Leaked files: Britain’s secret propaganda ops in Yemen
By Kit Klarenberg | The Cradle | April 17 2023
Yemen’s civil war, considered the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis, appears to be nearing its end due to a China-brokered detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, who support opposing sides in the bitter conflict.
Early signs suggest that the rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh may not only end hostilities in Yemen, but across the wider region.
The US, Israel, and Britain have the most to lose from a sudden onset of peace in West Asia. In the Yemeni context, London may be the biggest loser of all. For years, it provided the Saudi-led coalition with weaponry used to target civilians and civilian infrastructure, with receipts running into billions of pounds sterling.
During the entirety of the war, Yemen was struck by British-made bombs, dropped by British-made planes, flown by British-trained pilots, which then flew back to Riyadh to be repaired and serviced by British contractors. In 2019, a nameless BAE Systems executive estimated that if London pulled its backing for the proxy war, “in seven to 14 days, there wouldn’t be a jet in the sky.”
In addition to supplying weapons, the war also presented a golden opportunity for Britain to establish a military base in Yemen, fulfilling long-held fantasies of recovering the Empire’s long-lost glory days “East of Suez.”
Al-Ghaydah airport in al-Mahrah, Yemen’s far eastern governorate, has for some time quietly housed “a fully-fledged force” of British soldiers, providing “military training and logistical support” to coalition forces and Saudi-backed militias. There are even indications that this involvement could extend to torture methods, which is a troubling reflection of one of London’s leading exports.
The Cradle has obtained exclusive information about a previously undisclosed aspect of London’s role in the proxy war against Yemen’s Ansarallah-led resistance. It has been revealed that a multi-channel propaganda campaign, led by the intelligence cut-out ARK and its founder Alistair Harris, a veteran MI6 operative, has been operating in complete secrecy throughout the nine-year-long conflict – one that specifically targeted Yemen’s civilian population.
Anti-Ansarallah ops
Leaked Foreign Office documents have revealed that ARK’s “multimedia” information warfare campaign was designed to undermine public sympathy for the Ansarallah movement and ensure that the conflict would only end on terms that aligned with London’s financial, ideological, and geopolitical interests.
For instance, public acceptance of the UN’s widely unpopular peace proposal required propaganda support from local NGOs and media organizations that “support UK objectives” to “communicate effectively with Yemeni citizens” and change their minds.
It was also necessary to counter “new actors” in the information space that were critical of the Saudi-led coalition’s brutal bombing campaigns and the illegitimate, US-backed puppet government that the aerial assaults sought to protect.
Considering the high rate of illiteracy in the local population, ARK conceived the creation of a suite of “visually rich” products extolling the virtues of a Riyadh-dominated peace plan. These products would be disseminated on and offline, would “deliberately include different demographics, sects, and locations to ensure inclusivity,” and would be informed by focus groups and polling of Yemenis. ARK’s campaign even extended to convening “gender-segregated poetry competitions using peace as a theme” and “plays and town hall meetings.”
Publicly, many of these propaganda products appeared to be the work of Tadafur – Arabic for “work collectively and unite” – an astroturf network of NGOs and journalists constructed by ARK. Its overt mission was to “resolve local level conflicts” and “unite local communities in their conflict resolution efforts.”
The campaign began initially at a “hyper-local level” across six Yemeni governorates, “before being amplified at the national level.” Activities “[in] all areas and at both levels” had unified messaging across “common macro themes,” such as the slogan “Our Yemen, Our Future.”
In each governorate, a “credible” local NGO was identified as a messenger, along with “well-known” and “respected and influential” journalists who served as “dedicated field officers” across the sextet, managed by ARK.
In Hajjah – “a site of strong Houthi influence” – the Al-Mustaqbal Institute for Development was ARK’s NGO of choice; in Ansarallah-governed Sanaa, it was the Faces Institution for Rights and Media; in Marib, the Marib Social Generations Club; in Lahij, Rouwad Institution for Development and Human Rights; in Hadhramaut, Ahed Institute for Rights and Freedom; in Taiz, Generations Without Qat.
These local NGOs were instrumental in promoting ARK’s agenda and advancing the narrative that aligned with Britain’s objectives in Yemen.
The company’s roster of “field officers” comprised of individuals with various backgrounds, such as:
“Human rights abuse” specialist Mansour Hassan Mohammad Abu Ali, TV producer Thy Yazen Hussain, Public Organisation to Protect Human Rights press official and “experienced journalist” Waleed Abdul Mutlab Mohammed al-Rajihi, producer from Alhadramiah Documentary Institute Abdullah Amr Ramdan Mas’id, editorial secretary of Family and Development magazine and the Yemen Times’ Taiz news manager Rania Abdullah Saif al-Shara’bi, as well as journalist and activist Waheeb Qa’id Saleh Thiban.
A Trojan Horse
Once ARK’s field officers and NGOs “successfully designed and implemented hyper-local campaigns,” coverage of “information around the related activities will then be amplified at the national level.” A key platform for this amplification was a Facebook page called “Bab,” launched in 2016 with tens of thousands of followers who were unaware that the page was created by ARK as a British intelligence asset.
Under the guise of a popular grassroots online community, ARK used the Bab page to broadcast slick propaganda “promoting the peace process,” including videos and images of “local peacebuilding initiatives” organized by its NGO and field officer nexus.
“Campaign content will highlight tangible, real-life examples of compelling peacebuilding efforts that all Yemenis, regardless of their political affiliation, can relate to,” ARK stated.
“These will offer inspirational examples for others to emulate, demonstrating practical ways to engage with the peace process at a local level. Taken together, these individual stories form the broader campaign with a national message: Yemenis share a collective desire for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.”
When “high engagement levels” with this content were secured, Bab users were invited to submit their own, which demonstrated “support for the peace process.” They were explicitly asked “to mirror content ARK has produced, such as voxpops, short videos, or infographics.” This was then “shared by the project and field teams through influential WhatsApp messaging groups, a key way of reaching Yemeni youth.”
ARK’s “well-connected communications team” would then “strategically share packaged stories with broadcast media or key social influencers, or offer selected journalists exclusive access to stories.” Creating a constant flow of content was a deliberate ploy to “collectively be as ‘loud’ as partisan national political and military actors.” In other words, to create a parallel communications structure to Ansarallah’s own, which would drown out the resistance movement’s pronouncements.
ARK’s role in Yemen’s peace process
While one might argue that the non-consensual recruitment of private citizens as information warriors by British intelligence was justified by the moral urgency of ending the Yemen war quickly, the exploitation of these individuals was cynical in the extreme. It amounted to a Trojan Horse operation aimed at compelling Yemenis to embrace a peace deal that was wildly inequitable and contrary to their own interests.
Multiple passages in the leaked files refer to the paramount need to ensure no linkage between these propaganda initiatives and the UN’s peace efforts. One passage refers to how campaign “themes and activities” would at no point “directly promote the UN or the formal peace process,” while another says concealing the operation’s agenda behind ostensibly independent civil society voices “minimizes the risk” that “outputs are perceived as institutional communications stemming from or directly promoting the UN.”
Yet, once ARK’s campaigns began “performing successfully at the national level,” the company’s field officers planned to “build a bridge” between its local foot soldiers and national “stakeholders” – and, resultantly, the UN. In other words, the entire ruse served to entrench ARK’s central role in peace negotiations via the backdoor.
Diminished western influence
At that time, the ceasefire deal proposed by the UN required Ansarallah and its allied forces to virtually surrender before Riyadh’s military assaults and economic blockade of the country could be partially lifted, along with other stringent requirements that the Saudis refused to compromise on. The US aggressively encouraged such intransigence, viewing any Ansarallah influence in Yemen as strengthening Iran’s regional position.
However, these perspectives are no longer relevant to Yemen’s peace process. China has now encouraged Riyadh to offer significant concessions, and as a result, the end of the war is within sight, with critical supplies finally allowed to enter Yemen, prisoners returned, Sanaa’s airport reopened, and other positive developments.
Evidently, Washington’s offers of arms deals and security assurances are no longer sufficient to influence events overseas and convince its allies to carry out its agenda. The failure of ARK’s anti-Ansarallah propaganda campaigns to coerce Yemenis to accept peace on the west’s terms also highlights Britain’s significantly reduced power in the modern era.
Whereas wars could once be won on the coat-tails of well-laid propaganda campaigns, the experiences of Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan show that the tide has turned. Subversive information campaigns can confuse and misdirect populations but, at best, can only prolong conflict – not win it.
The RESTRICT Act will usher in a new era of censorship under the guise of “national security”
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 17, 2023
45 days after 9/11, the United States government passed the PATRIOT Act — a chilling law that used the guise of “national security” to greatly expand the federal government’s secret surveillance powers.
Almost 23 years later, another far-reaching bill, the “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” better known by its acronym, the RESTRICT Act, is using the same national security talking point to justify further federal government encroachment on Americans’ rights.
Although the bill doesn’t mention TikTok, its authors, Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator John Thune, have framed it as “the best way to counter the TikTok threat.”
However, the impact of the bill extends far beyond TikTok and gives the US government sweeping powers to ban a wide range of apps and services.
The bill authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit “current, past, or potential future transactions” involving technology products or services with more than one million US-based annual active users that:
- Are deemed to pose an “undue or unacceptable risk” in various areas (such as national security and election interference)
- Involve anyone determined to be “owned, directed, or controlled” by a “foreign adversary” (a term that can currently be applied to China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela but can be extended to other nations by the Secretary)
The Secretary of Commerce can also refer these tech products and services to the President who can take action to “compel divestment of, or otherwise mitigate the risk” associated with them.
Caitlin Vogus, the deputy director of rights group the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Free Expression Project, warned that these powers target the free speech rights of Americans. In a statement to Motherboard, she said:
“The RESTRICT Act could lead to apps and other ICT [information communication technology] services with connections to certain foreign countries being banned in the United States. Any bill that would allow the US government to ban an online service that facilitates Americans’ speech raises serious First Amendment concerns.”
Rights groups have also sounded the alarm about the RESTRICT Act’s threats to fine or imprison those who attempt to “evade the provisions” of the bill — a threat that they fear could be aimed at US citizens who attempt to access banned apps or services.
The RESTRICT Act states: “No person may engage in any transaction or take any other action with intent to evade the provisions of this Act.”
The bill even makes it unlawful to “approve” of “any act” that tries to evade the provisions of the bill.
People that violate these rules can be fined up to $1 million and imprisoned for up to 20 years.
Senator Warner has insisted that these penalties won’t be used to target individual users.
However, digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has noted that the bill doesn’t actually prevent individual users from being targeted. In an article about the RESTRICT Act, the EFF warned:
“Due to undefined mitigation measures coupled with a vague enforcement provision, the bill could also criminalize common practices like using a VPN or side-loading to install a prohibited app.”
Another concerning aspect of the RESTRICT Act is that it allows the Secretary of Commerce to form technical advisory committees without them being subject to Chapter 10 of part 1 of title 5 of the United States Code.
This section of the law aims to reduce “the undue influence” of special interests and lobbyists. It allows Congress to review the proposed activities of advisory committees before they’re formed and ensure that these committees aren’t being “inappropriately influenced” by special interests. It also requires advisory committees to report their activities and goals to Congress, make their meetings open to the public, make transcripts available to the public, and file reports with the Library of Congress.
Excluding RESTRICT Act advisory committees from this section of the law opens the door for lobbyists representing US tech giants to serve on these committees, push for their competitors in other countries to be banned, and further cement their dominance.
And the problems don’t end here. The RESTRICT Act also limits judicial, congressional, and public scrutiny of the government’s actions.
Actions taken by the Secretary of the Treasury under this act are exempt from sections 551, 553-559, and 701-707 of title 5 of the United States Code — sections that require federal officials and agencies to provide public notice when proposing rule making, allow interested persons to participate in the rule making, and give those who suffer legal wrong as a result of government action the right to judicial review.
The scope of judicial review under the RESTRICT Act is limited to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the court is prohibited from disturbing “any action taken” by the Secretary or the President when they review or prohibit transactions or take action against tech products and services, unless a petitioner demonstrates that the action is unconstitutional or violates a statutory command.
Additionally, Americans have “no right of access” to the information that the government uses when deciding whether to prohibit transactions involving technology products or services under this bill. The Freedom of Information Act also doesn’t apply to any information submitted by affected parties or created by the government when reviewing such transactions.
We obtained a copy of the RESTRICT Act for you here.
Despite the glaring problems with the bill, its architects are blaming TikTok for the criticism and claiming that the owners of the app are “spreading false claims about the Restrict Act in an effort to continue operating with impunity.”
According to Warner, the RESTRICT ACT has more than 20 bipartisan cosponsors.
The bill also has the full support of the Biden White House which has already demonstrated that it’s no fan of free speech and is currently being sued for alleged First Amendment violations.
If the RESTRICT Act passes, the Biden admin and any future pro-censorship administrations will be handed new powers to continue their crackdowns on online speech.
Canada’s state media quit Twitter over label
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau on CBC’s Face To Face with host Rosemary Barton in Toronto, September 12, 2021. © Global Look Press/Keystone Press Agency
RT | April 17, 2023
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) announced on Monday that it was “pausing” its activity on Twitter after the social media platform labeled it as state-funded, arguing that this somehow impugned their editorial independence.
“Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on Twitter,” the government-funded outlet tweeted.
“Twitter can be a powerful tool for our journalists to communicate with Canadians, but it undermines the accuracy and professionalism of the work they do to allow our independence to be falsely described in this way,” CBC spokesperson Leon Mar said on Sunday evening. “Consequently, we will be pausing our activity on our corporate Twitter account and all CBC and Radio-Canada news-related accounts.”
The CBC is a Crown corporation, entirely owned by the Canadian state. In its 2021-22 annual analysis, it reported receiving 1.24 billion ($930 million) Canadian dollars in government funding. However, the outlet insists that its editorial policies are entirely independent of the government and guided only by “public interest.”
Mar argued that Twitter’s own policy defines government-funded media as those in which the authorities “may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content,” which is “clearly not the case with CBC/Radio Canada.”
Leader of the opposition Conservative Party Pierre Poilievre reacted to the labeling of CBC by tweeting that “Now people know that it is [Canadian PM Justin] Trudeau propaganda, not news.”
Last week, Poilievre called on Twitter owner Elon Musk to add the label to the broadcaster, saying it was needed to protect Canadians against “disinformation and manipulation by state media.” Describing the CBC as government-funded is a fact, the politician said, “and Canadians deserve the facts.”
The CBC’s Twitter boycott echoes the actions of two US outlets, the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Both stopped tweeting last week, in response to being labeled as government-funded.
PBS also insisted that it was entirely editorially independent and produced “trustworthy content that features unbiased reporting.” The outlet could not argue that it didn’t receive government funding, as 31% of its revenue came from federal, state and local authorities, with another 12% coming from regional public broadcasters and universities, also heavily subsidized by the government.
Twitter originally rolled out the labeling of outlets in August 2020, tagging Russian and Chinese media as “state-affiliated” but exempting Western outlets such as the BBC and Voice of America (VOA). As documents published after Musk’s takeover showed, the platform was working hand in glove with what several US journalists described as a “censorship-industrial complex” of government agencies and politically motivated NGOs.
MORE UNANSWERED RED FLAGS REGARDING JACK TEXEIRA
By Larry Johnson | SONAR | April 16, 2023
Several former military and intelligence professionals have contacted me and voiced similar doubts about the pat story being circulated regarding National Guard Airman Jack Texeira and the allegations that he removed TOP SECRET documents from a SCIF, photographed them and then posted them to a gamer chat. They all agree, something is not right. The media account does not make sense.
The biggest oddity are the two two separate documents from the CIA’s Operations Center. Neither are complete and both deal only with the Ukrainian/Russian war. To reiterate a point from my previous article, that CIA Operations Center produces two daily reports — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It is not a “Community” product, i.e., it is not distributed to the other intelligence agencies. It is an internal CIA document (of course, it is available to the Director of National Intelligence).
Texeira’s alleged possession of two separate reports is doubly odd because he did not copy the full reports. The one dated 1 March 2023 only shows 3 of 8 pages. If he was taking the documents to impress the youngsters on the gamer chat, why did he not take the whole enchilada? And why did he only publish the portions of the intel report that dealt exclusively with Ukraine and Russia?
There has been some media reports that he also posted a State Department EXDIS cable. I have not seen it and cannot confirm that it exists. If it does, that would be another huge red flag. EXDIS is bureaucratic speak for EXCLUSIVE DISSEMINATION. It has a cousin, NODIS — i.e., NO DISTRIBUTION. The U.S. military does not have access to such cables.
There was a time when State EXDIS was available to U.S. military commands on a restricted basis. That was pre-Chelsea Manning. After Manning’s leaks in 2010, that access was cut off. I know this first hand because I was part of a team scripting military exercises for all U.S. regional commands (i.e., EUCOM, NORTHCOM, AFRICOM, PACOM, CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM) during the course of a year. I was the State Department Subject Matter Expert. That means I had the job of creating cable traffic from the Secretary of State or U.S. Embassies that the U.S. military might see during a terrorist crisis. Prior to the Manning/Wikileaks leak, I had full access to State Department messages, including EXDIS. After Manning, that access was terminated. Not just for me but for all the uniformed personnel I worked with. All held TS SCI clearances. There has been no change in that policy, which means there is no way that Jack Texeira would have had any access to copy and take a State Department EXDIS message.
Another curiosity with the story, apart from Jack’s youth and the claim that he held TS SCI clearances and had access to CIA internal reports, is the schedule of his Massachusetts Air National Guard unit. That outfit had not been called up and assigned a 24 x 7 mission. Instead, the Air National Guard unit meets one weekend a month. In other words, Jack had to work his magic over a two or three day period surrounded by peers and those in command of the unit. You do not just show up and pursue your own interests. There are drills and assigned work, which is supervised by Non-Commissioned Officers (i.e., Sergeants) and Officers.
The documents I have seen posted on Twitter and Telegram, were dated 28 February, 1 March and 2 March, i.e., Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. According to the MI-6 funded Bellingcat, those documents were published on 4 March, a Saturday. Let’s assume that Texeira’s National Guard unit assembled for drill on March 4. We’re asked to believe that Jack Texeira showed up for monthly Air National Guard duty on Saturday, quickly scoured the high side computer for sensitive documents, printed them off, smuggled them out of the SCIF, returned home sometime after 5 pm (normal end of duty day), photographed the documents and quickly uploaded them to the Discord server. If that is what happened, it smacks of urgency. Most young airmen, after a long day at work, want to go out and party rather than stay at home photographing documents.
I remain skeptical of the narrative and hope by raising these questions that some genuine journalists will explore the oddities and try to get to the ground truth.
Droughts developing more rapidly says global study
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | April 16, 2023
For the first time a new study has confirmed droughts across the world are developing more rapidly as a result of climate change.
The international study identifies flash droughts – which intensify in a matter of weeks – have become more frequent since the late 1950s over 74% of the world’s 33 global regions, especially those over North and East Asia, the Sahara and Europe.
The Met Office’s Dr Peili Wu is one of the paper’s authors. He said: “The transition to more flash droughts is being driven by a combination of rainfall deficit along with amplified rates of soil moisture loss.”
The paper highlights that the transition from slower-onset droughts to flash droughts is projected to expand to most land areas. This transition will become most pronounced with higher rates of global greenhouse emissions.
Obviously, a drought begins with a period with a relative absence of rain or snow. However, increased temperatures and sometimes stronger winds can rapidly amplify the loss of moisture in the soil, exacerbating the speed of the drought’s onset and impacts. This rapidity can lead to the creation of a flash drought. Droughts in their many forms can last for different time periods, from weeks to decades.
This has all the trappings of a study written purposely to “prove” a preconceived agenda.
It is of course predicated on a half degree rise in temperatures, the sort of difference between temperatures in Sheffield and Birmingham. Does Birmingham have flash droughts and Sheffield none? Silly question really.
As Dr Wu admits, “flash droughts” do not actually exist, he himself had to invent the term a few years ago, no doubt to pin them on global warming.
The level of moisture in soils is governed by all sorts of factors, but particularly agricultural practices. To attempt to tease out a climate influence is to all intents and purposes impossible, as it would be undetectable.
But there are other serious issues about this study. The first is that global warming has made the world wetter on the whole.
The second is that extra CO2 in the atmosphere has helped to green the planet. In particular, higher concentrations of CO2 mean that plants lose less water to the air. In other words, transpiration is reduced.
Thirdly global cooling in the 1960s, 70s and 80s led directly to massively severe droughts across a wide swathe of the world, from the Sahel across to India and China. The cause was the expansion of the polar air mass which pushed the rainbelts towards the tropics.
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000074891
Global warming does not lead to more severe droughts, whether flash or not – global cooling does.
Indeed, the world during the ice age was a very dry one, as cold air can hold less moisture. And it is dry air which sucks the moisture out of the ground like a sponge. That is why cold deserts like the Gobi are every bit as dry as the Sahara.
There is very little global data with which to analyse droughts, but there is plenty in the US.
And NOAA’s data is quite explicit. Droughts are now much less severe than they were in the past.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/national/time-series/110/pdsi/all/3/1895-2023
I am quite sure that Dr Wu and his colleagues are perfectly aware of all of this. That is why they have invented flash droughts, which with some dodgy computer modelling has enabled them to claim something which does not exist.
Testing the system
XYMPHORA | APRIL 15, 2023
The affidavit used to establish the probable cause to get an arrest warrant for the patsy. Two things of interest: 1) whatever the experts might think is likely, Teixeira had a Top Secret security clearance, and 2) whatever Bellingcop might say, he was identified easily without recourse to fancy internet sleuthing of the granite countertop.
The standard model is that the authorities get a young, idealistic, patriotic guy (Lee Harvey Oswald, perhaps even Timothy McVeigh), and convince him that he needs to do some seemingly odd things in order to save his country from real peril. For example, he may be working to stop illegal sales of weapons by mail, or even protect the President from assassination (both options in the case of LHO). Given the current controversy over Presidents and classified documents, it would not be hard to convince a guy like Teixeira that he had to ‘test the system’ by posting documents on relatively obscure social media platforms, and talk up these documents on discussion groups, in order to determine how long before the government is aware of the risk. It is a plausible ‘stress test’ of the government’s ability to protect secrets. The oddity of using photos of previously folded documents may be because the team using the patsy was lazy and that was the easiest way to do it, particularly as it didn’t leave a computer trail the patsy might use in his defense, or perhaps it was just supposed to remove identifying marks that could be found by specialized search engines (or so he might have been told). In any event, none of this was true.
The reasons for the operation:
- to get the open-ended RESTRICT Act passed by producing a phony security crisis (‘the Chinese are using their apps to suck out all our secrets!’);
- to further integrate and normalize the (((media))) as a full part of the national security state;
- to publicize the utility of using British intelligence assets like Bellingcop, a method of getting US PR accepted as fact due to the ‘objective’ magic of ‘computer sleuthing’;
- to get out of the war in Ukraine, now generally considered to be a lost and embarrassing War For The Jews, damaging to the reputation of the hegemon, to turn to the war against China; and
- possibly, but it is a stretch, to use the lies revealed by the documents to replace Brandon with somebody more capable of facing the Deep-State-threatening Trump candidacy.
Of course, as is standard in these cases, the patsy will say various things in his defense, but his lawyers will tell him to shut up as: 1) everybody involved will deny everything, 2) he will have no concrete proof, and 3) raising these issues will just anger the judge and increase his sentence for slandering the good name of the Deep State and the patriotic people who do its bidding. He’ll be told to keep his head down and he may come out of this, older, but alive.
Israel drops case against soldiers who killed Palestinian doctor
MEMO | April 14, 2023
Israel’s State Prosecutor yesterday closed the case into two Israeli soldiers who shot dead a Palestinian man at one of the entrances to Al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied city earlier this month.
According to Haaretz, the State Prosecutor, Amit Aisman, accepted the claims of the Israeli Justice Ministry’s police misconduct unit and the deputy state prosecutor for criminal affairs. Following “solid and clear evidence,” the State Prosecutor’s Office announced that the victim, Mohammad Al-Osaibi, shot two bullets while attempting to grab the weapon of one of the officers before he was shot dead and therefore, no offence was imposed by the Israeli forces.
Moreover, further investigation, according to Aisman, concluded that the area where the attack took place was not recorded by the cameras in the area and the Israeli officers failed to switch on their body cameras due to lack of time.
Rights groups have, however, questioned the lack of video footage of the event.
Al-Osaibi’s family deny the police’s version of events, saying the 26-year-old doctor from Houra, a Bedouin Arab village in southern Israel, was shot when he intervened to help a Palestinian girl.
His uncle, Ahmed Alasibi, told Haaretz : “From what we understand, he encountered the police who were harassing a young Palestinian woman, and apparently there was an argument. They shot him to death for no reason, the whole talk about an attack and taking their weapon is a lie.”
Tensions have been running high across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in recent months amid repeated Israeli raids into Palestinian towns and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Over 90 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the start of the year, according to Palestinian figures. Fourteen Israelis have also been killed over the same period.
The Indoctrinators, Part 3: Bill Gates
This is the third in our series about four well-known men whose purposeful social engineering over the years has undermined national democracies and economies, and created fertile ground for the final realisation of their post democracy dream of a global socialist/fascist world, controlled by supranational organisations such as the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and of course, themselves. They are George Soros (you can read Tuesday’s article here), Klaus Schwab (yesterday’s article is here), Bill Gates (today) and David Attenborough.
By Karen Harradine | TCW Defending Freedom | April 13, 2023
BILL Gates has a messiah complex. His obsession with ‘climate change’, vaccines and people control is proving dangerous for the world. Only a few weeks ago he gave voice to his latest megalomaniac plan for a global pandemic prison state. And as the past proves, what Gates wants he usually gets.
Together with his fellow Indoctrinators, George Soros and Klaus Schwab, 67-year-old Gates has not missed the opportunity provided by the Covid-19 crisis (which he helped to engineer) to further his revolutionist ‘global development’ green agenda. Following their precedent, he too created a foundation through which to impose his ghastly visions on an unfortunate world.
Since its inception in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), under its philanthropic guise, has found plenty of useful idiots across world governments willing to fund and support it. Successive witless British Prime Ministers, up to and including Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, have fallen under his spell with Gates hugely benefiting from this priceless endorsement and publicity. Given his malign agenda, Western taxpayers have literally been paying for their own demise.
Gates is an enthusiastic partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and attendee at their gatherings in Davos, which he typically uses to announce his latest plans to drain the West of its resources to fund his vaccine and climate change lunacy. In 1999, he formed the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), which he cleverly partnered with the United Nations (UN), BMGF, foreign aid agencies and pharmaceutical companies. It was to become, together with the BMGF, the second biggest source of funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
More than 80 per cent of the WHO’s budget comes from voluntary contributions by member states and donors. In 2021, the BMGF was the second largest contributor with $375million, and GAVI the fourth with $245million. Both have a long history of influencing the WHO (the BMGF’s first donation was in1998). Uniquely the BMGF became its official partner in 2017, further focusing the WHO’s public health priorities on to vaccines. An enabler of and publicist for the toxic Covid-19 vaccine, his close connection with the WHO has reaped him huge profits.
The WHO’s deeply disturbing proposed Pandemic Treaty effectively puts into action Gates’s planned grasp for global control as he detailed in his 2022 book, ‘How to Prevent the Next Pandemic’. It has been long in the planning.
In 2003, on a Davos panel called ‘Science for the Global Good’, Gates announced his foundation’s gift of $200million to the US National Institutes of Health to set up the Grand Challenges in Global Health, a vehicle for shifting US tax money into the developing world in pursuit of Gates’s own interests.
In 2010, Gates and his wife heralded a ‘decade of vaccines’ at Davos, pledging $10billion to fund vaccines in ‘poor countries’, a vaccine zealotry which has had some appalling outcomes for which Gates has expressed no remorse. In one example, nearly half a million children in India were paralysed after taking BMGF-funded polio vaccine. Despite such appalling consequences, Gates, with an honorary knighthood in the bag from the Queen, is still widely regarded as a benign philanthropist. There’s no doubt that money buys reputation.
Like Soros, Gates has a prominent platform on the WEF website to promote green investments worth billions of dollars. A devotee of the UN’s Agenda 2030, Gates is co-chair of the Global Commission on Adaptation.
Today, thanks to our unprincipled politicians, Gates has a hotline to Downing Street and Britain finds itself in the clutches of a megalomaniac. His tentacles reach far and wide, from shaping energy policies and dominating scientific organisations and academic research, to financing the mainstream media.
In 1997, Tony Blair invited him into Downing Street to sell his flawed computer system, going on to host him several times, implementing policies based on his dictates and in his financial interests. It was an association Blair was to prosper from, later getting $3.2million for his Global Africa initiative and more than $25.2million for his Institute of Global Change.
In 2010, Gates and his wife visited the Department for International Development (DFID) to hector ministers on supporting foreign aid while promoting his Living Proof project, funded also by Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Billionaires persuading politicians to plunder public resources to fund their own megalomaniac ambitions is not just deeply distasteful but wrong. Yet between 2011 and 2019, Gates got DFID to give over £60million for BMGF development projects.
In 2016, George Osborne pledged £2.5billion to another BMGF association, the Ross Fund. Three years later, the BMGF and World Bank ‘partnered’ with DFID to shovel more taxpayers’ money to foreign despots in the name of ‘education systems’.
In November 2020, after Johnson played his part in the hysteria over Covid-19, Gates met him and pharmaceutical companies and plotted how to prevent ‘pandemics’. Johnson then gave £800million to the BMGF’s vaccine initiative, COVAX.
A year later, Johnson reunited with Gates and promised a further £400million to fund his green investments.
In Sunak Gates has a willing apprentice. In February, the pair met to discuss wasting more money on Gates’s terrifying ‘climate change’ goals.
The BMGF and its subsidiaries like the Global Fund, which promotes the ominous sounding ‘health security’, has, since its inception in 2002, managed to extract an astonishing £4.5billion from the UK government, with another £1billion earmarked for the next two years. When did British taxpayers vote for that?
Millions today in this country can no longer afford both food and energy costs, they are medically neglected and live in substandard housing. Questions must be asked why politicians are funding this Indoctrinator to dictate policies that are provenly detrimental to British citizens and are only to the benefit of one man. The multi- billionaire land owner, Bill Gates. If a vampire is invited into a home, best be prepared for a bloodbath.
The last in this series will focus on green evangelist Sir David Attenborough.
CDC Hired Ad Firm to Write ‘News’ Articles Promoting Flu Shots for Kids, Elderly, Documents Reveal
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 14, 2023
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hired a marketing firm to write what looked like news articles but were actually ad placements created to persuade parents of young children and elderly people to get flu shots, according to documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD).
The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the CDC in September 2020 hired Weber Shandwick, a marketing firm, to create and place unattributed articles on news sites.
The campaign was part of a multi-year, $32 million dollar contract between Weber Shandwick and the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) to promote influenza vaccination and strengthen NCIRD’s immunization program.
The FOIA-requested contract specifies the ad agency will develop a wide variety of media strategies to deliver the CDC/NCIRD’s message on flu vaccines — but not always in its name — including writing unbranded articles for media distribution, spokesperson training, celebrity outreach, social media blitzes, social listening and monitoring, podcasting and more.
The contract could be renewed for a total award of $55.2 million, according to USAspending.gov, a federal grants database.
The broader campaign, described in the documents obtained by CHD, is dedicated to implementing “strategic health communication to provide a full range of communication support to change attitudes and behaviors to prevent diseases of interest to NCIRD.”
Every year the CDC launches a flu vaccination campaign — seeking to vaccinate every person in the U.S. ages 6 months and older.
Past campaign strategies have been largely fear-based, with the CDC’s in-house marketing team explicitly encouraging television personalities and public health experts and others to “state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)” for flu season and to represent each flu season in ways that will “motivate behavior (e.g., as ‘very severe,’ ‘more severe than last or in past years,’ ‘deadly’).”
The CDC recently incorporated another strategy that researchers call “native advertising,” which involves training and/or paying trusted, non-governmental actors to promote vetted ideas in conversation, community spaces and social media in ways that don’t appear to the targeted individual to be linked to official government campaigns.
Starting in 2021, the CDC spent hundreds of millions of dollars using these same advertising strategies to push the COVID-19 vaccines among communities of color.
‘Leveraging content with third-party credibility’
The FOIA documents — which only partially fulfilled CHD’s request and came heavily redacted — show Weber Shandwick subcontracted with Brandpoint, another public relations firm with expertise in “MAT release,” to create the articles related to flu shots.
MAT release means developing “branded, consumer-facing” articles that look like news articles, but are actually ads. Brandpoint specializes in making such ads and distributing them to a wide network of print and online publishers.
According to Brandpoint’s website, “These articles allow brands to leverage their own content and the credibility of third-party media companies while reaching consumers on the local news and media sites they frequent daily.”
In other words, the articles and announcements encouraging flu vaccination appear to be news, posted in English and Spanish on websites and radio stations that people know and trust, such as the San Antonio Express-News, the Houston Chronicle, WJCL in Savannah, Georgia, and KSBW in Salinas, California, according to the documents.
For example, Brandpoint has a Los Angeles Times content page that links to several of its articles. The print ads sometimes, but not always, carry a small label that marks them as a “paid post” but does not indicate who paid for them.
Figure 1: Sample Brandpoint Copy
Figure 2: Sample Brandpoint Image
For the flu vaccination campaign, Brandpoint developed article-like content, which included images of children, and paid to place them on different news sites. The CDC approved the ads, and most of them focus on childhood vaccination.
Some of the stories outlined CDC recommendations, but they don’t appear to be written by the CDC. Instead, the listed author is Brandpoint — often written as “(BPT)” — and the articles follow journalistic style conventions, so there is no way for the reader to know the CDC bankrolled the information.
Brandpoint committed to running ad articles on at least 800 online locations, flooding people’s media landscape with CDC-sponsored content. Many of Brandpoint’s story links from this campaign no longer work.
CHD is working to obtain records not yet provided by the CDC related to the agency’s contract with Weber Shandwick.
CDC supported ‘intentionally unbranded’ messaging to avoid appearance of ‘top-down’ advice
Since 2021, the CDC has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to create “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials and train “influential messengers” to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines in communities of color in every state across the country.
The CDC’s strategy included training clergy members, teachers, neighborhood businesses, community organizations and others to promote its COVID-19 and flu vaccine messaging so it would appear those messages came from within people’s existing communities, rather than from the federal government.
FOIA documents show this “native marketing” strategy began at least as early as 2020. In this case, the strategy focused on placing “organic” messages in third-party and social media — places the marketing agencies identified would be most likely to influence the target audiences.
Peer-reviewed research published in Plos One in 2020 found that messaging on social media that was unbranded — not visibly associated with the CDC or other government agencies — was more likely than a “top-down” approach to yield “positive attitudes toward the flu vaccine,” particularly among African American and Latino people.
The research, funded by healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, paid micro-influencers to select vetted messages and use them to create their own original content promoting flu vaccination on their social media pages.
Payment, which varied according to each influencer’s reach and influence, ranged from $84 to $360 per influencer.
Content was “intentionally unbranded to ensure that it aligned with the look and feel of their [influencer’s] pages.”
The “native advertising” strategy is used commonly in advertising, but prior to this study, it was untested in public health. It’s based on research demonstrating people are more likely to engage with — and change their behavior based on — content they don’t think is tied to a campaign or to advertising.
When people in the study’s target region, particularly among “at-risk groups,” were exposed to messaging from people with whom they “had trusting relationships,” they were in fact more likely to change their attitudes and behaviors regarding the flu vaccine than when the message came from the “top-down.”
But unbeknownst to them, the messages were created by researchers to include “pre-selected” and “vetted facts,” including messages like “everyone needs a flu shot,” side effects are minimal, the flu vaccine is “safe and effective,” etc.
Influencers also were instructed not to use the word “vaccine” but rather “shot” because of negative associations with the word vaccine.
A $10 billion market by 2030
The flu vaccine market is booming, according to market analysts who estimate the global flu vaccine market will grow to $10 billion by 2030, up from $5 billion in 2020.
Allied Market Research makes this projection based on the fact that “Healthcare organizations all over the world like Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have suggested vaccines” for the treatment of influenza.
Several major pharmaceutical companies produce flu vaccines available in the U.S., including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Mylan, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, Sanofi Pasteur and Seqiris.
The CDC says private vaccine producers projected they will produce 173.5 million to 183.5 million doses of quadrivalent influenza vaccines for the 2022-2023 season in the U.S.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC has advocated that people get the flu and COVID-19 vaccines and CDC vaccine promotion funding targeted the two vaccines together.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in 2021 unanimously voted 14-0 to co-administer the COVID-19 and flu vaccine to adults and children, with no scientific evidence to back the decision.
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine advisory committee met in January, representatives from the CDC and FDA reported they thought instances of stroke following receipt of Pfizer’s new booster in the elderly may be connected to the flu vaccine and said they would conduct research to determine if this was the case.
When asked by a committee member if it would be prudent to separate the flu and COVID-19 vaccines for elderly people, the CDC’s Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, responded:
“I think talking about spacing the vaccine is premature and I’ll just reinforce that the CDC’s recommendation for COVID vaccination and for flu vaccination have not changed.”
The Allied Market Research report confirms that pairing the two vaccines is good for the flu vaccine markets.
It states, “The COVID-19 outbreak is anticipated to have a positive impact on growth of the global influenza vaccine market. As the number of the population affected with COVID-19 virus increases, the demand for influenza vaccine surges.”
Government efforts — which by the CDC have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars for flu and COVID-19 — help Big Pharma’s profits soar.
“Increase in government support and surveillance regarding vaccination against influenza on the national and global levels to monitor the supply, distribution, and administration of flu vaccines is one of the crucial factors driving the market growth,” the report states.
Flu vaccine comes with risks, no evidence it’s effective
Although the CDC reports 36,000 to 80,000 deaths per year from flu, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — available on the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) website — show that CDC’s annual estimates are off by orders of magnitude, according to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD chairman on leave, who outlined the existing scientific data on flu in a May 2020 letter to Sanjay Gupta.
NCHS data report the average number of mortalities attributable to influenza on death certificates is little more than 1,000, but the CDC is able to inflate the data by conflating flu and pneumonia deaths, BMJ Senior Editor Peter Doshi reported.
Doshi charged the CDC with deliberately lying about annual flu deaths to “[work] in manufacturers’ interest by conducting campaigns to increase flu vaccination.” He warned that “by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia, current data are statistically biased.”
Even its promoters concede the flu vaccine has low efficacy. The Mayo Clinic reports the flu vaccine is, at best, 50% effective for reducing the risk of illness among healthy adults ages 18 to 64 (a group with already low flu risk) and the CDC reports it is 40-60% effective at reducing risk.
Two Cochrane reviews found the scientific data provides “no evidence for the utilization of vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine public health measure” and no evidence that the vaccine reduces transmission.
The Cochrane researchers accused the CDC of deliberately misrepresenting the science in order to support their universal influenza vaccination recommendation.
Even the National Institutes of Health reported there is no evidence that flu vaccination in elderly adults reduces mortality from flu.
Evidence shows the vaccine carries serious risks. Roughly two-thirds of the claims compensated in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (5,297 claims) have been for influenza vaccine injuries. In 2021, the total compensation to date — paid by U.S. taxpayers — was almost $4.5 billion, CHD reported.
And there is a lack of safety studies for two of the most targeted demographics for the flu shot — children and pregnant women, Kennedy wrote. In fact, studies have linked flu vaccination to miscarriages and birth defects.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
Doubled Pregnancy Loss Rate, Raised Foetal Abnormality Rate and Concentration of Lipid Nanoparticles in Ovaries – How Could They Call This Vaccine ‘Safe’?
BY ALEX KRIEL AND DR DAVID BELL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 14, 2023
The mRNA vaccines were released globally in early 2021 with the slogan ‘safe and effective’. Unusually for a new class of medicine, they were soon recommended by public health authorities for pregnant women. By late 2021, working age women, including those who were pregnant, were being thrown out of employment for not agreeing to be injected. Those who took the mRNA vaccines did so based on trust in health authorities – the assumption being that they would not have been approved if the evidence was not absolutely clear. The role of regulatory agencies was to protect the public and, therefore, if they were approved, the drugs were safe.
Recently, a lengthy vaccine evaluation report sponsored by Pfizer and submitted to the Australian regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) dated January 2021 was released under a Freedom of Information request. The report contains significant new information that had been supressed by the TGA and by Pfizer itself. Much of this relates directly to the issues of safety in pregnancy and impacts on the fertility of women of child-bearing age. The whole report is important, but four key data points stand out:
- The rapid decline in antibody and T cells in monkeys following a second dose;
- Biodistribution studies (previously released in 2021 through an FOI request in Japan);
- Data on the impact of fertility outcomes for rats;
- Data on foetal abnormalities in rats.
We focus on the last three items as, for the first point, it is enough to quote the report itself: “Antibodies and T cells in monkeys declined quickly over five weeks after the second dose of [Pfizer Covid vaccine] BNT162b2 (V9), raising concerns over long term immunity.” This point indicates that the regulators should have anticipated the rapid decline in efficacy and must have known at the outset that the initial two dose course was unlikely to confer lasting immunity and would, therefore, require multiple repeat doses. This expectation of failure was recently highlighted by Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director at the U.S. NIH.
The three remaining items should be a major cause for concern with the pharmaceutical regulatory system. The first, as revealed in 2021, involved biodistribution studies of the lipid nanoparticle carrier in rats, using a luciferase enzyme to substitute for the mRNA vaccine. The study demonstrated that the vaccine will travel throughout the body after injection and is found not only at the injection site but in all organs tested, with high concentration in the ovaries, liver, adrenal glands and spleen. Authorities who assured vaccinated people in early 2021 that the vaccine stays in the arm were, as we have known for two years, not being honest.
Lipid concentration per gram, recalculated as percentage of injection site.
In terms of the impact on fertility and foetal abnormalities, the report includes a study of 44 rats and describes two main metrics, the pre-implantation loss rate and the number of abnormalities per foetus (also expressed per litter). In both cases the metrics were significantly higher for vaccinated rats than for unvaccinated rats.
Roughly speaking, the pre-implantation loss ratio compares the estimated number of fertilised ova and the ova implanted in the uterus. The table below is taken from the report itself and clearly shows the loss rate for vaccinated (BNT162b2) is more than double the unvaccinated control group.
In a case control study, a doubling of pregnancy loss in the intervention group would represent a serious safety signal. Rather than take this seriously, the authors of the report then compared the outcomes to historical data on other rat populations – 27 studies of 568 rats – and ignored the outcome because other populations had recorded higher overall losses. This range is shown in the right hand column as 2.6% to 13.8%. This analysis is alarming as remaining below the highest previously recorded pregnancy loss levels in populations elsewhere is not a safe outcome when the intervention is also associated with double the harm of the control group.
A similar pattern is observed for foetal malformations with higher abnormality rate in each of the 12 categories studied. Of the 11 categories where Pfizer confirmed the data are correct, there are only two total abnormalities in the control group, versus 28 with the mRNA vaccine (BNT162b2). In the category which Pfizer labelled as unreliable (supernumerary lumbar ribs), there were three abnormalities in the control group and 12 in the vaccinated group.
As with the increased pregnancy losses, Pfizer simply ignored the trend and compared the results with historical data from other rat populations. This is very significant as it is seen across every malformation category. The case control nature of the study design is again ignored, in order to apparently hide the negative outcomes demonstrated.
These data indicate that there is no basis for saying the vaccine is safe in pregnancy. Concentration of lipid nanoparticles in ovaries, a doubled pregnancy loss rate and raised foetal abnormality rate across all measured categories indicates that designating a safe-in-pregnancy label (B1 category in Australia) was contrary to available evidence. The data imply that not only was the Government’s ‘safe and effective’ sloganeering not accurate, it was totally misleading with respect to the safety data available.
Despite the negative nature of these outcomes, the classification of this medicine as a ‘vaccine’ appears to have precluded further animal trials. Historically, new medicines, especially in classes never used in humans before, would require a very rigorous assessment. Vaccines, however, have a lower burden of proof requirement than ordinary medicines. By classifying mRNA injections as ‘vaccines’, this ensured regulatory approval with significantly less stringent safety requirements, as the TGA itself notes. In fact, these mRNA gene therapy products (to use the proper term) function more like medicines than vaccines in that they modify the internal functioning of cells, rather than stimulating an immune response to presence of an antigen. Labelling these gene therapy products as ‘vaccines’ means that, as far as we are aware, even today no genotoxicity or carcinogenicity studies have been carried out.
This report, which was only released after a FOI request, is extremely disturbing as it shows that authorities knew of major risks with mRNA COVID-19 vaccination while simultaneously assuring populations that it was safe. The fact that mainstream media have (as far as we are aware) completely ignored the newly released data should reinforce the need for caution when listening to the advice of public health messaging regarding COVID-19 vaccination.
Firstly, it is clear that regulators, drug companies and the Government would have known that vaccine induced immunity tails off very rapidly, with this being subsequently observed in real world data with efficacy against infection falling to zero. Accordingly, the single point in time figures of 95% and 62% efficacy against symptomatic PCR-positive infection quoted for Pfizer and AstraZeneca respectively meant almost nothing since a rapid decline was to be expected. Similarly, the concept of a two dose course was inaccurate as endless boosters would likely have been required given the rapid decline in antibodies and T-cells observed in the monkeys.
Most importantly, the data do not in any way support the ‘safe’ conclusion with respect to pregnancy; ‘dangerous’ would be much more accurate. The assurances of safety were, therefore, completely misleading given the data disclosures in the recent freedom of information release. Regulatory authorities knew that animal studies showed major red flags regarding both pregnancy loss and foetal abnormalities, consistent with the systemic distribution of the mRNA they had been hiding from the public. Even in March 2023, it is impossible to give these assurances, given the fact that important studies have not, to the best of our knowledge, been done. Pfizer elected not to follow up the vast majority of pregnancies in the original human trials, despite high miscarriage rates in the minority they did follow. Given all of the problems with efficacy and safety, the administration of these products to women of childbearing age and administration to healthy pregnant women is high risk and not justified.
Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was one of the first people to highlight the flawed nature of the Imperial Covid model; he is a founder of the Thinking Coalition which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach. David Bell is a public health physician with a PhD in population health and formerly worked as a scientific and medical officer at the World Health Organisation.
Featured Video
Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
UAE tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization
The Cradle | October 31, 2026
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- ‘The Arab Vote’: How Israeli Racism Has Ruined Their Elections
- Israel forces Palestinians in Gaza to choose between assassination alone or death with their families: Report
- US Approves Sale of 500 Patriot Missiles to Ukraine, Deliveries May Take Years
- German Imperialism: An Urgent Explainer
- Backed by AAP, West Virginia Proposal Would Allow Dental Hygienists to Give HPV Vaccine to 9-Year-Olds
- Poland Is the Symptom and Europe Is the Patient
- UAE security forces tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization: Report
- They Compared the Spice to the Drug. The Spice Won — Again. (Part 2)
- Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War
- Wrong, AP and NPR: Europe’s 50,000 Heat Deaths Are a Computer-Model Estimate, Not a Real Body Count
- If Americans Knew
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- 1,300 will gather in Palo Alto on Nov. 1 for Z3 Conference on Zionism
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- The Long Arm of AIPAC
- Genocidal intent behind Hebron assault, rights group says
- This week, Israel killed 8-year-old who survived bombing that wiped out her family
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- Israeli soldier poses at damaged Lebanon church, sparking anger
- New Report. Manufacturing the Great Replacement: Is Israel behind one of the largest racist influence campaigns ever documented?
- ‘Arab voice doesn’t count’: Jewish Israeli blocs reject Palestinian support
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
