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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

Scott Ritter: Biden’s Election Withdrawal Shows Who is Actually Running America

Sputnik – July 22, 2024

The timing of Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the presidential race raises questions, argues former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and ex-weapons inspector Scott Ritter.

“There’s no doubt that Joe Biden is unfit to be president of the United States. No doubt. But here’s the question. If he’s unfit to run as the candidate of the Democratic Party, why did they put him up?” former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and ex-weapons inspector Scott Ritter said, noting that signs of Biden’s frailty were visible during the G7 summit in Italy last month.

According to him, the fact that Biden is unfit to be the POTUS but was still allowed to “function” begets the question: who is really in charge in the United States?

“Who’s running America? Because it’s not Joe Biden. We don’t know who. It’s an unelected group of handlers who are drawn from what I guess we can call the establishment. Some people might refer to it as the deep state. And these are the people who are calling the shots,” Ritter stated, noting that “the critical decisions of governance” this group makes are made “for the American people, but not necessarily on behalf of the American people.”

He describes the 2024 presidential election in the US as “a test of American democracy” and a “contest between established elites that are found in the Democratic Party and this surge of populism in the form of Donald Trump who is taking control of the Republican Party.”

Yet while Americans are normally allowed to “have a say in the outcome” of this process, the Democratic Party and the “elites known and unknown” now opted to meddle in this process and “will be selecting who their candidate will be for the presidency in the 2024 elections,” which is “not the way it’s supposed to be,” he noted.

“America is in a crisis, a crisis of democracy, a crisis of identity. And it doesn’t look like we have a solution because for the most part, the American people have been confused and misled and manipulated by the mainstream media into somehow thinking that this is normal,” Ritter lamented.

July 22, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Ireland – mass-immigration and the Great Reset

By Gavin O’Reilly | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 21, 2024

On Monday morning, Ireland would awake to reports of unrest in the Dublin suburb of Coolock, when after months of peaceful protest by local residents over plans to move upwards of 500 male migrants into a disused paint factory in the working-class neighborhood, tensions would come to a head when Irish riot police cleared the on-site protest camp in a heavy-handed early morning raid. In response, work vehicles intended to convert the site would be set ablaze, leading to scenes reminiscent of the north of Ireland in the late 60s or early 70s.

As the day progressed, the parallels between Coolock and the Ireland of half a century ago would grow. Heavily-militarised police, under the direction of Garda commissioner and former RUC Deputy Constable Drew Harris, would soon arrive in the North Dublin suburb, resulting in scenes akin to Belfast or Derry in 1969. Local residents, including women, children, and the elderly, would be brutalised, a popular video streamer and citizen journalist would be arrested, and a number of elected representatives, who had arrived on the scene in a bid to calm tensions, would be pepper sprayed by police. By the end of the day, 15 people would be arrested and charged, with their names and addresses highly-publicised by the Irish media, an effective warning to others to not protest against the current immigration policies being imposed by Leinster House, which has seen large numbers of male migrants being placed into wildly unsuitable locations such as an inner city office block and childrens primary school, with no prior consultation being held with local communities beforehand.

Indeed, similar scenes would erupt in the small rural village of Newtownmountkennedy in late April, when again, after weeks of peaceful protest by local residents in opposition to plans to house male migrants in a disused hospital in the locality, police would once again carry out a heavy-handed early-morning raid on an on-site protest camp. In the ensuing hours, local residents would again be brutalised, a female journalist would be pepper sprayed, and martial law would effectively be imposed on the sleepy town.

In a grim irony, less than a week later, the southern Irish state would issue a statement condemning the response of the Georgian government to protests against its Transparency of Foreign Influence law, the previous week’s scenes in Newtownmountkennedy being wilfully ignored by Leinster House.

The current tensions surrounding immigration in Ireland began in November 2022, when, using the Russian intervention in Ukraine as a pretext, upwards of 300 migrants were moved into a disused office block in East Wall, a working-class neighbourhood in inner city Dublin. Protests would begin immediately amongst local residents, citing the unsuitability of the location and the lack of consultation with community representatives beforehand. Similar protests would take place at other sites in Dublin and throughout Ireland.

One year later, the tensions regarding immigration policy in Ireland would explode in their most notable manner so far. On the 23rd of November 2023, three children and their teacher were stabbed outside their Gaelscoil (Irish-language school) in central Dublin. With it soon emerging that the attacker was an immigrant previously subject to a deportation order, matters would come to a head. Calls for a protest in Dublin later that night would quickly spread throughout social media, seemingly attracting an opportunistic element who would engage in looting and the burning of vehicles. The Dublin riots would gain worldwide attention, with the focus seemingly more on the damage done to outlets such as McDonald’s and Footlocker, than the attack on the children and their teacher.

In the days following the riots, Security Minister for the southern Irish state, Helen McEntee, announced that facial recognition technology laws would be introduced in response, thus revealing the true intent behind current immigration policy in Ireland.

In addition to the devaluing of labour and the lowering of wages on behalf of industrialists, the mixing of vast amounts of people from different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds that mass-immigration entails, ultimately leads to tensions. Tensions that, in tight-knit areas such as working-class neighbourhoods and small rural villages, will inevitably spill over.

As a result, the government-corporate alliance is presented with a ready-made pretext to implement solutions that align with their agenda. In this case, the same facial recognition technologies that are outlined in the Great Reset, the initiative launched by the World Economic Forum in 2020, using ‘Covid’ as a pretext, intended to create even further integration between the public and private sector worldwide.

With the issue of migrants arriving into Ireland without proper identification also receiving mainstream media attention, it is likely this is being done with the intention of directing the narrative towards the introduction of mandatory digital ID; which, combined with facial recognition technology, will lay the groundwork for the dystopian digital surveillance state that the Great Reset envisages.

Indeed, upon the recent election of WEF aficionado Keir Starmer as British Prime Minister, Taoiseach Simon Harris announced that it marked a ‘great reset’ in relations between both countries. A deliberate choice of words, indicating that like his predecessor Leo Varadkar, he is also a World Economic Forum ‘Young Global Leader’, fully intending to continue the Davos agenda in Ireland.

July 21, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Ministers Were Informed Of mRNA Lies During Mandates, Cardiologist Reveals

Dr Aseem Malhotra had a direct line of communication to the Health Secretary

By JJ Starky | The Stark Naked Brief | July 19, 2024

We’ve had another mainstream breakthrough.

Yesterday, Dr. Aseem Malhotra appeared on TalkTV to discuss the UK government’s Covid response in light of Baroness Hallett’s report on the first module of the Covid Inquiry.

Commentators were surprised. Most predicted that the Covid Inquiry chair’s report would echo sentiments seen during proceedings, suggesting that lockdowns, despite all credible evidence, were the only viable solutions for dealing with Covid.

So when Hallett’s team concluded that “the imposition of a lockdown should be a measure of last resort… indeed, there are those who would argue that a lockdown should never be imposed,” it almost seemed strange.

During the interview, much like his January 2023 appearance on the BBC where he pivoted from discussing statins to linking Covid vaccines to cardiovascular issues, Malhotra shifted the focus to vaccines.

He covered a lot of detail in quick succession. He argued that the term “vaccine” used for mRNA products is misleading, as they are better described as gene technologies. He cited peer-reviewed reanalysis of Moderna and Pfizer’s clinical trials, which showed an adverse event rate closer to 1-in-800, a figure that outweighed Covid hospitalisation risk. He also mentioned that Israel saw a 25% increase in cardiac events among people aged 16-39 during the vaccine rollout.

But the standout moment came when Malhotra discussed his involvement in a court case in Finland concerning an entrepreneur who was denied entry to a café because he was unvaccinated.

Malhotra revealed that he witnessed a World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist testify under oath that by December 2021, the mRNA vaccine offered zero protection against Covid. He then disclosed that he had texted Sajid Javid, the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, informing him of this testimony, but Javid effectively ignored it.

Former UK Secretary State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid

It has been difficult to gauge what certain officials knew at what time. However, now we have an indication that some were categorically made aware that their policies were illogical and at direct odds with the evidence-base.

Press releases show that Javid’s department finally revoked the Covid vaccine mandate for health and social care staff on March 15, 2022, months after Malhotra made contact.

In November 2021, a survey of industry leaders estimated that up to 20,000 carers had already quit or been sacked over mandatory jabs. Given the mandate carried on to March the following year, that could be a vast underestimate.

Malhotra, who once advocated for everyone to receive the vaccines before his father reportedly passed away from them, notably said, “This is the biggest corporate crime committed by the drug the industry.”

TalkTV did not post the interview on YouTube as the platform continues to issue strikes to channels discussing the topic. So here it is in full.

Summary of Hallett’s Report on the Covid Inquiry:

  • Ad Hoc Intervention: Epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse described lockdown as an ad hoc intervention with no prior planning, guidelines, or clear expectations.
  • Lack of Scrutiny on Consequences: The novelty of the lockdown approach meant there was no time to scrutinise its potential side effects, leading to ill-prepared policies with unknown consequences.
  • Significant Economic Impact: The report highlights the 25% drop in GDP between February and April 2020 due to lockdowns, representing a major gap in the UK’s assessment of pandemic risk.
  • Missing Topics: The report does not discuss the UK government’s evidence that the Test and Trace system had minimal impact on reducing Covid infections despite its high cost.
  • Balancing Factors in Health Emergencies: The report emphasises the need for a balanced approach in health emergencies, considering economic impact, social wellbeing, and effects on education, as advocated by former chief medical officer Sally Davies.
  • Exclusion of Certain Testimonies: Testimonies from Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty are notably absent, indicating a potential shift from previously dominant perspectives during the pandemic.
  • Real Story of the Report: The report suggests that the UK was not prepared for the “wrong pandemic”, but rather that it resorted to an unprecedented policy without a proper evidence base or risk assessment. It advocates that lockdowns should be a measure of last resort, and perhaps never used at all.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Australia uses ‘illegal surveillance’ against pro-Palestinian student protesters: Activist

Press TV – July 20, 2024

Authorities at a top university in Australia have used illegal surveillance methods against pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who have for several months been protesting against Israel’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip.

Students at the University of Melbourne staged encampment protests and sit-in strikes to force the university to cut ties with weapons manufacturers, divest from Israeli firms, and “end its complicity in the genocide in Gaza,” said protest organizer Dana Alshaer.

Alshaer, one of the main organizers of UniMelb for Palestine, told Turkish news agency Anadolu that along with 20 other students, she is now facing “extremely baseless” allegations of misconduct from the university and the threat of expulsion.

“They targeted five main organizers of UniMelb for Palestine, and they also targeted some prominent students who have been very visibly present during rallies and protests on campus,” said Alshaer.

“In the misconduct allegations,” she said, “the university included CCTV footage and Wi-Fi location tracking as evidence … so there’s been a use of surveillance technologies against students.”

Alshaer said the university clarified in 2016 that “their Wi-Fi tracking cannot and will not be used to identify students.”

“However, what we saw in the misconduct allegations and documents that were sent to us is that Wi-Fi tracking has been used to track students.”

Alshaer also raised concern “over the university’s possible and potential use of facial recognition programs.”

She said the university is using these misconduct allegations as a punishment “for students who defied the university’s ties with weapons manufacturers … and challenged the university’s ongoing complicity in the genocide in Gaza.”

She said that that university “is punishing students for standing up against [Israel’s] genocide” in Gaza.

Alshaer said that after their month-long Gaza solidarity encampment protests, they managed to push the university to disclose in June its links with US weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing and BAE Systems, as well as over $15 million in research partnerships and investments with the US Department of Defense.

Despite being targeted by the university, she said, the students are determined to continue their activities for Palestine.

Pro-Palestine encampment protests that began at Columbia University in the United States in April and spread across campuses nationwide and worldwide, have faced harsh police crackdown and led to hundreds of arrests.

The protesters have been calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the regime’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

DONALD TRUMP AND THE TOLL OF VITRIOL

The HighWire | July 18, 2024

Nearly a decade of increasingly dangerous rhetoric and bias from corporate ‘journalists’ and those in power have prepared the grounds for violence. Who is to blame??

July 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | | Leave a comment

Secret Service under suspicion amid contradictions in Trump’s attempted assassination

By Uriel Araujo | July 19, 2024

Contradictions on Trump’s attempted assassination pile up, with serious security breaches and officials claiming an investigation is needed to determine whether it was a matter of incompetence or malice.

To begin with, according to the ABC News, “law enforcement officials investigating the assassination attempt on Donald Trump told lawmakers Wednesday that 20 minutes passed between the time U.S. Secret Service snipers first spotted the gunman on a rooftop and the time shots were fired at the former president.” How can one explain that?

Moreover, it is a well-established fact now that onlookers alerted the authorities about the presence of an armed man on a nearby roof. One witness  reported that to the BBC shortly after the incident.

In addition, local officials in Pennsylvania are complaining that the Secret Service, in an attempt to deflect blame, is throwing them “under the bus”. According to one local police officer: “The Secret Service came out here more than a month ahead of time and met with all the local agencies. They tell us exactly what to do, exactly what they want and exactly how they want it. It’s all on them.”

More intriguingly, several witnesses describe a second shooter, and there seems to be plenty of cell phone footage indicating that – while the Secret Service insist there was only one. According to a Times of India story, “an audio forensic analysis conducted by experts from the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado in Denver suggests the possibility of a second shooter in the incident”. A CNN story in turn reports that “forensic analysis suggests that as many as three weapons were fired at the Trump rally.”

Stephen Bryen, security expert, takes the second shooter allegation seriously, and, in his Substack newsletter, he is calling for a “solid FBI investigation with Congressional oversight” on the matter. He adds that “there is a general consensus that security at the Trump Rally was poor”, and adds: “if the Secret Service actually approved all the security measures … we wonder, like millions of others no doubt, how could they overlook the rooftops.” Bryen is no fringe figure – he is a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, who writes for Newsweek, the Jewish Policy Center, and others.

Cory Mills, a member of the United States House of Representatives, takes the matter a bit further, saying an investigation on the Secret Service is needed to determine whether this was merely incompetence or rather malice, with an intent to neutralize Trump.

Cory Mills is a former military, and was a member of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) 20 in Iraq. He is also a defense contractor, who has earned a Master of Arts in international relations and conflict resolution from American Military University. Again, this is also no fringe figure, and his allegations raise eyebrows.

Given all the above, it is no wonder suspicions abound – the fact that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is very close to the Biden couple certainly doesn’t help. According to the New York Post, she “landed her role thanks largely to a close relationship with first lady Jill Biden.” In any other country, by the way, after such a scandal, the Secret Service director would have been fired already or would have resigned. One thing that hampers further scrutiny, however, is an American cultural trait, namely the distaste for “conspiracy theories” (which is rather ironic in a country where conspiracies abound). Here, some context is needed.

Most scholars concede that sometimes conspiracy theories (CT) are proven to be at least partly correct. A “true” or ideal CT is supposed to always be false – meaning that its narrative does not describe reality. However, what happens when new data changes the “official” story? For instance, nowadays it is known that in 1962 the US Department of Defense proposed a false flag operation (the Operation Northwoods), calling for CIA operatives to actually commit terrorist attacks against American civilians and military targets in American cities (with bombings and hijackings) and then using those to justify a Cuban invasion. Then President John F. Kennedy rejected the plan, but the proposal existed, and no one denies it.

It is thus not clear at all how a “correct” conspiracy theory (one which later happens to be proven true) differs from a false one. Was it a CT when critics argued that the US government had lied about the real motivations which led it to invade Iraq? Other authors define “conspiracy theories” in a more neutral manner as any hypotheses that try to explain an event by invoking a “conspiracy” – namely, a secret plan carried out by a group of people.

One should also be cautious as to avoid equating a mere CT (about anything) and a conspiratorial way of understanding society and history in general. The latter (conspiracism), implicitly holds that nothing ever happens by chance but rather everything (especially tragedies) happens by design. Conspiracies do exist but not everything is a conspiracy. On the other hand, in the face of a major politically charged event, when various contradictions pile up, it would be naïve to readily dismiss everything as a “coincidence” (I would describe it as a “coincidence theory”).

With Biden’s undeniable senility getting worse, it is becoming increasingly clear he is not fit to run for the presidency again – he can barely participate in a debate or give interviews. Given this, the question then, as I wrote, is how can he govern, or rather how come has he been governing thus? In other words, who has been doing all the governing? Some talk about a “ triumvirate”, referring to Biden’s close advisers Bruce Reed, Mike Donilon, and Steve Ricchetti – the matter is far from being clear, though. One can only imagine the amount of palace intrigue going on amid this “emperor clothes” scenario.

With the ongoing political crisis, any investigation on the Secret Service will be either weaponized by Republicans against Democrats or covered up by the latter, amid a major narrative war and claims about “conspiracy theories”. The crisis is thus also an epistemic one, so to speak.

This state of affairs can only further undermine the legitimacy of American institutions, with serious consequences for the country’s stability. With a suspicious murder attempt on a presidential candidate and an embarrassingly senile incumbent president, the rest of the world holds their breath while the politics within the Atlantic superpower has just gone mad.

July 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | | Leave a comment

Ministry of Truth: Japan’s Communications Ministry Proposes Disinformation Law

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 19, 2024

Only recently, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an influential Washington think tank, outlined how the US and Japan could bolster their cooperation in “combating misinformation.”

In a report, CSIS noted almost in passing that Japan has in general fallen behind in this activity, but also that the group’s representatives had meetings with officials in Tokyo.

Coincidentally or not, news out of Japan this week says that the country’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is looking at introducing new “anti-disinformation measures.” And, a draft report notes that here, “efforts are not sufficient” while transparency and accountability (ostensibly on the part of internet companies) have not been “adequate.”

That would suggest yet another “Ministry of Truth” and “disinformation law” are in the making somewhere in the world, these taking shape as a draft report details possible measures that social media companies would have to adhere to, going forward.

The report, which notably comes from the Interior Ministry (also in charge of Communications), speaks about the necessity of companies behind social platforms setting up “counter-disinformation systems” themselves, that would deal with what is deemed to be “disinformation” by deleting this content, but also, stepping up “screening of advertisers.”

And once again, time seems to be of the essence, because the report states that the reaction would have to be “prompt.”

The next step is for the draft to become subject to some form of public debate, after which the local press says it will become “official;” and the following step will be making it into law.

The situation reads almost like Japan wasn’t aware it had a “misinformation” problem of a magnitude that requires new and stringent rules, but is now just realizing that, and is almost mimicking the tone and language that’s been present around the topic for years already, in many parts of the world.

Thus, there are some vague and broad “definitions” – the content to be promptly dealt with is that which “contains obvious errors, infringes on the rights of others or is illegal (including disinformation).”

The Japanese plan states that once “a request” comes from a governmental agency, “the operators should make a prompt decision and provide notification as to whether they will delete the information or not.”

What about freedom of expression? The report’s authors seem to think this will do the trick: “The draft also requests that the administrative agency disclose information such as the contents of the request.”

One target is repeat offenders accused of peddling “illegal disinformation,” who will have their content deleted and accounts suspended.

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

Odessa Leads Violent Resistance to Mobilization as Poll Shows Ukrainians’ Sympathy for Draft Dodgers

© AFP 2023 / SERGEI SUPINSKY
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.07.2024

The southwestern Black Sea port city of Odessa is rapidly becoming the center of resistance to Kiev’s increasingly chaotic efforts to scoop up more souls for the war effort. Meanwhile, new polling and statistics released this week reveal that support for draft dodgers is growing across Ukraine, particularly its western regions.

On the night of July 16 alone, a wave of arson attacks targeting the service and personal vehicles of Odessa’s territorial recruitment center employees left five cars burned to a crisp. Similar incidents were reported in Vinnitsa, Rovno, Dnepropetrovsk, and Kharkov the same night. Two more cars were burned in Odessa the next night, with the weekly total approaching a dozen.

The situation has gotten so bad in some cities that servicemen have reportedly resorted to putting “Not Territorial Recruitment Center” signs on their vehicles to avoid being targeted.

The ‘car-nage’ is no trifling matter for its perpetrators. On Tuesday, authorities in Rovno detained a 22-year-old suspect for the suspected arson of two military vehicles. He now faces up to 10 years in prison.

Arson is just one of the tools in the Ukrainian anti-war underground’s toolbelt. This week, unknown individuals attempted to blow up a territorial recruitment center in the town of Busk, Lvov region. Elsewhere in recent weeks, media have reported a stream of sabotage attacks targeting railway, electricity and other infrastructure, physical attacks on recruiters, and daily attempts by fighting-age men to escape Ukraine by crossing the border into neighboring Hungary, Poland, Romania or Moldova.

Ukrainian authorities have attempted to blame the unrest, including arson attacks on recruiters’ cars, on Russia, claiming suspects are being promised money or other rewards by the FSB via instant messengers.

But statistics and a fresh crop of sociological surveys suggest otherwise, indicating that Ukrainians are not only becoming increasingly tired of the conflict with Russia, but hostile to authorities, especially after the passage in May of a controversial law designed to strengthen mobilization, which obliges all men aged 18-60 to carry military ID with them at all times, allows summons to be served, and does not provide for demobilization. Combined with President Zelensky’s move this spring to lower the recruitment age from 27 to 25, the measures have proven a mental Molotov Cocktail encouraging resistance for Ukraine’s fighting age male population.

Punishments for dodging the draft are stiff. Earlier this month, the Kiev District Court in Kharkov sentenced a man with developmental disabilities to three years in prison for refusing to accept a summons after being deemed fit for service by a medical commission. Other men are grabbed in the streets, stuffed into vans, beaten and detained extrajudicially until they submit to conscription, reports have documented.

Ukrainians also have to worry about astronomical levels of corruption in recruitment offices, where bribe-taking has become the norm, rather than the exception. Shortfalls in recruitment rates resulting from wealthier Ukrainians being let off are inevitably made up by the poorer strata of society.

Western Ukraine Leading the Way in Dodging Draft, Stats Show

Unwillingness to fight has paralyzed much of the country, including –perhaps curiously, its most westernmost, anti-Russian, and pro-European regions.

Last week, Ukrainian media revealed, citing official government data, that enlistment offices had filed reports on over 417,000 draft dodgers since February 2022 (316,100 of them between 2023 and 2024), with western Ukraine lighting up bright red on the map among draft evader numbers despite being far more sparsely populated than the country’s center and east.

The figures show, for example, that while draft dodging in eastern, central and southern areas of the country range from as little as 200 people in the Ukrainian-controlled areas of Kherson, 4,500 in Kharkov and 14,300 in Kiev, in western areas, which include regions like Lvov, Zakarpatye, Ivano-Frankovsk, Rovno and Khmelnitsky, they total some 334,200 men.

In a recent report, Kiev-based journalist-turned Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier Artyom Ilyin said that most of the recruits from western regions of Ukraine he’s serving with are highly demoralized, asking why they should fight for a country that “has given them nothing but a machine gun in their entire lives.”

“Arguments about Putin and Moscow authorities do not work,” the journalist lamented, adding that “rumors” about the Kiev elite’s corrupt activities are rampant among the ranks.

Dodging the Draft Isn’t Shameful, Polling Says

Finally, shock polling this week by the Razumkov Center, generally regarded as one of Ukraine’s most respected public policy think tanks, revealed that a whopping 46% of Ukrainians do not consider it “shameful” to dodge mobilization, with 29.1% saying it is shameful, and 24.8% finding it difficult to answer. Among respondents aged 18-29, 50% said it is not shameful.

The same polling also found that 44% of respondents think the time has come peace talks with Russia, with 35% against the idea, and 21% undecided.

Draft Dodging Among Western Ukrainians Shows Local Fence-Sitter Mentality

Western Ukrainians had gotten “used to the fact that there was some kind of war going on in the east after the [2014] coup and before the start of Russia’s special military operation. The attitude was that ‘it doesn’t concern us, let the Donbass sort it out.’ They thought that the Ukrainian army’s terrorizing of the eastern regions would last forever,” Alexander Dudchak, a Ukrainian politics expert and leading researcher at the Institute of CIS Countries, told Sputnik, commenting on the unexpectedly high draft dodger rates among western Ukrainians.

When it came time to enlist for the current conflict, “they still prefer that the people from those [eastern] regions be sent to the front first,” Dudchak said. Today, the observer noted, the recruiters sent to major eastern and southeastern cities like Kharkov, Nikolayev and Odessa to collect fresh recruits often come from Ivano-Frankovsk, Lvov and other western regions.

As for the rising instances of arson and other acts of sabotage targeting recruiters, the military and infrastructure, Dudchak characterized the phenomenon as a fledgling form of popular resistance and guerilla warfare.

“This is the protest of the local population which in principle does not perceive this government as its own, or this military as their defenders. They act as best they can, using whatever capabilities they have,” he explained.

Ukrainian society today in general is in a state of apathy, and “doesn’t see any point any longer to continue the war,” according to the observer.

“Such tendencies are growing stronger. That’s what the sociological services are talking about, although they may also be preparing the population to accept the inevitable and the possibility of negotiations, and ceding territory. But of course, not under the current regime, not under Zelensky, most likely,” Dudchak summed up.

July 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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