The US Navy Bought Surveillance Data Through Adtech Company Owned by Military Contractor Which Harvests Location Data From Smartphones
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 13, 2023
A report from 404 Media, for the most part based on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, has put the pieces of a puzzle together to reveal that the US Navy was in business with an adtech company – that “just” happened to be owned by a major military contractor.
The company, nContext, is owned by Sierra Nevada Corporation, and what this triangle of surveillance was “keeping in the family” is the business of personal data changing hands, and reportedly, global (globally collected) data, at that.
404 Media writes that the public records it has seen show that the Navy was able to use a software tool (called, the Sierra Nevada nContext Vanir) that the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) uses for its surveillance operations around the world.
nContext, supposedly in the adtech (i.e., marketing) business, is behind developing that tool. However, the publicly available documents do not detail what kind of data the company had at its disposal, that was up for sale.
Above all, this is yet another example of how the ad industry – supposedly innocuous, other than for the suspicious amount of money it generates – actually can, and does at times work in insidious ways.
With this context in mind, the complexity and murkiness of the industry is perhaps not haphazard, but there to muddle up things as much as possible: because what this case shows is that an ad company can be collecting people’s data, allegedly for ad purposes (in and of itself, a highly controversial business) – but it then also gets available to all sorts of contractors, including those working closely with the US government, including the military and law enforcement.
The big picture: a government/country that is actively creating workarounds around its own laws and Constitution, which are supposed to mandate protecting citizens (including their right to privacy) – in this case, their private digital data.
“Crucially, when government agencies buy this data from a commercial entity, they can bypass legal restrictions put in place to protect the transfer and use of that information” – is how 404 Media describes this in its report.
In the specific case explored here, and in some previous Wall Street Journal articles, it appears that the information in question is location data taken from people’s phones and computers.
New Zealand whistleblower released on bail, meanwhile scientists debate meaning of leaked vaccine data
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | December 12, 2023
Scientists and statisticians continue to review and debate the accuracy and completeness of a large database of COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths released less than two weeks ago by a New Zealand Ministry of Health whistleblower.
Meanwhile, the whistleblower — Barry Young — was charged by New Zealand authorities with “accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes.” The 56-year-old appeared in Wellington District Court on Dec. 4. and was released on bail the next day.
Young, who also has used the pseudonym “Winston Smith,” was a computer systems programmer for New Zealand’s Ministry of Health, administering a computer payment system for certain vaccine administrators.
Police raided Young’s home on Dec. 3, and arrested him. Police raided the home of an associate the same day.
Young, who was reportedly offered two safehouses in New Zealand and one overseas but refused the offers, now faces at least seven years’ imprisonment. According to Newsweek, Young shouted “freedom” as he departed the courtroom on Dec. 4.
Young released the anonymized data with the assistance of Liz Gunn, a former lawyer, television journalist and candidate for public office for the NZ Loyal Party.
According to mathematician Igor Chudov, who analyzed the data, the database included information on the vaccine type, batch number, dose number, vaccination date, age, date of birth and date of death of the anonymized vaccine recipients.
The dataset was related to so-called pay-per-dose providers, such as individual doctors and drugstores. It did not include data on vaccinations administered at mass vaccination centers and by mobile vaccination clinics.
Data raise questions government ‘can’t ignore’
According to the New Zealand Herald, Health New Zealand, the national public health system also known as Te Whatu Ora, has opened an investigation and attempted to discredit the whistleblower, claiming Young “had no clinical background or expert vaccine knowledge.” Some analysts noted Young’s expertise in data administration.
Health New Zealand’s public messaging has centered around the security of personal data. “What [Young] is claiming is completely wrong and ill-informed … We take the security of the information we hold extremely seriously, and this is a significant breach of trust,” said Margie Apa, Health New Zealand’s chief executive.
In an interview with The Defender, Australian attorney Katie Ashby-Koppens said Health New Zealand was also granted an injunction from New Zealand’s Employment Relations Authority, prohibiting the publication of the leaked data.
Ashby-Koppens, who worked with New Zealand groups promoting medical freedom and transparency, questioned the legality of this injunction, which reportedly was used to pressure hosting providers to remove copies of the leaked data stored on their servers, leading some providers to remove accounts hosting the anonymized data.
Minister of Health Shane Reti sought to reassure the public about vaccine safety.
“There are many conspiracy theorists out there who unfortunately disseminate harmful disinformation, however, as Minister and as a physician, the public can and should continue to have confidence in vaccines,” he said. “I am reassured by experts confirming that there is no evidence supporting the allegations that have been made.”
According to the New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science (NZDSOS) media team, consisting of Dr. Cindy de Villiers, Dr. Alison Goodwin, Dr. Matt Shelton and Anna McLoughlin, such statements are a continuation of official COVID-19 narratives.
“The official mainstream media narrative is that New Zealand did very well during the pandemic, having negative excess mortality,” a spokesperson for NZDSOS told The Defender. “The New Zealand government and media have adopted a ‘shoot the messenger’ approach and then studiously ignored the issue, such that the average person on the street probably is unaware of what is happening in New Zealand.”
Yet, members of the public “who know what is happening absolutely support the whistleblower,” NZDSOS said, noting that “the media is so controlled and captured that large chunks of the population remain unaware of the data release or its significance.”
New Zealand authorities acknowledge only four COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths.
“The data has been very controversial, with people finding opposing things from their analysis of the data, despite being on the same side of the COVID debate,” Ashby-Koppens said. “The data is not complete [but] it raises a lot of questions, questions that the new New Zealand coalition government can’t ignore.”
Norman Fenton, Ph.D., a mathematician and professor emeritus at Queen Mary University of London, also examined the leaked data. He told The Defender the reaction of New Zealand’s authorities to the leak was “very strange.” He added:
“I understand that releasing confidential medical records is a criminal offense, but … the whistleblower only released an anonymized version of the data.
“Given the advanced publicity by people like Steve Kirsch about what the data revealed, I would have thought the New Zealand government would have been better advised to do nothing rather than raiding homes, arresting the whistleblower and erasing files from people who had gained access to the data. It is almost as if they wanted to get more publicity for both the data breach and what the data revealed.”
Presenting one possible reason supporting such an explanation, Fenton said:
“Not surprisingly, this has also led to conspiracy theories of which the most notable is that the government knew that this particular dataset did not contain (as some have claimed) any ‘smoking gun’ on vaccine safety and therefore it was deliberately released so it could be used to discredit ‘anti-vaxxers’ who claimed it did, and also act as a warning against any others who had access to more incriminating data to shut up.”
But for Kirsch, the founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation who examined the data and publicly claimed it proves that the COVID-19 vaccines killed 1 in 1,000 people globally, Young “is a hero.”
“He knew he would risk his life and could spend the rest of his life in jail, but he made the courageous move to expose the data for all to see,” he wrote.
According to NZDSOS, Young is due to appear in court again on Dec. 18 to submit a plea and is “represented by a large legal firm in New Zealand.”
Whistleblower noticed ‘really big safety signals’ in the data
In his Nov. 30 interview with Gunn accompanying the release of the data, Young said he helped build the very database from which the data were leaked. Access to such data led him to note items of concern that he decided to go public with, he said.
“I helped build it. I implemented it,” he said. “When I was looking up the data, I noted discrepancies with the dates of death. People were dying almost straight away after being injected and that sort of prompted my curiosity and I dug a little deeper.”
According to Young, he previously was vaccinated, but said that whether he’d get another dose was “a different story.” He added that he “believe[s] in fundamental freedoms of humans and [that] we shouldn’t have a procedure forced on us because of a mandate,” calling this “a huge overreach by the government.”
Following his release on bail, Young granted an interview to Infowars producer and host Alex Jones, stating that he noticed “really big red flags” and “really big safety signals” in the data. “Statistically, it may be killing people,” he said.
“I just looked at the data and what I was seeing, since the rollout, it just blew my mind. I was just seeing more and more people dying who shouldn’t have been dying. It was just obvious,” Young said. “I want people to analyze this … We need to open it up and the government needs to have an inquiry about it. Just bring it to the public’s attention.”
According to New Zealand police, Young’s post-bail interview with Infowars did not breach his bail conditions. He has since granted other interviews.
Scientists disagree on significance of data
According to NZDSOS, the leaked data “cover[s] vaccines that were administered as pay-per-dose. There are 2.2 million people and approximately 4 million doses included.” This compares to a total of 12.78 million doses administered in New Zealand.
Statistical consultant William Briggs is one of the analysts who reviewed the data. On his Substack, he wrote that “we cannot tell for sure” what the data definitively indicates, as there are important items of information missing.
“There was no cause of death given for anybody,” Briggs said. “Just death date for those who had at least one shot and died in this window. There can therefore be no certain proof of any cause of death,” he wrote.
Briggs added:
“An insurmountable problem in ascribing cause is the lack of data on people who did not get any shots. Their death and age data is missing. There is no comparison group for the people who got shots. …
“… this means there is no natural comparison group and nothing about cause, therefore, can be said with certainty.”
Briggs said that the data indicated a small increase in deaths among young people soon after receiving the first and second dose, but said this may be “because the young tended to get fewer shots.”
The analysis that has perhaps garnered the most analysis, though, comes from Kirsch, who wrote, “There is no confusion any longer: the vaccines are unsafe and have killed, on average, around 1 person per 1,000 doses.”
Kirsch noted that this figure “is consistent with other careful analyses,” such as one by Canadian scientist Denis Rancourt.
According to Kirsch, one safety signal he identified in the data is a “mortality hump that peaks around 6 months after a dose is given.”
“The data from New Zealand is not perfect; it is not a complete sample,” Kirsch conceded. “But, by using a cohort time-series analysis, it doesn’t matter. There is no possible way that this data is consistent with a safe vaccine.”
Fenton, who analyzed the data on his Substack, took a different position, telling The Defender, “The dataset is a very large subset of those vaccinated in New Zealand, and is potentially one of the most important publicly available datasets for examining COVID vaccine safety. But I don’t believe it is the ‘smoking gun’ as some have claimed.”
He noted the absence of a control group (the unvaccinated) and that “the age profile seems higher than the national age profile of [the] vaccinated, so there is some bias.”
However, he said the data “does provide some evidence of lack of safety of the vaccine, in particular supporting our own previous observations (from U.K. data) that in older age groups, all-cause mortality is higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.”
“What is less clear is the claim concerning batches with exceptionally high mortality rates,” Fenton said. “The claim that these batches were especially deadly due to the contents of the vaccine or its delivery is confounded by their very different age and time of vaccination profiles,” he added.
Chudov, in a pair of posts on Substack, also presented his analysis of the data. In his initial post, he suggested the public “be wary” of the data and noted that Gunn “is misinterpreting it by trying to pass normal nursing home deaths as evidence of ‘super deadly batches’ and ‘mass vaccine casualties.’”
In a follow-up post, Chudov acknowledged that some of his original questions about the completeness of the data were subsequently addressed, stating his belief that “Barry Young was more likely to be sincere than insincere in his intentions and actions.” Yet, he said his questions “about nursing home deaths and data quality still apply.”
Some analysts also pointed to official data indicating that excess deaths in New Zealand continue to be significantly above the long-term average — 17% in September and early October 2023, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Some also pointed to data indicating sharp increases in the incidence of heart attacks in New Zealand.
Yet, Apa said, “We assure people there is no evidence whatsoever that vaccination is responsible for excess mortality in New Zealand and that they can continue to have confidence in the vaccine,” in remarks quoted by the New Zealand Herald.
“We hope that additional independent assessment of the data by credible analysts will lead to further scrutiny of the vaccine rollout in [New Zealand] and that the whistleblower will not have risked everything for nothing,” activist group Voices for Freedom wrote.
Political questions surrounding the data leak, subsequent government actions
According to Voices of Freedom, Young reached out to them “a couple of years ago” and had reached out to several other organizations during this period, prior to telling Gunn about the data and releasing it with her assistance.
Voices of Freedom, as well as some other analysts, have nevertheless raised questions as to whether Gunn handled the release appropriately.
Young and Gunn told Infowars they attempted to contact Winston Peters, leader of the New Zealand First political party and current deputy prime minister and foreign minister, regarding the data, but were unsuccessful in doing so.
But according to analyst Tony Mobilifonitis, Peters “most likely is limited in what he can do because of the delicate politics of the three-party coalition.” Analyst Markus Mutscheller wrote that while Peters had previously “aligned with the NZ freedom movement … His priority is always to keep his position of power in the cabinet. Without it, he can’t do anything.”
NZDSOS told The Defender, “So far, there has been no public comment by NZ First or the ACT party, both of which championed a broader inquiry,” adding that Reti “is from the National Party, which firmly backs the use of mandated vaccines.”
“The Associate Minister of Health, Casey Costello, is from NZ First, who is well aware of what is happening. However, ministers are not able to comment on cases that are before the court,” NZDSOS added.
According to the New Zealand Herald, an inquiry examining New Zealand’s COVID-19 pandemic response has been convened. However, according to NZDSOS, it is unlikely to examine the leaked data, as the inquiry “specifically excludes vaccine efficacy and does not include vaccine safety.” Instead, it aims to “strengthen … preparedness for, and response to, any future pandemic.”
According to NZDSOS, “The new coalition government has promised a broader public inquiry, but terms and conditions have not been decided upon to date. It is not clear whether there will be additions to the existing inquiry or whether a completely new inquiry will commence. Our preference is for a brand-new inquiry.”
‘Still no letup’ in narrative that COVID vaccines are ‘safe and effective’
Several scientists, analysts and activists have called on the New Zealand government to release full, anonymized COVID-19 vaccine data and its own analysis.
“They should release the data on the unvaccinated so that a full direct comparison can be made,” Fenton said. “We also need all the (anonymized) patient-level data on new health conditions/hospitalizations since 2021, for both vaccinated and unvaccinated, so that we can determine the true level of vaccine adverse reactions.”
Similarly, NZDSOS said, “The best approach would be to release all the data in an anonymized form and for the Ministry of Health to discuss their analysis.”
Kirsch wrote, “Nobody will debate me on this,” adding that New Zealand authorities “should be releasing the full [12 million-person] record dataset to remove all doubt and prove to the world the vaccines are safe.”
“Clinical outcomes are never improved by keeping public health data hidden from public view,” Kirsch wrote. “Yet every health authority in the world has kept this critical record-level safety data hidden from view.”
In a subsequent Substack post, Kirsch wrote, “Health New Zealand: Where is your analysis of your data? Why aren’t you publishing it?”
Voices for Freedom called on New Zealand authorities “to be transparent with NZ’s vaccination data,” noting that “There appears to be no official denial of the accuracy of the downloaded Health NZ data set.”
NZDSOS said that New Zealand authorities have a history of not being transparent, telling The Defender that Official Information Act requests are fraught with “often lengthy delays and redaction of data” and the system “is not particularly functional.”
“Some of these requests have been acknowledged, but the length of time in releasing information of this kind in any form has been delayed time and time again … We have not heard of any data/information releases that have come out yet,” NZDSOS said.
Fenton said New Zealand authorities are not being forthcoming regarding the data because it would likely “reveal much more evidence on just how ineffective and unsafe the vaccines have been and on how it likely has led to increased all-cause mortality in all age groups who have taken it.”
“There is still no letup in attempts by governments and pharma companies to close down all discussion and evidence of vaccine harms and to maintain the ‘official’ line that these vaccines are ‘safe and effective’ and need to continue to be given,” he added.
“It appears that the measures taken to silence Barry and avoid discussing the data are designed to deter others from doing the same thing,” NZDSOS said. Similarly, Fenton shared his belief that “the very public actions taken against the whistleblower [were] likely intended to dissuade other whistleblowers everywhere, not just in New Zealand.”
NZDSOS said that prospective whistleblowers should nevertheless not be dissuaded.
“Do what will allow you to sleep at night. It is not about any legal advice, as we know that it is likely that the legal system is compromised. It is about doing what is right,” NZDSOS said. “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Britain secretly sent 500 extra troops to Cyprus base being used to supply weapons to Israel
By Matt Kennard | Declassified UK | December 12, 2023
Britain secretly deployed 500 additional troops to its bases on Cyprus after Israel began bombing Gaza, it can be revealed.
The UK government has said previously that it deployed 1,000 troops to the East Mediterranean to support Israel but it did not reveal how these troops were distributed.
But in a letter to Alba MP Kenny MacAskill, seen by Declassified, defence minister James Heappey wrote that on 27 November half these troops were in Cyprus.
Britain now has “approximately 500 additional service personnel deployed to Cyprus,” Heappey wrote in a surprising admission.
Britain has two “Sovereign Base Areas” on Cyprus – known as Dhekelia in the east of the island and Akrotiri in the west – which are large, highly secretive military and intelligence installations comprising 3% of the island’s land area.
The major UK air base on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri, has long been the staging post for British bombing campaigns in the Middle East, and sits 180 miles from Tel Aviv. The flight time is 40 minutes.
The extra UK troops takes the number of British military personnel deployed on the island to 2,717. The UK bases also host 273 British civil servants.
The US military has also had a base on British territory on Cyprus for nearly half a century, but its size was kept secret from the public before Declassified recently revealed that 129 US airmen are permanently deployed to RAF Akrotiri.
It is not known if additional US personnel have also been deployed to Britain’s Cyprus bases to help support Israel’s bombing of Gaza, as the British government refuses to make public any information about American activities on the UK territory.
Defence minister James Heappey also revealed in his letter that Britain has sent extra troops to Egypt, Israel and Lebanon, but he refused to say at what levels. “I have withheld specific numbers for these countries for operational security reasons,” he wrote.
The UK military personnel were said to be deployed “to support contingency planning and UK humanitarian aid efforts”.
The 500 extra UK troops deployed to Cyprus do not include British special forces, which operate completely outside of democratic oversight.
The Sun reported on 27 October that Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS), the army’s elite special force, was on “standby” in Cyprus to – it was claimed – rescue British hostages held captive by Hamas and Britons who are trapped in Gaza.
The UK military’s “D-Notice” committee, which seeks to stop the media publishing information it claims would damage national security, requested on 28 October all media editors to not publish information relating to SAS operations in Gaza.
There has been no further reporting on the SAS’s role in Gaza, while the UK military refuses to confirm or deny if the SAS has been on the ground in Gaza since Israel began bombing the territory.
It is unclear if the Cypriot government has been told of the SAS deployment—or the extra UK troops.
Declassified recently revealed that over 30 military transport flights, operated by the RAF, had flown from RAF Akrotiri to Tel Aviv since the bombing of Gaza began.
But Cypriot government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis told the Cyprus Mail he had received no information about the flights. The UK, meanwhile, denied it is sending “lethal aid” or “military equipment” to Israel from RAF Akrotiri.
Declassified then reported the US was using RAF Akrotiri to transfer weapons to Israel. Respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that over 40 US transport aircraft have flown to RAF Akrotiri carrying equipment, arms and forces.
The planes have been loaded with cargo from strategic depots belonging to the US and NATO in Europe, Haaretz reported, with around half the US flights said to be “delivering military aid”.
The Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides was asked about the US deliveries in a press conference, and said: “There is no such information, our country cannot be used as a base for war operations”.
Kenny MacAskill, the MP who asked the questions in parliament, told Declassified: “We require openness and accountability about what is happening at Britain’s bases on Cyprus and the role they are playing in Israel’s criminal bombing of Gaza. 500 additional military personnel to Cyprus is a huge deployment given the large contingent already based there. What is their role?”
He added: “It’s 20 years since the UK was taken into a war in Iraq based on lies and deceit. That cost the lives of millions and still causes harm today as refugees and terrorism testify to. Iraq wasn’t in my name and neither are these actions. We need to be told what is being done by our government.”
Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt
UK Government Justifies Using Royal Air Force To Monitor Online COVID Speech, Calls “Disinformation” a “Serious Threat”
Even lawmakers and journalists had their speech monitored
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 12, 2023
The Mail on Sunday reported that UK Royal Air Force (RAF) intelligence agents participated in a covert operation run by Whitehall, which was suspected of surveilling private citizens speaking out against Covid lockdown measures. This secretive operation was led by The Army’s “information warfare brigade,” tasked with analyzing online commentary—a charge the Ministry of Defence repeatedly rebuffed publicly until the recent reveal.
Documentation furnished by this publication suggests the Armed Forces, particularly those located at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, assisted various government bodies, such as the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport’s Counter Disinformation Unit and the Cabinet Office’s Rapid Response Unit. Their engagement in these initiatives was much more substantial than formerly known, per this latest revelation.
The clandestine operations in focus took on the challenge of countering “disinformation” and “harmful” narratives throughout the pandemic. However, they also garnered severe backlash for allegedly gathering data from lawful social media posts that challenged the Government’s lockdown maneuvers.
Prominent public figures, like David Davis MP, who voiced skepticism over the Covid mortality rates’ computed projections, and journalist Peter Hitchens, were the subjects of government reports. Insiders from the defense department conceded that the military’s contribution to such operations might be portrayed as spying on UK citizens, a segment from the furnished documents revealed.
However, the MoD alleged that the absence of Armed Forces support in overseeing online discourse could catalyze the propagation of “misinformation,” which could cause harm.
Jake Hurfurt, representing the advocacy group Big Brother Watch, didn’t mince his words, slamming these activities asking for a review on how the government monitored the British people throughout the pandemic period. He stated to the Mail on Sunday, “The revelations that the RAF as well as the Army spied on the British people during the pandemic is yet more evidence that the MoD misled the public about the role of its psyops troops in 2020.”
The government responded to these allegations stating, “Online disinformation is a serious threat, which is why in the pandemic we brought together expertise from across government to monitor disinformation about Covid.”
They alleged that all data collected were from public sources and the units did not target individuals or interfere with public discussions.
Ukrainian trial demonstrates 2014 Maidan massacre was false flag
By Kit Klarenberg | The Grayzone | December 11, 2023
A massacre of protesters during the 2014 Maidan coup set the stage for the ouster of Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. Now, an explosive trial in Kiev has produced evidence the killings were a false flag designed to trigger regime change.
Two police officers charged with the mass shooting of opposition protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014 have been released after a Ukrainian court determined the fatal shots in the infamous massacre were fired from an opposition-controlled building.
On October 18 2023, Ukraine’s Sviatoshyn District Court determined that of the five officers on trial, one would be acquitted outright, while another was sentenced to time served for alleged “abuse of power.”
The remaining three, who no longer live in Ukraine, were convicted in absentia on 31 counts of murder and 44 counts of attempted murder. This, under a Supreme Court opinion stipulating suspects can be held collectively responsible for the actions of a group deemed criminal.
The verdict means no one will face jail time, or be in any way punished for their alleged role in the infamous Maidan massacre, which saw over 100 protesters killed, triggered an avalanche of international condemnation and led directly to the downfall of President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country mere days later.
The trial began in Kiev in 2016, but the case languished for years. Matters were further complicated in 2019, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traded all five of the accused for prisoners held by Donbas separatists. Two subsequently returned on a voluntary basis to have their day in court.
Unsurprisingly, the verdict has triggered outrage among victims’ families, and prosecution lawyers say they plan to appeal. By contrast, the mainstream media has so far remained eerily indifferent. In an apparent attempt to distort the trial’s outcome, several outlets — including Reuters — simply referred to the court “sentencing” the officers in their headlines. The Kyiv Post went as far as falsely claiming all five had been found “guilty” of “Maidan crimes.”
But there is more to the story than these outlets have let on. As even the Western-funded Kyiv Independent acknowledged, “a former top investigator” previously tasked with probing the massacre said the verdict followed years of deliberate sabotage by Ukrainian authorities, who “have done their best to make sure there are no real results.”
The question of why officials in Kiev would seek to sabotage the probe has been largely ignored by legacy media outlets. But the verdict offers some highly revealing clues.
‘Unknown persons’ behind killing
Littered throughout the 1,000,000 word document are passages demonstrating conclusively that the sniper fire emanated from buildings controlled by the opposition to Yanukovych. Collectively, these excerpts strongly suggest the Maidan massacre was a false flag carried out by nationalist elements who aimed to ensure the president’s ouster.
The evidence “was quite sufficient to conclude categorically that on the morning of February 20, 2014, persons with weapons, from which the shots were fired, were in the premises of the Hotel Ukraina,” the court found.
Another section reveals “Hotel Ukraina” was “territory… not controlled by law enforcement agencies at that time.” Numerous video recordings show that before, during, and after the massacre, the building was overrun by the far-right opposition party Svoboda, whose leaders used the premises to coordinate their anti-Yanukovych activities on the streets below.
In at least 28 of the 128 shootings considered during the trial, the court ruled that whether “due to the lack of information, the incompleteness or contradictory nature of the submitted data,” the “involvement of law enforcement officers has not been proven,” and that “other unknown persons cannot be ruled out.”
Furthermore, the verdict effectively ruled out any involvement of Russian security and intelligence services in the massacre, a conspiracy theory promoted heavily by pro-Maidan elements.
“The ‘Russian trace’ was not confirmed after examining the relevant documents,” the court found. It concluded that those individuals who were suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence, and were being “constantly monitored,” did not have “any participation in the events on the street.”
For Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, a University of Ottawa political science professor who has spent years documenting overwhelming evidence of opposition responsibility for the massacre, such findings are a long-overdue vindication of his research. In comments to The Grayzone, he explained that the conviction of three police officers in absentia for the murder of 28 Maidan protesters and attempted murder of 36 was “based on a single fabricated forensic ballistic examination.”
The flawed “forensic examination of bullets reversed [the] results of 40 other ballistic examinations” taken previously — every one of which, Katchanovski notes, “showed bullets of Berkut police Kalashnikovs did not match those retrieved from bodies of killed Maidan protesters.”
In the end, “the trial produced an extraordinary volume of evidence proving protesters were shot at from various buildings controlled by pro-Maidan elements,” he says, pointing to the “over 100 witnesses, including 51 anti-government activists injured during the shooting, [who] testified to having been shot from these areas, or seeing snipers located there.”
Elsewhere, the verdict rejected a 3D-model reconstruction of the shooting of three Maidan activists, produced by a New York City-based “unconventional architecture practice” named SITU. This bogus analysis, which was financed to the tune of $100,000 by the Kiev branch of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, was heavily promoted by The New York Times and other Western media outlets and held up as definitive proof that Ukrainian security forces were responsible for the deaths. But the SITU model changed the location of victim’s wounds — from the side or back of their body to the front — and altered the angles of the bullets’ trajectory to fraudulently convict police for their murders.
As Katchanovski explains, “This is deliberate fraud and disinformation.”
“SITU’s bogus modeling allowed The New York Times and many others to deny the existence of Maidan snipers, and brand as ‘conspiracy theory’ any suggestion the massacre was a ‘false flag,’” he says.
But if the Berkhut officers were not responsible for the dozens of deaths that day, the question remains: who was?
Maidan killers move to Odessa
In August 2023, the New York Times revealed that the Ukrainian gunrunner Serhiy Pashinksy, once openly condemned by Zelensky himself as a “criminal,” had become the top private supplier of arms to Ukraine. Pashinsky sourced grenades, artillery shells and rockets “through a trans-European network of middlemen,” then sold, bought and resold the arms “until the final buyer, Ukraine’s military, pays the most.” The hustle has enriched him to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Pashinsky, a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, was a central figure in the Maidan coup. As The Grayzone subsequently revealed, he has been accused by three Georgian mercenaries of personally orchestrating the February 2014 massacre, supplying the weapons used and personally picking targets to be shot. When Israeli journalists confronted Pashinsky about these allegations, he threatened to have his associates track them down at home and “tear them apart.”
During the Maidan trial, defense lawyers made prominent mention of those same Georgian mercenary snipers. Along with Maidan leaders, and Western-backed fascist paramilitary Right Sector, the snipers were also implicated in the May 2014 Odessa massacre, a gruesome incident in which scores of Russian-speaking anti-Maidan protesters were forcibly herded into the city’s Trade Unions House, which was then set alight. In all, 46 died due to burn injuries, carbon monoxide poisoning, and attempts to escape the horrors by jumping out of windows. Non-fatal casualties reportedly totaled around 200.
Katchanovski says that as with Maidan, evidence points to the role of an extremely well-organized plot to carry out the Odessa killings:
“A Georgian sniper who confessed their Maidan massacre role in an Israeli documentary also revealed one of the massacre’s organizers dispatched them to Odessa right before the attack on separatists there.”
Post-coup, coverup after coverup
From the beginning of the Maidan trial, witnesses and prosecutors were subjected by far-right Ukrainian figures to a campaign of intimidation. During proceedings, Neo-Nazi C14 and Azov activists stormed the courtroom, attacked defendants, and placed tires outside the court in an apparent threat to burn the building down. The presiding judge was even beaten by a Maidan activist.
“Covert pressure from Zelensky’s administration and the far-right is likely much greater than what we have seen publicly,” Katchanovski commented to The Grayzone. “Ukraine’s judiciary isn’t independent. Zelensky’s administration routinely and openly interferes in proceedings, and even dismissed the entire Constitutional Court. It’s a very difficult situation for the judges and jury. There were direct threats from the far-right to convict the accused.”
Accordingly, some wounded protesters who initially testified to the presence of snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings later revoked their accounts. They subsequently admitted the prosecution met with them privately, to discuss what they’d said on the witness stand. For Katchanovski, “this is proof the coverup goes to the top of the Ukrainian government.”
Many Ukrainians, especially in the East, have held this same suspicion since Ukraine’s post-Maidan nationalist coup government adopted a wide-ranging amnesty law in 2014. That legislation granted Maidan protesters blanket immunity from prosecution for every serious crime imaginable, including murder, terrorism, and seizure of power. The law also prohibited official investigation of any anti-government agitator for these crimes, and ordered the destruction of all relevant evidence that had previously been collected.
A high-ranking official within Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Office has since admitted that prosecutors handling the Maidan massacre investigation and trial were covertly selected and appointed by none other than Pashinsky. Efforts to conduct a parliamentary commission to probe the killings were blocked by Petro Poroshenko, the rabidly anti-Russian President of Ukraine who succeeded the ousted Yanukovych in 2014.
The official tampering was understandable, Katchanovski argues, given how fundamental Kiev’s narrative of the Maidan massacre is to the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government. The false flag mass murder led directly to Yanukovych, justifying the withdrawal of government forces from downtown Kiev, the seizure of government buildings by Maidan activists, and the president’s unconstitutional removal by the Ukrainian legislature.
All these developments paved a path to the eight-year-long civil war in Donbas, which claimed the lives of over 14,000 and precipitated Russia’s invasion in February 2022. For Katchanovski, the link between the false flag massacre and ongoing war in Ukraine is obvious. The verdict, he says, makes that even more clear.
As retaliation for his groundbreaking investigations into the Maidan massacre, Katchanovski’s home and property were illegally seized by local courts in 2014 “with the involvement of senior officials.” Yet the professor remains more determined than ever to get to the bottom of the story.
“One day, the truth of what happened will be officially acknowledged — the only question is when,” he vowed. “Delayed acknowledgment and lack of justice in this case has already cost Ukraine very dearly. There are many conflicts, including the ongoing war, which spiraled from the Maidan massacre. Countless people have suffered needlessly as a result. The time for truth and reconciliation is well overdue.”
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
Why the Pentagon is a multitrillion-dollar fraud
By Scott Ritter | RT | December 12, 2023
Recently, the Pentagon admitted it couldn’t account for trillions of dollars of US taxpayer money, having failed a massive yearly audit for the sixth year running.
The process consisted of the 29 sub-audits of the DoD’s various services, and only seven passed this year – no improvement over the last. These audits only began taking place in 2017, meaning that the Pentagon has never successfully passed one.
This year’s failure made some headlines, was commented upon briefly by the mainstream media, and then just as quickly forgotten by an American society accustomed to pouring money down the black hole of defense spending.
The defense budget of the United States is grotesquely large, its $877 billion dwarfing the $849 billion spent by the next ten nations with the largest defense expenditures. And yet, the Pentagon cannot fully account for the $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities it has accrued at US taxpayer expense, ostensibly in defense of the United States and its allies. As the Biden administration seeks $886 billion for next year’s defense budget (and Congress seems prepared to add an additional $80 billion to that amount), the apparent indifference of the American collective – government, media, and public – to how nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars will be spent speaks volumes about the overall bankrupt nature of the American establishment.
Audits, however, are an accountant’s trick, a series of numbers on a ledger which, for the average person, do not equate to reality. Americans have grown accustomed to seeing big numbers when it comes to defense spending, and as a result, we likewise expect big things from our military. But the fact is, the US defense establishment increasingly physically resembles the numbers on the ledgers the accountants have been trying to balance – it just doesn’t add up.
Despite spending some $2.3 trillion on a two-decade military misadventure in Afghanistan, the American people witnessed the ignominious retreat from that nation live on TV in August 2021. Likewise, a $758 billion investment in the 2003 invasion and subsequent decade-long occupation of Iraq went south when the US was compelled to withdraw in 2011– only to return in 2014 for another decade of chasing down ISIS, itself a manifestation of the failures of the original Iraqi venture. Overall, the US has spent more than $1.8 trillion on its 20-year nightmare in Iraq and Syria.
These numbers are mind-numbingly large – so large that they become meaningless to the average person. The US defense enterprise is so massive that it is literally a mission impossible to speak of balancing the books. The American people might be willing to shrug off an accounting error or two. But the defense budget equates to American military power and the perceptions of national worth that translate into notions of American exceptionalism.
The fact of the matter is that our cavalier approach to defense spending has resulted in fraud of a massive scale. The American people were sold a bill of goods – a military capable of projecting power world-wide to sustain the so-called “rules based international order” upon which the notion of American exceptionalism has been premised. As it turns out, the US military is as hollow as the numbers on the Pentagon ledgers. The American people have bought an apparatus that is incapable of fighting and winning a major war against any of the potential opponents arrayed against it. We failed to defeat Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban. And we are not able to defeat either China or Russia, let alone regional powers like North Korea and Iran. And yet we will simply continue to invest, in seemingly unquestioning fashion, into this enterprise, expecting somehow that a system that cannot pass an audit will somehow magically produce a different result despite the fact that we, the American people, are doing nothing to demand such a result.
In short, the defense budget is the equivalent of “pay-to-play,” in which the American people pay the US government to produce the results necessary to sustain their overinflated sense of self-worth. We Americans have become so accustomed to being the biggest, baddest bully in the global arena that we assume that simply by pouring money into a system that had produced the desired results for more than seventy years that we could keep the good times rolling. But when you allocate money to a system that has been allowed to become conditioned to operate without accountability, don’t be surprised when the shiny mansion on the hill you thought you were buying turns out to be little more than a house of cards.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union.’
FOI Request Reveals Bellingcat Collusion With Western Intelligence
By Kit Klarenberg | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 12, 2023
An email sent on November 12 2020 by an officer within Amsterdam’s National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) shows a Bellingcat investigation was intentionally shared with the agency prior to publication, so as to assist the Dutch spooks in shaping media strategies and messaging following its release. The revealing communication is irrefutable proof of the cozy relationship the self-styled “independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists” enjoys with Western intelligence services.
In the message, marked “high importance,” the undisclosed author explained that Bellingcat would soon publish research amounting to a deeply libelous attack on independent journalists and researchers, who challenged the mainstream narrative surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. As such, the Dutch intelligence officer wrote, “it is probably smart to put together interdepartmental wording for this already”:
“Because the article highlights several sides (MH17 but also COVID19) it is probably wise to wait a while and see if; a. the mainstream media pick it up; b. from which angle the media pick up and highlight it (MH17 or COVID); c. from this angle to determine the wording and therefore which department is in the lead; d. coordinate the language as much as possible interdepartmentally.”
A ‘bonanza’ of Western intel propaganda
The article in question, entitled “The GRU’s MH17 Disinformation Operations Part 1: The Bonanza Media Project,” was framed as an investigation into a now-defunct independent media venture named Bonanza Media which was established by Russian journalist Yana Yerlashova with the help of freelance Dutch researcher Max Van der Werff.
Much of Bonanza’s work challenged Western assertions that separatist fighters in Donbass shot down MH17 with a Buk surface-to-air missile system provided to them by the Russian military. Ukrainian officials began pushing that narrative, citing audio recordings they claimed to have intercepted alongside material purportedly found on social media implicating the separatists, even before Malaysia Airlines publicly announced it had lost contact with the plane.
Bellingcat, which serendipitously launched just days before the downing of MH17, came to prominence by immediately seizing on this deluge of carefully-curated and potentially falsified information. With amazing speed, the organization claimed to have precisely mapped out what happened that fateful day, and exactly how it occurred. Despite its relative inexperience and opaque organizational structure, its findings were accepted without a shred of scrutiny by Western journalists, lawmakers, pundits, and the official Dutch MH17 tribunal, which concluded in November 2022.
Bonanza Media’s film, “MH17 – Call for Justice”, features interviews with witnesses on-the-ground that day and Malaysian government officials who did not accept the official story, but doesn’t rule out the possibility of Russian culpability altogether. However, the documentary presented a substantial challenge to Bellingcat’s version of events – which also happened to align neatly with the official narrative. In 2020, Bonanza also published leaked documents confidentially submitted to the tribunal. This included Dutch intelligence files recording that while many Ukrainian Buk systems had been spotted in eastern Ukraine, Russian equivalents were nowhere to be seen.
Evidently, Bellingcat and its founder, Eliot Higgins, were displeased with their results. As Dutch freelance journalist Eric van de Beek wrote in 2020, “because it was impossible for Bellingcat to discredit Van der Werff on the basis of the well-researched content featured on his blog and in his recent documentary, Eliot Higgins opted to wage a campaign of misinformation.”
Bellingcat’s 2020 investigation into the group strongly insinuated Bonanza was being run by Russia’s GRU, heavily implied their investigations were edited by the agency’s operatives before publication, and suggested its contributors were on the Kremlin’s payroll. The group claimed their conclusions were “based on emails from the mailboxes of two senior GRU officers obtained by a Russian hacktivist group and independently authenticated by us.”
Strict British libel laws may have prevented the group from making direct allegations to this effect, but the Dutch media had no such qualms, and the investigation triggered a wave of smears in major local publications. One daily newspaper headlined as fact: “Dutch MH17-blogger directed by Russian secret service.” Another, which directly asserted that “Van der Werff worked on the orders of the Russian military intelligence service GRU,” is currently being sued by the researcher regarding the unproven claim.
Strikingly, throughout this period not a single mainstream journalist questioned how Bellingcat acquired the highly sensitive trove of documents upon which its investigation depended. On top of confidential GRU emails, Bellingcat somehow apparently acquired phone data showing calls between purported Russian intelligence officials and cell tower data tracking their movements, which it claimed pinpointed their locations to GRU headquarters in Moscow. None of this information is remotely “open source,” and since it wasn’t shared publicly, it can’t be independently verified.
Oddly, in one passage, Bellingcat stated “it is not clear who requested or suggested” changes to a Bonanza article it alleged were made after the piece was submitted to the GRU, before publication. One might think ascertaining this would be simple, given the vast amount of highly incriminating evidence to which Bellingcat had exclusive access. Perhaps British libel laws were a deterrent to accusing the GRU — but why would this be the case if the material was authentic, and defending it in court was no issue?
MH17 verdict undermines Bellingcat
The newly-released NCTV email strongly suggests Bellingcat’s investigation into Bonanza was the product of a Western intelligence information operation, intended to steer the MH17 tribunal in a very specific direction — namely, towards the defendants’ guilt. Sure enough, Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Donbas separatist Leonid Kharchenko, were convicted in absentia for the murder of MH17’s 283 passengers and 15 crew members, the court ruling they arranged the transfer of the Buk surface-to-air missile system that reportedly struck the plane.
Meanwhile, the only defendant to seek legal representation and give testimony during the trial, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted on all charges. The court found there was “no indication” he was involved in obtaining the missile system, that he could have prevented its use, or that he was involved in transporting it to another location after the incident. Prosecutors announced they will not appeal the verdict.
The response by the normally brash Higgins to the Dutch court’s judgment was uncharacteristically muted. In an otherwise self-congratulatory Twitter thread, he merely noted that “Pulatov is acquitted, the rest are found guilty.” There was no explanation for why the defendant was found innocent, nor any analysis of the ruling’s potential implications for Bellingcat’s MH17 investigations.
This defence at the MH17 trial is a total car crash, the JIT has had 5 and a half years to prepare for this nonsense, and it’s just recycling MH17 truther nonsense.
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) June 22, 2020
Higgins and his crack squad of laptop jockeys were understandably embarrassed on these counts. Not least because the Bellingcat chief repeatedly mocked Pulatov and his lawyers during the tribunal, suggesting his conviction was a fait accompli, and sneering when the defendant testified accusations of responsibility for MH17 resulted in adverse personal consequences for him. A June 2020 Bellingcat investigation lambasted Pulatov’s testimony, suggesting his defense strategy was “unlikely to win Mr. Pulatov the court’s sympathies.”
We detail the role that each of these four men had in the downing with our new report. Girkin was the Minister of Defense of the DNR in July 2014, Dubinsky was the head of the GRU DNR, the Pulatov/Kharchenko were his underlings. https://t.co/2cVjK2RCPj pic.twitter.com/wjHwBqpzrP
— Bellingcat (@bellingcat) June 19, 2019
A sordid history of smears
Bellingcat’s confirmed collusion with NCTV raises obvious questions about whether the organization’s relentless attacks on journalists and researchers who do not toe the official national security line are also directly coordinated with, and on behalf of, Western intelligence agencies. In many cases, Bellingcat’s attacks have had real-world consequences for its targets.
For example, Bellingcat has over many years attempted to destroy the career of MIT emeritus professor Theodore Postol, who questioned official investigations into alleged chemical strikes in Syria. In 2019, Bellingcat pressured a science journal to prevent Postol from publishing an academic paper challenging the results of a UN probe into the alleged 2017 Khan Sheikhoun sarin attack which blamed the Syrian government on the basis of supposed “computational forensic analysis.”
Throughout the Syrian conflict, Bellingcat published investigations blaming government forces for chemical weapons attacks, typically within hours of them allegedly happening. These findings were invariably based in part on material provided to the organization by British intelligence constructs on-the-ground, such as the bogus humanitarian group known as the White Helmets. In the immediate aftermath of the notorious April 2018 Douma incident, which OPCW whistleblowers suggest was staged, Higgins tweeted an exclusive photo of one of the cylinders purportedly used in the strike.
The post was abruptly deleted though, perhaps because the White Helmets subsequently shared a photo of the same site in which the same cylinder was in a different position. Proof positive the scene had been manipulated by those staging it. Dissident British academics who have helped expose Douma and other chemical weapons strikes in Syria as opposition-executed false flags – in which British intelligence was frequently complicit – have likewise been relentlessly targeted by Bellingcat.
Elsewhere, Bellingcat fabricated and misrepresented evidence to smear independent Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva as a potential GRU asset. Meanwhile, the organization has played a lead role in disseminating and “verifying” dubious, if not outright fraudulent, material and claims related to the Ukraine conflict throughout its duration. Investigations by The Grayzone strongly suggest Bellingcat operatives were directly implicated in a Ukrainian intelligence operation gone wrong, which got Kiev’s forces killed.
CIA veterans have openly praised Bellingcat for stating publicly what spy agencies cannot. In a December 2020 Foreign Policy article entitled, “Bellingcat Can Say What U.S. Intelligence Can’t,” the CIA’s former deputy chief of operations for Europe and Eurasia was quoted as saying:
“I don’t want to be too dramatic, but we love this. Whenever we had to talk to our liaison partners… instead of trying to have things cleared or worry about classification issues, you could just reference their work.”
Accordingly, leaked files exposing the internal workings of Integrity Initiative, a British intelligence black propaganda operation tasked with ginning up conflict with Russia to pad the UK’s defense budget, were rife with references to Bellingcat. As an internal document which describes one of the group’s goals as “increasing the impact of effective organisations currently analysing Russian activities” notes, “we already do this [emphasis added] with… Bellingcat.”
As a result of such excerpts, this journalist repeatedly asked Higgins about the nature of his and his organization’s relationship with the Integrity Initiative. Though initially evasive, in March 2020 Higgins finally denied any association in an email that concluded with an ominous threat:
“The funny thing is your shitty reporting on the matter had [sic] proven quite useful to us, looking forward to you finding out how, try not to feel too bad.”
Almost four years later, this journalist is still waiting to learn what Higgins and his collaborators in Western spy agencies have cooked up to make me “feel bad.” Given the confirmed interest of British intelligence in sabotaging this outlet, and the crazed allegations put to me by the counter-terror police who detained me in London this May, he may have already made good on his threat.
Mocking their army, Israel commentators call out fake ‘Hamas surrender images’
MEMO | December 11, 2023
Israeli observers and journalists accused the occupation army spokesman, Daniel Hagari, of lying by fabricating pictures and videos showing alleged members of the Al-Qassam Brigades’ Elite Forces surrendering.
Most highlighted that many of those shown in the pictures were elderly men in their 60s and not young fighters in their prime who would normally make Elite Forces.
Ori Goldberg, researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre- Herzliya, said in a series of posts on X yesterday: “After reports of terrorists who turned themselves in, it turned out that these were groups of men who were arrested and taken from compounds where hundreds of Gazans were seeking refuge, together” to escape the bombing by the occupation army.
According to Goldberg: “To win a guerrilla war, you need clear goals and clear political guidance. Otherwise, the war breaks down into endless incidents and explosions and operations and assaults and does not come together for a decision. The IDF can fight for 18 years in Gaza, as in Lebanon, and the war will not end until the political echelon calls for its end. There are no clear goals and no clear guidance.”
In one video, an older gentleman can be seen following the instructions of an Israeli occupation soldier who is directing him where to go and where to place the weapon he is holding. The man had been stripped to his underwear. Commenting on a picture, military reporter at MAKO website, Hai Levy, said: “You can consider him an elite fighter if you’d consider me a frog.”
Others questioned how the men were stripped to their underwear before their weapons were taken from them.
While others said these images brought “shame” to Israel as they were so obviously fake.
US-made munitions used in illegal white phosphorous attack on Lebanon
The Cradle | December 11, 2023
The Israeli army used US-manufactured white phosphorous shells in a brutal attack on south Lebanon in October, the Washington Post reported on 11 December, citing an analysis of shell fragments found in the southern Lebanese village of Al-Dhahira.
A Washington Post journalist came across the remnants of three 155-millimeter artillery shells near the border. Production codes found on the shells indicate that they were made by ammunition depots in Louisiana and Arkansas in 1989 and 1992.
Residents told the journalist that the shells in question “incinerated at least four homes.”
Nine people were injured in the white phosphorous attack, which took place on 16 October, including three who were hospitalized.
Photos and videos verified by Amnesty International show the white phosphorus falling on Al-Dhahira on 16 October.
“Israeli forces continued to shell the town with white phosphorus munitions for hours,” trapping residents in their homes until 7:00 AM the next day, locals told the Washington Post, adding that they now refer to that evening as the “black night.”
Israel has used white phosphorous on southern Lebanon over 60 times since the war began in October, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).
“The Israeli army fired artillery shells containing white phosphorus, an incendiary weapon, in military operations along Lebanon’s southern border between 10 and 16 October 2023,” Amnesty International said on 31 October, adding that the 16 October attack must be immediately investigated as a war crime.
Israel claimed its use of the banned munitions was in line with international law, given that they used them to create “smokescreens” and not for targeting, according to an army statement.
However, the 16 October white phosphorous attack took place at night, when “smoke would have little practical use … and [when] there were no Israeli troops on the Lebanese side of the border to mask with smokescreens,” Washington Post said.
“Residents speculated that the phosphorus was meant to displace them from the village and to clear the way for future Israeli military activity in the area,” it added.
White phosphorous burns at extremely high temperatures and can stick to the skin, posing a potentially lethal threat. Residents of Al-Dhahira reported that remnants of the banned weapon would combust upon contact in the days following the attack.
Israel also used white phosphorous in its current war on Gaza, as well as in previous wars in both Gaza and Lebanon.
Crossfire has intensified recently on the Lebanese border. Hezbollah has stepped up its attacks on Israeli military sites and widened its range of targets in response to intense and violent air strikes on southern Lebanese villages and in response to Israeli massacres in the Gaza Strip.
Recent Israeli strikes on Lebanon have resulted in several civilian casualties.
Brewing truth: Climate doomsayers’ cooked up coffee crisis
By Vijay Jayaraj | American Thinker | December 7, 2023
Every day, people across the world wake up to news about climate change affecting their lives. With the seeming randomness of a roulette wheel, the doomsday clique of the climate world daily selects a fresh topic to sow seeds of anxiety among the populace.
Popular things easily recognized — even cherished — by people are continually identified as being at risk of being damaged or destroyed by climate change. Coffee, for example, is a commodity experiencing a surge in popularity, and there are no prizes for guessing what climate doomsayers are saying now.
Yes, coffee is now said to be under threat from man-made climate change. CNN, in a recent article, made this statement: “climate change poses a huge threat to the coffee business and to farmers.” Keeping with its customary approach of presenting climate change as a threat to all manner of things, CNN quotes the Inter-American Development Bank as warning that “rising temperatures will reduce the area suitable for growing coffee by up to 50%.”
Is this claim true? If so, plenty of people would be affected, because coffee is selling like hot cakes.
The brew is a staple in nearly 98% of households in Brazil. According to the 2023 National Coffee Data Trends Report, coffee consumption in the U.S. has hit a 20-year peak, with over 50% of consumers gravitating toward specialty coffee.
Even in my home country, India, there is a sudden deluge of boutique coffee shops. Some chains have opened as many as 50 branches within a span of five years, and that is not an easy task in a country of 1.3 billion tea-lovers. India is now the eighth largest producer of coffee beans.
More than 99% of global coffee production comprises the arabica and robusta species, which are just two of over 140 different species in the Coffea genus. Coffea, especially arabica, depends highly on soil fertility and temperature.
The purveyors of climate apocalypse are particularly interested in the temperature aspect, as it provides a legitimate pathway for indulging in climate scaremongering. Despite widespread concern about increasing warmth, satellite temperature data collected from 1979 to 2023 indicate that there has not been a significant rise in temperatures.
Despite widespread concern about increasing warmth, global satellite temperature data collected from 1979 to 2023 indicates that there has only been a modest rise of less than one-degree C in temperature.
Besides, it is widely acknowledged that warming since the Little Ice Age and increased atmospheric CO2 since the Industrial Revolution have boosted agricultural production and the general greening of ecosystems.
Scientists in Brazil have discovered that “carbon dioxide fertilization offsets negative impacts of climate change on arabica coffee yield.” They say that the CO2 fertilization effect will cause a net increase of the average Brazilian arabica coffee harvest by the years 2040–2070.
CO2 enrichment studies in Latin America show that elevated CO2 increased photosynthesis by 40% and increased the efficiency plants’ water use by approximately 60%. Higher CO2 eventually caused a 7–14% increase in plant height and a 12–14% increase in yield. Another study showed that there were significant increases in all leaf area and biomass markers in response to increased CO2.
The research indicates that we might already be reaping the rewards of increased productivity rates in both arabica and robusta coffee varieties thanks to the recent rise in atmospheric CO2. This reality is reflected in the plantations across the globe. Production in South America and Southeast Asia have shown increases in yield during the past two decades.
Brazil and Vietnam are the top two coffee bean producers. Both countries have seen remarkable increases in their yield, with Vietnam’s production climbing from 0.54 tons per acre in 2002 to 1.11 tons per acre in 2021. Meanwhile, Brazil’s yield has also shown significant growth, rising from 0.49 tons per acre in 2002 to 0.87 tons per acre in 2020.
Even if the temperatures were to increase dramatically, experts say that coffee cultivation would be possible in cooler regions at latitudes away from equator or at higher altitudes.
So sit back and drink that morning cup of Joe. Climate is not going to steal your coffee, and thank CO2 for keeping the plantations productive.
Vijay Jayaraj is a research associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a Master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.
IMF Head Wants World Wide Carbon Taxes
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | December 7, 2023
IMF Chief Kristalina Georgieva has called for every government to implement some form of carbon taxes or “carbon pricing” in the near future.
Yes, we’re into week two of the UN’s COP28 climate change summit, and the hits just keep on coming.
For example, yesterday it was announced sixty-three world governments have pledged to reduce the emissions from air conditioners and electrics fans.
[You can read a detailed breakdown of the other pledges made during COP28’s first week here.]
Speaking at COP28 in Dubai, and repeated in an interview with the Guardian, Georgieva extolled the virtues of “carbon pricing” and heaped praise on the EU and Canada for their implementation:
When you put a price on carbon, decarbonisation accelerates. The Europeans introduced the emission trading scheme [in 2005] and they have been growing and yet emissions went down by 37%. You see the same thing in Canada with their carbon tax.”
While both the speech and interview discuss the proposed carbon taxes in terms of corporations as “major polluters”, any tax applied to big business would be directly passed onto private citizens via price increases.
The Guardian acknowledges this, but of course, decides to add a weasel-word qualification [emphasis added]:
However, attractive though a carbon price may be in economic theory, in practice governments are reluctant to impose such explicit prices and taxes, because they can easily be attacked, and because they hit poorer people hardest, if badly applied.
“If badly applied”, sure.
The truth is economic destruction, designed to lower the standard of living for ordinary people, is the whole point of “carbon taxes”. just as it was the point of lockdowns.
Deceptive language aside, the undeniable fact that any carbon tax – corporate or individual – would directly harm the poorest is clearly understood by the people who would seek to enforce them.
Not that they have a problem with that, you understand, their concern is merely that purely public rage and/or civil disobedience makes direct taxation difficult to implement. The Guardian article gives the game away by referencing France’s Gilets Jaunes protests as an example.
So, even as Georgieva names carbon taxes the “perfect” solution to climate change, she recognizes the need to rely on more indirect methods.
Yes, the best way to introduce implement carbon prices [is] a carbon tax…But it is not politically feasible in some countries … We can also use regulatory compliance in which standards lead to implicit prices on carbon.”
These “regulations” and “implicit” prices would not be “carbon taxes” in name, but they would very much be so in spirit.
Again the Guardian cites an example, the EU’s recent “carbon border adjustment mechanisms”, which charge more import duties on goods coming from countries with “lax” emissions policies.
A global version of those rules is likely just one of many such measures we can expect moving forward since, according to Georgieva, the world’s biggest financial institutions are all working together on this issue:
[T]he IMF, World Bank, OECD and World Trade Organization [have] set up a taskforce to examine the different carbon prices that are implied in countries around the world by their carbon policies and regulations.”
The head of IMF has spoken, and the World Bank and World Trade Organization are all on board: Carbon Taxes are inevitable. The only question is what they decide to call them.
All the world’s biggest financial heavy-hitters are coming together to figure out the best way to scam people out of their hard-earned money… for the good of the planet, obviously.
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From the Archives
The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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