Ukraine’s highly unpopular military conscription produces ‘ghost soldiers’ and widespread corruption
By Dmitri Kovalevich | Al Mayadeen | June 27, 2024
The end of June marked one month since Ukraine adopted a new law on military conscription that significantly limits the rights of Ukrainians. During this time, Ukrainian media has been full of reports, daily and even hourly, of ‘kidnappings’, as many Ukrainians put it, by military conscription officers from the streets and neighborhoods of the country of military-age men (25 and older) deemed fit for battle. Fighting between enlistment officers and civilians resisting their work is increasing, as is the publicizing of it all in Ukraine media.
Even pro-war, Western newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post can no longer hide from their readers the story of citizen resistance to conscription in Ukraine, as they have been doing for years.
Tension in Ukraine over forced conscription is growing daily. The Ukrainian military is promoting (and enforcing through conscription) its idea that justice demands that all Ukrainian men submit to the horrors of war, just as its soldiers have done for more than two years in direct confrontation with the Russian armed forces and in direct confrontation with the self-defense forces in Donbass for eight years before that. The Kiev regime launched a civil war against the people of Donbass (today the Russian Federation republics of Donetsk and Lugansk) in the spring of 2014, seeking to crush the deep-going opposition there to the far-right paramilitary coup of February 2014 that overthrew Ukraine’s elected president and legislature.
In response to the conscription terror unfolding daily in the streets and neighborhoods of the country, Ukrainian military vehicles are now being set on fire every day in various cities. Local residents believe the targeted vehicles to be transporting military enlistment officers, not ordinary soldiers. One result is that rank-and-file military personnel are increasingly placing notices on their transport vehicles reading ‘Not military recruiters’. As they conduct their work, lone military enlistment officers are coming under attack far to the rear of the front lines, even in western Ukraine.
The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Skeptic‘ comments on the confrontations, writing, “People do not understand who, exactly, is appearing before them in uniform: is it a simple military man, or is it military enlistment officer? The forced conscription being carried out by the authorities at the hands of military recruiters leads people to take illegal actions. Along with simple efforts to avoid the conscription officers, people are increasingly fighting back with their bare hands when cornered, risking their lives or their freedom in order to do everything possible to avoid going to the war front and suffering the fate of so many before them who have lost their lives or their health.
“The number of disabled people in Ukraine now exceeds three million, and their number is growing by more than 30,000 people every month through the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU),” the Skeptic channel writes.
On June 11, Ukrainians were stirred by media broadcasting a mass brawl in the city of Odessa between ambulance drivers and the military enlistment officers who were trying to conscript one of them. Dozens of ambulance drivers from all over the city came to the aid of their colleague, at which point several civilian vigilantes joined with the recruiters in beating the ambulance drivers with baseball bats.
According to a report in the widely-read, Ukraine media outlet Strana, the vigilantes were members of voluntary police assistance squads. These have been established since 2022. Private security companies often enroll their employees in such units. In fact, these are paramilitary formations dedicated to assisting military enlistment officers and police to seize eligible conscripts. A ‘bonus’ for the members of such vigilante groups is that they are accorded protection against conscription.
The Strana report explains, “In addition, cooperation with military enlistment officers and the police gives the members of the ‘assistance detachments’ many ways for illegal earnings. For example, they often act as intermediaries in giving bribes to the enlistment officers – naturally, for a certain percentage. There are also schemes to issue, for a fee, taxi cab passes for nighttime travel [which is supposed to be forbidden]. The struggle for such financial flows periodically causes serious clashes between the ‘assistance detachments’ in Odessa.”
The terror inflicted by military recruiters against civilians is dictated not so much by the desire for ‘justice’ on the military front [equality in military service] as by common corruption. ‘Failures’ to issue conscription notices and erasing of computerized conscription data on Ukrainians liable for military service can cost several thousand dollars. Even some children of military commissars are involved in such illegal business in order to avoid service. In mid-June, for example, the son of the head of one of the military enlistment offices in the Vinnytsia region was detained after he was found to be arranging travel abroad for men seeking to escape the country at prices approaching the equivalent of US$20,000. During searches of the son’s premises, authorities found conscription notices and copies of passports of more than a dozen men of the age of military service, plus a lot of cash, including US dollars. He is now facing a possible jail sentence of eight years and the loss of his personal property. It is illegal for men of military age to leave Ukraine unless they have special permission (care of a frail elder, for example).
Ukrainians also know that military recruiters are choosing not to patrol and raid certain vacation spots or shopping locations frequented by wealthy Ukrainians. One restaurant owner told Strana on condition of anonymity, that this is happening largely due to large bribes. A restaurant owner in Odessa told the publication, “Each chain of shopping malls negotiates independently with military recruiters; not directly but through the mediation of the regional governing administration. Naturally, for large payoffs. I can’t tell you the amount of payment for the ‘security zone’, but the sums start from 5-10 thousand dollars and more, per month, depending on the size of the shopping center and its popularity.”
“Each network of shopping and entertainment centers negotiates independently with the military registration and enlistment offices, but not directly. They negotiate through mediation by the regional city administration. Naturally, for large payoffs I cannot say what is the exact fee for protection in a ‘security zone’, but the amounts start at 5,000 to 10,000 [U$] each month, depending on the size of the shopping complex and its popularity.”
Despite all the uproar taking place in Ukraine over conscription, the results on the front line are barely visible, writes a correspondent on Telegram from the ‘Kholodnyi Yar ‘unit of the AFU. “This is partly due to the fact that newly conscripted soldiers are merely replacing the dead and wounded. Corruption and fictitious servicemen who exist only on paper are partly to blame.”
The ‘First War News’ Telegram channel writes on June 18, “In Donetsk region, the accountant of one of the military units along with two other unit members organized a scheme to enter fictitious data about the participation of soldiers in combat operations in order to collect the bonuses for direct military action for all three participants in the scheme.”
A similar scheme operated in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led occupation of the country from 2001-2012. Al Jazeera reported back in 2021 why the Afghan army that was built up painstakingly for years by the occupation forces fell apart so quickly. Its report explained, “First, there was widespread corruption in Afghanistan’s defense and interior ministries, where funds, ammunition, and food deliveries were stolen before reaching the soldiers on the ground… Furthermore, some commanders embezzled money by submitting fund requests for the salaries of ‘ghost soldiers’; that is, soldiers who had never actually signed up for the military. As all this was happening, the soldiers of the Afghan comprador army were left unpaid and frequently denied for months at a time permission to visit their families on leave.
Unsurprisingly, the Afghan armed forces under Western tutelage had one of the highest desertion and casualty rates of armies in the world. One estimate placed the army’s monthly attrition rate at 5,000, while the monthly recruitment rate was 300 to 500.
The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Kartel’ describes how similar schemes are taking place in the AFU. “The simplest schemes are those involving ghost soldiers. Fictitious recruits are enrolled and sent to the frontline and the salaries and bonuses go into the commanders’ pockets. Secondly, commanders record of non-existent ‘destruction’ of enemy equipment in order to earn bonuses. Thirdly, they sell places in the rear and in reserve units, and fourthly, they sell vacations and sick leaves to soldiers”.
The underground Ukrainian Marxist organization Workers’ Front of Ukraine (WFU) wrote on Telegram on June 13 about the corruption that has permeated much of the AFU. “If you want to be dismissed, you must pay up. If you are found guilty of a crime or misdemeanor, you must pay up. If you don’t want any trouble, you must pay up. Tens of millions of hryvnias are leaking out of the state budget through payments to so-called ‘gray souls’ [ghost soldier] schemes, for which the military unit receives allowances.
“The alcohol trade is also blossoming. If you are caught drinking too much vodka sold to you by your officers, you are fined, further boosting corrupt earnings. And so on. In one of the buildings of the ‘second headquarters’ a mining farm has been organized, the electricity bills of which are covered by our taxes.”
The Ukrainian Telegram channel ‘Resident‘ writes on June 17 that, in essence, the ever-tightening law on military conscription is transforming military recruiters into a new economic elite, and a deeply corrupt elite at that. The already tense atmosphere in Ukrainian society due to conscription is being aggravated by all the reports of corruption and bribery. And despite the corruption scandals, military enlistment officers actually remain quite untouchable in Ukraine. They have become the unspoken and unassigned decision-makers of the fates of tens, hundreds of thousands of human beings in Ukraine. They are assigned the power to manage this diminishing number of potential military recruits, and they are managing this ‘resource’ in their own, personal interest.
In earlier times, Ukrainians paid bribes to officials for any old certificate or license. They would pay bribes for the right to receive medical care from doctors or even for a necessary conveyance in an ambulance. They would pay bribes to the police to avoid a fine for a traffic violation. Now they are paying bribes for the simple act of walking down the street, working, shopping, getting married, or adopting a child–all in order not to end up in a bombed-out foxhole at the frontline.
Recently, fugitive conscription evaders have begun to stage mass breakthroughs in large groups through the Transcarpathia region in western Ukraine and across the border. The region is Ukraine’s gateway westward into the European Union.
On June 9, 32 people traveling in a transport truck bearing fake military license plates broke through the border to Hungary. The truck was full of fugitives and simply drove off-road at top speed into the neighboring territory. The truck was tracked down by Hungarian border guards and soon after, the fugitives surrendered to the Hungarian authorities near the village of Barabash. Local residents claimed in comments to local media that the fugitives were various Ukraine law enforcement officers who were facing assignments to the war front.
Ukrainian soldiers and officers are also, increasingly, complaining about the ineffective military tactics of their high command. The soldiers are reduced to fighting for every house and every scrap of forested land, even in the most unfavorable situations. This is due to the extreme pressure on military authorities to demonstrate ‘effectiveness’ to the U.S. and NATO military leadership in order for Ukraine may continue receiving military funding and weapons from them.
Ukrainian battalion commander Ivan Mateyko stated in an interview with the Focus newsmagazine that military units are being severely punished for abandoning their positions. For the sake of its public relations, the AFU does not withdraw people even from the last, surrounded house in a village so that the village may still be said by superior officers to be under ‘Ukrainian’ control. “Losing a military position is punished, even when you are holding the last house in a village because as long as you are in that house, the village is considered ours. It doesn’t matter how many people die for the sake of holding that house. It doesn’t matter that that house has been surrounded for a week, cannot safely receive supplies, and cannot safely evacuate the wounded and dead,” he said.
According to Mateyko, when the situation is a stalemate and there are not enough soldiers to mount an adequate defense, commanders decide to indiscriminately send everyone into battle. He believes that commanders are sending people to their deaths in such circumstances out of fear of losing their positions or fear of being penalized.
Alexei Arestovich, a former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine (2020-2023) and a far-right ideologue, notes that the AFU is not learning anything new from its experiences in battle. He compares this to the army of the Soviet Union in Crimea during World War Two. He writes on Telegram, “They tried different methods, from mechanical to moral and psychological from 1941 onward. [Nazi Germany occupied Crimea, after bitter struggle, from late 1941 until liberation in 1944.] By 1943-1944, they had learned to fight. The difference between the Red Army of 1941 compared to the Red Army of 1944 is the difference between heaven and earth. They tried, tried, and tried again. After 30 unsuccessful attempts, the 31st attempt would succeed.”
Arestovich asks, “How does Ukraine’s army today compare? Our valiant armed forces do not want to learn, nothing happens. I am looking at this and asking myself, ‘During two and a half years of struggle against our original [sic] enemy, what changes have occurred in the armed forces? Even organizational changes, reflecting accumulated experience? This army has long been driven by inertia and is simply wearing itself out without trying to make sense of events, without trying to draw any conclusions.”
A leader of the neo-Nazi paramilitary battalion ‘Azov’, Dmytro Kukharchuk, believes that Kiev is losing its war. He believes the Russian Federation has no need at all to sue for peace as it is in a much more favorable position. “Yes, we are losing this war now. It’s obvious. We are losing territories, we are losing the best people. Many people say: ‘Everything is going fine and soon we will conclude a peace treaty with Russia.’ But the main question is, why does the Russian Federation need to negotiate peace?” According to him, the strategy of a creeping offensive (war of attrition) which the Russian army has chosen is serving it very well, while the consequences for Ukraine are not only unpleasant, they are critical.
Notwithstanding these words, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a quite specific proposal for peace in mid-June. It would require the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, renunciation by Kiev of Ukraine’s specious claim over Crimea, and renunciation by Kiev of present or future NATO membership.
The U.S. administration and then Ukraine quickly rejected this proposal, as if on cue. The key stumbling block is not so much control of the regions presently under Russia’s control, but future NATO membership for Ukraine. NATO is using Ukraine as a proxy force in this war and toward the goal of NATO membership.
Former Ukrainian journalist and today a political exile, Rostyslav Ishchenko, comments on June 18: “Russia has declared the need to create a unified security system in Eurasia, without the participation of non-Eurasian states. For the first time, albeit indirectly, Moscow has raised the issue of NATO’s liquidation, since without the U.S. military presence in Europe, the bloc loses its meaning and the USA becomes a non-Eurasian power.”
For his part, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg is promising that Ukraine will join NATO as soon as it defeats Russia, which is to say ‘never’. Despite the grim military situation facing the Ukraine regime, Western leaders are instructing Kiev to refrain from any negotiations with Russia.
Oleh Soskin, a former adviser to Leonid Kuchma (the second, post-Soviet Ukraine president from 1995 to 2004 and today a political analyst) has recently written on Telegram that the West is quite satisfied with the killing of Ukrainian citizens at the hands of the country’s capitalist elite. “They are all very satisfied with the fact that this Zelensky, A.Yermak [head of the Office of the President of Ukraine], D.Arahamiya [head of the legislature faction of Zelensky’s political machine], R.Stefanchuk [speaker of the legislature] and, naturally, D. Shmygal [prime minister since 2020] are very good at using Ukrainians as weapons and cannon fodder.”
Indeed, the Ukraine regime is acquiring yet more funding and weapons from the West and sending yet more Ukrainians to their deaths in order to please the elites of the NATO countries.
From time to time, I personally witness clashes taking place between civilians and Ukrainian military enlistment officers. I have witnessed outraged women trying to wrestle their sons and husbands out of the clutches of military conscriptors. “Let Zelensky go to the trenches!,” they shout. “Let him send his own children off to war! Let Biden himself fight the Russians!” Needless to say, this sharp, civilian erosion of support for Kiev’s and NATO’s war does not bode well for either.
Journalism under fire: Jailed for exposing Jordan
The Cradle | June 24, 2024
In Jordan, failing at self-censorship can land you in jail. Literally.
Freelance journalist Hiba Abu Taha, a passionate pro-resistance Jordanian of Palestinian origin, refused to self-censor. On 11 June, the Magistrate Court in Amman sentenced her to a harsh one-year prison term for violating the kingdom’s controversial Cybercrimes Law introduced last year.
This was due to an article she wrote for Lebanese news site, Annasher, criticizing “Jordan’s role in defending the enemy entity.” The article was published on 22 April, eight days after Jordanian, US, British, and French aircraft intercepted Iranian drones and rockets over Jordanian airspace heading towards Israeli targets.
However, Abu Taha was arrested on 13 May after Annasher published her investigative report on 28 April titled “Partners in extermination: Jordanian capital owners involved in Gaza genocide.” The timing of her arrest gave the impression that she was detained for exposing Jordanian companies transporting exports to Israel – a land corridor that government officials went out of their way to publicly deny amid growing popular outrage at Amman’s continued ties with Tel Aviv while it commits the Gaza genocide.
It is widely believed that her nearly 2,000-word investigative report, supported by a 15-minute video of evidence she gathered undercover, was the real reason for the journalist’s indictment.
Exposing government deception on Israeli trade routes
In her report, Abu Taha accused Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh and other officials of concealing the use of Jordan as a land route for UAE and Bahraini exports via Saudi Arabia to Israel to break the Yemeni Ansarallah blockade in the Red and Arabian Seas.
She cites transport and clearance company employees in Amman and Aqaba about their services to transport goods through the northern Sheikh Hussein Bridge or the southern Wadi Araba crossing. She went on to expose the names of the Jordanian companies and their influential owners, who have shown no qualms about doing business as usual with the occupation state as it commits unprecedented war crimes in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Abu Taha also identifies influential company owners acting as agents for Israeli or Israel-bound shipping companies. Resorting to official documents, she writes that Jordanian exports to Israel increased from $123 million in 2022 to $143 million in 2023, with a record monthly high of $17 million in December 2023, a month after Yemen began targeting Israeli-owned and Israel-bound cargo ships.
She notes that despite court evidence “recognizing the existence of the land bridge” as well as video footage and pictures of the movement of trucks at the Sheikh Hussein border crossing, Khasawneh insisted that:
The land bridge is a figment of imagination with no truth on the ground … The number of trucks entering and leaving Jordan for the entity has decreased, and what is being raised is nothing but self-flagellation.
Abu Taha details her exchange with government spokesman Muhannad Mubaidin, who fires back at “those accusing Jordan” of providing a land bridge for Israel as “shameful.”
She writes that he “initially tried to deny the government’s role” in this regard and “even tried to point the finger at West Bank merchants as deceiving their colleagues in Jordan by telling them that the exports are for the Arabs.”
When confronted with the facts she found, Mubaidin immediately referred to the 1994 Wadi Araba peace treaty with Israel and stressed that the government would not ban trade with the Zionist state because “such a decision is a populist one that appeases a certain party or faction.”
Meanwhile, Trade Ministry Spokesman Yanal Barmawi told Abu Taha that he was unaware of the “export issue” and that “the private sector would know.” She writes that official denials and blaming the private sector, which cannot operate without government approval, “confirms that the authorities are trying to contain the Jordanian street.”
Opinion prosecution
Despite the rigor of her investigative report, Abu Taha was prosecuted for her 22 April opinion piece. Nidal Mansour, co-founder of the Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists (CDFJ), noted that Abu Taha was convicted under the restrictive Cybercrimes Law, which was enacted shortly before 7 October 2023.
The Media Commission, a government-controlled regulatory body, filed a complaint against her, accusing her of “inciting sedition and discord among members of the community,” “threatening community peace,” “inciting violence,” and “spreading false news” through electronic media.
Abu Taha’s article accused Jordan of “treason,” among other derogatory terms, for intercepting Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel and giving the US, British, and French military forces a free hand in the country to defend the occupation state.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) quotes Media Commissioner Bashir al-Momani as saying that Abu Taha’s article contained “serious insults against Jordanian state institutions, incitement to the state’s positions, and stirring up discord among the components of the people,” which he added “necessitated her prosecution.”
According to a CDFJ statement, Abu Taha was convicted under Articles 15 and 17 of the 40-article Cybercrime Law of August 2023. Article 15 stipulates:
Whoever intentionally sends, resends, or publishes data or information through an information network, information technology, information system, website, or social media platforms that includes fake news targeting the national security and community peace, or defames, slanders, or contempt [sic] any person shall be imprisoned for a period of not less than three months or a fine of not less than 5,000 dinars and no more than 20,000 dinars, or both penalties.
Article 15 also gives the prosecutor the right to take legal action “without the need to file a complaint or claim a personal right if it is directed at one of the authorities in the state, official bodies, or public administrations,” which means that Abu Taha could have still been punished even if the Media Commission had not filed a complaint.
The court also invoked Article 17 to hand her a one-year sentence. It states that:
Whoever intentionally uses an information network, information technology, information system, website, or social media platform to spread what is likely to stir up racism or sedition, targets social peace, incites hatred, calls for or justifies violence, or insults religions, shall be punished by imprisonment from one to three years or a fine of no less than 5,000 dinars and no more than 20,000 dinars, or both penalties.
Draconian laws and legal challenges
Abu Taha’s opinion piece in Annasher undoubtedly lacked the self-censorship that Amman has successfully induced by imposing a series of restrictive press and media laws over the decades.
Mansour tells The Cradle that the press and publication laws have become more draconian with the evolution of information technology, beginning with restrictive laws on the independent weekly press back in the 1990s, to online news sites in the early 2000s, and social media with the most recent “fluid” Cybercrime Law that could effectively stifle any form of free speech on these platforms.
He notes that Abu Taha’s lawyer, Rami Odatallah, appointed by the leftist Jordanian Popular Unity Party (an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), is more experienced in defending political activists than journalists.
Abu Taha is not a member of the political party. Still, it stood by her ordeal and denounced her arrest and sentencing, demanding her release and other activists that had been “harassed and arrested” for supporting the resistance against Israel online or on the street.
Mansour reveals that the CDFJ plans to hire a lawyer specialized in the Cybercrime Law to appeal her sentence, which his organization described as “deeply concerning” and called for “abolishing imprisonment in cases related to publication and freedom of expression in accordance with international human rights standards.”
Abu Taha’s arrest and sentencing drew attention to Jordan’s crackdown on both journalists and rightfully enraged activists by using the Cybercrime Law. … Full article
Debt Disaster: Why Global South Increasingly Sidelines the US Dollar
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 22.06.2024
Soaring US national debt may translate into a real disaster when supercharged by internal political fighting or de-dollarization among top emerging economies, US observers warn.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts that the US national debt will hit $50.7 trillion by 2034, but the true figure “surely will be much bigger,” wrote William Pesek, an award-winning journalist and author, for the Asia Times.
The CBO projected on June 18 that US debt would reach 122 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2034, far surpassing the nation’s record-high public debt-to-GDP ratio of 106 percent in the aftermath of World War II. The watchdog also expects that interest costs for maintaining the debt will climb to $892 billion in 2024 (from $352 billion in 2021).
Pesek named defense funding, social safety net outlays and tax cuts unmatched by revenue increases as being the major drivers behind the debt growth, adding that they would become even costlier in the future.
He also quotes Goldman Sachs economists as predicting that the US debt-to-GDP ratio will hit 130 percent by 2034, i.e. 8 percentage points higher than the CBO estimates. Judging by the present dynamics, it could be far higher than that, according to the journalist.
The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald F. Seib appears to share Pesek’s concerns: “Over the centuries and across the globe, nations and empires that blithely piled up debt have, sooner or later, met unhappy ends.”
The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage echoes his counterparts in referring to the spending spree under the Trump and Biden administrations, which included huge tax cuts, various social programs and increasing defense expenditures.
“[Most recently], besides the annual appropriations, lawmakers approved a $95 billion foreign aid bill to support Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and make investments in the US industrial base, and Biden announced plans to forgive billions of dollars in student loans,” the correspondent noted.
When it comes to Ukraine, Congress has approved nearly $175 billion of funding and military assistance to support the Kiev regime and allied nations since 2022, as per the Committee for the Responsible Federal Budget. This spending has been repeatedly questioned by some US lawmakers, who referred to Kiev’s corruption, non-transparency and military failures. To complicate matters further, American lawmakers are complaining about US primary defense contractors tremendously overcharging the US government.
Meanwhile, Ukraine funding constitutes a fraction of the US growing military spending that rose by 2.3 percent from 2022 to reach $916 billion in 2023, or 68 percent of total NATO military spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). These expenditures only add to America’s bloated national debt.
According to Pesek, “this slow-motion economic disaster” related to Washington’s inability to balance its spending “could be sped up by political squabbling or by de-dollarization efforts among top emerging markets.”
He particularly refers to Biden’s economic policies and protectionist measures which are not making the US economy more resilient. According to the journalist, the White House’s latest 100 percent tariffs on China-made electric vehicles have hurt “global faith in the dollar or US Treasury securities” (of which the People’s Republic holds around $700 billion).
He warns that Global South countries are “viewing the US less and less as an adult in the room when it comes to economic and geopolitical affairs.”
“The most obvious example of disillusionment over US fiscal excesses is the pivot away from the US dollar,” Pesek notes, adding that there is no sign that the US government is ready to overhaul its economic approach.
“Nor is it safe to bet on the US debt only rising to $50 trillion a decade from now. As the real figure exceeds even the worst expectations, global markets could be in a world of hurt. And Washington will make it easy for Global South nations hoping to sideline the dollar,” he concludes.
Hunter Biden’s Charge of Lying Under Oath
The June 5 criminal referrals are indication enough that the Oversight and Judiciary committees are far from done, spent, or at a dead end.
By Patrick Lawrence | Consortium News | June 19, 2024
This is the fifth in Consortium News’ series on the congressional investigation into President Joe Biden’s allegedly corrupt involvement in the business affairs of his son Hunter. We publish these reports whenever new developments warrant them. Our earlier reports can be read here, here, here and here .
One reads regularly in the mainstream media, when events force them to report on the question, that the U.S. House Oversight Committee has hit a wall as it investigates Hunter Biden’s schemes to leverage his father’s power and Joe Biden’s potentially impeachable role in his son’s unseemly doings.
The House hearings have stalled, or fizzled, or reached a dead end: This has been the standard theme in corporate media for months now.
“Wouldn’t you know it,” Michael Goodwin asked in The New York Post as far back as March, “CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico and others on the left all reached exactly the same conclusion at the same time.”
Let us put aside the notion that the above-named media are “left” and consider the implications of what Goodwin, a conservative columnist and relentless critic of the Biden regime, means to imply with this remark. There are three points to consider.
One, U.S. media’s brazen rush to slam shut the door on the House proceedings puts their bias in favor of the president and his family well beyond dispute.
Two, liberal newspapers and broadcasters — repeatedly claiming that the House hearings have produced no proof or indication of wrongdoing on the president’s part — can do so only by ignoring very substantial evidence of criminal and impeachable offenses.
Finally and not least, whatever the final outcome of the House proceedings, the nation’s most powerful media have already sustained considerable self-inflicted damage by way of the negligence that is perfectly legible in their coverage of the investigations and its interim findings.
To be noted in this connection: More than two-thirds of Americans, according to a poll conducted earlier this year, think the House hearings should continue; half of these respondents — 34 percent of those surveyed — “think Joe Biden is guilty of corruption and should be impeached.”
These figures cannot land as a surprise to anyone who has paid careful attention to the House hearings. Among much else, they have already produced substantive evidence establishing in considerable outline the operations of what is called, with justification, the Biden crime family:
— Payments of $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden by Mykola Zlochevsky, the founding chairman of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company. Zlochevsky sought (and enjoyed) Vice–President Biden’s protection from Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma on charges on suspicion of extensive corruption.
— Gross payments to the Biden family, chiefly Hunter and Joe’s brother James, of more than $20 million during the years (2009–2017) when Joe was vice-president.
— A dense network of 20–odd shell companies the Biden family set up to disguise payments received from influence-peddling schemes Hunter conducted in Ukraine, Russia, China and elsewhere.
— The detailed testimony, so far not credibly refuted, of government investigators — from the F.B.I. and the IRS — providing granular evidence of the Biden family’s illegal financial operations.
— The covert, corrupt efforts of David Weiss, during his tenure as federal attorney for the Delaware District, to protect Hunter Biden from the above-noted investigators and, in addition, to negotiate a plea bargain on gun and tax charges that would immunize Hunter Biden from all subsequent criminal liabilities. This plea deal collapsed a year ago next month.
— Voluminous evidence of Joe Biden’s often intimate involvement in Hunter’s business dealings, many of these illicit, as lodged in the infamous laptop computer Hunter left at a repair shop in Wilmington, the contents of which were obtained by The New York Post.
— A check for $240,000 James Biden wrote his brother shortly after he and Hunter consummated a transaction with a Chinese associate worth many times this figure. James Biden continues to contend that this was repayment of a loan from Joe Biden, but he and the Biden White House refuse to provide documentation substantiating the nature of the transaction.
Consortium News reported on these and other matters earlier in this series. Now there is evidence that Hunter Biden compounded his legal liabilities when he testified at length and under oath to Congress on Feb. 28 — an appearance Biden refused until he was threatened with contempt of Congress.
The House Ways and Means Committee, which also has an investigative function in the Biden case, voted on May 22 to release 100 pages of new evidence showing that Hunter Biden lied three times during that testimony. The evidence of this was provided, once again, by Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, the IRS investigators who had previously presented the Oversight Committee with evidence of the Biden family’s corruption.
The Ways and Means Committee is chaired by Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican. Here is part of Smith’s official statement as he released the new evidence:
“Hunter Biden has shown once again he believes there are two systems of justice in this country — one for his family, and one for everyone else. Not only did Hunter Biden refuse to comply with his initial subpoena until threatened with criminal contempt, but he then came before Congress and lied….
The documents released today are not part of a personal vendetta against Hunter Biden, but are meant to ensure the equal application of the law.
Lying during sworn testimony is a felony offense that the Department of Justice has prosecuted numerous individuals for in recent years…. Hunter Biden’s lies under oath, and obstruction of a congressional investigation into his family’s potential corruption, calls into question other pieces of his testimony.
The newly released evidence affirms, once again, the only witnesses who can be trusted to tell the truth in this investigation are the IRS whistleblowers.”
Ways and Means presents the three instances when Shapley and Zeigler caught Biden lying in a succinct format, the rigorous tone of which suggests the committee’s strong determination to hold the president’s son to the letter of the law.
Each entry is headed, “Lie #1,” #2, or #3, followed by a section headed “Hunter Biden’s Sworn Testimony” and another called simply “The Truth.”
In the first case, Biden is shown to have lied about who he was texting, in a now- famous incident, when he warned a Mr. Zhao that his father was with him as he demanded an immediate wire transfer of $5 million.
Biden, hiding behind his drug and alcohol addictions, claimed in testimony, “I sent the text to the wrong Zhao.” The committee produced What’sApp telephone records showing there was only one “Zhao” in Hunter Biden’s universe, and it was Raymond Zhao, the chairman of CEFC, a Chinese energy company that, shortly after the exchange of texts, wired $5 million to accounts Hunter Biden controlled.
In the second case, Biden claimed to have no beneficial association with or control of the bank accounts of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a financial entity Biden operated with a business partner named Devon Archer.
The committee revealed evidence that Biden in fact used Rosemont Seneca to receive his monthly stipend from Burisma, where he sat on the board during his father’s vice-presidency, as well as funds from other foreign enterprises and people to whom he was selling influence.
Lie #3 concerned Biden’s intervention to secure a U.S. visa in behalf of Mykola Zlochevsky, the Burisma founder (who is misidentified in the Ways and Means statement as “Nicolay.”) Asked about this during his Feb. 28 testimony, Biden asserted, “I’d never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa.” The committee produced email traffic demonstrating that Biden “was actively using his name and father’s influence to aid foreign nationals in obtaining visas from the U.S. government.”
Zlochevsky in 2010. (Svetlana Pashko, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Scant Coverage
It is shocking — or perhaps not in view of the media’s record — to consider how little coverage these revelations received at the time. On June 5, Jason Smith, Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, who chairs Oversight, sent criminal referrals to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, recommending the Justice Department charge Biden, and James Biden as well, with making false statements under oath.
David Weiss, who now serves as a special prosecutor, also received the three chairs’ letter. Neither Garland nor Weiss has so far responded publicly. It is difficult to see how either the DoJ, the White House, or the media can ignore, spin, or distort these charges — open-and-shut matters documented on paper and in digital records.
Tangentially related but closely so, after a trial of of seven days, June 4 to June 10, the jury on June 11 found Hunter Biden guilty on all three charges related to his purchase and possession of a gun in 2018, during a time he was drug addicted and lied about this condition on his application to purchase a .38 Colt revolver.
Biden now awaits sentencing by Maryellen Noreika, the district court judge in Delaware who rejected the objectionably lenient plea bargain to which Weiss agreed in July 2023.
Much has been made of the Biden family’s displays of unity and compassion before and during Hunter Biden’s trial. President Biden flew to Wilmington for a late-night visit with Hallie Biden a few days before the trial began.
Even The New York Times suggested this risked leaving the president open to charges of witness tampering, given Hallie Biden was scheduled to testify for the prosecution. Hallie Biden is the widow of Beau Biden, Joe’s oldest son, and, during Hunter Biden’s years as an addict was for a time after Beau’s death Hunter’s paramour.
During testimony, Hunter’s chronic indulgences in cocaine and alcohol were almost ostentatiously played out for the jury and, it seemed, the public. The First Lady, Jill Biden, attended the trial daily but for the days she was at the Normandy beaches to join the president in marking the 80th anniversary of the D–Day landings.
The Biden clan was notably stoic when the verdict was announced. Evidently for the cameras, Hunter Biden took his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, by the shoulders, leaned to kiss her, and audibly whispered with a faint smile, “Hey.”
It is not possible to interpret these evidently rehearsed-for-the-public family displays with anything like certainty. But questions inevitably arise. They turn, almost inevitably on David Weiss’ role as the prosecutor in the gun case.
Weiss is a highly problematic figure. As earlier noted, he was deeply compromised when, during federal investigations into Hunter Biden’s tax records and the broader matter of his foreign business dealings, he, Weiss, acted covertly on numerous occasions to shield Hunter Biden from the lawful scrutiny of federal investigators.
Many were astonished — and many Republican political figures objected — when, the plea deal of July 2023 having collapsed, Attorney–General Garland promoted Weiss to the rank of special prosecutor.
This was ostensibly to give Weiss broader powers to direct investigations into the corruption allegations Hunter Biden faced — an array that threatened to lead to the White House door.
As many critics immediately charged, the Weiss appointment seemed intended not to extend his powers but to keep in place a federal attorney who had just demonstrated his willingness to protect the president’s son — and by extension the president, let us not miss — as a matter of partisan loyalty.
Hunter Biden’s trial on various charges related to his handling of his federal taxes is to begin on Sept. 5, two months to the day before the presidential elections.
Weiss will again be the prosecutor. This leaves us now with two questions.
One, were Hunter Biden’s attorneys in the gun trial in essence shadow-boxing? Their defense strategies — it could not be proven Hunter was using when he purchased the gun, a guilty verdict would infringe on his Second Amendment rights — were flimsy and unpromising.
Was the guilty verdict, in other words, what is called in intelligence circles a limited hangout?
Has a decision been made at top levels of the Democratic- controlled federal judiciary to find Hunter Biden guilty on the lesser crime of illegal gun possession — on the argument he had to be convicted of something — so as to prepare a skeptical public for an innocent verdict in the much more consequential trial on charges of financial corruption — a trial that could directly threaten the Biden presidency?
Two, where are the House hearings likely to go from here, and what will be the next step? The June 5 criminal referrals are indication enough that the Oversight and Judiciary committees are far from done, spent, or at a dead end.
As previously noted in this series, it seems clear they have enough sound evidence to support a vote to impeach President Biden.
But it remains to be seen whether the House committees will have the political will to press the case they appear to have, just as the outcome in California, where Weiss will prosecute the tax and corruption cases, is for now not at all certain.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.
Criminal college poison mandates, and what to do going forward
Info that people with high school kids will need
BY MERYL NASS | JUNE 18, 2024
What bothered me the most about the COVID poison shots was the extreme interest in giving them to children. And while most parents of controllable children said no, over 50% of impressionable high schoolers wound up getting them, often with rewards and almost always with peer pressure. (The usefulness of providing rewards to induce acceptance had been tested in this age group with the HPV vaccine.)
But it was almost impossible to get to college without a shot. It turned out that college administrators were worse than drill sergeants when it came to requiring the shots. How much were they paid? We don’t know yet. We do know that both Pfizer and the CDC had given substantial grants to the American college health organization before COVID shots had even rolled out, which pushed out propaganda about the shots to all college health providers. Many medical providers in colleges are paraprofessionals, who are used to taking orders. The planners, I believe, counted on their obedience. I blogged about this organization’s grants 3 years ago on my anthrax blog. Then the organization took down the info about their grants. Either Zeke or Rahm Emanuel (can’t recall which evil brother it was) had something to do with the plan to force the jabs on students.
Children were least likely to suffer from COVID. And for some yet unearthed reason, colleges were the last to end their shot mandates. Even today some colleges still mandate these poison shots.
Anyway, Lucia Sinatra (and CHD) has sued colleges over the mandates, and Lucia has fought against these mandates in many ways. CHD has asked the Supreme Court to take its mandate case against Rutgers University.
Today Lucia provides a list of colleges that still have these mandates and lots of advice about which ones never had mandates, etc. If you have a child who will enter college soon, this is really important information. Please share.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield Goes Hollywood
The Vaccine Story told through a New Blockbuster Movie
BY JUSTUS R. HOPE | JUNE 13, 2024
If you thought the documentary about Ivermectin suppression and Dr. Pierre Kory was eye-opening, perhaps you will find Dr. Wakefield’s newly released movie, Protocol 7, a drama starring Eric Roberts, even more astonishing. Life truly imitates art, and sometimes the two are indistinguishable, especially when it comes to Big Pharma’s protection of profitable vaccines at all costs.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield has been the lightning rod for vaccine injury since he published his 1998 Lancet study concerning the connection between autism and the MMR vaccine.
Dr. Tess Lawrie recently interviewed Dr. Wakefield’s mother in Bath, United Kingdom, and she told Wakefield’s story using facts from his childhood, early adulthood, and medical career. She tells the story of a high achiever who set records at his private school regarding leadership, character, and academics, the son of two physicians who grew up a stone’s throw away from where Tess Lawrie lives. She described his research that touched such a sensitive Big Pharma nerve.
“In 1998 Dr Andrew Wakefield, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and a senior researcher in the University Departments of Medicine and Histopathology at the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine published a paper in the Lancet with his colleagues entitled: Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.
Dr Wakefield’s special interest was inflammatory bowel disease and this paper reported a case series of 12 children with developmental disorders whose mothers also described a constellation of bowel symptoms appearing shortly after their child’s vaccination.”
However, the mainstream media prefers not to deal with facts that are troublesome to their argument. Instead, they use the more effective technique of name-calling.
The MSM used Wikipedia, Anderson Cooper, and Brian Deer to character assassinate Wakefield. Cooper, the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, is the broadcast journalist, embraced by mainstream media, who graduated from Yale University in 1989. He also served two internships at the CIA. Cooper’s interview with Wakefield was punctuated with this cheap phrase, “But, sir, if you’re lying, then your book is also a lie. If your study is a lie, your book is a lie.” Here is the transcript.
Wakefield’s prolonged vilification and lifelong persecution by Big Pharma make Pierre Kory’s battle look like a cakewalk.
However, like Pierre Kory, Wakefield relied on facts rather than name-calling and emerged stronger than ever. He now reaches his audience through what can only be termed America’s most effective medium, the Big Screen.
“Protocol 7 is a medico-legal thriller based on the true story of two Merck lab scientists who, in 2010, blew the whistle on the company’s fraudulent manipulation of lab data to support the company’s efficacy claim about the mumps component of its MMR vaccine. The case has been tied up in courts ever since.
Rachel Whittle plays a small-town attorney and mother of an autistic child. British star Matthew Marsden plays a doctor with a history of being a lone voice in the wilderness about MMR vaccines and autism. Another British actor, Harrison Tipping, delivers what struck me as the film’s best performance —that of a Merck lab scientist who is a willing participant in the fraud, but also one who is tormented by his recognition that he is debasing his work and talent in the service of an ugly lie. Eric Roberts elegantly plays Dr. Errani, the head of Merck’s MMR division, who demands that the lab team figure out a way to support the company’s efficacy claim by whatever means necessary.”
Sound familiar?
Here is the Official Trailer to Protocol 7, and the film’s SHOWING SCHEDULE. This limited showing is selling out fast. Book your tickets now!
NATO stumbles on €40 billion Ukraine plan
© SIMON WOHLFAHRT / AFP
RT | June 14, 2024
There is no agreement in NATO just yet regarding the proposal to fund Kiev to the tune of €40 ($43) billion, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg admitted on Friday.
The issue came up at the meeting of the US-led bloc’s defense ministers in Brussels. Italy reportedly did not agree with the proposal, which was already scaled down from Stoltenberg’s initial €100 billion request.
The “long-term financial pledge” is one of the four things NATO needs to “deliver for Ukraine” by the Washington summit next month, Stoltenberg told reporters after the meeting.
“We have not yet agreement on that,” he admitted.
“Many allies are very supportive of the idea that we need not only to have short term pledges – they are welcome, of course – but if we could have more long-term predictable pledges, it will give the Ukrainians better planning assumptions,” Stoltenberg said. “It will give more predictability and transparency and assure a minimal or fair burden-sharing within the alliance. And most importantly, it will send a message to Moscow that they cannot wait us out.”
NATO ministers did agree on the plan for Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine and pledged to send more ammunition and equipment to Kiev in the short term, Stoltenberg pointed out, adding that “there will be new announcements in the coming days and weeks.”
That leaves the financial pledge and the “language” for Ukraine’s possible membership to be worked out in the “some weeks” remaining before the Washington summit, according to the NATO secretary-general.
Kiev expected a formal invitation to the bloc last year, at the NATO summit in Vilnius. When it did not arrive, Vladimir Zelensky launched a tirade on social media, angering Washington. The US-led bloc eventually said it would be in a position to invite Ukraine “when allies agree and conditions are met.”
On Thursday, Stoltenberg said “an absolute minimum” condition for Ukraine’s membership would be defeating Russia. The US and its allies have funneled weapons, ammunition, and equipment to Ukraine over the past two years, while insisting they are not a party to the conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Friday that Moscow would be ready for a ceasefire if Kiev signed a pledge never to join NATO and withdrew its troops from the four regions that have chosen to join Russia. Kiev has denounced the proposal as an “ultimatum” and rejected it.
“Human Rights NGOs” and the Corruption of Civil Society
BY GLENN DIESEN | JUNE 10, 2024
The organisations operating under the banner of “human rights non-governmental organisations” (NGOs) have become key actors in disseminating war propaganda, intimidating academics, and corrupting civil society. The NGOs act as gatekeepers determining which voices should be elevated and which should be censored and cancelled.
Civil society is imperative to balance the power of the state, yet the state is increasingly seeking to hijack the representation of civil society through NGOs. The NGOs can be problematic on their own as they can enable a loud minority to override a silent majority. Yet, the Reagan doctrine exacerbated the problem as these “human rights NGOs” were financed by the government and staffed by people with ties to intelligence agencies to ensure civil society does not deviate significantly from government policies.
The ability of academics to speak openly and honestly is restricted by these gatekeepers. Case in point, the NGOs limit dissent in academic debates about the great power rivalry in Ukraine. Well-documented and proven facts that are imperative to understanding the conflict are simply not reported in the media, and any efforts to address these facts are confronted with vague accusations of being “controversial” or “pro-Russian”, a transgression that must be punished with intimidation, censorship, and cancellation.
I will outline here first my personal experiences with one of these NGOs, and second how the NGOs are hijacking civil society.
My Encounter with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is one of these “NGOs” financed by the government and the CIA-cutout National Endowment for Democracy (NED). They regularly publish hit pieces about me and rarely miss their weekly tweets that label me a propagandist for Russia. It is always name-calling and smearing rather than anything that can be considered a coherent argument.
The standard formula for cancellation is to shame my university in every article and tweet for allowing academic freedom, with the implicit offer of redemption by terminating my employment as a professor. Peak absurdity occurred with a 7-page article in a newspaper in which it was argued I violated international law by spreading war propaganda. They grudgingly had to admit that I have opposed the war from day one, although for a professor in Russian politics to engage with Russian media allegedly made me complicit in spreading war propaganda.
Every single time I am invited to give a speech at any event, this NGO will appear to publicly shame and pressure the organisers to cancel my invitation. The NGO also openly attempt to incite academics to rally against me to strengthen their case for censorship in a trial of public opinion. Besides whipping up hatred in the media by labelling me a propagandist for Russia, they incite online troll armies such as NAFO to cancel me online and in the real world. After subsequent intimidations through social media, emails, SMS and phone calls, the police advised me to remove my home address and phone number from public access. One of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee recently responded by posting a sale ad for my house, which included photos of my home with my address for their social media followers.
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee also infiltrates and corrupts other institutions. One of the more eager Helsinki Committee employees is also a board member at the Norwegian organisation for non-fictional authors and translators (NFFO) and used his position there to cancel the organisation’s co-hosting of an event as I had been invited to speak. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is also overrepresented in the Nobel Committee to ensure the right candidates are picked.
Why would a humanitarian NGO act like modern Brownshirts by limiting academic freedom? One could similarly ask why a human rights NGO spends more effort to demonise Julian Assange rather than exploring the human rights abuses he exposed.
This “human rights NGO” is devoted primarily to addressing human rights abuses in the East. Subsequently, all great power politics is framed as a competition between good values versus bad values. Constructing stereotypes for the in-group versus the out-groups as a conflict between good and evil is a key component of political propaganda. The complexity of security competition between the great powers is dumbed down and propagandised as a mere struggle between liberal democracy versus authoritarianism. Furthermore, they rest on the source credibility of being “non-governmental” and merely devoted to human rights, which increases the effectiveness of their messaging.
By framing the world as a conflict between good and evil, mutual understanding and compromise are tantamount to appeasement while peace is achieved by defeating enemies. Thus, these “human rights NGOs” call for confrontation and escalation against whoever is the most recent reincarnation of Hitler, while the people calling for diplomacy are denounced and censored as traitors.
NGOs Hijacking Civil Society
After the Second World War, American intelligence agencies took on a profound role in manipulating civil society in Europe. The intelligence agencies were embarrassed when they were caught, and the solution was to hide in plain sight.
The Reagan Doctrine entailed setting up NGOs that would openly interfere in the civil society of other states under the guise of supporting human rights. The well-documented objective was to conceal influence operations by US intelligence as work on democracy and human rights. The “non-governmental” aspect of the NGOs is fraudulent as they are almost completely funded by the government and staffed with people connected to the intelligence community. Case in point, during Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” in 2004, an anti-corruption protest was transformed into a pro-NATO/anti-Russian government. The head of the influential NGO Freedom House in Ukraine was the former Director of the CIA.
Reagan himself gave the inauguration speech when he established the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1983. The Washington Post wrote that NED has been the “sugar daddy of overt operations” and “what used to be called ‘propaganda’ and can now simply be called ‘information'”.[1] Documents released reveal that NED cooperated closely with CIA propaganda initiatives. Allen Weinstein, a cofounder of NED, acknowledged: “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”.[2] Philip Agee, a CIA whistle-blower, explained that NED was established as a “propaganda and inducement program” to subvert foreign nations and style it as a democracy promotion initiative. NED also finances the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.
The NGOs enable a loud Western-backed minority to marginalise a silent majority, and then sell it as “democracy”. Protests can therefore legitimise the overthrow of elected governments. The Guardian referred to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004 as “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing” for the purpose of “winning other people’s elections”.[3] Another article by the Guardian labelled the Orange Revolution as a “postmodern coup d’état” and a “CIA-sponsored third world uprising of cold war days, adapted to post-Soviet conditions”.[4] A similar regime change operation was repeated in Ukraine in 2014 to mobilise Ukrainian civil society against their government, resulting in overthrowing the democratically elected government against the will of the majority of Ukrainians. The NGOs branded it a “democratic revolution” and was followed by Washington asserting its dominance over key levers of power in Kiev.
Similar NGO operations were also launched against Georgia. The NGOs staged Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” in 2003 which eventually resulted in war with Russia after the new authorities in Georgia attacked South Ossetia. Recently, the Prime Minister of Georgia cautioned that the US was yet again using NGOs in an effort to topple the government to use his country as a second front against Russia.[5] Georgia’s democratically elected parliament passed a law with an overwhelming majority (83 in favour vs 23 against), for greater transparency over the funding of NGOs. Unsurprisingly, the Western NGOs decided that transparency over funding of NGOs was undemocratic, and it was labelled a “Russian law”. The Western public was fed footage of protests for democratic credibility, and they were reassured that the Georgian Prime Minister was merely a Russian puppet. The US and EU subsequently responded by threatening Georgia with sanctions in the name of “supporting” Georgia’s civil society.
Civil Society Corrupted
Society rests on three legs – the government, the market and civil society. Initially, the free market was seen as the main instrument to elevate the freedom of the individual from government. Yet, as immense power concentrated in large industries in the late 19th century, some liberals looked to the government as an ally to limit the power of large businesses. The challenge of our time is that government and corporate interests go increasingly hand-in-hand, which only intensifies with the rise of the tech giants. This makes it much more difficult for civil society to operate independently. The universities should be a bastion of freedom and not policed by fake NGOs.
[1] D. Ignatius, ‘Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups’, Washington Post, 22 September 1991.
[2] Ibid.
[3] I. Traynor, ‘US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev’, The Guardian, 26 November 2004.
[4] J. Steele, ‘Ukraine’s postmodern coup d’état’, The Guardian, 26 November 2004.
[5] L Kelly, ‘Georgian prime minister accuses US of fueling ‘revolution attempts’’, The Hill, 3 May 2024.
Kafka-NHS
The witch hunts against dissident doctors continue
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | June 8, 2024
In June 2021, Dr. Sam White, a general practitioner, released a video calling out harmful covid policy. From a scientific perspective every word he said was entirely defensible. Moreover it is clear that he was speaking from an ethical position of wanting to protect his patients from harm. He pulled no punches in addressing the most prominent issues that were causing harm – lack of treatment for the frail, inappropriate gene therapies and masking. In interviews, in 2022, he called the situation a war between good and evil. In doing so he unleashed a torrent of anger among those in a position of power over him, which, three years on, continues to harm him.
He had already resigned from his GP partnership in protest at their vaccination policy in February 2021. His conscience had been keeping him awake at night because he did not want to be a part of the vaccine rollout. Consequently, after resigning he was signed off with stress rather than having to work his notice. NHS England still saw fit to suspend him with an emergency order in June. Dr White managed to record a conversation with an NHS senior clinical adviser who implied that he was mentally unwell. Dr White believes that possession of that recording led the NHS to revoke their suspension. However, by then the NHS had referred him for a GMC investigation and an automatic GMC suspension.
The GMC overturned the suspension in August 2021 but imposed restrictions on him including a ban on mentioning covid on social media and requiring the removal of his previous posts. The legal position is that doctors have a right to free speech but if the GMC could prove Dr White’s speech was a threat to the health of the public or undermined trust in the profession then he could be sanctioned.
Dr White looked to his indemnity provider for support to fund his legal case but they washed their hands of him saying it was a “conduct issue”. With the help of crowd funding support, Dr White took the case to the High Court in November 2021. The verdict was published in December 2021, overruling the GMC and saying they had not followed due process in their actions. The High Court documentation was removed from the judiciary’s website in September 2022 such that other doctors in a similar position will be unable to refer to it in their defence. It is available on the Wayback Machine.
Dr White has asked to be removed from the register, as he is no longer practising conventional medicine, but the GMC have refused and are continuing to persecute him. Every interview he has undertaken has been transcribed and put forward as evidence that he is undermining public health policy and causing the public to lose trust in the profession. The next tribunal hearing is scheduled to last three weeks in August and September 2024. This ongoing investigation, three years later, indicates a relentless effort to discredit and punish Dr. White for his dissenting views.
If that sounds bad, wait until you hear about the NHS’s role.
The same day as the High Court hearing, unbeknown to Dr White or his lawyers, NHSE had a meeting where they decided to refer Dr White for a health assessment, despite the fact he no longer worked in the NHS. This was an opportunity to reopen the investigation into him. They have repeatedly asked if he had returned to NHS work and said he must tell them if he did. What was their intent here? Were they planning to ask any future employer to suspend him all over again?
NHS England has a list of “approved providers”. Any doctor not on their list cannot work for the primary employer of doctors in the country. In 2023, NHS England removed Dr White from their list, effectively barring him from practising within the NHS. He had already shifted his practice to private healthcare with a holistic focus, but this further punishment leaves him with no other options.
The GMC is far from perfect but at least it has due process and a system of appeal for where there might be an injustice. NHS England can unilaterally destroy a career, with no legal recourse.
In some ways, the most disturbing aspect of the whole affair was revealed in the communications between the GMC and NHS England. Firstly, the derogatory terms used about the doctor to justify their behaviour are shocking and reveal a lack of professionalism and intolerance for differing opinions within the medical establishment. Moreover, this language served as a means to rationalise their harsh and unjust actions towards him. Secondly, they appeared to be acting in cahoots. The GMC’s apparent open and fair processes have been bypassed by direct communication with NHS England, stripping Dr White of a right to employment.
Dr. Sam White’s case is a stark example of systemic injustice and the erosion of professional rights within the NHS and the GMC. His ongoing persecution for voicing dissenting views underscores a troubling intolerance for ethical and scientific debate, reminiscent of a Kafkaesque nightmare where rationality and justice are subordinated to bureaucratic oppression.
EU Plans Major Expansion of Mass Surveillance
Indiscriminate Data Collection, Device Monitoring, Encryption Backdoors, and Mandatory Data Sharing
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 7, 2024
The European Union (EU) is planning to implement a new set of draconian mass surveillance rules shortly after Sunday’s EU Parliament election, a member of the EP has warned after the plans surfaced on the internet.
The conclusion that radical surveillance measures are in the works proceeds from documents detailing the meetings of working groups, dubbed “high level group(s) on access to data for effective law enforcement.”
The documents originate from the EU Commission, and contain a number of recommendations, including reintroducing indiscriminate retention of communications data in the bloc, creation of encryption backdoors, as well as forcing hardware manufacturers to give access to anything from phones to cars to law enforcement through what is known as “access by design.”
MEP Patrick Breyer announced that the plan contains 42 points produced by the EU Commission and governments of member-countries. The purpose of being able to access phones, IoT (such as “smart home”) devices, and cars is to make sure they can be monitored around the clock.
Meanwhile, the return of controversial data retention is planned despite a previous ruling of the EU Court of Justice, and could even be extended to include over-the-top services such as messengers (this is defined as retaining IP information data “at the very least”). That, Breyer explains, means that all internet activities will become trackable.
A favorite target of authorities actively undermining their image as democracies has for a while been end-to-end encryption. Here, the EU intends to ban secure encryption of metadata and subscriber data, as well as force messaging services who implement encryption to allow interception.
The EU further plans to “tackle” the use of encryption devices that it declares are “proven to be used solely” by criminals. In reality, the right to install encryption backdoors in phones and computers can be abused to spy on anyone, dissidents and critics included.
Technology providers will, if so ordered by judicial authorities, have to break encryption in order to “facilitate access to data at rest in user’s devices.” And there will be “mechanisms for robust cooperation with communication and technology providers” – meaning they will have to share data with governments and law enforcement.
If these agencies demand, service providers must activate GPS location tracking, according to these recommended “solutions for effective law enforcement.” Representatives of providers who refuse could end up in jail.
“This extreme surveillance plan must not become a reality, if only because it has been cooked up by a completely one-sided secret group of surveillance fanatics working without any real transparency or democratic legitimacy,” Breyer stated.
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Book Review
A Palantir Manifesto
By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2026
Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America’s future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the “soft” influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the country’s engineering talent to focus on national defense. Karp and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, argue that tech bros should “grow up” and start killing America’s enemies before they kill us. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Wired for War: Israel’s Black Cube and the infiltration of Europe
- Monitoring group finds UK media guilty of ‘systematic’ dehumanization of Palestinians
- Al-Akhbar’s Amal Khalil assassinated by Israel, left to die under rubble
- US naval blockade disrupted but ‘not broken’ Iran’s oil exports: Kpler
- On Mass Surveillance, Will the Deep State Win Again?
- Fire breaks out aboard identity-fluid $8bn USS Zumwalt
- A Palantir Manifesto
- John Mearsheimer: U.S. Expands Iran War & Divorces Europe
- Palantir’s Technological Republic is a blueprint for digital tyranny
- Israeli-backed armed gang kidnaps 25 Palestinians in Gaza’s Zeitoun neighbourhood
- If Americans Knew
- Israel chases down, kills Lebanese journalist, massacres 5 in Gaza, all during “ceasefires” – Daily Update
- Gaza’s unseen casualties: A surge in stillbirths and birth defects
- ‘Day of Ordinary Terror’: Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child
- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
- Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.
- Eyes on Gaza, as trends reveal increased Israeli violence – Daily Update
- Israeli soldiers using sexual assault to force Palestinians out of West Bank, report says
- Top Biden Official Supports Trump Iran Attack, Says Biden May Have Done The Same
- A history of Israel’s invasions of Lebanon
- How the powerful pro-Israel lobby keeps controlling Democrats in the US
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
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