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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A majority of Americans now officially meet the definition of “anti-vaxxer”

By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | July 29, 2024

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an “anti-vaxxer” as “a person who opposes the use of some or all vaccines, regulations mandating vaccination, or usually both”:

So, to be an “anti-vaxxer,” per the dictionary, a person needs to only oppose receiving some vaccines. Meaning, a person that opposes receiving a COVID-19 vaccine or an influenza vaccine is an anti-vaxxer. And guess what? The majority of Americans now oppose receiving both of these vaccines.

In fact, according to the CDC, despite spending billions of dollars wildly promoting these products, less than half of Americans received an influenza vaccine, RSV vaccine, and the updated COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, less than 23% of the adult population in the U.S. has received an updated COVID-19 vaccine despite a relentless multi-billion-dollar national promotion campaign.

Not only do a majority of Americans oppose receiving these vaccines, an even greater percentage of Americans no doubt (including some that receive these vaccines) oppose mandating one or more of these products.

The irony is that deciding against being injected with a product after reviewing its clinical trials, post-licensure safety record, lack of liability, etc., is an informed, thoughtful decision. Yet those that mindlessly get every vaccine are the ones painted as making informed, thoughtful decisions?!  Hats off to Big Pharma/CDC for convincing so many that up is down and down is up.

The next time someone calls you an “anti-vaxxer” because you have made an informed decision to not receive a medical intervention, let them know that, yes, you did make an informed, independent medical decision. And wish them luck doing the opposite!

You can also let them know that since “anti-vaxxers” are now the majority, you understand their insecurity and hostility. But they shouldn’t worry: the anti-vax majority is not interested in taking away the rights of the pro-vax minority. They can feel free to get (or not get) as many vaccines as they want. We in the majority just ask that they respect our right to do the same.

July 30, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Evidence indicates federal agencies must have been involved in Trump’s attempted assassination

By Uriel Araujo | July 30, 2024

It has been reported that Donald Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was seen carrying a rangefinder (a device employed to measure distances to remote objects, often used by hunters and military) and was deemed a suspect over 90 minutes before shooting. This has been revealed by newly released text messages exchanged between members of the Beaver County Emergency Service Unit. The messages are clear enough: “he know you guys are up there”, “I did see him with a range finder”. Pictures of Crooks were also shared with Secret Service. Forbes has called this a “possible security lapse”, but in the overall context, such sounds almost like a euphemism. It is far from being the only “lapse” in an increasingly strange case.

One may remember that, as I wrote, according to the FBI, during the Trump rally the would-be assassin was spotted on the roof, holding a weapon, no less than 20 minutes before the shooting, with civilians in the crowd alerting the authorities – and bizarrely nothing was done. Moreover, CNN reported that “forensic analysis suggests that as many as three weapons were fired at the Trump rally.” Stephen Bryen, security expert and former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, also takes the possibility of there being at least a second shooter seriously and calls for a “solid FBI investigation with Congressional oversight” on the issue.

On top of all of that, let us consider the following points hyperlinked below – for the sake of brevity I shall not elaborate too much on each, but shall merely present them:

1. The Oversight Project (OP) employed mobile ad analysis in a geo-location investigation and claims to have thusly “tracked devices that regularly visited both Crooks’s home and place of work and followed them.” It leads straight to Washington DC – to a building that happens to house both the Gallery mall and offices of the FBI, of all places: “someone who regularly visited Crooks home and work also visited a building in Washington, DC located in Gallery Place. This is in the same vicinity of a FBI office on June 26, 2023.”

Of course, this is a busy downtown area in DC, and geolocation cannot pinpoint someone to the most precise address. But still, given the context, the coincidence is enough to raise eyebrows. It does not necessarily mean something more sinister: it could just mean that federal agents were monitoring Crooks before the incident – neither scenario looks good, though (the latter would only make the security breach look even stranger). The OP is a pro-“government transparency” initiative by the Heritage Foundation that uses Freedom of Information Act requests.

2. The FBI, after finally having broken into the shooter’s phone device, claims to have found no leads pertaining to motives. The Bureau also claimed that encrypted messaging applications are a “real challenge”. The espionage capabilities of the US federal agencies regarding telecommunications are well known, which makes this claim hard to swallow.

3. Crooks even flew a drone over the rally’s perimeter, on the day of the attempted assassination, and he might have used a ladder to climb the roof.

5. Before the shooter went up, two local officers inside a building overlooking the same roof left their posts, a short while before Crooks started firing.

6. The SS admitted having repeatedly denied requests for extra security at Trump rallies.

All of the above is very hard to explain in terms of a mere “security lapse”. In fact, such a hypothesis sounds even absurd. Had any of that taken place in any other country in the world, the whole international media would be asking questions about authorities being involved or a cover-up. In the US political culture, however, one usually cries “conspiracy theory” to shut down discussion. It remains to be seen whether this will work in this case, though.

If one looks at the timeline, a man (Crooks) was seen acting suspiciously within the Trump’s rally perimeter (60 minutes before the incident); was then spotted walking around with a rangefinder, a telescope-like device (40 minutes before); was later spotted by Secret Service on the roof (20 minutes before), and was even seen by civilians attending the rally who pointed and shouted “he’s on the roof, he’s got a gun” while Trump gave his speech (2 minutes before); and even pointed his rifle at an officer (30 seconds before). Then, of course he fired eight shots at Trump, hurting the former President’s ear (only because Trump tilted his head to read something on a screen) and hitting three civilians – one of them died. Crooks was finally killed by a SS counter-sniper. Before all of this, at no point was he questioned, asked to leave, detained or shot – having been shot down only after attacking the former President.

It is no wonder then the US Secret Service itself is being investigated by Homeland Security,  with a probe looking into all these security lapses; and it is no wonder SS Director Kimberly Cheatle finally resigned after appearing under subpoena in front of the House Oversight Committee. As I’ve written, the Secret Service is increasingly under suspicion, amid its several contradictions.

The hard truth is that, considering all of that, some Secret Service role in an attempted assassination is the most likely scenario so far. During a congressional hearing last week, the now-resigned SS Director was asked: “Was there a stand-down order, Ms. Cheatle? Was there a conspiracy to kill President?” It certainly seems so, considering all the above. The Director may have resigned, but the crisis remains – and this is not the only scandal haunting Washington before the upcoming elections.

With an incumbent President whose senility and mental decline has been covered up by the White House’s inner circle, it is even unclear who has been governing the country thus far – with some talking about a “ triumvirate” (referring to Biden’s close advisers Bruce Reed, Mike Donilon, and Steve Ricchetti). One can thereby forecast political instability and turmoil within the United States, including possibly espionage agencies infighting, with unclear and unpredictable consequences foreign policy-wise.

July 30, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

TikTok to Ban Some Criticisms of Zionism Following Pressure from NGO Backed by Former Israeli Intelligence Officials

Meta’s global head of policy development, Dina Hussein (Left), and TikTok’s head of trust & safety partnerships, Valiant Richey (Right), moments after CyberWell founder Tal-Or Cohen spoke on the same panel as part of the September 2023 Eradicate Hate Global Summit.
By Lee Fang and Jack Poulson | July 28, 2024

The popular social media platform TikTok has agreed “off-the-record” to enacting the same ban on many criticisms of the Israeli government as was adopted by Meta on July 9, according to a statement from the head of the Israeli pressure group CyberWell published on Sunday. As uncovered by the authors through two reports earlier this month, CyberWell is an offshoot of the Israeli government intelligence collection effort known as Keshet David (“David’s Bow”), which was itself spun out of a larger government propaganda effort now known as Voices of Israel.

CyberWell is one of many nonprofit advocacy groups that has leveraged its role as a trusted ‘counter-disinformation’ and ‘anti-hate’ partner to press for its public policy aims. As we previously reported, CyberWell’s campaigns have included attempts to ban the popular slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as well as criticisms of the Israeli government’s wartime propaganda, including demonstrably false claims from government officials surrounding the killing of “dozens” of babies on October 7th. CyberWell has also pressed for a ban on discussions of the Israeli government’s enactment of the so-called ‘Hannibal Directive’ preference of killing its own citizens rather than allowing them to be taken hostage.

Meta’s recent policy change, which was championed by CyberWell, bans many critical uses of the term ‘Zionist’ – a reference to those who call for an independent state in the Middle East which privileges Jews over other ethnic groups. Meta’s decision recognized that ‘Zionist’ can be used “as shorthand to refer to governments, soldiers, or other specific groups” and therefore punted on the question of whether to ban the critique that “Zionists are war criminals.”

Listen to the audio here:

Roughly seventeen minutes into an interview with Canadian political consultant Warren Kinsella published on Sunday, CyberWell chief executive Tal-Or Cohen responded to a question on whether other social media platforms would be following Meta’s ban on many criticisms of Zionism by stating:

“We’re also a trusted partner of TikTok. And we have been assured by TikTok off-the-record, I’ll say off-the-record, that their policy is the same. Meaning they would be treating Zionism in the same way, okay. So I expect that off-the-record you’re going to actually be seeing statements about that in the coming days. On the record, I can tell you that we’ve been reassured by TikTok that they’re looking at this statement by Meta and that they intend to provide clarification to the public on it soon, okay.”

Ms. Cohen continued that CyberWell plans to fight for the same policies at X and Google: “We all need to look at X and at Google and kind of say … this decision has been widely supported by all of the major Jewish organizations, by a coalition known as the IHRA Coalition,” referencing a pressure campaign for social media platforms to adopt the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) re-definition of antisemitism, for which CyberWell has served as the data provider.

Cohen further stated that: “The next clear move is to call on all social media platforms to actually recognize what is true, which is that ‘Zionist’ is being used as a codeword to spread antisemitism to speak about Jews in hostile and violent ways, and we expect the digital policies that are in place to be applied equally to this form of hate too.”

The host of the interview, Daisy Consulting Group’s Warren Kinsella, was exposed in 2019 for running a smear campaign known as ‘Project Cactus’ to ‘seek and destroy’ the populist People’s Party of Canada and its leader, Maxime Bernier. A source with knowledge of the campaign asserted that Kinsella’s client was the Conservative Party of Canada.

In addition to its ‘trusted partner’ status with Meta and TikTok, CyberWell has also enjoyed close access to U.S. security officials. Ms. Cohen spoke alongside Meta’s global head of policy development, Dina Hussein, and TikTok’s head of trust & safety partnerships, Valiant Richey, during a panel at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit in late September. Beyond participation from multiple FBI agents and an official from the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which has come under criticism for its expansive methods of opposing online disinformation, the summit’s keynote speakers included U.S. homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and former Israeli interior minister Natan Sharansky.

CyberWell’s leadership includes several former high-level Israeli security officials, such as Amos Yadlin, the former head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate, Aman.

Sharansky was influential in the creation of the IHRA redefinition of antisemitism, which he has described as a reaction to a United Nations-backed criticism of the Israeli government as an apartheid state through the 2001 Durban declaration, as well as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Along with celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Sharansky authored the introduction to a 2019 report from Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs – which originally created Voices of Israel – entitled “Behind the Mask: The Antisemitic Nature of BDS Exposed.”

A subsequent report in early 2021, published jointly by the ministries of strategic and diaspora affairs, “The Hate Factor,” laid out the Israeli government’s strategy for pressuring social media companies to adopt the IHRA redefinition of antisemitism. CyberWell is arguably the embodiment of that strategy.

TikTok and CyberWell did not immediately respond to requests for comment. This article will be amended if comments are received after publication.

July 28, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Meet the Sentient World Simulation: How the Government Predicts the Future

Corbett Report | July 27, 2024

WATCH ON: ARCHIVE / BITCHUTE / ODYSEE / RUMBLE / RUMBLE / SUBSTACK or DOWNLOAD THE MP4

Have you heard of the “Sentient World Simulation”? Do you know that the Defense Department revealed two decades ago that they were working on putting together a real-time model of the earth and every person in it? And do you know that project has effectively been swept under the rug and was never mentioned again? Well, you’re about to! Get ready for this week’s fascinating look back through The Corbett Report archives.

FLASHBACK SHOW NOTES

How the Government Predicts The Future – Inside the “Sentient World Simulation”

Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations

Corbett Report 2012 Data Archive (USB Flash Drive)

TRANSCRIPT

The NSA’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. The building of the massive NSA data center in Utah to permanently store copies of all digital communication sent around the world. The UK government’s “Communications Data Bill” to monitor emails, instant messages and other personal information. What was dismissed as crazy conspiracy theory just over a decade ago has become, in this post-9/11 era, the all-too-familiar stuff of newspaper headlines and talking head reportage.

In fact, it was about a decade ago that the tactic of the intelligence agencies seemed to change. Instead of keeping their activities classified–referring to the NSA as “No Such Agency,” for example, or officially denying the existence of Echelon–the government increasingly began shoving this information in the public’s face.

GLENN GREENWALD: This was the mindset that in 2002 that led the bush administration to dredge up John Poindexter from wherever it was that he was. And he actually they worked for defense contracts and they dredged him up. And he was going to start the program that they called the “total information awareness program.” And the logo—which I actually looked at in the last couple weeks that you should go and look at, just because you won’t believe how creepy it is—has the pyramid with this huge eye hovering over it, this eye that was gonna be the all-seeing eye.

And the only problem with the total information awareness program was that they just put a name on it that was too honest about what it was. It freaked everybody out and so they had to pretend that they weren’t going to go forward with it. But of course what they did was they incrementally and in a very clear way recreated the total information awareness program under a whole variety of different legislative initiatives. And this idea that every single form of technological communication by law must be constructed to permit government backdoor interception and surveillance is an expression of what this surveillance state mindset is: that there can be no such thing as any form of privacy from the US government. That is the mindset that has led the surveillance state to be this sprawling, vast, ubiquitous and always expanding instrument that state and corporate power users employ in order to safeguard their power.

SOURCE: Glenn Greenwald: Challenging the US Surveillance State 

Perhaps the scariest thing about something like the Total Information Awareness Office is not merely that it was proposed in the first place, or that it incorporated such blatantly creepy Orwellian imagery to convey its true nature and purpose, but that, as we sit here 10 years later, and as the core functions of the TIA office are now being openly performed by the NSA, DHS and other governmental agencies, people are now actively making excuses for this nightmarish police state.

“If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear” has always been the rallying cry for those who are too afraid of questioning presumed governmental authority to speak out against the surveillance state and the implied assumption of guilt that goes along with it. With feigned bemusement these moral midgets inevitably ask “What’s so bad about the government spying on you, anyway?”

The answer, of course, is that the very question implies that the agencies tasked with carrying out this constant Big Brother surveillance are themselves above reproach, shining lights of moral rectitude who would never abuse this incredible power for nefarious ends. For the unimaginative out there, Hollywood yarns like “Enemy of the State” have provided fictional examples of what can go wrong if someone, somewhere, abuses this power of information and surveillance to target an innocent person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

To be sure, the power that these technologies give for agencies, or corrupt groups within those agencies, to destroy the lives of targeted individuals, is itself a fitting answer to the question of why government surveillance should be troubling to us. But beyond what can happen to specific, targeted individuals in such a scenario, however, is a much larger question: What if this data, our emails, our phone calls, our credit card transactions, our social media posts, our cell phone GPS logs, and all of the hundreds of other pieces of data that are admittedly being collected on us every day, were being fed into a database so gargantuan it contains a digital version of every single person on the planet? And what if that database were being used by the Department of Defense to war game various scenarios, from public reactions to natural disasters to the likelihood of civil unrest in the wake of a declaration of martial law?

Remarkably, this is precisely what is happening.

It is called the “Sentient World Simulation.” The program’s aim, according to its creator, is to be a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action.” In practical terms that equates to a computer simulation of the planet complete with billions of “nodes” representing every person on the earth.

The project is based out of Purdue University in Indiana at the Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations Laboaratory. It is led by Alok Chaturvedi, who in addition to heading up the Purdue lab also makes the project commercially available via his private company, Simulex, Inc. which boasts an array of government clients, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, as well as private sector clients like Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin.

Chatruvedi’s ambition is to create reliable forecasts of future world events based on imagined scenarios. In order to do this, the simulations “gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence.” Although not explicitly stated, the very type of data on digital communications and transactions now being gobbled up by the NSA, DHS and other government agencies make ideal data for creating reliable models of every individuals’ habits, preferences and behaviors that could be used to fine-tune these simulations and give more reliable results. Using this data, the SEAS Laboratory and its Sentient World Simulation offshoot are able to create detailed, operable real-time simulations of at least 62 nations. “The Iraq and Afghanistan computer models,” according to a 2007 Register report on the project, “each has about five million individual nodes representing things such as hospitals, mosques, pipelines, and people.”

At the time of initial reports on the program five years ago, there were only 62 country-level simulations being run by the US Department of Defense. These simulations grouped humans into composites, with 100 individuals acting as a single node. But already at that time, the US Army had used the systems to create a one-to-one level simulation of potential Army recruits. The ultimate aim would be to archive enough data on each individual to be able to make a computer model of everyone on the planet, one that could be used to predict the behaviors and reactions of every single person in the event of various scenarios.

The program can be used to predict what would happen in the event of a large scale tsunami, for example, or how people would react during a bioterror attack. Businesses can use the models to predict how a new product would fare in the market, what kind of marketing plans would be most effective, or how best to streamline a company’s organization.

The original concept paper for the project was published in 2006 and in 2007 it was reported that both Homeland Security and the Defense Department were already using the system to simulate the American public’s reaction to various crises. In the intervening five years, however, there has been almost no coverage at all of the Sentient World Simulation or its progress in achieving a model of the earth.

There is a very good chance that these types of systems are, at least for the moment, pure quackery. Computers are only as valuable as their programming, after all, and the algorithms required to accurately predict responses in chaotic systems with multiple, dimly-understood variables is orders of magnitude beyond what is currently possible. Or is it? One of the great ironies of our time, as Glenn Greenwald goes on to point out in his speech on the surveillance state, is that although we live in a time when it is possible for nebulous government agencies to know every detail of your life, from what you ate for breakfast to where you shopped last night to who your friends are, we are also living in an age of unprecedented ignorance about what are our own governments are actually doing.

GREENWALD: [There’s] one other point that’s worth making about how this works—about how the surveillance State works and how power is exercised through it and this, I think, is probably the most pernicious part—and I refer to this as the one-way mirror. The government’s one-way mirror. At exactly the same time—this is really so remarkable to me—at exactly the same time that the government has been massively expanding its ability to know everything that we’re doing, it has simultaneously erected a wall of secrecy around it that prevents us from knowing anything that they’re doing.

This is the heart of the matter. Somehow we are expected to go along with the sophomoric sophism that “If we have nothing to hide then we have nothing to fear,” yet at the same time we are asked to believe that the government must keep all manner of information secret from the public in order to carry out its work of “protecting” that public.

If the government has nothing to hide, then why doesn’t it release the notes, memoranda and findings of the 9/11 Commission in full and unredacted?

Why doesn’t it release the records of the JFK assassination investigation instead of arguing, as it is, that those records should once again be removed from a declassification review that is to take place in 2013, 50 years after the assassination itself took place?

Why doesn’t it release the full audit trail of what banks received the emergency TARP funds and in what amounts?

Is it because, after all, the government does have something to hide from the public that are its ostensible masters? Is it because the old maxim that “Knowledge is power” is more true than we could ever know, and that the government’s one-way insistence on transparency for the citizens and opacity for itself is a reflection of the power that it holds over us?

The Sentient World Simulation is just one example of one program run by one company for various governmental and Fortune 500 clients. But it is a significant peek behind the curtain at what those who are really running our society want: complete control over every facet of our lives achieved through a complete invasion of everything that was once referred to as “privacy.” To think that this is the only such program that exists, or even that we have any significant details about the ways that the SWS has already been used, would be hopelessly naive.

So where does this leave a public that is at such a disadvantage in this information warfare? A public that is effectively told that anything and everything they do, say or buy, can and will be catalogued by the a.i. control grid even as the details of that grid are to be kept from them? Unfortunately there is no easy way back from the precipice that we were ushered toward with the creation of the national security state and the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. Perhaps we have already stepped over that precipice and there is no going back in the current political paradigm. These are things for an informed, aware, knowledgeable citizenry to decide through a societal dialogue over the nature of and importance of “privacy.”

But without a general awareness that programs like the Sentient World Simulation even exist, what hope do we have in counteracting it?

July 28, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Secret Service Opted Out of Drone Surveillance Before Trump Assassination Attempt – US Senator

Sputnik – 26.07.2024

The probe into the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has uncovered new details of the botched security operation at the Pennsylvania rally.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley has submitted a letter to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with shocking details that the Secret Service – responsible for ensuring the safety of the former president’s life – “repeatedly” turned down offers by local police to carry out drone surveillance of the area.

“The night before the rally, US Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally,” the senator wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, citing information from a whistleblower.

The whistleblower also alleged that it was not until after the deadly shootout that the Secret Service went on to use drones to record the area, Hawley noted.

Hawley had previously quoted the whistleblower and spoken out against the officer who left the very spot from which the assassin targeted Trump. The officer allegedly left the roof of the warehouse because it was “too hot.”

“It is hard to understand why [the Secret Service] would decline to use drones when they were offered, particularly given the fact USSS [US Secret Service] permitted the shooter to overfly the rally area with his own drone mere hours before [the] event,” the Republican senator elaborated further.

Hawley also went on to mention that the whistleblower believes that using drones would have helped neutralize the sniper.

July 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Vaccine Advocate Peter Hotez Calls for Use of Police, Military Against ‘Anti-vaccine Aggression’

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 26, 2024

Vaccine advocate and pharmaceutical industry insider Dr. Peter Hotez, long a proponent of the COVID-19 vaccine, said he favors deploying police and military powers against “anti-vaxers,” whom he blamed for causing hundreds of thousands of deaths during the pandemic.

During an interview July 5 at the Simposio Internacional de Actualización en Pediatría (International Symposium of Pediatric Updates) in Cartagena, Colombia, Hotez suggested organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and NATO should target “anti-vaccine aggression.”

Hotez said:

“What I’ve said to the Biden administration is, the health sector can’t solve this on its own. We’re going to have to bring in Homeland Security, the Commerce Department, Justice Department to help us understand how to do this.

I’ve said the same with — I met with Dr. Tedros [director general of the WHO] last month … to say, I don’t know that the World Health Organization can solve this on our own. We need the other United Nations agencies. NATO. This is a security problem because it’s no longer a theoretical construct or some arcane academic exercise. Two hundred thousand Americans died because of anti-vaccine aggression, anti-science aggression.

The full interview was available on YouTube until Wednesday evening, when it was removed. The Defender obtained a video recording of the full interview.

Hotez is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University College of Medicine and director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, one of the sponsors of the symposium, which was organized by the Colombian Pediatric Society.

Aside from being a vaccine proponent and developer — he helped develop the Corbevax COVID-19 vaccine which was administered in India and has received at least $30 million in vaccine development grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — Hotez has crusaded against so-called “misinformation” about vaccines.

In March, The Hill reported that Hotez has found a “‘parallel career’ fighting misinformation.”

Hotez “finds his efforts to combat misinformation to be ‘meaningful,’” and says “pushing back on the anti-vaccine movement is just as important as developing vaccines,” The Hill wrote.

Hotez also holds six patents on the hookworm (helminth) vaccine, and has several listed patent applications as well, including those for SARS-CoV2 vaccines.

“Peter has cashed in significantly on the COVID-19 pandemic and gets a lot of money when shots go into arms,” said Brian Hooker, Chief Scientific Officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

In his July 5 interview, Hotez called for more stringent action against “anti-vaxers,” whom he connected to entities such as the Russian government, and called for medical schools to educate new doctors about anti-vaccine sentiment.

“‘Anti-science’ and ‘anti-vaxxer’ are propaganda terms Hotez uses to establish a power dynamic over anyone who disagrees with him,” said cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough.

“Now Hotez is calling for a security state to enforce his propaganda instead of engaging in much needed dialogue over vaccine safety with a critical appraisal of short- and long-term side effects from the routine childhood vaccine schedule, including the COVID-19 shots,” McCullough added.

According to Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus and senior research scientist in epidemiology (chronic diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health:

“Hotez has spent his entire career developing vaccines which have not achieved success in commercial use. His demands to impose public health martial law are reminiscent of the ‘Comité de salut public’ — ‘Committee of Public Safety’ — that Robespierre used to murder his political opponents [during the French Revolution].”

For Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Hotez’s suggestions are a call to violate established international human rights law.

“Coercing vaccines upon human beings without their informed and voluntary consent violates the Nuremberg Code on Medical Experimentation, which is a crime against humanity,” Boyle said. “What we see at work here with Hotez is the Nazi mentality that pervades so many vaccinologists like him. Hotez is revealing his true colors.”

Independent journalist Paul D. Thacker has investigated Hotez for his site, The Disinformation Chronicle. He said, “This crackpot idea that we should deploy military forces to deal with moms worried about vaccine side effects and children … doesn’t that speak for itself?”

Dr. Sukharit Bhakdi, a microbiologist, questioned Hotez’s scientific credentials:

“Simple fact: Hotez is not a real scientist. He has never published any research article based on true scientific research. His publications transmit his personal opinions and beliefs. He has not conducted a single valid vaccine trial and has zero data to back his claims.

“He has been on the globalist team together with [Dr. Anthony] Fauci et al. and is now turning to violence to silence all dissenters. This very fact disqualifies him as a physician.”

“His evolution over the course of the pandemic is curious as he has become more and more shrill as time goes on,” Hooker said. “It seems he is trying to extend his 15 minutes of fame by ‘jumping the shark’ and inciting gestapo-like measures against ‘anti-vaxers’ and ‘science deniers.’ His definition of science is very ‘Fauci-esque’ indeed.”

Claim that unvaccinated caused ‘hundreds of thousands’ of deaths ‘an obvious untruth’

During his July 5 interview, Hotez asserted that the unvaccinated were responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said:

“There’s anti-vaccine activity in every country, and each has its own unique national flavor. But the part that I’m worried about now is something very dark and accelerating in the United States.

“And the most dramatic evidence for that is what happened during the COVID pandemic … My estimate is 200,000 Americans died needlessly because they refused COVID vaccines in 2021, 2022.”

Hotez did not provide evidence supporting this figure, but it was similar to claims made by Dr. Anthony Fauci during Congressional testimony last month. Without citing evidence, Fauci said the unvaccinated are “probably responsible for an additional 200,000-300,000 deaths” in the U.S.”

Risch called this claim “an obvious untruth.”

“In the face of repeated major empirical CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] evidence and CDC’s public acknowledgement that the mRNA vaccines largely failed to reduce COVID transmission, Hotez absurdly claims that people choosing not to vaccinate themselves have contributed more to deaths from COVID than all of the large-scale breakthrough infections among vaccinated people,” Risch said.

McCullough said, “Hotez presumes COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective as any vaccinologist would dream. Sadly, his fantasy was over before it started. The COVID-19 vaccines were unsafe and failed to reduce hospitalization and death in prospective randomized trials or in valid observational studies. They never stopped transmission.”

“All experts, including Hotez, agreed theoretical protection from COVID-19 vaccines was just a few months, requiring frequent boosters,” McCullough added.

Hotez calls parents who choose not to vaccinate their children ‘victims’

In his interview, Hotez called for action — including more censorship — to counter what he called a “dark and accelerating” and “dangerous” anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. and globally that is “expanding and extending to childhood immunizations in the United States.”

“My worry is that this anti-vaccine movement, and it’s not misinformation or [an] infodemic, as many call it, it’s organized, it’s deliberate, it’s well-financed and it’s politically motivated … I worry that’s now globalizing to other countries on the African continent, in Asia and even Latin America,” he added.

On the topic of childhood vaccinations, Hotez said, “Parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids are victims” of this campaign, and called for medical schools to train doctors on how to respond to parents who oppose vaccinations.

“Pediatricians need to understand what the anti-vaccine ecosystem is, how it’s organized, how it operates, and to get educated about it,” he said. “I think that’s a first step … in our medical schools, in our pediatric residency training, in our conferences like this, being able to describe what this anti-vaccine monster looks like.”

But for journalist Rodney Palmer, formerly of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the increasing reluctance of parents to vaccinate their children is due to mounting concerns about vaccine safety. He said:

“The rising movement questioning the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines appears to be based on mounting evidence from government health data collection agencies and the life insurance industry.

“The fraud and cover-up of ivermectin as an effective prevention and treatment of COVID-19 caused a segment of the population to question the official guidance around vaccines — more so once they were mandated.”

Hotez blamed legacy and traditional media, as well as foreign governments, for fueling anti-vaccine sentiments.

“Fox News is now a source of anti-vaccine disinformation,” Hotez said. “If the parents are watching Fox News every night … They are going to be coming into your practice believing disinformation.”

Turning to social media, Hotez said, “Twitter, since Elon Musk has taken it over, has become an anti-vaccine site dominated by anti-vaccine groups and individuals who are monetizing the internet. They’re selling fake autism cures because they say vaccines cause autism, which they don’t.”

Hotez continues to be active on X.

Adversarial foreign governments are also to blame for propagating anti-vaccine rhetoric, according to Hotez. “For instance, the Russian government, the Putin government, is spreading anti-vaccine propaganda. The goal of this is to destabilize society and to have caused people to question authority,” he said.

Hotez did not provide any information to support this claim. Russia produces the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, under the auspices of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and The Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology — an arm of the Russian federal government.

Hotez calls ‘anti-vaccine movement’ a tool of the ‘far-right’

Hotez also used the interview as an opportunity to plug his upcoming book, “The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning.” He said the book “describes [the anti-vaccine] ecosystem and its political leanings in detail.”

According to the book’s publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press, Hotez “explains how anti-science became a major societal and lethal force” and how “the anti-vaccine movement became a tool of far-right political figures around the world.”

In 2022, Hotez fiercely criticized looming Congressional hearings into a possible lab-leak origin of COVID-19 and whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) prematurely discredited the hypothesis, dismissing this as an “outlandish conspiracy.”

However, Hotez’s own 2012 to 2017 NIH grant — totaling $6.1 million — for the development of a SARS vaccine had the aim of responding to any “accidental release from a laboratory,” in addition to a possible zoonotic (or natural) spillover of the virus.

In a June 2023 interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD’s chairman on leave, podcaster Joe Rogan offered to donate $100,000 to a charity of Hotez’s choice if he agreed to debate Kennedy.

Hotez — with the support of several legacy news media outlets and the American Medical Association — refused Rogan’s offer. He later claimed on social media that a “couple of anti-vaxers” “stalked” and “taunted” him outside his home after he declined the offer to debate Kennedy.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

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.

July 26, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Leaked: Israel attempted to obstruct US lawsuit against Pegasus spyware

Press TV – July 25, 2024

Israel has gone to great lengths to obstruct a high-stakes US lawsuit that could potentially expose highly confidential information regarding the regime’s Pegasus spyware, one of the world’s most notorious hacking tools, leaked files suggest.

Israeli officials confiscated documents related to the Pegasus spyware from its manufacturer, NSO Group, in a bid to prevent the company from complying with demands from WhatsApp in a US court to provide information about the intrusive technology, said the British media on Thursday.

These documents indicate that these seizures were part of an unusual legal tactic devised by the Israeli regime to prevent the disclosure of details about Pegasus, which Tel Aviv feared could lead to significant diplomatic and security repercussions for the regime.

Pegasus enables NSO clients to secretly install hidden software on smartphones, allowing them to extract messages and photos, record calls, and activate microphones covertly. NSO’s clients have included both authoritarian regimes and democratic nations, and the technology has been implicated in human rights abuses worldwide.

NSO has sold its spyware – known as Pegasus – to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Hungary and India among others.

The spyware also allows its users to monitor conversations, text messages, photos and location, and even encrypted messaging apps such as Signal and WhatsApp. Pegasus can turn phones into remotely operated listening devices.

Since late 2019, NSO has been embroiled in a lawsuit in the US filed by WhatsApp, alleging that the Israeli firm exploited a vulnerability in the messaging service to target over 1,400 of its users across 20 countries within two weeks. NSO rejects the allegations.

The seizure of files and computers from NSO’s offices in July 2020, kept secret until now by a strict gag order issued by an Israeli court, sheds new light on the close relationship between Israel and NSO, and the shared interests of the privately owned surveillance company and the country’s security establishment.

The removal of files in July 2020 occurred after talks between Israeli officials and NSO about how to respond to WhatsApp’s demands for NSO to disclose internal documents regarding its spyware, prompting questions about potential coordination to withhold certain information from US legal proceedings.

At one point, NSO’s lawyer, Rod Rosenstein, a former US deputy attorney general during the Donald Trump administration, reportedly asked one of Israel’s US attorneys whether the Israeli regime would intervene to assist in the legal dispute with WhatsApp.

Earlier this month, WhatsApp accused NSO of failing to fulfill its responsibilities to provide internal documents as part of the legal discovery process. This process aims to help WhatsApp gather information crucial for its case and reveal unprecedented details about how NSO’s government clients have utilized Pegasus.

Nevertheless, the covert involvement of the Israeli regime has impeded WhatsApp’s efforts to compel NSO to provide crucial information. Recently, WhatsApp’s lawyers informed the US court that NSO has “only produced 17 internal documents of its own.”

Both Israel and NSO anticipated expansive demands from WhatsApp for confidential internal company documents, including lists of its clients.

As the discovery process became imminent in the early part of 2020, NSO considered requesting a “blocking order” from the Israeli regime. This order would prevent NSO from disclosing specific information to WhatsApp. A memo outlining this proposal was shared with Israel’s justice ministry in April of that year.

Tel Aviv’s actions seem to have significantly affected the case. NSO has contended that its ability to engage in the discovery process has been constrained by several legal restrictions in Israel.

Earlier this month, WhatsApp’s lawyers told the court they had not yet received any documents relevant to Pegasus, accusing NSO of a “continued refusal to meaningfully participate in discovery.”

The US government blacklisted the Israeli company in 2021 for its sale of hacking tools to repressive regimes.

July 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

US police no longer trust FBI – report

RT | July 25, 2024

Many US state and local law enforcement agencies are refusing to share vital information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation due to concerns that it has become partisan and politicized, according to a whistleblower report submitted to Congress.

The 230-page report was compiled by an alliance of retired and active-duty agents and analysts, who spoke to more than 30 “independent, highly credible” sources across the US.

“They are not only reluctant to work with the FBI but reportedly have decided to no longer share actionable, substantive information on criminal and other intelligence-related activity” with the Bureau, because they believe it “has been operating as a partisan federal agency motivated by a political agenda” in recent years, the report’s authors said.

The report’s existence was first reported on Wednesday in the New York Post. The document itself was sent to the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees and posted online.

The group described a “crisis of confidence” in FBI-led task forces and a “disturbing loss of trust” in the Bureau as a whole, even as Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress about a “complex threat environment” that is unprecedented in his career.

Most sources pointed to the FBI’s response to the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol and the August 2022 raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.

One of the sources described the FBI’s behavior as “that of a Third World country” and argued it “should be dismantled and its personnel prosecuted and given long prison sentences.”

Pressure to assist with “J6” cases has led to a belief that the Bureau is driven by a “partisan, political agenda.” One source said they could not understand why the FBI was not going after any other groups with the same fervor. Another said that local officers feared they could be targeted “because of their love for the US” and perceived as “domestic terrorists” based on how they vote.

Newer FBI agents “do not bother to conceal their distaste” for traditional political or religious views and openly identify themselves as “woke or liberal,” the head of a multi-agency task force said. Hired on the basis of “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) guidelines, they are “completely worthless” and “the worst batch of people,” the whistleblowers said.

The FBI academy at Quantico, Virginia at which new agents are trained “promotes a cult of narcissism” and arrogant superiority, while being intolerably politicized, the report claimed. Meanwhile, the Bureau’s Security Division has been abusing the security clearance process to purge conservative-leaning agents from its ranks.

The whistleblowers urged Congress to force the resignation of Wray as “an extreme measure of last resort” and the only way to restore the Bureau’s reputation.

July 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

America’s Palace Coup

By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | July 24, 2024

On Sunday, July 21 at around 1:30pm Eastern time someone with access to President Joe Biden’s social media accounts posted that he was dropping out of the presidential election. The announcement was not on any form of official stationary and the signature was obviously different than usual when compared by the untrained eye. Just the night before, Joe Biden’s social media accounts had insisted he was staying in the game, though he was “in isolation” due to allegedly testing positive for COVID (something which people still inexplicably do). It didn’t take any great insight to see that America’s stuffed corpse had finally been given the shepherd’s crook. Around a half hour later, the Biden accounts posted that he would be endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris—the only person in American public life less coherent than Joe Biden—for president. While we have been joking about necromancers and Weekend at Bernie’s and the “They” Biden refers to as being in charge for years, in some ways it feels like it became true all at once. For all of this, at least thus far, we are meant to believe that Biden will be continuing through the end of his term as president; but there is no mistaking it, there has been a palace coup at the White House.

It has been a long road to this point, and I should not make any predictions given my track record on Joe Biden. In 2020 I was sure no one would vote for him in the primaries, and it certainly seemed that way until he won the fourth contest in South Carolina, and most of the rest of the field besides Bernie Sanders dropped out so the party could “come together.” Of course, it was at about this time that Donald Trump allowed the COVID madness to be unleashed and destroy the end of his presidency. When Trump couldn’t close the Pandora’s Box he had opened, Biden had an excuse to campaign from his basement. They managed to keep Biden out of the public eye as much as possible while Donald Trump ran a mostly normal campaign. I was sure he wouldn’t win the general election, and we could argue all day about last minute rule changes and if the election was fair, but one way or another, Biden was carried across the finish line and became the president of the United States.

It has been an ignominious term in office. 2020 was an indecisive election, and any normal political party would have sought to govern moderately and spend time selling America on their agenda for the midterms. Instead, Democrats set to re-shape America on the smallest of margins, taking Franklin Roosevelt, who once had over 75% of the House, as their model. More than anything they did this by refusing to enforce immigration laws, leading to an unprecedented number of humans being let into our country. However, they did hammer through the inappropriately named “Inflation Reduction Act,” which was a substantial spending package to get through on such a small legislative majority. Still, the term was primarily defined by a wide range of disgraces, not just Biden’s constant confusion but also the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the mandate for vaccines that didn’t work, the notorious trans freak show at the White House, and of course the confirmation that the Hunter Biden laptop was real and the president’s son is a depraved crackhead. Still, for all of this we were told Joe Biden was in charge and that it was some sort of conspiracy theory to think this obviously failing man was not running the show (to whatever limited extent Presidents are normally in charge).

This all changed after the debate at the end of June. At all prior public performances Joe Biden had seemingly been injected with just the right amount of drugs and performed decently. He had scary black eyes but could talk. However, while there was some confusion and malapropisms from Biden during the debate, I didn’t think it was as bad as people made it out to be. More than anything, the debate rules clearly made to favor Biden which stopped interruptions and the lack of a crowd let Biden ramble on incoherently. Further, one notices that he is a liar and he was constantly insulting Trump despite his much vaunted “decorum.” People say they want a politician with “fire in his belly” but in the case of Joe Biden, this just looks like Alzheimer’s rage. Still, to those of us who had been expecting this each performance, it was kind of incredible it finally happened, but also not as bad as it could have been. However, to people who believe the news media and their carefully curated worldview, it had been the case that it was just “malinformation” and “cheapfakes” giving people the false impression that the president was unwell. It was very much a matter of the party’s final command being to not believe your own eyes, to paraphrase George Orwell.

Then, it came time to write Biden out of the plot. Our public life has become surreal. We are meant to believe it is normal that the president is missing. He made a Twitter post and then ghosted us. His schedule was cleared. Everyone with power in the Democratic Party, with the notable exception of former President Barack Obama, immediately lined up behind Kamala Harris. At her first appearance as she went to take over her supposed boss’ campaign, she played what she almost called a “recording” but then corrected herself and referred to as a “call” with the president. Kamala said, “You’re not going anywhere Joe” and laughed maniacally in front of a crowd of dupes. Perhaps he is fine, perhaps he isn’t. Of course we will never know the truth about how they got Biden out after insisting he would continue to campaign no matter what. We are left to wonder if his man can be trusted with the nuclear codes…well, how that is allowed, we know he cannot be. There is talk that they threatened to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment against him if he didn’t drop out. One way or another, the revolution was: in around thirty-six hours it was reported that the majority of Democrat National Convention delegates were pledged to Kamala. Our nation’s most unfit president has been forced out of his own campaign, in a seamless transition, to an even more pliable puppet.

For all of this, perhaps the most incredible thing is that our usually panic-addicted media wants to act like this is normal. Biden’s legacy will be as a self-less patriot who, of his own free will, stepped down for the good of the country. He would be our own Cincinnatus, if the people in media knew that reference. There is nothing to see. Move on. The president is fine. Do not look behind the curtain. Kamala Harris has always been the Democratic nominee. She is the will of the voters. This is the glorious new age of Democracy™. It is morning in America.

July 24, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

People must agree to give up freedoms for survival – Kiev’s ex-top general

Valery Zaluzhny. © Alexey Furman/Getty Images
RT | July 23, 2024

The Western nations should “wake up” to the threat of a potential major conflict they are facing, Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s former military commander-in-chief, told a British military conference on Monday. The governments should make sure their nations are ready to “mobilize” and sacrifice their liberties in the name of what he called “survival” if such a conflict does break out, said Zaluzhny, who in May became Kiev’s ambassador to London.

Readiness for a war “should be considered as a huge set of measures” that covers all fields of state activity, the former general told the Land Warfare Conference 2024 hosted by the Royal United Services Institute. “Modern wars… are total,” he said, adding that “they require efforts… of society as a whole.”

Waging a war means that a state has to use all its “resources,” including “economics, finance, population and allies,” Zaluzhny stated, in a speech that he published in full on social media. “Society must agree to temporarily give up a range of freedoms for the sake of survival.”

The ex-general also claimed that what he called “the war for freedom in one country” in an apparent reference to Kiev’s standoff against Moscow “should become the policy of survival” for other nations.

In his speech, Zaluzhny claimed that “the very existence of Russia is already a threat.” He also referred to Moscow as an “eternal enemy” engaged in “the primordial struggle” with Kiev.

The military commander-turned-envoy also stated that the ongoing conflict would determine the future of wars for decades to come and called it a “war of the transitional period” that would set new rules of warfare. He also repeatedly spoke about the growing role of technologies on the battlefield but did not mention any specific ones, except for unmanned systems.

According to Zaluzhny, Ukraine had “already invented a way to fight and win against stronger armies in the 21st century.” He still admitted that Kiev cannot “scale up” its supposedly innovative warfare solutions but its backers in the West “have resources but … no applied and practical field to test them.” The former general then called on the West to work “together” with Ukraine to “effectively use the resource.” A failure to do so would mean that “we will all die,” he claimed.

Zaluzhny, who had served as the country’s military commander-in-chief since 2021, was dismissed by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky in February after a massive counteroffensive that ended up in a major failure for Kiev. Some media reported at that time that Zelensky also viewed the veteran general as a political rival. In May, Zaluzhny was relieved from active service and appointed an ambassador to the UK.

July 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

NATO States Embrace Conscription, Eyeing Future War with Russia

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | July 22, 2024

As NATO escalates its proxy war in Ukraine and inches closer to fighting directly with Russia, the Washington-led bloc is embracing mandatory military service. Many European members of NATO have expanded or reintroduced conscription as part of large-scale preparations for such a war, CNN reports.

Already outpaced in terms of military industrial capacity by Russia, the alliance’s new battleplans will see an attempt to beef up weapons production and form 35-50 brigades of 3,000-7,000 battle ready troops.

Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has insisted, “Today, we have 500,000 troops on high readiness, combat-ready battlegroups in the eastern part of the Alliance for the first time.” But the bloc is struggling to meet its goals of assembling 300,000 soldiers prepared to be activated within a month and another half a million in six months. There is also a question of whether the bloc can filed a military fit for a protracted war akin to the Ukraine conflict.

Following the end of the Cold War, several European states ceased conscripting their citizens. Although increasing numbers of NATO member countries have resorted to the draconian practice during recent years, especially in the Baltics and Scandinavia. Roughly a third of the NATO alliance practices some form of compulsory military service.

This year, for the first time since it was abolished in 2006, Latvia reimplemented its draft. Male citizens are subject to conscription within a year of turning 18 years old. Additionally, Norway has unveiled a long-term plan to increase its ranks of mandatorily conscripted troops, employees, and reservists by 20,000 as well as double the military budget. In 2015, Oslo became the first NATO government to establish a gender-neutral draft.

Lithuania brought back mandatory military service in 2015, each year drafting 3,500 to 4,000 men between the ages of 18-26 for a nine-month period. Although the Finnish Defense Forces employ only 13,000 people during peacetime, Helsinki claims it has the ability to activate over 900,000 reservists  with 280,000 combat-ready troops. Sweden conscripts both men and women, Stockholm drafted 7,000 its citizens and the military expects to conscript 8,000 next year. The Swedes have had conscription since 1901.

Citing the supposed Russian threat to Europe, Robert Hamilton, the head of Eurasia Research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said “It is tragically true that here we are, in 2024, and we are grappling with the questions of how to mobilize millions of people to be thrown into a meatgrinder of a war potentially.” For 30 years, Hamiliton served as a US Army officer. “Meatgrinder” is a term often used by frontline troops in Ukraine, particularly during the battle of Bakhmut where the average life span of such a soldier was only a few hours.

In the United Kingdom, conscription is currently being pushed by Conservative MPs. The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, the annual military spending bill, may include provisions which inter alia will seek to automatically register all eligible men and women for Selective Service, a form of conscripted labor, which could inevitably include military service.

Former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe General Wesley Clark echoed Hamilton’s hawkish sentiments, emphasizing “whether this is a new Cold War or an emerging hot war is unclear.” He added that NATO “must rebuild our defenses,” including with mandatory military drafts.

“I think young people in Europe and the US will come to realize that this generation, like the generation that fought WWII, it didn’t ask to be the ‘Greatest Generation’ but the circumstances thrust that burden on them,” Clark added.

The risk of direct war with Russia is growing by the day amidst the Ukraine proxy war, as the alliance has largely approved NATO missiles to be used for attacks against the Russian mainland. The bloc will soon provide Kiev with F-16s and an explicit green light for the warplanes to carry out direct strikes against Russian territory as well. Without irony, Stoltenberg claimed this should not be viewed by Russia as an escalation.

As NATO considers increasing its nuclear weapons deployments, the US is also planning to deploy previously banned, medium-range, nuclear capable missiles in Germany which has caused Russia to hint it could similarly retaliate. Pointing to the massive US-led buildup for war with China, President Vladimir Putin accused NATO of creating major security threats for Russia in Asia.

NATO set its sights on China four years ago, identifying Beijing as a military threat to European security. China maintains a “no limits” partnership with Russia. “NATO is already ‘moving’ there (to Asia) as if to a permanent place of residence. This, of course, creates a threat to all countries in the region, including the Russian Federation. We are obliged to respond to this and will do it,” Putin vowed earlier this year. That same month, Stoltenberg cited China as a reason the bloc is considering an “adaptation” of its nuclear arsenal.

July 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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