covid policy. Approval of policies had little to do with their substance. Mostly it derived from impressions of the personal qualities, political affiliation, and perceived authority of the officials who presented the policies. Governor Cuomo exuded masculine confidence and gave the impression of taking bold action against a foreign invader. His performances were fascinating to watch, but they had little to do with reality.
By late March of 2020, the virus had spread far beyond the possibility of being contained. The Swedish state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, pointed this out in a March 28, 2020 New York Times interview, but no major public health official in the United States acknowledged this reality. Because the virus was far beyond containment, it was unlikely that any of Governor Cuomo’s contagion control orders such as his statewide lockdown or shutdown of “nonessential businesses” made any positive difference. He was awarded an Emmy for embodying “the determination to fight back” against the virus. In fact, he disarmed New Yorkers by impeding their access to the only weapon (hydroxychloroquine) known at the time for fighting it. Covid patients, including thousands of sitting ducks in nursing homes, were consequently left defenseless.
From: The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, by John Leake and Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, SKYHORSE, New York, 2022.
House Floats Law to Make Colleges That Mandated COVID Shots Pay for Vaccine Injuries
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 30, 2024
Colleges that mandated the COVID-19 vaccine would be liable for medical expenses for students who experienced adverse events from the shot, under a bill introduced Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The University Forced Vaccination Student Injury Mitigation Act of 2024 would require higher education institutions to cover medical costs for students who were — or still are — required to get a COVID-19 shot for class attendance and who experienced an injury.
The bill — introduced by Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) — stipulates colleges must cover the medical costs or risk losing all federal funding from the U.S. Department of Education.
“If you are not prepared to face the consequences, you should have never committed the act,” said Rosendale in a press release. “Colleges and universities forced students to inject themselves with an experimental vaccine knowing it was not going to prevent COVID-19 while potentially simultaneously causing life-threatening health defects like Guillain-Barré Syndrome and myocarditis.”
“It is now time,” Rosendale added, “for schools to be held accountable for their brazen disregard for students’ health and pay for the issues they are responsible for causing.”
Reps. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and Bill Posey (R-Fla.) co-sponsored the bill.
Dr. Joseph Marine, professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explained in the press release why he supports the bill:
“COVID-19 vaccine mandates for college students were flawed policies that did not alter the course of the pandemic and were not needed to keep college campuses ‘safe.’ I had to make efforts to prevent my own high school and college-age children from receiving COVID-19 booster shots that they did not want or need.
“It seems reasonable to me that institutions that implemented such policies without a sound medical or scientific rationale should take responsibility for any proven medical harm that they caused.”
If passed, the bill would allow students to submit a formal request for reimbursement, the Washington Examiner reported.
The request would have to include a record of COVID-19 vaccination, certification from a medical provider that the vaccine caused some kind of disease and a detailed account of related medical expenses.
Diseases covered by the legislation include myocarditis, pericarditis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, Guillain-Barré syndrome and any other diseases that the U.S. Secretary of Education determines to be linked to COVID-19 vaccination.
After the student’s request is vetted to ensure it’s valid and contains sufficient evidence, the college would have to pay the medical costs within 30 days.
It is unclear when a vote on the bill will take place.
CHD took college mandate challenge to U.S. Supreme Court
Rutgers University was the first college or university in the U.S. to mandate the vaccines, threatening to disenroll noncompliant students in the fall 2021 semester. In August 2021, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) sued the university in an attempt to block the mandate.
The case was dismissed in January 2023. After losing on appeal in February, CHD in May asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the court declined. Meanwhile, a month earlier, Rutgers abruptly ended the mandate.
Meanwhile, a federal appeals court this summer ruled that employees in the Los Angeles Unified School District can sue the district over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate because the shots don’t prevent transmission.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges that myocarditis and pericarditis may occur after COVID-19 vaccination. And research shows that adolescents and young adults are particularly at risk of vaccine-induced myocarditis.
As of Sept. 27, there were 1,604,710 Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports of injury or death following a COVID-19 vaccination.
VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before confirming the reported adverse event was caused by the vaccine. VAERS has historically been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
Meanwhile, citing concerns about the shots’ efficacy and safety, Idaho’s Southwest District Health last week voted to no longer offer COVID-19 vaccines at all 30 locations where it provides healthcare services.
17 colleges still have COVID vaccine mandates
By late May 2021, more than 400 U.S. colleges and universities required students to be vaccinated against COVID-19, The New York Times reported.
As of Oct. 19, 17 of those institutions still have a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for students to be able to enroll or live on campus, according to No College Mandates, a “group of concerned parents, doctors, nurses, professors, students and other college stakeholders working towards the common goal of ending COVID-19 vaccine mandates.”
Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of No College Mandates, said in the press release:
“College students were never at risk of severe injury or death from any variant of the COVID-19 virus and institutions of higher education had this data well in advance of mandating COVID-19 vaccines.”
According to the CDC, age is the “strongest risk factor” for severe outcomes from COVID-19 — meaning that the older a person is, the greater their risk for severe symptoms and death.
The CDC said its National Center for Health Statistics shows that “compared with ages 18–29 years, the risk of death is 25 times higher in those ages 50–64 years, 60 times higher in those ages 65–74 years, 140 times higher in those ages 75–84 years, and 340 times higher in those ages 85+ years.”
In other words, the typical college student — ages 18-22 — isn’t usually at risk of severe disease or death from COVID-19 when compared with older age groups.
Nonetheless, Sinatra said, many colleges imposed “some of the most coercive and restrictive vaccination policies” on college students, stripping them of their “fundamental right to bodily autonomy and informed consent.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Texas judge: Enforcing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism limits speech
Interim decision allows policies to remain in place for now
‘Freedom for Palestine’ protest march that drew thousands of participants on November 4, 2023 in Berlin, Germany. [Sean Gallup/Getty Images]
MEMO | October 31, 2024
Will Tuesday’s Vote Counts Be Another Sham Biden-Harris Statistic?
By James Bovard – Mises Wire – October 30, 2024
If Kamala Harris wins the presidential election on Tuesday, Americans will be told that the final vote count is a sacred number that was practically handed down from Mt. Sinai engraved on a stone tablet. Any American who casts doubt on Harris’s victory will be vilified like one of those January 6, 2021 protestors sent to prison for “parading without a permit” in the US Capitol. Actually, anyone who doubted the 2020 election results was being prominently denounced as “traitors” even before the Capitol Clash.
But is there any reason to expect the final vote count in next week’s presidential election to be more honest than any other number that the Biden-Harris administration jiggered in the last four years?
Biden, Harris, and their media allies endlessly assured Americans that the national crime rate had fallen sharply since Biden took office. That statistical scam was produced by the equivalent of disregarding all the votes in California and New York. FBI crime data simply excluded many of the nation’s largest cities until a revision earlier this month revealed that violent crime had risen nationwide.
Deceitful national crime data helped cover-up the disastrous impact of open border policies. The Biden-Harris administration did backflips to avoid disclosing the true size of the surge of illegal immigrants from early 2021 onwards. Kamala Harris did zombie-like face plants in recent interviews when elbowed for honest answers.
In the same way that another surge of unverified mail-in ballots may determine the 2024 election, Biden manipulated the number of illegal aliens by using his presidential parole power to entitle more than a million people from Haiti, Venezuela, Cubans, and other countries to legally enter and stay in America on his own decree. The Biden administration even provided a vast secretive program to fly favored foreign nationals into select airports late at night where their arrival would occur under the radar.
Some states will officially count mail-in ballots that arrive well after Election Day even if the envelopes have no postmark. This is the same “late doesn’t matter” standard that Biden used to vindicate the $42 billion provided by his 2021 infrastructure law to boost broadband access in rural America—which Uncle Joe said was “not unlike what Roosevelt did with electricity.” Unlike the Tennessee Valley Authority, Biden’s broadband program has nothing to show since it delivered faster internet access to almost no one. The same default occurred with the Inflation Reduction Act’s alleged showpiece achievement—42,000 new charging stations around the nation for electric vehicles. But that program produced more presidential applause lines than EV refills. As of March, $7.5 billion in federal spending had only produced seven new charging stations nationwide.
How many votes will Harris lose on Tuesday because Americans remain outraged at the inflation that has slashed the dollar’s value by more than 20 percent since Biden took office? There would be far more popular fury if the feds had not deceived Americans about the full financial damage that Washington inflicted. The official inflation statistic doesn’t count soaring mortgage and housing costs—which is akin to excluding any state south of the Mason-Dixon Line from the national vote tally. Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, said that if the feds today used the same inflation gauges used in the 1970s, Biden’s peak inflation would have been 18 percent, twice as high as the reported number.
Tens of millions of voters will not be obliged to show any identification before voting in this election: they are presumed trustworthy regardless of zero verification. But this is the same standard that the Biden-Harris administration uses for not disclosing its most controversial policies to American citizens. People will vote next week without knowing the facts behind whistleblower allegations on Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party, to Secret Service failures to prevent Trump assassination attempts, and the brazen details of the Censorship Industrial Complex.
In Washington, politicians feel entitled to applause for any grandiose promise—regardless of their failure to deliver. Similarly, politicians and election officials promising that the presidential vote count will be accurate and reflect “the will of the people” is far more important than tabulating the actual ballots. Will the unmanned ballot boxes in big cities be stuffed with bogus ballots the same way a politician jams endless balderdash into his campaign speeches? As pundit Stephen Kruiser quipped, “the clothing donation boxes that were all over my old neighborhood in Los Angeles were probably more secure than the ballot drop boxes.”
Of course, if Trump wins, then all the forces of decency must instantly shift to the other side of the barricades. Any electoral victory by Trump will be illegitimate because of politically incorrect comments made by speakers at Trump campaign rallies. As in 2017, if Trump wins, every “true patriot”—or at least every true progressive—will be honor-bound to join The Resistance™.
FBI ran ‘honeypot’ operation on 2016 Trump campaign – whistleblower
RT | October 30, 2024
Former FBI Director James Comey personally ordered “honeypot” spies to infiltrate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to an agency whistleblower. The off-the-books operation was described by the agency insider as a “fishing expedition” to find wrongdoing among Trump’s team.
The operation was “personally directed” by Comey and launched in June 2015 without any case file being created in the FBI’s database, according to a whistleblower report handed to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and seen by the Washington Times.
At the time, Trump had just announced his first presidential campaign and neither he nor anyone on his campaign team was suspected of any crimes. Nevertheless, Comey ordered two “honeypot” agents to infiltrate Trump’s team on the campaign trail with the aim of extracting damning information from adviser George Papadopoulos, the report claimed.
A “honeypot” agent refers to an attractive woman who uses a sexual or romantic relationship to gather intelligence from a target.
Comey’s operation took place a year before the FBI’s ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russia, which later morphed into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year ‘Russiagate’ probe. According to the whistleblower, the honeypot operation was kept “off the books” to conceal it from the US Justice Department’s inspector general, who later determined that Comey knowingly lied when submitting evidence to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump’s campaign.
Papadopoulos was eventually questioned by the FBI and in 2017 pled guilty to making false statements to agents regarding his alleged contacts with Russia the year before. He served 12 days in federal prison in 2018, and has claimed ever since that he was entrapped by FBI agents posing as Russians with damaging information on Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.
He complained about sloppy FBI agents “dropping information in my lap that I did not want regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails in the hands of the Russians” during the Crossfire Hurricane probe, and claimed to have been targeted by at least one “honeypot” beforehand. However, Papadopoulos thought that the woman was working for the CIA and “affiliated with Turkish intelligence,” he said in 2019.
The operation was canceled when a newspaper obtained a photograph of one of the agents and was about to publish it, the whistleblower claimed. The FBI allegedly contacted the newspaper claiming that the woman in question was an informant, and not an agent, and would be killed if the photo was released, successfully preventing its publication. One of the agents was then allegedly transferred to the CIA so she would not be available as a potential witness.
“The FBI employee personally observed one or more employees in the FBI being directed to never discuss the operation with anyone ever again, which included talking with other people involved in the operation,” the report states.
The Judiciary Committee told the Washington Times that it “plans to look into” the report. Trump fired Comey in 2017, describing him as a “liar” and a “slimeball.”
How the West rigged Moldova’s referendum on the European Union
By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 30, 2024
On October 20, a referendum was held on the Moldovan public’s interest in a constitutional reform to enable entry into the European Union. The “yes” vote won with 50.39%, a numerical margin of about 12,000 votes.
This result was well below expectations, considering all the government’s preparation and mobilization in support of the referendum.
Since Maia Sandu came to power, the goal has been to transform Moldova into a platform and tool for provocation and attack against Russia, similar to how Georgia and Ukraine were positioned in the past.
This had already begun even before Sandu’s election in 2020, with the free operation of Western or pro-Western NGOs in the country. According to various studies, there are around 14,000 NGOs registered in Moldova, a ratio of 1:200, with USAID having a strong direct presence in the country and indirect influence (as a funder of other NGOs).
USAID alone has invested more than $500 million in Moldova over the past 10 years. In terms of general funding, the West supports NGO activities in Moldova with $110 million annually. Besides USAID itself, other main NGO funders include the Open Society Foundation, the governments of Germany and the Netherlands, the NED, and Chatham House.
Among these “Moldovan” NGOs are Promo-LEX, IDIS Viitorul, the EEF (East Europe Foundation), WatchDog.MD, and the EBA (European Business Association), among others. All these groups work in areas like “promoting democracy and human rights” and “countering Russian disinformation.”
In recent years, these and many other NGOs have been actively shaping public opinion through social engineering techniques, aiming to “Ukrainize” Moldovans; that is, to turn Moldovans into Russophobic bots and compliant followers of Washington and Brussels.
With Sandu’s victory, Moldova’s automatic alignment with the West began. To achieve this, the nationalist sentiments of the population are naturally utilized, as the population historically identifies with Romania. However, this connection is manipulated not to foster a Romanian ethno-cultural identity but as a vehicle for the Westernization of Moldova.
When Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine began, Sandu seized the moment to formally apply for EU membership, despite Moldova’s constitution mandating geopolitical non-alignment. Shortly thereafter, the government started imposing censorship on the use of the Russian language in the country, as well as restricting Russian media and symbols, and even arrested her political rival, Igor Dodon. Predictably, Sandu quickly began indebting her country with multi-million euro loans from the European Union.
In the Moldovan narrative, Transnistria, a tiny strip of land with a Russian majority, poses a major threat to “Moldovan sovereignty.” Thus, Sandu decided to sacrifice Moldovan sovereignty in order to defend it. It makes no sense, but that’s how the minds of politicians who have been brainwashed by Western influence work.
Meanwhile, NATO stationed nearly 10,000 troops along the Moldovan border (even though foreign troops are prohibited on its territory), and the country faces frequent anti-government protests from citizens worried that the West might try to turn Moldova into another Ukraine.
This brings us to the referendum on constitutional reform aimed at EU integration. The result, although “victorious,” was disappointing, considering all the money spent promoting the EU, the imprisonment of opposition members, media censorship, and social engineering efforts by NGOs. Even this victory was only achieved through fraud. If you look closely at the referendum maps, you get the impression that the “no” vote won over the “yes.” And that’s exactly what happened: only 46% of Moldova’s residents voted for the reform. The majority of the country’s population voted against EU integration. In all of Gagauzia and the northern regions, opposition to the EU was nearly unanimous, and even in the center of the country, a significant portion of the population voted against joining the EU.
That’s when the “expatriate” population came into play—those who don’t live in the country, don’t share its fate, yet feel entitled to decide on its future. Out of 235,000 diaspora votes, 180,000 supported EU membership. The trick was simple: they increased the number of polling stations in Western countries while in Russia, where 500,000 Moldovans live (half the diaspora and one-sixth of all Moldovans worldwide), they reduced polling stations from 17 to 2, with only 10,000 ballots available.
The conclusion, therefore, is that under democratic rules, the Eurocrats and globalists would be soundly defeated at the polls. But since they don’t really care about democracy, they ensured that only the “right people” could vote.
Concerts, restaurants, nightlife – Kiev regime hunting for conscripts
By Ahmed Adel | October 30, 2024
Ukraine is struggling to recruit troops to reinforce its front lines amid thousands of casualties in nearly three years of conflict. Under these conditions, the Kiev regime is hunting for recruits in places that were once off-limit, such as “upscale venues,” whilst also becoming increasingly reliant on foreign mercenaries to perform special operations.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Kiev regime has expanded its search network for military recruits to include “upscale venues” and “nightlife spots,” which is creating more social tension.
Even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tries to secure more weapons and security guarantees from the US government, the “biggest immediate problem” in Ukraine is recruiting more soldiers, the US outlet said. To deal with this issue, the Kiev regime recently lowered the age of compulsory military service to 25 and imposed additional penalties for draft dodgers, seeking to bring more soldiers to the front lines in the face of advancing Russian forces.
However, the newspaper said that most of the men who wanted to join the Ukrainian armed forces had already done so, while others had fled the country or were in hiding to avoid being drafted. Some prominent figures, including state prosecutors, are also avoiding joining the military by claiming medical exemptions.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the military is stepping up its recruitment campaigns in public places in the capital and other major cities. Military agents check concert halls, grocery stores, and even luxury restaurants in the port city of Odessa.
Mathieu Boulègue, a researcher at the Transatlantic Defence and Security Programme at the Centre for European Political Analysis, believes “there is no easy solution” to Ukraine’s troop shortage.
“That is unfortunately a critical issue that you cannot solve by sending stuff over, short of sending Western troops,” the researcher told the American outlet.
Some Ukrainian officials, cited by the outlet, said they were building up reserves of conscripts to replace those who had lost their jobs. However, they warned that mobilising new troops would not be effective without “more Western supplies to arm new recruits properly.”
The deployment of new Ukrainian troops is not just a military problem for Kiev, the Wall Street Journal noted, but also a growing social and political issue for Zelensky.
“Among soldiers who have been serving on the front line for nearly three years, resentment is building against men avoiding military service,” while scandals continue to emerge involving officials who allegedly accept bribes to grant exemptions.
For this reason, the Kiev regime is increasingly reliant on foreign mercenaries to perform military operations since the citizenry does not provide enough soldiers. In effect, the presence of foreign mercenaries demonstrates the extreme shortage of experienced troops in Ukraine.
In the latest example, foreign mercenaries from the US, Canada and Poland, likely on a sabotage mission or raid, attempted to breach Russia’s Bryansk Oblast on October 27. The special operations mission the mercenaries were assigned required highly skilled operators capable of sabotage or reconnaissance, so given the lack of such people in the Ukrainian military, it is reasonable that they would turn to foreigners.
Emphasising this point is the fact a tattoo was discovered on the body of one of the eliminated foreigners, indicating that he was a member of the elite 75th Ranger Regiment of the US Army.
The discovery of the mercenary group makes a mockery of the West’s claim that soldiers from North Korea are fighting in Ukraine since it is Ukraine suffering from a shortage of troops and relying on foreigners. In fact, it is clear that the West planned the operation rather than Ukraine.
While South Korea and the Kiev regime spread fake news that North Korean troops are fighting in Ukraine, about 15,000 mercenaries from more than 100 countries have arrived in the country since February 2022 to join Ukrainian forces.
According to a Russian Defence Ministry report, Western secret services recruit mercenaries through the US private military companies Academi (formerly Blackwater), Cubic, Dark Horse Benefits, Dean Corporation, Forward Observations Group, Hyperion Services, and Sons of Liberty International, as well as the Polish ASBS Othago and the European Security Academy. At the same time, mercenaries are recruited by neo-Nazi and right-wing organisations from Germany, Italy, Portugal and other countries.
With Ukraine’s best troops dead, wounded or exhausted, the Kiev regime is now hunting for recruits all over the country, including in places that were once considered off-limits. This only deepens Kiev’s reliance on foreign mercenaries and, more importantly, demonstrates the hopeless position that the regime is in.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Canada’s ‘New Red Scare’ is profoundly undemocratic
By Paul Robinson – Canadian Dimension – October 28, 2024
In the past decade, a disturbing phenomenon has arisen in the Western world. One might call it the “New Red Scare.” According to many, the West is the target of a highly sophisticated, professional, and dangerous campaign of foreign subversion, coming mainly from the Russian Federation. Accusations abound against “Russian agents,” “Kremlin influencers,” “Moscow proxies,” and the like. Don’t like someone, call them “pro-Russian;” dislike what they say, call it “Russian disinformation;” want to silence them, call them a “Russian agent.” And so on. Increasingly, reasoned debate is being replaced by silencing and name-calling.
Speaking on Thursday to a parliamentary committee, former diplomat and Member of Parliament Chris Alexander painted a picture of Canada as the victim of an extraordinarily successful malign Russian operation. “Far from being marginal players, Russian information assets and active measures are often kingmakers in our elections,” he declared—a truly remarkable claim that will probably have many wondering how they had failed to notice the dominant role that Russia plays in our political life.
But that wasn’t all. According to Alexander, the leaders of “The People’s Party of Canada, the yellow vest movement, trucker protests, and Wexit [i.e. Western Canadian separatism]” were “radicalized online by Moscow’s active measures” and their funding “had all the hallmarks of Russian influence.” The convoy protests of 2022, Alexander claimed, were designed by the Russians “to distract a country with a huge Ukrainian diaspora as it launched its war of aggression [against Ukraine].” Who knew? And who knew that Russian secret services were so devastatingly efficient as to be able to manipulate a political party and a separatist movement, and to engineer the occupation of the national capital? Frankly, it beggars belief.
In my opinion, there’s a serious problem with threat inflation of this sort. It distracts from real problems and prevents a proper analysis of the causes of those problems by blaming them all on outside actors. When “Blame Russia” is the response to any difficulty, proper solutions are unlikely to be found.
But the statements above weren’t even the most striking bit of Alexander’s evidence to Parliament. For Alexander then submitted documents to the committee that he said showed that a journalist codenamed “Stuart,” whom he identified as the Ottawa Citizen’s defence correspondent David Pugliese, had been recruited by the Soviet intelligence service, the KGB, in the 1980s. He said that the journalist had demonstrated “long-running covert ties to Moscow” and had written divisive articles about “Ukraine’s Nazi links, Nazis in Canada, defamatory pieces about the family of deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, provocative takes on [defence] procurement and other issues at the Department of National Defence,” and so on. According to Alexander, “These are themes that Moscow would be delighted to promote.”
In response, Pugliese has called the accusation “total fabrication. … It’s just ridiculous.” He has pointed out that some of the information in the documents presented by Alexander does not fit him. For instance, one of the documents lists the journalist codenamed “Stuart” as having been in Ottawa in 1984, but Pugliese did not live in Ottawa at that time. In a statement on X, Pugliese remarked that “Individuals linked to Mr. Alexander’s false claims have also stated I play hockey on the Russian embassy hockey team in Ottawa. That is a total fabrication and shows the ridiculousness of this campaign to undercut my journalism. I have never played hockey and can barely skate.”
In any event, it seems that the documents don’t actually say that “Stuart” (whoever he might be) was ever recruited by the KGB. Global News reports that “Several experts on KGB documents said the papers appeared to be legitimate but did not suggest the reporter was ever a Russian agent, only that the Soviets looked at him.” According to one expert, “All [the documents] say is that an individual by this name came to the attention of KGB officials, not even necessarily very senior ones, and that they were interested in exploring him as a potential target of recruitment … So nothing in these documents clearly says that this individual was even approached, or certainly says that that approach was successful. All they do is say this is something worth exploring.”
Pugliese commented that “I get that I piss off a lot of people with my articles … I understand that not everybody appreciates my style of journalism.” Certainly, his reporting on issues such as wasteful defence procurement projects, sexual assault in the military, Nazi links to the Monument to the Victims of Communism, and so on, does not make certain people and institutions look very good. But the insinuation that if you write such things you are not fulfilling the basic journalistic role of holding those institutions to account, but rather working to divide our society on behalf of a hostile foreign power, is profoundly undemocratic.
Our society is not without faults. Our domestic and foreign policies are also often flawed. To correct failings, we need people who point them out, however unpopular that may be. In my view, we should be enabling the widest possible framework of public discourse, not seeking to silence people. To date, we haven’t quite reached the level of hysteria of 1950s McCarthyism, but as the paranoia over foreign interference ramps up, we are perhaps coming painfully close.
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.
White House Security Adviser’s “Information Czar” Idea Triggers Free Speech Concerns
By Dan Frieth – Reclaim The Net – October 29, 2024
Amid escalating assertions over foreign influence in US elections, the White House is exploring a controversial proposal that some warn could threaten free speech and open debate. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently confirmed that the administration has been “grappling with and thinking about” the potential creation of an “information czar,” sparking concern over the government’s expanding role in controlling narratives under the guise of national security.
Speaking at the National War College, Sullivan responded to a question about the potential for a centralized figure to oversee and counter foreign disinformation efforts by suggesting that while the idea has been under consideration, it could raise issues in a free society. “Questions around information operations, around public diplomacy, around the voice that America uses to speak to the world, bleed over into questions of propaganda or politics,” he said, implicitly acknowledging that such a role could have far-reaching consequences on public discourse.
The proposal for an “information czar” raises immediate concerns over whether any centralized control over information could be used to restrict speech and stifle dissenting opinions. Sullivan recognized this risk, questioning whether such a role should be linked to the White House itself or to a more removed agency in order to “insulate this from the twos and fros of politics.” Still, the idea of government officials controlling “information resiliency” remains contentious, especially when directed at speech in the US rather than strictly addressing threats abroad.
In defending the proposal, Sullivan argued that foreign election interference, particularly by Russia and other state actors, poses a national security issue and “an attack on our country” that needs a robust response. However, critics argue that efforts to counter disinformation could easily expand into broader content censorship efforts, a slippery slope that could ultimately see the government interfering with free speech in the name of “resilience.”
We’ve Been Down This Road Before
The White House’s recent consideration of an “information czar” to counter foreign election disinformation brings to mind the Department of Homeland Security’s short-lived Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) in 2022, which aimed to address misinformation but was quickly dismantled after facing public backlash and First Amendment violation concerns. The DGB’s stated mission was similar: to safeguard national security by countering foreign misinformation.
However, it was met with immediate and intense criticism, as many feared the board would become a vehicle for government overreach, potentially chilling free speech under the guise of “information resilience.” The public pushback against the DGB showed the deeply rooted skepticism toward government involvement in controlling or moderating information, especially when it intersects with free speech concerns.
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NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
Blog Roll
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- Iran FM meets with US envoy on UN meeting’s sidelines at American side’s insistence: Report
- Qatar PM calls for Gulf security framework with Iran, says war must be ‘wake-up call’
- China condemns US extortion of Iranian airlines, rejects Washington’s ‘illegal’ sanctions threats
- Italy to move military personnel from Taif base after missile strike
- Finland’s Stubb tells European leaders to calm down
- Defeating Russia on battlefield impossible – Fico
- Finland’s Gender Clinic Reversal
- Massachusetts Wants Mental Health Visits, Why Does Government Use ‘Health’ to Enter Our Homes & Families?
- US lawmaker admits American people footing bill for Trump’s failed aggression against Iran
- If Americans Knew
- Sanctions are collective punishment: immoral and self-defeating
- Phosphorus Munitions Fired by Israel Burn Groves, Orchards in Southern Lebanon
- Israel Carries Out New Ceasefire Violations Across Gaza
- AI – Emphasis on the ‘I’: Israel Is Funding AI Chatbot Propaganda
- Israel Blocking Hundreds of Wheelchairs for Injured Children From Entering Gaza
- Israel Is Expanding and Upgrading Compounds for Palestinian Militias in Gaza
- The Palestinian-American Residents of This West Bank Town Are Wondering: Where Is Trump?
- Gaza desperately needs tents, wheelchairs, fuel… and everything else (Israel blocks it all) – Daily Update
- Israeli Attacks in Gaza Kill at Least Seven Palestinians Over Three Days, including Woman and Child
- Trump’s militarization of Washington DC as he pursues Israel’s war against Iran
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
