Meta’s Ban on Sputnik ‘Very Bad’ and Politicized Decision – Analyst
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – September 17, 2024
A politically motivated move by Meta to ban Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya and RT news outlets from its apps globally reflects the company’s biased approach, analysts said in separate interviews with Sputnik.
“There is a perception in the United States that the flow of Russian information will always be disinformation and that it will be tipped in favor of Donald Trump, even though [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has said that he could deal with Kamala Harris, too. This [perception] is simply untrue. I mean, the idea is to frighten the American people that they don’t know one idea from another. I mean, that’s the smokescreen,” Professor Joe Siracusa, political scientist and dean of Global Futures, Curtin University, told Sputnik.
As such, the idea that Russia spends all of its time to propagandize the American public, and that “there is a body of information out there that is going to undermine their faith and their freedom is ridiculous”, Siracusa underlines.
Recently, Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya, RT and “other related entities” were banned from Meta apps globally over alleged foreign interference activity.
This is a “very bad decision, particularly coming from an American company,” the political scientist points out.
Meta’s ban on Russian news outlets mean that “they [Meta] are really sort of censoring the news themselves. What they’re saying to the American people is that you’re not mature enough to understand ideas”, per the professor.
“This is the kind of game that the Democratic Party plays. I mean, there’s no excuse or reason for this kind of embargo on foreign information based on the idea that it’s protecting the American people… from whom? From Mark Zuckerberg? It’s ridiculous. Meta was in very close cahoots with the Democratic Party the last time around when it went after Donald Trump. So, in a way, it’s already been politicized,” the professor concludes.
In a separate interview with Sputnik, Facebook whistleblower Ryan Hartwig says that as a former Facebook content moderator, he saw firsthand how the company “influenced elections throughout the world.”
“Facebook is clearly biased and has an agenda with elections. At a whim, it can make newsworthy exceptions to protect certain politicians. They may as well ban their own app and go after themselves for foreign interference activity,” Hartwig, who is the co-author of “Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower’s Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship”, points out.
When it comes to Facebook’s foreign influence, suffice to mention the elections in Spain, Venezuela, and the US, according to Hartwig.
Given the fact that Facebook was being influenced by the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) “to suppress major stories” like the Hunter Biden laptop saga, “other countries should consider Meta a government agency,” the whistleblower adds.
As for the Ukraine crisis, “It’s clear that Meta is acting in coordination with the US government and the US State Department as a proxy for a foreign conflict,” Hartwig concludes.
Canadian journalist outs himself as Canadian, Ukrainian intelligence collaborator
By Wyatt Reed · The Grayzone · September 3, 2024
Canada’s National Post is refusing to comment after one of its columnists revealed himself to be a collaborator with Western-aligned intelligence agencies. A Canadian activist is now threatening to sue the paper after the confessed spy smeared him in a front page article.
Adam Zivo, a columnist who covered the war in Ukraine for Canada’s National Post newspaper, has outed himself as an operative of Canadian and Ukrainian intelligence. The admission came as Zivo publicly leapt to the defense of Canada’s Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), in response to a wave of online mockery directed towards a post by the spy agency which asked readers, “Has a stranger ever tried to inflate your ego?,” before warning them that such flattery “could be elicitation.”
“People are dunking on this tweet but this actually happened to me in Odesa in early 2023 with a guy who seemed to be a Chinese spy,” Zivo volunteered. “I ended up organizing a small sting operation with two Ukrainian intelligence officers to figure out what his deal was,” he declared.
In a subsequent post, Zivo expanded on his repeated attempts to entrap a man he had encountered in Odessa, and whom he claimed was a Chinese intelligence agent. “I met the Chinese man and his wife at a restaurant while wearing a wire,” while “SBU officers watched us from a car parked outside, which had tinted windows,” Zivo stated.
He told Canada’s PressProgress that following his meeting with the supposed Chinese agent, “I drafted a detailed report which I quickly provided to the National Post, CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service] and the Ukrainian government. After the recorded dinner, I produced transcripts and a follow-up report which was also shared with these stakeholders.”
The National Post has so far refused to comment on the revelation. As PressProgress reported, “National Post Editor-in-Chief Rob Roberts and Managing Editor Carson Jerema did not respond to several requests for comment.”
In response to questions to that publication, Zivo insisted he kept his bosses at the National Post updated about his intelligence activities.
“I informed them of what was occurring and that I was working with local authorities to address my safety concerns,” Zivo said, though he reportedly insisted later that he “did not run this by my editors for a sign off,” because, since he was a “freelancer, not a staff writer,” he did not “need permission.”
According to Zivo, his working relationship with Canadian and Ukrainian intelligence services began in late 2022. None of his articles published in the National Post have disclosed his ties to foreign or domestic spy agencies.
Since then, Zivo has zealously advocated for rapid deliveries of heavy weapons to Ukraine. He has also used his column as a platform for denigrating those he deemed an impediment to the war effort – including both the Canadian military and the nation of Germany, which he accused of “reckless greed and a callous disregard for eastern European lives” for initially declining to send tanks to Ukraine.
Among Zivo’s targets was Dimitri Lascaris, a Canadian lawyer who narrowly lost the Canadian Green Party’s 2020 leadership election. In early 2023, Zivo made Lascaris the subject of a front-page report entitled, “Former Green party leadership candidate goes to Moscow to whitewash war.” In the column, Zivo accused Lascaris of “pro-Putin sympathies,” “seemingly endorsing pro-Kremlin propaganda,” and “uncritically and reflexively taking Russia’s side.”
Zivo also rang up the co-leader of Canada’s Green Party, Jonathan Pednault, to solicit criticism of Lascaris. In a parenthetical, Zivo stated that he had helped facilitate a solidarity tour of Kiev for Pednault, and “introduced him to some contacts for his trip, such as local Jewish and LGBTQ leaders.”
While hinting at his ties to the Ukrainian government, Zivo neglected once again to disclose his role as an intelligence collaborator.
“No corporate media outlet in Canada has taken an interest in this story”
Following Zivo’s unmasking as a Ukrainian intelligence collaborator, Lascaris took to social media to argue the reporter-turned-spook “perpetrated a fraud by concealing from me and the public his spying activities,” then proceeded to write an “article about me [which] falsely insinuated that I was working in the service of the Russian government.”
“The supreme irony here is that it was Zivo – not me – who was acting as a government agent,” Lascaris explained.
In comments to The Grayzone, Lascaris remarked that “Zivo has also violated the journalistic values of transparency and integrity because he secured an interview with me on false pretences, and when the National Post published Zivo’s many articles about the Ukraine war, neither Zivo nor the Post disclosed to the public that Zivo was a spy.”
Zivo has previously described himself as a “journalist,” “content vendor,” “filmmaker,” “activist” and – apparently ironically – as a “geopolitical analyst via an ecosystem of NATO-affiliated NGOs.”
Lascaris dismissed these labels as window dressing. “There’s now little doubt that Zivo wears only one hat: he is a shill for the Western military industrial complex,” he said.
“There are probably many more ‘journalists’ like Zivo in the Western corporate media. What is unusual about Zivo is that he bragged publicly about being a spy for Western intelligence agencies,” Lascaris added.
It is unknown whether other intelligence operatives are employed by the National Post, or its parent company, Postmedia News, which is owned by a pro-Trump hedge fund in the US known as Chatham Asset Management.
Describing Postmedia as “fanatically pro-Israel,” Lascaris accused the company’s newspapers of “attacking me for the past eight years,” noting that the hit pieces “started around the time that I became a prominent advocate for Palestinian human rights in Canada.”
But for Lascaris, deploying an actual spy to imply he was acting as a Kremlin asset was a step too far. He now says he is considering legal action against the National Post and its parent company, Postmedia News, which is Canada’s largest newspaper publisher.
“Because Zivo misled me… I sent a letter to the National Post’s editor-in-chief in which I threatened to sue the Post for fraud,” Lascaris explained, adding: “I’m awaiting the editor’s response.”
A handful of Canadian journalists have condemned Zivo on an individual basis, with the President of the Canadian Association of Journalists, Brent Jolly, describing Zivo’s intelligence activities as “problematic” and “ethically murky.” Jolly told PressProgress : “I don’t think we can go around and just have people one minute working for CSIS and the next writing a story about what an amazing job CSIS is doing.”
Sonya Fatah, the Associate Chair of Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism, described Zivo’s actions as a major breach of journalistic ethics, stating: “I imagine most newsrooms would be horrified.”
But so far, Canadian mainstream media has done its best to ignore Zivo’s disturbing double game.
“As far as I know, no corporate media outlet in Canada has taken an interest in this story,” Lascaris said. “Although I am well known to the corporate media, no Canadian corporate media outlet has sought comment from me about this scandal.”
But outside the Western media bubble, Lascaris said he suspects that Zivo’s activities will have dangerous repercussions.
“It’s almost certain that Zivo’s admission will heighten Russian suspicions about Western corporate journalists. And it’s not just Russia. China and other states targeted by Western government belligerence are sure to take these revelations into account in their dealings with Western journalists,” according to Lascaris.
“Zivo said that his employer knew about his activities. As far as I know, Postmedia has not denied this, nor has it taken any action against Zivo. The logical inference to draw is that Canada’s largest newspaper publisher believes that Zivo did nothing wrong.”
Zivo’s admission that he worked with intelligence services “will only heighten the belief in Russia, China and elsewhere that Western media have been coopted by, and have become tools of, hostile Western governments” Lascaris emphasized.
“In essence, the National Post’s response to this scandal will inevitably make it harder for Western journalists to do their jobs in the non-Western world.”
NATO’s Destruction of Ukraine Under the Guise of “Helping”
Propaganda & Proxy Wars
By Glenn Diesen | September 17, 2024
In a recent public event, the heads of the CIA and the MI6 assessed developments in the Ukraine War. The head of the MI6 applauded the invasion of Kursk for having changed the “narrative” of the war, while the head of the CIA also outlined the objective to “put a dent” in the Kremlin’s narrative about the development of the war. There can be no doubt that the invasion of Kursk was an utter disaster for Ukraine and NATO. However, controlling the narrative is imperative as the Western public will support financing the war if they believe they are helping Ukraine and the war can be won.
During the 20-year-long NATO occupation of Afghanistan, public support was also maintained by constructing a narrative of progress and helping the people of Afghanistan. Every week the Western public was reassured by the media that the war effort in Afghanistan was making great progress, until NATO fled in a great hurry as people fell off planes. Much like how the Pentagon Papers exposed the deceit of the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan Papers exposed how the war was an unmitigated disaster. Yet, in both instances, a rosy picture was presented by the media.
A leaked CIA report outlined how they could increase public support for NATO’s occupation of Afghanistan by selling it to the public as helping women. The report revealed that “Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban”, and framing NATO’s occupation as a crusade for women’s rights could “overcome pervasive scepticism among women in Western Europe towards the ISAF mission”.[1] NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg even co-authored an article with Hollywood star Angelina Jolie with the title: “Why NATO must defend women’s rights”.[2] Appealing to the best in human nature to mobilise public support for doing the worst in human nature is a good description of war propaganda.
Selling the Ukraine War
The Ukraine War is sold to the public as being merely selfless “help” from NATO for Ukraine to defend itself against an expansionist Russia, motivated solely by territorial acquisition and restoring the Soviet Union. Framing the war as a simple struggle between good and evil is why NATO cannot negotiate or even pursue basic diplomacy, and peace depends on good defeating evil. In what is close to a copyright infringement of “war is peace” in George Orwell’s 1984, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg asserts that “weapons are the way to peace”.
In political propaganda, it is common to frame a war through a concept that everyone agrees with, such as the need to “help” Ukraine. We all want to help Ukraine preserve its sovereignty, territory and the lives of its citizens. However, instead of discussing what would help Ukraine, such concepts are given a fixed meaning to shut down debates. Any argument can then be framed as either being pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian. However, what is bad for Russia is not automatically good for Ukraine. Yet, people who can be taught to speak in clichés can be taught to think in clichés. Commentary on NATO policies toward Russia is similarly framed as being pro-Western or pro-Russian, which circumvents an actual discussion about whether these policies are in the West’s interests or not.
Concepts such as “helping Ukraine” can then be filled with any content that often contradicts what “helping” entails, but corresponds with proxy war. When we unpack what NATO frames as “helping Ukraine”, we find that it rarely has the support from the majority of Ukrainians and it almost always ends up with disastrous consequences. So how does NATO “help Ukraine”?
NATO Expansion
NATO dismisses any accusations of an expansionist agenda by presenting itself as a passive actor that merely responds to Ukraine’s desire to join NATO. This narrative conceals the reality that every poll between 1991 and 2014 demonstrates that only approximately 20% of Ukrainians wanted to join NATO. When NATO promised future membership to Ukraine in 2008, 43 percent of Ukrainians considered NATO a threat to Ukraine and merely 15 percent associated NATO with protection.[3] Forty-six percent of Ukrainians answered it was more important to have close relations with Russia, while only 10 percent of Ukrainians supported close relations with the US over Russia.[4] In 2011, a NATO document acknowledged: “The greatest challenge for Ukrainian-NATO relations lies in the perception of NATO among the Ukrainian people. NATO membership is not widely supported in the country, with some polls suggesting that popular support of it is less than 20%”.[5]
Even after Russia seized Crimea in response to the Western-backed coup in 2014, only a small minority of Ukrainians wanted integration with NATO (10.3% in the South and 13.1% in the East).[6] Nonetheless, Ukraine was still pulled toward NATO even though CIA Director Burns had warned already back in 2008 that it would likely trigger a civil war in Ukraine and “Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face”.[7] In December 2020, former British ambassador to Russia Roderic Lyne similarly warned that attempting to push Ukraine into NATO “was stupid on every level at that time. If you want to start a war with Russia, that’s the best way of doing it. Moreover, any poll in Ukraine showed that two thirds of the Ukrainian public did not want NATO membership”.[8] If the Ukrainians did not want NATO membership and we knew it would trigger a war, why was it “pro-Ukrainian”?
Regime Change in Kiev
In February 2014, NATO countries toppled the government in Ukraine under the guise of supporting a “democratic revolution”. Yanukovich had been elected in what the OSCE had recognised to be a free and fair election, and there was no evidence that Yanukovich would not have stepped down if he had lost in the next election. The Maidan protests did not enjoy democratic majority support from the Ukrainians and even fewer supported a coup.[9] British Foreign Minister William Hague deceived the public by claiming that the toppling of President Yanukovich had been done in compliance with the constitution, contrary to the clear rules in the Ukrainian constitution that specified procedures for removing the head of state.[10] A phone call leaked two weeks before the coup, exposed how Washington was planning the coup and hand-picked the new government that would be installed.[11] NATO supported the toppling of the democratically elected government that attempted to bridge a divided society, and replaced it with a divisive pro-NATO/anti-Russian government. Yet criticise the Western-backed coup in Kiev and you will be branded to be “anti-Ukrainian” and “pro-Russian”. In contrast, the people who set Ukraine on a path to destruction against their will claim to “stand with Ukraine”.
Asserting Administrative Control over Ukraine
On the first day after the coup, the head of Ukraine’s intelligence services in the new government that the US had hand-picked, called the CIA and MI6 to start a partnership for a covert war against Russia.[12] This partnership was a key reason why Russia decided to intervene militarily eight years later in February 2022.[13] The Washington Post reported: “the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow”.[14] The US then also strengthened the far-right fascist groups in Ukraine as they functioned as a veto power on any efforts to seek peace with Russia.
Several Westerners took key positions in the Ukrainian government. In 2014, Natalie Jaresko took the position of Finance Minister of Ukraine and received Ukrainian citizenship on the same day as she took the job. Jaresko was a former US State Department official and former Economic Section Chief of the US Embassy in Ukraine. She transitioned from representing American interests in Ukraine, to representing Ukraine. The general prosecutor of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, complained that since 2014, “the most shocking thing is that all the [government] appointments were made in agreement with the United States”. According to Shokin, Washington’s behaviour indicated that they “believed that Ukraine was their fiefdom”.[15] Biden would later take credit for having fired Ukraine’s General Prosecutor, who had opened an investigation into the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Three months after the coup in February 2014, Hunter Biden and a close family friend of US Secretary of State, John Kerry, became board members of Burisma.[16]
After Russia invaded in February 2022, the US further strengthened its grip over Ukraine. In 2023, an American transgender who argued that Russians are not human beings became the new spokesperson for Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces. As Ukraine’s situation became more precarious and dependence on the West increased, Kiev largely outsourced the post-war reconstruction process to BlackRock and J.P. Morgan to manage the Ukraine Development Fund. The US asserting administrative control over the Ukrainian government was depicted as helping Ukraine with democratic governance and fighting corruption.
De-Russifying Ukraine
Decoupling Ukraine from Russia was a key objective to permanently place Ukraine in NATO’s orbit. The US-orchestrated Orange Revolution in 2004 installed the Yushchenko government that distanced itself from Russia and pursued NATO membership, however, the public eventually reversed this trajectory by electing Yanukovich. At the end of Yushchenko’s presidential term, Newsweek labelled Yushchenko the world’s most unpopular leader with a 2.7 percent approval rating.[17]
US support for the de-Russification of Ukrainian society entailed purging the political opposition, arresting the main opposition leader, banning independent media, banning the Orthodox Church, and purging the Russian language and culture. The first decree by the new Ukrainian Parliament in 2014 was a call to repeal Russian as a regional language. By 2024, Ukraine even had language inspectors to counter the spread of the Russian language.[18] The BBC reported that after the coup, Kiev’s city council was covered with large neo-Nazi banners, the American confederate flag, and portraits of the fascist ally of Hitler, Stepan Bandera.[19] A new nationalist identity was supported based on the far-right in which street names with the shared Russian or Soviet history were replaced with fascists who collaborated with Hitler. To de-Russify a country that lived in the same state as Russia for centuries and shared language, culture and faith, could not possibly coexist with democracy, stability or basic human rights. Such policies caused a deep rift in the social cohesion of the country and caused misery for millions of Ukrainians who became second-rate citizens in their own country.
Yet, these developments could be supported under the guise of “helping Ukraine” to decouple from Russia as a condition for asserting its distinctive identity and sovereignty.
The War Against Donbas
After the coup in 2014, people in Donbas rejected the new government in Kiev that had seized power with the support of the West, as predicted by CIA Director Burns. The first instinct of the new authorities and their backers in Washington was to send the military to destroy the uprising. Yet, the Ukrainian army was weak and regular soldiers were not comfortable with turning their guns on their own population. This problem was overcome by recruiting fascist militias in Western Ukraine, such as Azov, who were happy to kill. Yevhan Karas, the leader of the fascist group C14, informed his audience that the West did not give weapons to help Ukrainians but did so because “we have started a war” that was fulfilling the goals of the West. The nationalists were supported by the West due to their resilience: “because we have fun, we have fun killing and we have fun fighting”.[20]
Kiev launched an “anti-terrorist operation” against Donbas, which killed more than 14.000 Ukrainians. Ignoring all evidence about the involvement of local Ukrainians in the uprising, the Western media largely denied any agency as all fighting was done by “pro-Russian” militias or Russians themselves. Thus, the war against Ukrainians in Donbas could be sold to the Western public as helping Ukraine fight Russian influence.
Sabotaging the Minsk-2 Peace Agreement
The fighting between Kiev and Donbas came to an end with the Minsk-2 peace agreement. Both Poroshenko and Zelensky attempted to implement the Minsk-2 agreement before being opposed by the US-backed far-right.
The BBC reported in August 2015 that a clear majority of 265 MPs out of 450 had supported the first reading of the decentralisation bill to grant more autonomy to Donbas. This sparked a violent veto by the far right, it then reported: ‘Protesters led by the populist Radical Party and the ultra-nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party—who oppose any concession to the Russian-backed separatists’ clashed with riots police that resulted in the death of a national guard member and over 100 injured.[21] Poroshenko subsequently began to abandon his efforts to implement the Minsk-2 agreement.
Zelensky was therefore able to win a landslide election victory with 73% of the votes in 2019. He won over the Ukrainian public by running on a platform of peace by promising to implement the Minsk agreement to ensure peace After Zelensky became president, he was threatened by the US-backed far right and a protest was arranged in Kiev in which approximately 10,000 people rallied against President Zelensky’s plan to end the war, which was denounced as “capitulation”.[22] After failing to assert control over the far-right groups in the military, Zelensky had to align himself closer with the nationalists and thus rejected peace with Donbas.[23]
The US assisted its government in Ukraine to ignore the UN-approved Minsk-2 peace agreement by building an increasingly powerful Ukrainian army and tying it closer to NATO. Germany and France had negotiated the Minsk-2 peace agreement in 2015, although they later revealed this had been a deceit. Angela Merkel argued in an interview with both Bild and Spiegel that the Minsk Agreement enabled her to buy time for Ukraine to build itself into a powerful and well-fortified country.[24] When her French counterpart, former president François Hollande, was asked about Merkel’s statement that the Minsk-2 peace agreement was merely intended to buy time, he confirmed: “Yes, Angela Merkel is right on this point” and added that the conflict with Russia would be resolved on the battlefield: “There will only be a way out of the conflict when Russia fails on the ground”.[25] Retired German General Harald Kujat, the former head of the German Bundeswehr and former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, later argued that the West’s sabotage of the Minsk agreement was “a breach of international law… it turns out that we are the ones who do not comply with international agreements”.[26]
NATO countries had confirmed for 7 years that the Minsk-2 peace agreement was the only path to a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, while concurrently sabotaging the only path to peace. This path to war was done against the overwhelming will of the Ukrainian population, as evidenced by their consistent voting for a peace platform. Why should NATO efforts to overturn the result of the Ukrainian elections to sabotage the peace agreement be considered “pro-Ukrainian” or “helping Ukraine”?
Refusing Russia’s Demand for Security Guarantees in 2021
Russia demanded in 2021 security guarantees to mitigate the threats from NATO’s growing footprint in Ukraine, otherwise, the escalating threat would be resolved by military means. President Biden warned Ukraine that Russia was preparing its military for an invasion, yet he did not want to offer any security guarantees to prevent an invasion.
Kurt Volker, the former US Ambassador to NATO and former US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations from 2017 to 2019, even argued that Biden should not make any agreements with Putin as “the best possible outcome is not one of modest agreements and a commitment to ‘predictability,’ but one of a lack of agreements altogether. Success is confrontation”.[27] NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also acknowledged that halting NATO expansion was required to prevent an invasion: “President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And [it] was a pre-condition for not invad[ing] Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that”.[28] Under a fierce security competition in which Russia feared for its security, “helping Ukraine” would certainly have involved mitigating some of Russia’s security concerns.
Sabotaging the Istanbul Peace Negotiations in 2022
After the Minsk agreement had been sabotaged for 7 years and no security guarantees were forthcoming, Russia decided in February 2022 to use military force to impose a political settlement. On the first day after the Russian invasion, Zelensky confirmed “Today we heard from Moscow that they still want to talk. They want to talk about Ukraine’s neutral status… We are not afraid to talk about neutral status”.[29] On the third day after the invasion, Moscow and Kiev announced they would hold peace talks “without preconditions” in Belarus.[30] Zelensky even suggested later a “collective security agreement” to ensure that the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine would be met.[31]
The US had other objectives. On the first day after the Russian invasion, Washington rejected peace without preconditions as Russia first had to withdraw all its forces from Ukraine.[32] Washington even suggested that it would not support Ukraine’s effort to resolve the conflict through a compromise as “this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine”.[33] In March 2022, Zelensky argued in an interview with the Economist that “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives”.[34]
According to the leader of Zelensky’s political party and Zelensky’s advisor, Russia and Ukraine were close to an agreement. Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksandr Chalyi, who participated in peace talks with Russia, confirms Putin “tried everything” to reach a peace agreement and they were able “to find a very real compromise”.[35]
Retired German General Harald Kujat, the former head of the German Bundeswehr and former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, argued that NATO provoked the war and that the US and UK sabotaged the Istanbul peace negotiations as “the West was not ready for an end to the war”.[36] The Turkish mediators confirmed: “I had the impression that there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue—let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine”.[37] The Israeli mediators reached the same conclusion as former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recognised “both sides very much wanted a ceasefire” but the West “blocked” the peace agreement as a “decision by the West to keep striking Putin” rather than pursuing peace.[38]
After interviews with American and British leaders, Niall Ferguson reported in Bloomberg that a decision had been made for “the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin” as “the only end game now is the end of Putin regime”.[39] Over the next two and a half years, numerous American political and military leaders expressed their support for the war as it was a great opportunity to weaken Russia as a strategic rival without using and losing American troops. The decision to fight Russia with Ukrainians was nonetheless framed consistently in the media as “helping Ukraine”.
Keeping Ukraine in the War
As Zelensky had argued in March 2022, some of its Western partners preferred “long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives”.[40] The Americans were pressuring Ukraine to launch the disastrous counter-offensive of 2023, as a “senior Ukrainian military official recalled, the Americans were nagging about a delayed start”.[41] The New York Times reported that “American officials say they fear that Ukraine has become casualty averse, one reason it has been cautious about pressing ahead with the counteroffensive”.[42]
However, despite the disastrous casualties among the Ukrainians and the failure of the counter-offensive, the Washington Post could report that “for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance”.[43] As Ukraine continues to bleed dry in the war of attrition, there are more and more videos on Ukrainian Telegram channels of more aggressive “recruitment” tactics that involve grabbing Ukrainians off the street and throwing them into vans. Yet, the discussions in NATO countries revolve around lowering the conscription age in Ukraine or deporting Ukrainian refugees that can be used to refill the trenches.
If these were our own soldiers dying in the hundreds of thousands, would we not have begun negotiations a long time ago? The incoming EU foreign policy chief has rejected any diplomacy with Russia as Putin is a “war criminal”, while also punishing EU member states such as Hungary for attempting to restore diplomacy and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. NATO could help Ukraine by using the promise to end expansion as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia. Instead, NATO continues to threaten further expansion after the war, which makes any peace agreement impossible. When Ukraine begins to collapse, the US and NATO will likely call for a ceasefire to freeze the frontlines to yet again buy some time to rebuild its Ukrainian army and fight another day.
As we reflect on NATO’s policies toward Ukraine, can we conclude that they have been in the interest of Ukraine or had the support of the Ukrainians? Has it been in the interest of the West? The ability to ask critical questions is prevented by presenting all policies as being either pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian, in which dissent is effectively criminalised. It is a common phenomenon that when political leaders create propaganda, they often end up deceiving themselves.
…..
– The text includes excerpts from my book “The Ukraine War and the Eurasian World Order” https://www.claritypress.com/product/the-ukraine-war-the-eurasian-world-order/
[1] WIKILEAKS – – CIA Red Cell Special Memorandum; Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission-Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough, March 11, 2010
[2] Why Nato must defend women’s rights | Jens Stoltenberg and Angelina Jolie | The Guardian
[3] J. Ray and N. Esipova, ‘Ukrainians Likely Support Move Away From NATO’, Gallup, 2 April 2010.
[4] C. English, ‘Ukrainians See More Value in Ties With Russia Than U.S.’, Gallup, 15 February 2008.
[5] 2011 – 172 CDSDG 11 E REV1 – UKRAINE – MALAN REPORT | NATO PA (nato-pa.int).
[6] GALLUP® CORP Template (usagm.gov)
[7] W.J. Burns, ‘Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines’, Wikileaks, 1 February 2008.
[8] R. Lyne, ‘The UC Interview Series: Sir Roderic Lyne by Nikita Gryazin’, Oxford University Consortium, 18 December 2020.
[9] BBC, ‘Ukraine’s revolution and the far right, BBC, 7 March 2014.
[10] D. Morrison, ‘How William Hague Deceived the House of Commons on Ukraine’, Huffington Post, 10 March 2014.
[11] BBC, ‘Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call’, BBC, 7 February 2014.
[12] The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
[13] The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
[14] G. Miller and I. Khurshudyan, ‘Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia’, The Washington Post’, 23 October 2023.
[15] M.M. Abrahms, ‘Does Ukraine Have Kompromat on Joe Biden?’, Newsweek, 8 August 2023.
[16] P. Sonne and J. Grimaldi, ‘Biden’s Son, Kerry Family Friend Join Ukrainian Gas Producer’s Board’, The Wall Street Journal, 13 May 2014.
[17] O. Matthews, ‘Viktor Yushchenko’s Star Has Fallen’, Newsweek, 13 March 2009.
[18] Language inspectors to start working in Frankivsk | УНН (unn.ua)
[19] BBC, ‘Ukraine’s Revolution and the Far Right’, BBC, 7 March 2014.
[20] A. Rubenstein and M. Blumenthal, ‘How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia’, The Grayzone, 4 March 2022.
[21] BBC, ‘Ukraine crisis: Deadly anti-autonomy protest outside parliament’, BBC, 31 August 2015.
[22] A. Korniienko, ‘Thousands rally in Kyiv against Zelensky’s plan to end war with Russia’, Kyiv Post, 6 October 2019.
[23] J. Melanovski, ‘Ukrainian President Zelensky deepens alliance with far right’, WSWS, 30 April 2021.
[24] A. Osang, ‘You’re Done with Power Politics’, Spiegel, 1 December 2022.
[25] T. Prouvost ‘Hollande: ‘There will only be a way out of the conflict when Russia fails on the ground’’, The Kyiv Independent, 28 December 2022.
[26] Emma, ‘Russland will verhandeln!’ [Russia wants to negotiate!], Emma, 4 March 2023.
[27] K. Volker, ‘What Does a Successful Biden-Putin Summit Look Like? Not What You Think’, CEPA, 2 June 2021.
[28] J. Stoltenberg, ‘Opening remarks’, NATO, 7 September 2023.
[29] V. Zelensky, ‘Address by the President to Ukrainians at the end of the first day of Russia’s attacks’, President of Ukraine: Official website, 25 February 2022.
[30] S. Raskin and L. Brown, ‘Ukraine and Russia to meet for peace talks ‘without preconditions,’ Zelensky says’, New York Post, 27 February 2022.
[31] M. Hirsh, ‘Hints of a Ukraine-Russia Deal?’, Foreign Policy, 8 March 2022.
[32] US Department of State, ‘Department Press Briefing’, US Department of State, 25 February 2022.
[33] US Department of State, ‘Department Press Briefing’, US Department of State, 21 March 2022.
[34] The Economist. ‘Volodymyr Zelensky on why Ukraine must defeat Putin’ The Economist, 27 March 2022.
[35] Breaking the Stalemate to Find Peace: The Russia-Ukraine War – A Geneva Security Debate (youtube.com)
[36] J. Helmer, ‘Whr. Gen. Kujat: Ukraine War is Lost, Germany Now Faces an Angry Russia… Alone’, Veterans Today, 25 January 2023.
[37] R. Semonsen, ‘Former Israeli PM: West Blocked Russo-Ukraine Peace Deal’, The European Conservative, 7 February 2023.
[38] N. Bennett, ‘Bennett speaks out’, YouTube Channel of Naftali Bennett, 4 February 2023.
[39] N. Ferguson, ‘Putin Misunderstands History. So, Unfortunately, Does the U.S.’, Bloomberg, 22 March 2022.
[40] The Economist. ‘Volodymyr Zelensky on why Ukraine must defeat Putin’ The Economist, 27 March 2022.
[41] ‘Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine’, The Washington Post, 4 December 2023.
[42] ‘Troop Deaths and Injuries in Ukraine War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say’, The New York Times, 18 August 2023.
[43] D. Ignatius, ‘The West feels gloomy about Ukraine. Here’s why it shouldn’t’, The Washington Post, 18 July 2023.
Would Be Assassin is a Media Darling
Ryan Wesley Routh, former roofer from N. Carolina and implacable foe of Trump and Putin, has often been approvingly quoted by MSM
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | September 16, 2024
While we often hear that middle-aged southern white men pose a grave threat to American democracy and public safety, Ryan Wesley Routh—a former roofer from North Carolina who looks and sounds like a dumb cracker —has, in recent years, been a model of anti-Trump and anti-Putin sentiment. Also notable is the fact that in 2002, he was charged with the felony possession of a fully automatic firearm.
The following is a collection of statements he has made to various MSM outlets over the last couple of years.
“It’s a pretty big yard, but the front bank is completely full,” Ryan Routh, an American volunteer who started the memorial last year, said. “There may be 10,000 at this point. ‘Flags of the fallen’ is what I’ve been calling it.”
Routh, a former construction worker who lives in Hawaii, is one of the thousands of foreigners who, after seeing news reports about the invasion, travelled into Ukraine in early 2022 to volunteer as fighters or medics.
“Most of the Ukrainian authorities do not want these soldiers,” said Ryan Routh, head of the International Volunteer Center in Ukraine, a private organization which helps foreigners seeking to assist the war effort connect with military units and aid groups. “I have had partners meeting with [Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense] every week and still have not been able to get them to agree to issue one single visa.”
The New York Times article backs up the Russian Defense Ministry’s information regarding the countries which are actively trying to recruit mercenaries to join the fight in Ukraine. It wrote about Ryan Routh, a former construction worker from North Carolina who spent several months in Ukraine last year and is now seeking recruits among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban. He plans to move them to Ukraine from Pakistan and Iran – in some cases, illegally. Nevertheless, dozens of people have apparently expressed an interest.
With Legion growth stalling, Ryan Routh, a former construction worker from Greensboro, N.C., is seeking recruits from among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban. Mr. Routh, who spent several months in Ukraine last year, said he planned to move them, in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed interest. “We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,” he said in an interview from Washington.
The man behind the wall of banners, Ryan Routh, told CNA that he posted the flags to pay tribute to the nations that have citizens fighting in Ukraine’s foreign legion, the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine. Routh said there have been no protests about the presence of the Taiwan flag so far, but even if China is dissatisfied, “I can order another 1,000, they can’t touch my flags.”
Routh, 56, originally hails from Hawaii, but most recently worked in the construction industry in North Carolina and has no military background. He came to Kyiv more than two months ago to show his support for Ukraine and wanted to join the foreign legion.
However, due to his age, he was unable to do so, and he is instead currently assisting the legion in recruiting volunteers for the Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie units in Kharkiv. Thus far, Routh has assisted in recruiting 70 volunteers to join the fight against Russia.
Routh began posting flags on the wall of a sandbagged monument in Kyiv’s Independence Square. He told the news agency that he included Taiwan’s flag because he had met at least five Taiwanese volunteers serving in the legion over the past two months and learned about Taiwan’s contribution to Ukraine’s war effort.
According to Routh, he has yet to receive any protests from China about the presence of the Taiwan flag. He said that any pressure that would come from China would be “nothing” compared to the daily assault by Russian forces on every soldier who supports Ukraine.
He said that he will continue to stay in Kyiv and encourage more people to fight against Russia. European countries deliver truckloads of food, medical supplies, and military equipment, but Ukraine may need three to four times more support, estimated Routh.
The volunteer pointed out that there are only 50 national flags on the stone wall, meaning that there are over 100 countries that do not have a single soldier that has volunteered to fight for Ukraine, “This is unacceptable.” He emphasized the war between Russia and Ukraine is a battle of good versus evil.
Routh asserted that at this critical moment, all countries should give their soldiers unpaid leave and provide air tickets to fly to Ukraine to participate in the war to prevent Russia from starting another war. “We should be united and share success and failure, which is what these flags stand for,” said Routh.
Thus, Routh has become a seemingly improbable face and voice of prevailing Democrat Party sentiment and foreign policy orthodoxy.
The Truth: About COVID-19 Shots
Millions were exposed without informed consent — this fight is for accountability & justice
Gaz’s – A Defender’s Voice – September 7, 2024
This video delves into the alleged concealment of critical information regarding the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 mRNA injections, focusing on how regulatory bodies and authorities misled the Australian public. It claims that significant contamination of genetic material was found in Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, far exceeding safety thresholds, with potential links to severe health risks like cancer and autoimmune diseases. Despite independent verification from multiple labs, global regulators, including Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), dismissed concerns, claiming there was no safety risk without conducting proper tests.
The video argues that the mRNA injections are in fact gene therapies rather than traditional vaccines, citing how these injections modify genetic material within cells to stimulate an immune response. It criticizes the lack of rigorous testing on the long-term effects of this genetic modification, accusing manufacturers and health authorities of withholding important information about the risks, such as the bio-distribution of modified RNA throughout the body and its potential to disrupt cellular functions.
Legal challenges against Pfizer and Moderna are outlined, notably the case of Dr. Julian Fidge, who accused the companies of bypassing Australia’s regulatory requirements for gene therapies. The lawsuit was dismissed due to a lack of legal standing, but the video highlights potential conflicts of interest, including Judge Helen Rofe’s undisclosed connections to Pfizer. This raises questions about the integrity of the judicial process, especially regarding the dismissal of critical evidence related to genetic contamination.
The video also condemns the narrative pushed by health authorities that the vaccines were “safe and effective,” arguing that data showed minimal absolute risk reduction and high infection rates among vaccinated individuals. It accuses authorities of fearmongering, particularly regarding children, and asserts that pregnant and breastfeeding women were given false assurances about the safety of the vaccines, despite being excluded from clinical trials.
Ultimately, the video calls for accountability and justice, emphasizing that millions of Australians were subjected to experimental gene-based treatments without adequate informed consent. It demands transparency, thorough investigations into regulatory failures, and reparations for those harmed. The script ends with a strong appeal to hold responsible parties accountable and to ensure that such breaches of public trust are never repeated.
Israel far from defeating Hamas in Rafah, ‘Israel’ in an ‘endless tunnel’
Al Mayadeen | September 13, 2024
The Israeli military has not managed to defeat even a single battalion or company of the Hamas Resistance forces in Rafah, a member of the Israeli Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee said on Saturday.
Amit Halevi’s criticism came after the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) announced on Thursday that it had “defeated Hamas’ Rafah Brigades,” and that it now has “completed operational control over the entire urban area.”
Halevi, quoted by the Israeli Channel 7website, stated that the army claims to have killed over 2,000 fighters in Rafah, however, the actual number is significantly lower, noting that the inflated figure “doesn’t even represent 25%” of the Resistance’s fighting force.
He further highlighted that “Israel” had only destroyed a small fraction of the underground tunnels in Rafah, adding however that “even those (tunnels) were not all destroyed, but rather sealed, making it easy for Hamas to reactivate them.”
The senior Israeli official noted that the Resistance in Rafah holds a massive stockpile of weapons, and the amount uncovered by the IOF is minimal in comparison. He emphasized that “Israel remains far from defeating or destroying Hamas.”
Elsewhere in his criticism, Halevi described the messages coming from the Israeli army spokesperson as misleading for the public and the government.
“Every soldier who entered Khan Younis for the fourth time or the al-Zaytoun neighborhood for the fifth time knows that nothing has been defeated,” he said in reference to the repeated Israeli incursions into these areas, despite previous declarations that they were “under control” and claims that the Resistance groups there had already been “defeated”.
“With the current operational methods, the matter will never be settled, because for every [Resistance fighter] killed, two more are born; for every injured [fighter], three new fighters are recruited; and for every piece of weaponry seized by the Israeli army, five more are produced underground in Gaza.”
Halevi further remarked that the method the occupation army uses in the “war of shafts,” as described by the head of Shin Bet, cannot lead to defeating Hamas in quantitative terms, referring to the number of fighters and the weapons they possess in Gaza.
Therefore, “Israel” has no strategic achievements but is instead in an “endless tunnel,” according to Halevi.
Where Was Amnesty International During the Genocide in Gaza?
By Paul de Rooij • Unz Review • September 11, 2024
Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one ‘safe zone’ at the time
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt, 10 August 2024
One would expect that human rights organisations would spring into action during an impending or unfolding genocide — the ultimate violation of human rights. Maybe human rights NGOs actions should be proportional to the level of the crimes they are concerned with. Thus, the more killing, torture, arbitrary imprisonment, bombing…, etc., that is plainly evident, the more action one would expect. So, what is the output of some of the leading human rights organisations in the face of the genocide in Gaza? Below is an analysis of Amnesty International’s press releases and announced actions.[1]
Will they come clean?
First things first. To assess the credibility of any organisation, one should know their relationship with Israel and the United States — both participants in the unfolding genocide. On this account, Amnesty International has never come clean about its relationship with the Israeli government. Uri Blau, a Haaretz investigative journalist, recently revealed that Amnesty_Intl.-Israel was taken over and run by Israeli operatives paid for by the Foreign Ministry.[2]
They ran interference in reporting on the situation in the occupied territories, participated in conferences, and even set up a “human rights” institute at Tel Aviv university. This was a nice way to co-opt the human rights industry. The principal who ran AI-Israel even gave an interview boasting of his exploits.
And did AI-Israel have a hand editing any Amnesty reports about the situation in the occupied territories or its many wars in the region? Some Palestinian lawyers reported having problematic encounters with AI-Israel officials, to the extent that they refused to have any dealings with it thereafter. One could well imagine AI-Israel officials reporting on Palestinians who reached out to them. So how ethical is it for Amnesty International to expose Palestinians contacting AI-Israel to imminent danger? When will Amnesty International acknowledge this dirty relationship and ensure that it maintains the requisite distance from the Israeli government in the future?
The genocide will be televised
Next, one must establish if what we witness amounts to a genocide. Craig Mokhiber, the former UN official in the High Commission for Human Rights, resigned because his agency was not reacting given the unfolding situation in Gaza, and stated in his resignation letter; “this is a textbook case of genocide”. NB: the letter was submitted on 28 October 2023. Mokhiber stated that it is usually difficult to establish whether a genocide is taking place because one doesn’t know the motivation of the leading military and political leadership.[3]
In the current context, there is no doubt about the motivation; one only has to listen to Netanyahu, Gallant, Ganz, Smotrich, Ben Gvir… And also most of the parliamentarians — they made genocidal statements in the Knesset; they were competing with each other to see who would be most truculent.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) statement on the case brought in front of the court by South Africa also suggests that we are witnessing a genocide — at least most of the justices urged Israeli action to forestall a genocide.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, and in particular, the refugee camps exhibit a high population density. The Israeli military is bombing these locations using huge bombs recently delivered by 500+ of American military cargo planes.[4]
There is no doubt about this, one can even witness the bombing realtime on Al Jazeera. Civilians are directed to evacuate areas only to be bombed in locations that had been putatively named “safe areas,” hospitals, schools, UN compounds, etc. Fleeing civilians were targeted; all bakeries were destroyed; hundreds of wells destroyed; scores of chicken farms ravaged; entire families wiped out… Thus it is not only the level of killing, but also the destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure that is happening now. The weaponry is very accurate, thus the targeting was done intentionally; so it is not an issue of “collateral damage,” but it is intentional and indiscriminate targeting. A principle of International humanitarian law is that actions should be proportionate, but Israeli military and politicians revel at the disproportionate nature of the destruction; it is the Dahiya doctrine applied to Gaza.[5] This doctrine refers to the disproportionate violence perpetrated against the Lebanese population in the Dahiya neighbourhood in Beirut in 2006; the neighbourhood was entirely flattened with huge bombs. Alastair Crooke, the former British diplomat, summarises the situation succinctly: “Gaza is already a monument to callous inhumanity and suffering. It will get worse…”[6]
One thing is certain: if it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, then it is genocide.[7] Under these circumstances, one would expect all human rights organisations to spring into action and demand court actions, UN Security Council resolutions, calls for key officials to be held accountable for crimes against humanity, and for the US, UK, Germany… and others to stop enabling Israel’s genocidal actions.
Nature of coverage
A few things are evident when reviewing AI’s press releases: one is struck by the paucity of coverage, the trite and generic form of statements, the unwillingness to call out the nature of some crimes, and unwillingness to debunk some of the crass Israeli propaganda meant to further de-humanise the Palestinians, and to justify Israel’s crimes.
Since 7 October 2023, there have only been 60 press releases — none of any substance. One is struck also that there are a number of press releases about Israel/OPT that don’t mention the ongoing genocide at all![8]
Or the commentary is part of a discussion of human rights in general.
Ahistorical
Gaza has been subject to numerous massacres — several not even registering in the media accounts in the so-called West. There were several of the post-2006 attacks (aka “mowing the lawn” operations) usually referred to by their Israeli sugar-coated operation names. After each such operation AI dutifully produced its trite reports, but was rather circumspect in calling out Israeli crimes; and whenever it did issue a statement about a particular crime, it was immediately offset by references to Palestinian crimes.
A good historical starting point to assess the current violations of international humanitarian law would be the Goldstone report (2008) — which documented and established serious Israeli crimes during “Operation Cast Lead”.[9] Alas, one is struck by the ahistorical nature of AI’s press releases and reports. It is as if history started yesterday, but then this is the nature of the “rights-based reporting,” where there is virtually no reference to history. When it suits Amnesty it will ignore history.[10] Would one’s assessment of a criminal be altered by the fact that he was a serial criminal? If so, then it behooves AI to emphasise Israel’s long history of mass crimes against the Palestinian population. But acknowledging the long history of dispossession and brutality against the native population would suggest that “we” should be in solidarity with the Palestinians. Alas, that is not a position Amnesty is willing to take. It prefers to utter its clucking sounds, and admonish “both sides” as if there were a moral equivalence between the violence perpetrated by oppressor and oppressed.
False balance
Amnesty wants to appear impartial, and clamours for both Palestinian and Israeli rights. Thus AI will issue a report outlining some of the Israeli crimes, but will then issue a report on the “Palestinian war crimes”. In general, according to AI, most of the actions perpetrated by the Palestinians are ipso facto war crimes; there is no need for further investigation or discussion. A disgraceful example is an article discussing Palestinian war crimes published on 12 July 2024. Thus after more than nine months of bombings, maybe 186,000+ dead[11], calculated starvation, summary executions and evidence of rampant mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners… Amnesty chose to demand the release of the Israeli hostages! According to Erika Guevara Rosas, AI’s “Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns,” holding Israeli civilian hostages is a war crime.[12] Lost in this narrative is an explanation as to why the hostages are held — they are the only means to obtain the release of some of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners. And true to form, a few days later AI released a longish press release critical of the Israeli brutal treatment of prisoners. Producing reports critical of “both sides” are attempts to claim impartiality.
Amnesty ignores the 1960 UNGA resolution acknowledging the right for an oppressed/colonised population to defend themselves — this includes armed struggle; and that Israel has an obligation to protect the oppressed population. The nature of the violence suggests that it is not possible to assume a “neutral” position. Thus, Amnesty’s proclivity to admonish “both sides” is ethically suspect.
Not countering Israeli propaganda
One useful function AI could play would be to debunk Israeli propaganda meant to dehumanise Palestinians to serve as a pretext for its genocidal campaign. The day after the Palestinian incursion, the Israeli propaganda machine was ready to push stories about rapes, babies cooked in microwave ovens, brutal murders, and so on. However, Amnesty has not countered these fabricated stories; in fact it has helped propagate the Israeli narrative. For example, it repeatedly referred to the 7 October attack as “horrific” — a term almost exclusively used to describe Palestinian actions. It doesn’t account for the fact that it was the Israeli military who killed more than half the Israeli civilians on that day.[13]
There were no babies cooked to death or impaled on bayonets. Alas, even with a pompous sounding “Evidence Investigation Unit,” Amnesty doesn’t seem to care to separate facts from hateful slander. If the latter is meant to dehumanise the Palestinians, then exposing this propaganda would go some way to humanise the victim. It seems that that is not in Amnesty’s purview.
In the press release demanding the release of Israeli hostages, Erika Guevara Rosas stated: “Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza that has resulted in the death of over 38,000 Palestinians”. This is factually correct, but contextually challenged. Guevara is using the Palestinian Health ministry’s figures that are based on the actual recovery of bodies; it misses all the victims under the rubble. The Lancet study estimates that about 8% of the Gazan population has been killed — that is in the order of 186,000 dead. Furthermore, the deaths attributable to epidemics, starvation, etc., are also missed in the Health Ministry’s statistics. The London School of Hygiene and Johns Hopkins University have attempted to estimate this mortality rate.[14]
Their estimates and methodology are complex, and it is best to read it directly from their reports. Suffice it to say that the mortality rate has increased dramatically.
Maybe a clearer explanation of the available statistics would be in order.
Lets investigate!
There are plenty of daily criminal attacks, but it is only the particularly outrageous ones when AI feels compelled to utter some comment. The discovery of mass burial sites near hospitals that had recently been invaded by the Israeli military elicited some commentary[15]. Instead of pointing a finger at Israel, and suggesting serious crimes had been perpetrated, it instead calls for an “independent investigation”. If only AI’s sanctimonious investigators could enter the scene, then one could establish what really happened. The other implication of AI’s call for investigation is that it doesn’t value the voice of the victims of Israeli crimes. Thus it is not up to Palestinians to call out their oppressor, but some “independent” body has to take its jolly good time determining whether a crime was committed; a report will follow a few years later. In the meantime, all Israeli crimes are merely “alleged” crimes.
There is a more problematic aspect to AI’s call for investigations, namely, that it is giving credence to Israeli exculpatory claims and justifications for its attacks. Thus bombing the Al Shifa hospital was justified on the spurious grounds that there was an Al Qassam bunker in the vicinity. Or, bombing a location with many refugees in tents by stating that some of the resistance commanders were in the area. Given the history of Israeli lies about all the massacres that it has perpetrated, one would think that Amnesty would be more sceptical of Israeli claims, and to challenge them outright. Instead it calls for investigations. Furthermore, when is it justified to kill 100+ civilians in order to kill two fighters? It is curious that a human rights organisation doesn’t reject this outright — there is no need for an investigation. Maybe an analogy could clarify the objection. Imagine that a rapist justified his crime by stating that the victim wore provocative clothing. Amnesty’s actions are akin to investigating if the victim’s clothing was actually sexy.
On 26 August 2024, AI issued a press release on two of the bombings of camps of displaced people killing hundreds.[16] A priori, one would say that it is a welcome report, but one is struck by the fact that these incidents “need to be investigated as war crimes”. Amnesty even reviewed the statements made by the Israeli military to justify the bombing. And to add a comic element, Amnesty sent a note to “Ministry of Justice officials,” i.e., Hamas, to determine if its fighters were sheltering in the bombed locations. In other words, it is asking the Palestinians whether the Israeli bombings were justified! And to top things off, Amnesty regurgitated its accusation that the Palestinian actions, e.g., taking hostages amounted to clear war crimes. On the one hand, AI asks that Israeli actions be investigated, yet for the Palestinians the accusation is clear: these are war crimes.
Amnesty usefully states that using civilians as human shields is “prohibited under international law.” Suggesting that if any fighter mingles with the civilian population, this amounts to a crime. The Palestinian fighters have little choice about where they can operate given that the population is constantly forced to move — the fighters included. But there is a difference between fighters being in close proximity to civilians, and the Israeli practice of placing Palestinian civilians on top of military vehicles or forcing them to enter houses ahead of Israeli soldiers. The difference is the coercion involved, and the fact that the fighters are in the midst of their own people. Thus in the press release, Amnesty wags its finger about fighters finding themselves together with civilians. However, Amnesty has yet to issue one of it missives about the civilians Israeli military forces to act as human shields. We await another press release.
Losing the forest for the trees
The crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians, i.e., genocide, crimes against humanity, and so on, must be described as mass crimes — referent to the population at large. However, Amnesty’s favourite technique to avoid mentioning the mass crimes is to dwell on individual stories to the exclusion of the totality of the crimes. On 19 August 2024, Amnesty issued a press release about the flouting of the Arms Trade Treaty. Thus: “Amnesty International has long been calling for a comprehensive arms embargo on both Israel and Palestinian armed groups because of longstanding patterns of serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including war crimes…” True to form Amnesty bleats about an embargo on “both sides,” as if there were hundreds of military cargo airplanes delivering weapons to the Palestinians. But instead of mentioning the total tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza, it provides two examples[17]:
Amnesty has documented the use of US-manufactured weapons in a number of unlawful airstrikes, including US-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) in two deadly, unlawful air strikes on homes in the occupied Gaza Strip, which killed 43 civilians – 19 children, 14 women and 10 men – on 10 and 22 October 2023.
A GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb, made in the US by Boeing, was used in an Israeli strike in January 2024 which hit a family home in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah, killing 18 civilians, including 10 children, four men, and four women.
According to Euromed Human Rights: “Israel dropped 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza Strip since last October, exceeding World War II bombings in Dresden, Hamburg, London combined.”[18]
Maybe providing such statistics would be more effective.
Similarly, on 18 July 2024, AI released a rather lengthy report on prison conditions.[19] To its credit, the press release was better than most AI output, but again, after a cursory mention of the total number of cases, it emphasises a few examples of prisoner’s conditions. It is dwelling on a few items to the exclusion of the mass injustice condition.
Long list of neglect
Ever since 7 October 2023, there have been many incidents that didn’t elicit a single comment by Amnesty International. Here are a few items:
- Israel bombed Palestinians waiting to obtain food from a humanitarian aid delivery truck; there were about 210 killed.
- Triple-tap bombings. Israelis bomb an area killing civilians, and then those who come to rescue them, and those who seek to rescue the rescuers.
- Al Jazeera showed a video of airplanes dropping supplies in Gaza. A few minutes later Israelis bombed the locations where the parachutes landed.
- Several hundred medical and emergency rescue staff have been killed; 170+ journalists, and in some cases the journalists’ families were also killed.
- Destruction of universities, schools and hospitals. Israeli soldiers themselves posted videos of rejoicing soldiers when hospitals and universities were blown up.
- There is a serious shortage of potable water for most Gazans. The quality and quantity of water available in Gaza was already a serious issue prior to October 2023. Groundwater had saline seepage, and thus the sodium level was above safe limits. With the destruction of wells, and the inoperability of desalination plants, the access to safe water became a serious challenge. Furthermore, the Israeli military are flooding tunnels with sea water, further contaminating groundwater.
- Israeli military declared a large garbage dump site to be a “safe zone”.
- The Israeli military forced relocations of population from North to South, and later on South to North. And of course more houses were destroyed in the meantime. There are no places where civilians can escape to safety.
- The condition of prisoners held in Israeli jails is appalling: brutality, neglect, meagre access to food and water. Al Jazeera featured the case of Moazez Abayat[20]A man who suffered torture, brutal treatment, meagre access to food and water. It was clear that Abayat had lost his mind in prison, and this is certainly not an isolated case. In August, soldiers sodomised prisoners… and +972 magazine published an article about the conditions at a military prison with a jarring statement: “The situation there [Sde Teiman detention center] is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”
- The Hannibal killings, i.e., Israeli military killed Israelis to avoid having them taken as hostages. Haaretz reported that more than half the Israeli civilians killed on 7 October were killed by the military.
- Israeli propagandists were ready to make allegations of widespread rape and murder of children. Most of those claims were false.
- The grand larceny and theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank continues, and in the process hundreds have been killed.
- Israeli drones broadcast recordings of children in distress to entice people to investigate, and consequently kill them.
- The day after rulings by international courts (ICJ or ICC), the Israelis engaged in massive bombardments and other destructive actions. It is their means to send a “FU” message. On the eve of Netanyahu’s trip to the US, the Israeli military bombed a refugee camp killing dozens. On the day Netanyahu addressed the US Congress, 100+ Palestinians were killed.The point of this: Israel can do whatever it wants, and it has the US’s backing.
- On the eve of negotiations, Israel perpetrates particularly serious mass crimes. Early in August the US announced “negotiations,” but with meagre Israeli interest. On 10 August, Israel bombed a school killing 100+. Furthermore, Israelis murdered two of the Palestinian negotiators. Who will want to negotiate with Israel now?
- The lack of medicines is causing the certain deaths of those with chronic diseases. The protracted war is a death sentence to diabetics, renal patients, cancer victims…
Impotence and futility
Amnesty issues a few press releases and maybe a report thereafter, but there is no meaningful action. Thus far Amnesty has organised a petition calling for a ceasefire! One can fill the petition form with gibberish, and press the button however many times, and it will register in this preposterous exercise.[21] Liberal souls will be assuaged.
There have been three instances where AI urged its members to write very polite letters to Israeli officials. Thus mass crimes are happening at present, and these “urgent actions” merely plead for the fate of three individuals. All sample letters start with “Dear General…”; that is the way Amnesty likes its members to address the genocidal creeps. These letter writing campaigns are a means to get young idealistic activists to engage in “actions” that are of virtually no consequence.
Every year Amnesty claims to have more members — in the millions. Appealing to this membership base to do something meaningful could possibly be more effective. Palestinian civil society groups have long clamoured for BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions). Why can’t AI urge its members to boycott Israeli products? The answer is evident: the mega donors (e.g., Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood’s notorious sex predator and Israel cheerleader; the Sackler Foundation) funding Amnesty’s activities would revolt.[22]
Manifest double standards
Amnesty has produced several press releases advocating intervention in Syria, even using holocaust memes (“never again”) to emphasise its point. It even produced a melodramatic multimedia production on the “horrors” at a notorious prison.[23] When it comes to Israel, Amnesty doesn’t call for intervention; it certainly doesn’t refer to holocaust memes as “never again” seems not to apply to the Palestinians. Amnesty also doesn’t produce melodramatic videos on the most notorious Israeli prisons where inmates are tortured, brutalised and killed.
Regarding the situation in Venezuela, Amnesty demands “urgent actions from ICC prosecutor”.[24]
When it comes to Israel, it doesn’t call upon the international courts to prosecute Israel for war crimes or worse. According to Donatella Rovera, a senior AI investigator, Amnesty doesn’t issue such calls.[25] Another standard applies.
On 21 May 2024, Amnesty issued a press release urging the ICC to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Gallant and three Palestinian resistance leaders. What Agnes Callamard, AI’s Secretary General, doesn’t explain is the fact that whereas an arrest warrant was issued for Putin, when it comes to Netanyahu, the prosecutor merely petitioned the court to consider issuing a warrant. Given the uproar and threats issued by US politicians, the ICC quietly dropped the matter — thus there are no warrants issued against Netanyahu and Gallant at present. There is scant evidence of a moral backbone at the ICC. But the ICC statements allows Amnesty to posture by wagging its finger at “both sides”.
On 2 September 2024, Amnesty issued a demand for Mongolia to arrest President Putin, and did so in a rather hectoring tone.[26] And although the ICC no longer seeks to prosecute Netanyahu, this doesn’t stop other organisations to call on governments hosting Netanyahu for his arrest. Alas, Amnesty didn’t send a similar demand to the US. Maybe such a call would have tarnished Netanyahu’s reputation during his recent address to the US Congress.
On the eve of the Gulf War against Iraq, Amnesty produced a report on the purported case of Iraqi soldiers “throwing babies out of incubators”. President Bush appeared on TV showing this report and using it as a justification for war. After the hoax was exposed Amnesty didn’t issue any apology or explanation. But now we face a real situation in Gaza where the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of Gaza’s largest hospital and consequently dozens of newborns had to be taken off incubators or other equipment. The doctor attending the children noted that most of them would die. One would say that this would provide emotive material to campaign to obtain a ceasefire; the plight of babies might resonate with Western liberal souls. Alas, Amnesty was silent in this instance.
And there are blind spots
One must marvel at the long list of press releases and reports Amnesty produces on a regular basis. No corner of the planet is exempt of an Amnesty commentary or reprimand. From commenting on transexual rights in Mongolia, sex workers rights, climate change, migrant rights and discrimination, etc. And many of its missives wag a finger at the offending state with titles including “… must do this”. Amnesty frequently waves its human rights magic wand. Somehow they think they have the standing of a UN-like organisation to pontificate on any topic anywhere in the world.
But one encounters blind spots in AI’s coverage. There are very few admonishing press releases regarding US, UK, or Israeli atrocious behaviour. When offending actions are mentioned at all, one finds them couched with terms such as “alleged”; and certainly not calling for a tribunal to hold criminals to account. The war in Ukraine has elicited minor critical commentary except chastising Russia; the US role in causing and fuelling the war are not mentioned. In general, AI’s position on issues aligns with US, UK and Israeli state policy. There is no criticism or even mention of the US’s penchant for forever wars; for waging violent actions in many places in the world. These seem to be just fine by Amnesty’s standards.
The United Nations Security Council has become a joke — where one finds the US and its acolytes brazenly lying, and exhibiting monumental hypocrisy and cynicism. Any relevant resolution delivering a modicum of justice is routinely vetoed. This is plainly evident regarding calls for a ceasefire in Gaza with such resolutions vetoed. On 21 December 2023, the US put forth a “compromise” resolution regarding a ceasefire and humanitarian aid. The curious thing is that on the same day the diplomats acknowledged that Israel would not be bound by the resolution — it was merely an exercise of hypocrisy on steroids. Yet the next day, Agnes Callamard, AI’s Secretary General, stated that: “This is a much-needed resolution…”![27]
. To her credit, she also stated: “It is disgraceful that the US was able to stall and use the threat of its veto power to force the UN Security Council to weaken a much-needed call for an immediate end to attacks by all parties.”
There is no pushback
An important role any organisation could play would be to confront local supporters of regimes involved in mass crimes. There are notorious cases:
- Nikki Haley, the failed presidential candidate, went to Israel to express her support to the extent that she wrote “kill them all” on an Israel artillery shell.
- At the August 2024 Democratic National Convention attendees were active cheerleaders for the Israeli actions.
- The US Congress welcomed Netanyahu and gave him 57 standing ovations.
Maybe these outrageous statements and actions would elicit critical commentary. It is not only a generic trite statement about what is happening “over there,” but what is also necessary is to challenge the local enablers of mass crimes. Alas, Amnesty would rather consort with US politicians rather than to confront them.
The bane of HR NGOs
In Europe, various governments and NGOs provide scholarships for students to specialise in Human Rights. The courses are offered in several countries, and hundreds of students attend Human Rights centres each year. Italians get to study in Finland for a year… And we find the grotesque situation of Dutch students studying human rights in Israel; it is a bit like going for education on animal rights to a slaughterhouse. This is all courtesy of EU largesse. The graduates then work for hundreds of NGOs or government agencies. Each of them will then wave their human rights wand over a topic that may be fashionable, invariably gay/trans rights, women’s reproductive rights, sex worker’s rights, etc. Further fuelling the human rights industry is the lavish funding obtained from various lottery funds — much of the profits from such institutions are disbursed to NGOs. The human rights industry experiences subsidised growth. Thus each NGO with its own warped agenda receives funds directly or indirectly. The directors of some NGOs command six figure salaries — a favourite for out-of-office politicians seeking a sinecure.[28]
In the Netherlands where this process has been in place for decades, the human rights lobby has mushroomed in size and now manifests a dysfunctional dynamic, i.e., the NGOs bring incessant lawsuits against the government tying it down in court.
Do NGOs advocating Palestinian human rights get to play in this merry go round? Fat chance!
Human rights are for the birds
When confronted with mass crimes what is needed is justice, and not one of its bastardised, neutered, malleable and ineffective substitutes. If one wants justice then it behooves one to speak in terms of justice, and to avoid the human rights mumbo jumbo. This is specially the case when human rights have been cynically exploited and weaponised by the US and UK.[29] A framework that can be used to justify wars, the so-called humanitarian interventions, cannot be a framework that advances justice or motivates people to act against mass crimes. The criminals react accordingly, i.e., they aren’t bothered if they are called transgressors of human rights, but may fear being accused of mass crimes.
The mask comes off
The current wars in Gaza, Ukraine, etc., and the reactions surrounding them has torn off the mask of the American empire revealing its hypocrisy, cynicism and sadism. Many of the “values” so dear to the neoliberals have been shown to be a sham. “Democracy,” “International law,” “freedom of speech,”…, and of course “human rights” have fallen off their pedestals. The collateral damage of the collapse also tears into the United Nations, the ICC, ICJ, and also the human rights industry because they also have been shown to be so ineffective and compromised. Amnesty International is demonstrably a conflicted organisation steeped in hypocrisy. It is a tool used by the UK and US governments to weaponise “human rights” to suit its own ends: the justification of wars, and the demonisation of “regimes,” i.e., the governments that the empire doesn’t like. It has been a conduit for pro-war propaganda in the past, and even calling for so-called humanitarian military interventions.
What is needed are critical voices that highlight the daily massacres, that call for the criminals and their enablers to be held to account, and to sue for a modicum of justice. Calling for a ceasefire is the bare minimum. Alas, most human rights NGOs don’t even fulfil this task. When Amnesty International postures about all sorts of trendy human rights everywhere in the world, but then doesn’t cover genocide and spring into effective action, then let it shut up entirely.
One thing is certain: Amnesty International is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem.
Notes
[1] This is an analysis of Amnesty’s press releases and reports. These can be found here:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ Amnesty’s position are also available on Twitter, but these are not covered here. The press releases and reports by other HR organisations are very similar and exhibit the same bias.
[2] Uri Blau, Documents reveal how Israel made Amnesty’s local branch a front for the Foreign Ministry in the 70s;
The Israeli government funded the establishment and activity of the Amnesty International branch in Israel in the 1960s and 70s. Official documents reveal that the chairman of the organization was in constant contact with the Foreign Ministry and received instructions from it; Haaretz, 18 March 2017.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/3/22/israels-human-rights-spies-manipulating-the-discourse
Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, “Israel’s human rights spies”: Manipulating the discourse
Revelations about Israel’s infiltration of NGOs in the 1970s shocked many, but human rights ‘spies’ are still out there, 22 Mar 2017.
[3] Craig Mokhiber (Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights), The resignation letter. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/11/a-textbook-case-of-genocide/
[4] Avi Scharf, Weapons shipments to Israel: A Dizzying Pace, Then a Drop: How U.S. Arms Shipments to Israel Slowed Down
subtitle: Publicly available flight tracking data shows how many U.S. arms shipments have arrived in Israel each month since the Gaza war started, revealing a sharp rise and then gradual tapering off in the pace of deliveries, Haaretz, 27 June 2024.
[5] Israel wants to be feared to maintain its morally bankrupt deterrence policy. Thus any resistance must be smashed with disproportionate power. The Dahiya neighbourhood in Beirut was brutally bombed, and the politicians ordering the bombing were very pleased with the level of destruction. Thus the Dahiya doctrine.
[6] Alastair Crooke, Trickery, Humiliation, Death – and the Timeless Hunger for ‘Honour and Glory’, Strategic Culture, 30 December 2023.
[7] Ilan Pappe, the great Israeli historian, once replied to a question of whether Israel was an apartheid state by stating: “if it quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, then it is apartheid”.
[8] Some examples of AI Press releases about OPT that don’t mention Gaza at all.
AI, Dutch Investor pushes for human rights safeguards to stop use of surveillance technology against Palestinians, 4 July 2024. Refers to the intrusive video spying.
AI, Israel’s attempt to sway WhatsApp case casts doubt on its ability to deal with NSO spyware cases, 25 July 2024.
[9] Operation “Cast Lead” is a curious name for a military operation. It actually refers to a passage in Deuteronomy where the Hebrews exterminate their opponents to the extent that they pour molten lead down their throats.
[10] Contrast AI’s ahistorical reporting on the situation in Gaza with that of Syria. When it comes to Syria, the history of the “regime” is suddenly an issue.
[11] Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf, “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential”, The Lancet, Volume 404, Issue 10449, pp237-238, 20 July 2024. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext
[12] AI, Israel/ OPT: Hamas and other armed groups must immediately release civilians held hostage in Gaza,12 July 2024
[13] By Yaniv Kubovich • Haaretz 7 July 2024
IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking
Soldiers Captive
Subtitle: “there was crazy hysteria, and decisions started being made without verified
information: Documents and testimonies obtained by Haaretz reveal the Hannibal operational order, which directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity, was employed at three army facilities infiltrated by Hamas, potentially endangering civilians as well”
[14] Crisis in Gaza: Scenario-based Health Impact Projections https://gaza-projections.org/gaza_projections_report.pdf
[15] AI, Gaza: Discovery of mass graves highlights urgent need to grant access to independent human rights investigators, 24 April 2024.
[16] AI, Israel/OPT: Israeli attacks targeting Hamas and other armed group fighters that killed scores of displaced civilians in Rafah should be investigated as war crimes, 26 August 2024.
[17] AI, Global: Governments’ brazen flouting of Arms Trade Treaty rules leading to devastating loss of life, 19 August 2024.
[18] https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/gaza-one-most-intense-bombardments-history
[19] AI, “Israel must end mass incommunicado detention and torture of Palestinians from Gaza”, 18 July 2024.
[20] https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/7/10/freed-former-palestinian-bodybuilder-alleges-abuse-by-israeli-jailers and https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-west-bank-muazzaz-abayat-prison-interview
[21] https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/demand-a-ceasefire-by-all-parties-to-end-civilian-suffering/
[22] Thomas Frank, Hypocrite at the good cause parties, Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2018. Frank reports that Harvey Weinstein made “AI-USA possible”.
[23] Paul de Rooij, Amnesty International trumpets for another “Humanitarian” war… this time in Syria, MintPress, 23 March 2018.
[24] Amnesty, Venezuela: Scale and gravity of ongoing crimes demand urgent actions from ICC prosecutor, 9 August 2024
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/08/venezuela-crimes-demand-urgent-action-icc-prosecutor/
[25] Personal communication with Donatella Rovera, January 2003.
[26] AI, “Mongolia: Putin must be arrested and surrendered to the International Criminal Court”, 2 September 2024.
[27] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/israel-opt-adoption-of-un-resolution-to-expedite-humanitarian-aid-to-gaza-an-important-but-insufficient-step/
Israel/OPT: Adoption of UN resolution to expedite humanitarian aid to Gaza an important but insufficient step, 22 Decemeber 2024.
[28] Irene Khan, the former Amnesty general secretary, received a £533,000 “golden handshake” when she departed.
[29] For some of the background history of Amnesty International, see: Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, Sutton Publications, 2002. Also, Alfred de Zayas, The Human Rights Industry, Clarity Press, 2023.
ISM Response to Israeli Army Statement on the Murder of Aysenur Eygi
View of Israeli army on the road and on house’s roof
International Solidarity Movement | September 10, 2024
On Friday, September 6, Turkish-American human rights activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) Aysenur Eygi was killed by a single shot to the head from an Israeli sniper while supporting a demonstration against illegal Israeli settlements Beita’s lands. After a brief internal investigation conducted by the Israeli army itself, the Israeli army has released a statement asserting that “the inquiry found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her.” The ISM entirely rejects this specious claim and continues to demand an independent investigation of the Israeli army’s killing of our comrade Aysenur Eygi. ISM is joined in this demand by people worldwide who have watched Israel operate with impunity for decades. The world sees through this transparent attempt to conceal the Israeli army’s responsibility for the death of Aysenur Eygi, who is just one of the hundreds of thousands of martyrs Israel has killed over decades of ethnic cleansing, displacement, and genocide.
The military’s account of the events is blindly based on the accomplices’ version, which completely contradicts the testimonies of multiple eye witnesses, who the military did not even contact. All eyewitnesses said immediately following the killing that the scene where Aysenur was killed was completely quiet, and that there could have been no excuse to open fire, let alone directly hitting a woman peacefully standing in an olive grove.
According to activists who were present when Aysenur was killed, the Israeli army’s brief statement “includes an array of evident falsehoods, clearly indicating how its investigation is concerned with deflecting fault and avoiding any sort of accountability.” These falsehoods include:
• The military version claims Aysenur was not the target of the kill-shot, but rather that she was hit “indirectly and unintentionally” when a soldier targeted a key instigator. This statement does not align with the physical reality on the ground for several reasons:
1. It is unclear what the claim that Aysenur was hit “indirectly” is based on, as there is no forensic evidence to back this up this claim.
2. The closest Israeli forces to were Aysenur was when she was shot, were those positioned on a rooftop some 750 feet (220m) away from her, at an elevated position. Considering the distance and the soldiers’ elevation, stones could not have physically been thrown towards the soldiers from the location Aysenur was at when she was shot.
3. There were two separate shots fired, with a few seconds in between them. The first shot hit a metal object and a shrapnel hit a Palestinian teenager in the pelvis. Had there been any truth to the military’s false narrative of confrontations taking place where and when Aysenur was shot, reason would have it that he was the main instigator the statement is referring to. However, Aysenur was hit by a second shot, several seconds after the man was already down. It was aimed directly at her, as there was no one else around (apart an activist standing next to her) who could have been the target of the shot.
4. The teenager was located further away to the side from the soldiers than Aysenur, so a shot aimed at him could not have possibly hit her, directly or indirectly.
• The statement very manipulatively conflates two events that are separate in time and place. The first event is the one during which short confrontations that took place soon after the midday prayer at the top of the hill (https://maps.app.goo.gl/2zLgMr4UGfN7QKj49). It was then and there that a few burning tires were placed on the road. The second event is the shooting of Aysenur, which took place more than half an hour later – when there was no confrontations at all – more than 900 feet (274m) from where the burning tires were, and about 750 feet (220 m) from the rooftop where the soldier who shot her was positioned on, in an elevated, tactically controlling position.
• Aysenur was not shot at the Beta Junction. The Beita Junction is here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/uRnMHnWRcRsrTs5R8 , while she was shot here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/17jEQwVPzbRqujvi9 . The two locations are more than a mile away from each other (1.16miles, 1.87km).
The Israeli army has a long history of using sham investigations as a method of covering up their human rights abuses and crimes against humanity in Palestine. According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, from a report published jointly with the Palestine Centre for Human Rights, Israel has long been “unwilling and unable” to investigate its soldiers for attacking peaceful protesters. This history of fake investigations as a cover ups goes back decades, and has been documented by B’Tselem and other human rights groups. When ISM activist Rachel Corrie was killed by the Israeli Army in Gaza in 2003, a similar sham investigation swiftly cleared the Israeli forces of all responsibility. Rachel Corrie’s parents have spoken out demanding that a thorough investigation happens in this case. Warning about another coverup, they have said clearly that if an independent, truthful investigation had been conducted 21 years ago, many lives that have been taken by Israel in the ensuing decades could have been saved. Even US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that “The killing of the American activist in the West Bank was unjustified and without provocation on her part, and it is not permissible to shoot someone because he participated in a demonstration.”
‘Follow the Science’: Have the Bad Guys Finally Gone Too Far?
By Sharyl Attkisson | The Defender | September 9, 2024
In this exclusive excerpt from her new bestseller, “Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails,” journalist Sharyl Attkisson details how public health agencies and some public universities are so captured by commercial interests that they function as little more than an advertising arm of Big Pharma.
In the case of vaccine makers, success comes with inventing shots that can be added to the list of what’s required for schoolchildren. Better yet, invent shots that the public can be convinced to get, repeatedly, for the rest of their lives. Instant billion-dollar blockbuster!
This has led to a questionable dynamic where the one-time standard that vaccines were required to meet — that they must be vital, safe, and effective — fell by the wayside. Instead the government aggressively serves as promoter of dubious versions that may not be necessary, may not work very well, and come with the risk of serious side effects.
In 1975, the cost of vaccinating a child from birth to age six was $10 (in 2001 terms, adjusted for inflation). As more vaccines were added to the list, the cost ballooned to $385 in 2001. Today it’s thousands of dollars. The costs are largely hidden to us since we get inoculated for free or with minimal out-of-pocket payments. But make no mistake, we’re paying the bills in the form of insurance premiums, and tax dollars to state and federal programs that provide vaccines at little to no direct cost to the patient. Vaccine companies are reaping enormous profits.
Sometimes getting and keeping a vaccine on the market requires sleight of hand. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), our premier infectious disease federal health agency, is happy to give a little help to its vaccine industry partners or, as the CDC calls them, “stakeholders.” The agency’s best and brightest can even adjust the veritable meaning of the word “vaccine.”
The CDC used to define “vaccines” quite simply as agents that “prevent disease.” But in 2021, that had to be changed. It became undeniable that Covid vaccines didn’t prevent the disease (or transmission, or even illness). Logic might suggest that the Covid vaccines would have to be withdrawn from the market. After all, they didn’t even meet the definition of a vaccine. Instead the CDC quietly redefined the word “vaccine” to make the Covid shots seem successful after all.
On the CDC’s vaccine web page, sometime between September 1 and 2, 2021, somebody removed a key phrase from the definition. On September 1, the CDC defined a vaccine as “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.” But on September 2, the phrase “protecting the person from that disease” was removed, like it never even happened. Now, the CDC says, vaccines merely “stimulate the body’s immune response.”
Think of it. The CDC unilaterally redefined two hundred years’ of the world’s understanding of what constitutes a vaccine, without so much as an explanation, public discussion, hearing, or vote. Once you understand that our top, trusted medical authorities are willing to sneakily move goalposts and change meanings of words to protect a market, you’re a long way to beginning to understand how deep the corruption goes.
It’s one thing to be barraged by marketing to convince you to buy a shiny new car. But it’s quite another to get sold a bill of goods by our trusted health experts when it comes to our most precious possession. Our increasingly elusive quest for good health has become a commodity to be bought and sold by today’s snake oil salesmen and their coconspirators, but on a far grander scale …
In their defense, pharmaceutical companies are doing exactly what they were built to do: make money. The thought that they’re somehow different from other multinational corporations, that they are motivated by altruism and can be trusted to be honest about the failings of their own products, is a fallacy. There’s no law that requires them to put patient health ahead of profits. There’s nothing that forces them to stop promoting a pill even if they secretly know it doesn’t work or has dire side effects. It could be argued they have a fiduciary duty to try to downplay or even cover up negative information about their products if it could hurt their bottom line.
Our sick and broken system is the fault of politicians, federal agencies, the medical establishment, and the media. They have a far different responsibility than private drug companies. But they’ve allowed themselves to be so captured by commercial interests that they function as little more than an advertising arm of the pharmaceutical industry …
It’s grown exceedingly common that when patients get sick during a study, instead of the drug company considering the illness to be a possible side effect — which is what should be the response — they seek to explain it away. They blame anything other than the experimental medicine.
Another blatant example of this twisting of science can be found in a May 2023 study to look at whether serious neurological, or brain and nerve, disorders were connected to Covid-19 vaccines. The study was entitled, “Observational Study of Patients Hospitalized With Neurologic Events After SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination.” It was published in Neurology Clinical Practice.
The first problem I see when reviewing the study is that, although some side effects don’t surface until months or years after a medicine is taken, the study scientists drew their conclusions based on a mere six-week period. They looked at only 138 people hospitalized after a Covid vaccination, and a limited number of neurological conditions, including stroke or blood clots, encephalopathy or brain damage, seizure, and intracranial bleeding.
But what really captures my attention is the study’s nonsensical conclusion. It states that since all 138 vaccinated, hospitalized patients had “risk factors” or “established causes” for their neurologic illnesses, such as high blood pressure for stroke victims, this proves the Covid vaccines are safe. “All cases in this study were determined to have at least 1 risk factor and/or known etiology accounting for their neurologic syndromes. Our comprehensive clinical review of these cases supports the safety of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines,” reads the study discussion.
You don’t have to be a scientist to detect a serious flaw in their reasoning. It’s like claiming that an old person who falls down the stairs and breaks a hip — was injured by being old, and it had nothing to do with the fall down the stairs. Having high blood pressure to begin with doesn’t mean if you have a stroke after Covid vaccine, you can automatically rule out the vaccine as having an impact. In fact, you should immediately ask whether the vaccine might prove riskier to people with preexisting vulnerabilities.
Surely even a novice scientist should know this. So why did this ridiculous study get published? It looks suspiciously as if someone is trying to dispel growing safety concerns about the vaccines. I decide to find out who.
I learn that the study was conducted at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York–Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. It was funded by taxpayer money through the CDC. I email the primary study author, Dr. Kiran Thakur: “The study seems to imply that because people who suffered certain neurological events shortly after Covid vaccination had risk factors, it exonerates the vaccines from blame. But did the authors consider that people with existing risk factors could be at greater risk for vaccine adverse events?”
Instead of answering the question, Dr. Thakur replies, “Can you clarify the purpose of your questions (to be published, personal inquiry or otherwise).” When I reply that her responses might be published, she goes dark on me. When I persist in asking her to respond, she finally answers: “Declining, thank you.” Why isn’t a legitimate scientist happy to answer a simple question about her work? What’s the big secret?
Reaching a dead end with Dr. Thakur, I query the medical journal’s editorial staff. They loop me back to Dr. Thakur, saying only she can answer my questions. Shouldn’t the journal be asking the same questions?
Next I turn to Columbia University. I ask to see the study materials and related communications. I want to learn Who was behind this study, and did the peer reviewers or anybody else flag the obvious flaws? It’s a reasonable request because we, the public, funded the research and own the information. Besides, a basic tenet of scientific research dictates that there should be transparency in data and all aspects of studies. In fact, a study isn’t considered legitimate unless the data is available so that it can be verified and replicated by others with the same results.
But Columbia University stalls in responding to my emails. So I file a formal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the material. More time passes, and Columbia informs me that it’s a private institution and it doesn’t have to follow Freedom of Information Act law. I appeal on the basis of scientific transparency. Why does Columbia want to keep details of an important, publicly funded study secret? Isn’t that contrary to tenets of sound science? My appeal falls on deaf ears. University officials tell me they’ll only respond to validly issued and served subpoenas or court orders, and that “[s]ubpoenas to the University must be served on the Office of the General Counsel.”
Think of the audacity. A private university can take our tax money for a study, then refuse to answer questions about it because they’re a private university. To me it looks like the CDC can legally launder taxpayer dollars to third parties to produce what amounts to propaganda, then cover their tracks under a shroud of secrecy.
Next, I decide to file a FOIA request directly with the CDC, which is undeniably subject to the Freedom of Information Act. However, I know from experience that federal agencies spin the FOIA process into a tool to obfuscate. They rarely follow the provisions requiring them to turn over materials within twenty working days. And punishment for their violations is virtually nonexistent.
Sure enough, the CDC sits on my FOIA request for forty-two days before emailing to let me know they haven’t yet begun processing my request. They say I need to be much more specific, or they won’t consider responding. This raises one of the newer tricks federal agencies use to make it tougher for us to access information we own. They require FOIA requests to be impossibly precise. In the past, it was enough for a requester to provide a topic and date range. Agencies would search computer records using keywords. But now they claim they can’t do that.
The CDC FOIA officers now demand that I somehow discover and present them with names of each specific, archaic department and subdepartment that should be searched and the title of any documents I’m looking for. They further insist I provide names and titles of each person within those departments whose email accounts should be searched. And I must give them the number of the grant that awarded the taxpayer funds for the study. Problem is, I have no way to know any of that. The grant number was strangely omitted from the published study, and I have no clue how I would find names of the people who might have records, or what departments they work in. That’s a key part of what the FOIA response would reveal. Using these avoidance tactics, a federal agency can heighten their odds of keeping public documents secret …
There may be a silver lining. The bad guys finally went too far.
With Covid: the disinformation, intolerance for dissent, shutdowns, mandates, forced or withheld medical treatment, mass firings, and attacks upon tens of thousands of scientists sparked the formation of a diverse coalition. This coalition includes a mix of liberals, conservatives, and nonpartisans. It’s made up of freethinking parents, students, doctors, nurses, researchers, elected officials, and celebrities.
Many had never before questioned public health narratives or their doctors. Most had blindly supported them. But today, members of this new coalition find themselves probing widely pushed orthodoxy on Covid and beyond, rightly asking what else the media and top public health officials have misled us on.
Now, redemption from the grasp of those who seek to control our health and our lives may come through a collective awakening that’s already begun.
“Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails,” by Sharyl Attkisson, is now available at bookstores everywhere.
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.
Did the IRS Manipulate the 2020 Election?
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | September 9, 2024
Hunter Biden pled guilty on Thursday to a barrage of federal tax crimes. But will the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department ever plead guilty to stealing the 2020 election for Joe Biden?
In 2023, the IRS assessed 18,599,109 penalties on individuals who allegedly underpaid or failed to pay federal income taxes. How did the IRS miss Hunter Biden for so long?
In 2021, the Biden administration sought to compel banks to report to the IRS any bank account with more than $600 in transactions per year. But the feds effectively disregarded multimillion dollar windfalls pouring into Hunter’s coffers from around the globe.
Hunter is a tax dodger straight out of IRS Central Casting. Between 2014 and 2019, he pocketed more than $8 million from shady foreign sources, triggering a bushel of Treasury Department Suspicious Activity Reports. Hunter failed to pay more than $1 million in taxes and was slapped by a tax lien of $112,805 for his 2015 taxes. The IRS even threatened to cancel his passport, but no criminal charges were filed.
The IRS began formally investigating Hunter in 2018; by January 2020, a team of a dozen IRS employees were working on his case. The Justice Department failed to file any charges before the statute of limitation expired on Hunter’s 2014 and 2015 tax violations.
IRS investigators vigorously pushed to search part of Joe Biden’s Delaware estate prior to the 2020 election. On September 3, 2020, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf agreed with Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory special agent, that there was “more than enough probable cause for the physical search warrant” and “a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden.” Wolf reportedly told Shapley that U.S. Attorney David Weiss “agreed that probable cause had been achieved.” But Wolf declared that “optics were a driving factor in the decision [not] to execute a search warrant,” according to Shapley.
Like the “optics” Team Biden unleashed when they sent heavily-armed FBI agents to raid Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022 to choreograph government documents for photographers? The FBI recently admitted that the documents they seized were arranged prior for a publicity shot. There has been scant media criticism of the Biden White House for seeking to destroy the president’s political opponent with high profile tactics that did better on CNN than in federal court.
IRS investigators were kept out of an October 2020 Justice Department briefing on an alleged “criminal bribery scheme” investigation on Joe Biden and his family. This severely limited the potential political damage to the presidential frontrunner at that time. A female FBI supervisor stated in a congressional interview last year that the Justice Department used the 2022 midterm election as a pretext to delay further action on Hunter’s tax case. CNBC reported in April 2023 that the IRS reportedly “finished its investigation more than a year ago,” but no charges were filed.
The IRS’s Shapley filed a whistleblower complaint in April last year asserting that the investigation of Hunter Biden’s tax violations was being blocked by “preferential treatment and politics.” In May last year, a special agent in the IRS’s international tax and financial crimes group who had spent five years investigating Hunter Biden also filed a whistleblower complaint on the Biden case. The IRS responded with accusations of criminal conduct and warnings to other agents in an apparent attempt to intimidate into silence anyone who might raise similar concerns,” according to Mark Lytle and Tristian Leavitt, Shapley’s lawyers.
After two IRS officials formally became whistleblowers, the Justice Department dismissed the entire IRS team from the Hunter investigation, potentially crippling the ability to pursue Hunter’s million-dollar plus tax violations.
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee reported last year that IRS investigators were met with a “‘Delay, Divulge, and Deny’ campaign that ultimately shielded the president’s son by allowing the statute of limitations to expire on several tax crimes for…when Joe Biden was the Vice President.” Attorneys for Hunter Biden were tipped off ahead of time about searches, resulting in the removal or destruction of evidence. “Prosecutors instructed investigators not to ask witnesses questions about Joe Biden or references to the ‘big guy,’” the congressional committee noted.
An FBI agent was interviewed last year by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigators regarding the potential coverup. The interview transcript confirms official skullduggery. Just the News website excerpted the transcript of the questioning:
“In September of 2021, are you aware that Lesley Wolf emailed Gary Shapley stating, ‘I do not think you are going to be able to do these interviews as planned,’ adding that they would require approval from DOJ Tax Division. ‘Are you aware of that?’ the FBI agent was asked at one point.
“At another point, the FBI agent was asked: ‘Are you aware in October of 2021 Lesley Wolf emailed Gary Shapley and the investigative team that ‘It will get us into hot water if we interview the President’s grandchildren’?”
In July 2023, the Justice Department sought to close Hunter’s case with a wrist-slap plea for tax misdemeanors. But federal judge Maryellen Noreika did not agree that ‘there is nothing to see here, move along.’ She asked lawyers a few questions about the blanket immunity that prosecutors provided for Hunter’s other possible crimes and the deal collapsed. Hunter missed his chance to win the Emmy Award for Best Tear-Jerking Performance on Courthouse Steps by a Media Darling. The Washington Post reported that Hunter had written “a statement about his desire to close a difficult chapter in his life, and was planning to read it to news cameras outside the courthouse after entering his plea” at the federal courthouse in Delaware.
Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed that David Weiss, the Special Counsel he appointed to investigate Hunter’s alleged crimes, had independent authority to file charges as he pleased. But it was later revealed that Weiss’ charging ability was severely restricted outside of Delaware and by Justice Department tax attorneys. Curtailing Weiss’ ability to prosecute the case enabled President Biden to continue scoffing at reporters who ask about kickback allegations: “Where’s the money?”
Biden won the 2020 election by a margin of 43,000 votes in three swing states because far more Americans considered Biden “honest and trustworthy” than Trump (52% vs. 40% according to a Gallup poll in October 2020). But Biden’s honesty was always a mirage created by a craven media and federal coverups. Biden campaigning as “Mr. Clean” was as absurd as if Bill Clinton had campaigned as the Chastity Kid, or Donald Trump campaigning as Humility Incarnate.
In the final debate with Trump before the election, Joe Biden proclaimed that “my son has not made money” from China. But while he was vice president, Biden took Hunter with him to Beijing in 2013 to help his boy snare sweetheart deals.
Any tax indictment of Hunter or criminal search of Joe Biden’s Delaware home prior to Election Day 2020 would have shattered Biden’s moral pretenses. And once his Teflon shield vanished, the New York Post’s revelations of Hunter’s laptop would have done far more damage to Uncle Joe.
At the least, a federal search of Biden’s home shortly before the 2020 election could have had the same blunderbuss effect as the October 2016 FBI re-opening of its investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email crimes.
Hunter’s guilty plea may have been a subsidy for the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Pleading guilty before the trial got rolling will prevent a deluge of potentially riveting evidence of Biden family corruption and official coverups. Instead, Team Biden and the Harris campaign is hoping for a single news cycle of bad publicity.
The rigging of the Hunter Biden IRS investigation is no surprise to anyone familiar with the agency’s history. As author David Burnham wrote in his 1990 masterpiece A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power, “In almost every administration since the IRS’s inception the information and power of the tax agency have been mobilized for explicitly political purposes.” Burnham noted, “The reality that so many are somehow in violation of a supremely murky law gives the agency and the individual agent an astonishingly free hand to pick and choose their targets.” This arbitrary power can be compounded when the feds choose to ignore or overlook brazen tax offenses by the politically connected.
A pardon for Hunter is as certain as Joe Biden’s next verbal hairball. But will federal agencies have the decency to drop the “equal justice” hokum and admit that “optics” trumps fair play almost every time?
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Woolsey Fire started at Santa Susana Field Lab — where “radioactive materials released were never accurately measured”
By John Laforge | CounterPunch | November 30, 2018
In my Nov. 16 column, I reported on potential radiation risks posed by California’s Woolsey wildfire having burned over parts or all of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory—south of Simi Valley, Calif., 30 miles outside Los Angeles—site of at least four partial or total nuclear reactor meltdowns.
The field laboratory operated 10 experimental reactors and conducted rocket engine tests. In his 2014 book Atomic Accidents, researcher James Mahaffey writes, “The cores in four experimental reactors on site … melted.” Reactor core melts always result in the release of large amounts of radioactive gases and particles. Clean up of the deeply contaminated site has not been conducted in spite of a 2010 agreement.
Los Angeles’s KABC-7 TV reported Nov. 13 that the Santa Susana lab site “appears to be the origin of the Woolsey Fire” which has torched over 96,000 acres. Southern Calif. Public Radio said, “According to Cal Fire, the Woolsey Fire started on the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 8 … on the Santa Susana site.” … continue
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