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Journalists persecuted for exposing Ukrainian military’s crimes

By Lucas Leiroz | June 30, 2026

The Kiev regime has long been known for its authoritarian and dictatorial practices, constantly violating the most basic democratic principles and values, such as freedom of speech and the press. Journalists have been censored, arrested, sanctioned, and – in the most extreme cases – even murdered by the regime, revealing its deeply anti-democratic nature, despite Western propaganda’s insistence on portraying it as a “guardian of European values.”

In a recent incident involving violation of press freedom, Ukrainian military threatened to use force to “punish” journalists who exposed abuses committed by recruitment centers. An officer from Ukraine’s 425th Separate Assault Regiment “Skelia” (formerly “Skala”) recently threatened journalists who had revealed allegations of torture among the regiment’s recruits.

The journalists had previously reported various types of abuse within the unit, noting that new recruits were subjected to torture – with some even dying as a result of the physical mistreatment they endured. According to information shared by the journalists, at least 26 Skelia soldiers have died in the last six months. These deaths occurred at the unit’s training grounds, where recruits were forced to withstand severe torture.

The reported practices included “beatings, forced confinement, people being bound with tape or handcuffs, and cases of draftees with serious health issues being subject to grueling assault training.” It is important to note that forced mobilization policies in Ukraine are being implemented in a draconian manner; practically any man is mobilized once located by the authorities. Consequently, individuals with health issues or no prior military experience end up in these training centers, where they are subjected to rigorous physical tests for which they are neither physically nor mentally prepared.

The allegations caused an upheaval in Ukrainian society and generated intense public pressure on military authorities. To suppress the public outrage – particularly that of the victims’ families – the government decided to remove the unit’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Yury Harkaviy, from his post. Investigations into the matter are ongoing, at least in theory. It remains unclear whether the commander and his team will face criminal charges for the torture and murder of the soldiers who died during training.

However, the authorities’ action against the unit’s commander does not appear to be truly effective. In practice, this seems to be merely a way to contain public pressure and mask what is actually happening: the persecution of the journalists involved in the report. An officer from the unit, Nikolay Kharlan, posted a video threatening the journalists, insulting them, and accusing them of “spreading misinformation for cash.” He claimed that no illegal acts occurred during the recruits’ training and harshly criticized the decision to remove his commander.

Kharlan criticized the government, accusing it of failing to fulfill its duty to protect Ukrainian military personnel. Furthermore, he stated that, given the government’s inaction, the troops themselves would take the initiative to protect their unit, thus suggesting that reprisals would be imposed on journalists. He also said he did not believe that 26 soldiers had died due to training abuses, describing the allegation as “Russian propaganda.”

“There should be criminal liability for this (…) [The government] removed itself from fulfilling its duties (…) In this case, the units of the armed forces will be able to defend themselves (…) Of the 26 people who died, 18 died in medical institutions – not at Skelia. This s**t is absolutely insane. Nine suicides? This information is false, and does not correspond to reality (…) [This is] Russian propaganda,” he said.

Although Kharlan spoke out against the government and threatened other Ukrainian citizens in his statement, no action has been taken by the authorities to punish him so far. This is due to a simple reason: the Ukrainian government lost control over its military long ago. Kiev is held hostage by military units formed by fanatical nationalists, with the formal authorities serving merely as the public face of an extremely violent and authoritarian dictatorial regime.

The decision to remove the commander will likely have only a temporary effect, intended to ease public pressure and prevent popular demonstrations in support of the victims’ families. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the military are taking the initiative to go after journalists – who, unless they take appropriate protective measures or flee the country, will face critical danger to their lives. The government will also do nothing to protect these journalists or prevent the military from attacking them, given that the government itself is known for constantly violating press freedom and turning a blind eye to crimes committed by the military.

This case clearly reveals the true nature of the Ukrainian regime, which bears no resemblance to the European media narratives of “democracy and freedom.” In reality, the Ukrainian people live under one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world.

Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.

You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.

June 30, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , | Comments Off on Journalists persecuted for exposing Ukrainian military’s crimes

EU’s New Creator Press Passes Come With a Loyalty Test

By Cam Wakefield | Reclaim The Net | June 29, 2026

The Council of the European Union has decided that from July, online creators can attend EU summits and ministerial meetings to make videos for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Fine. But the guidance to member states includes one odd instruction: don’t pick anyone who has “published views against EU values.”

What are EU values? Nobody will say. That’s the useful thing about a vague rule. You can point it wherever you like and never have to justify it. Posted something awkward about migration?

Wondered whether the euro was a good idea? Suggested the Commission gets things wrong? Possibly against EU values, possibly not, depending on who’s reading your back catalog that morning.

There’s no list of banned opinions or a review. An official just looks through your old posts and makes a call.

Now imagine them trying this on actual journalists. Guidance that said: nominate reporters to cover the summit, but exclude any who’ve expressed views against EU values. The newspapers would lose their minds, and Brussels knows it, which is exactly why it would never write that sentence down for the press corps. Journalists come with a long tradition of being a nuisance to power, and a fair number of lawyers to back it up.

Creators don’t have that armor. There’s no press freedom group ready to defend some bloke with 200,000 followers who makes explainer videos about the Council. So the EU runs an opinion test, files it under “eligibility criteria,” and assumes nobody will notice it’s the same thing it would never ask of a reporter.

They’re doing the same job, though. A creator explaining a Brussels decision to teenagers who’ll never buy a newspaper is doing journalism, whether or not anyone hands him a badge. Plenty of them reach more people than the wire reporters in the room. The only real difference is that one group has institutional defenders and the other has a phone.

Which leaves the EU with an awkward question. Is a free press one of these “values” or not? If it is, the rule contradicts itself, because the whole point of a free press is being able to publish views against you. You can’t vet your reporters for loyalty and call it press freedom in the same breath. And if a free press isn’t on the list, then they’ve told you what’s actually on it by what they left off. An institution that believed in free expression wouldn’t reach for an opinion test at all.

The clever part needs no rejection to work. The moment this guidance exists, anyone who wants a press pass starts editing himself. Skip the criticism about the latest policy. Drop the joke about von der Leyen. Keep it balanced, just in case. The Council doesn’t need to silence anyone when it can make people nervous enough to do it themselves. There’s also no paper trail, because nobody was ever formally told no.

The scheme arrives wrapped in good intentions, naturally. Brussels calls it widening engagement and bringing the institutions closer to the public. The other rules are reasonable enough: you need a real audience at home, a track record on politics and European affairs, no big sponsorship deals, no political office. Then the values clause does the job it was put there to do, sorting the approved from the unapproved. What you get isn’t a press pool so much as a fan club with lanyards.

The politicians who said anything were the ones already out of favor. Belgium’s Gerolf Annemans, a Vlaams Belang MEP, went for sarcasm: “I would go even further: nothing should be allowed to be questioned.” Lucas Hartong, formerly a Dutch MEP for the PVV, was drier, noting that “the EU and genuine democracy don’t exactly go hand in hand.” The Sweden Democrats said the whole thing showed “the EU elite is becoming increasingly desperate.”

Take the word “values” off the front and look at what’s underneath. The EU writes the definition, hands it to national governments, and uses it to decide which independent voices get to film its leaders. An institution that trusted its own legitimacy would open the doors and let the unflattering footage happen. Screening the cameras for loyalty first tells you how confident it really feels. And the creators most likely to pass? The ones who were never going to ask anything difficult anyway.

June 29, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on EU’s New Creator Press Passes Come With a Loyalty Test

Who Wants to Live in This Digital Prison?

Truthstream Media | June 28, 2026

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June 29, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , | Comments Off on Who Wants to Live in This Digital Prison?

Google’s New reCAPTCHA Wants Your Camera Access and 21 Points of Your Hand

The same company that monetizes everything you do online would like to switch on your camera

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | June 27, 2026

Google wants a look at your hands before it lets you through. The company’s newest reCAPTCHA check, rolling out now as a test, asks you to switch on your camera and wave at it so an algorithm can decide whether you’re a human or a bot.

That wave is less casual than it looks. The system records a short video of your hand and pulls 21 hand-landmark coordinates from it, mapping your finger joints, your palm geometry, and the way you move in real time.

Google describes the purpose as liveness detection, a way for websites to fend off automated account creation, credential-stuffing, and other fraud. But this is still a biometric scan, collected so you can prove you’re a person and still involves turning on your cameras for Google.

Google has lined up the promises you would expect. The company says the footage is deleted once verification finishes, no audio is recorded, and the video is never tied to your identity. Its documentation adds that nothing goes to third parties and the data serves security alone, then points to the Google Privacy Policy for how everything is used and stored, a policy elastic enough to cover almost anything.

For now the feature seems optional. People who cannot perform the gestures still get the older puzzles, with Google saying reCAPTCHA “continues to provide visual and audio challenges” while it develops alternatives.

However, we all know that optional today is rarely optional forever and the older challenges survive partly because the gesture check is still being tested.

The reassurances rest on trust and Google has spent years giving people reasons to hold it back. This is a company whose business runs on gathering and monetizing personal data, now asking to switch on your camera and read your hand.

June 27, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | | Comments Off on Google’s New reCAPTCHA Wants Your Camera Access and 21 Points of Your Hand

Larry Sanger Said Wikipedia Punishes Dissent. Then It Banned Him.

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | June 25, 2026

Larry Sanger spent the spring suggesting that Wikipedia could stand to host a wider range of opinions. The community took the suggestion under advisement, deliberated in the open spirit the site loves to advertise, and then banned him for life.

They took his point, apparently. He had argued the place was an ideological monoculture that punishes dissent and a panel of volunteers settled the question by punishing the dissenter.

Sanger cofounded Wikipedia in 2001 and wrote a good chunk of the neutrality rules still bolted to the wall. This week he collected the harshest sanction the project hands out, an indefinite block, upgraded to a permanent ban after he had the nerve to mention the block on X.

There was no appeal and his founder status bought him nothing.

When the editors closed the discussion that ended his run it wasn’t that they concluded that he broke an explicit rule. They certified that Sanger is “not here to constructively build the encyclopedia.”

That is a ruling about the man, pretending to be a ruling about an act. You can fight a specific charge against you with evidence but you can’t fight a reading of your heart because no evidence on earth disproves a feeling.

The committee decided what was rattling around inside Sanger’s head and what was rattling around inside Sanger’s skull turned out to be bannable.

Anyone with real pull on Wikipedia has an agenda, the admins and the power editors included. Sainthood has never been a documented feature of the volunteer base.

If “not really here to build” becomes grounds for exile, the rule stops catching people who have motives and starts catching people whose motives the room has voted to dislike.

The selective eyesight is sitting right out in the open for all to see. One of the accounts that helped run Sanger off, an editor going by TarnishedPath, had already been barred by Wikipedia’s own administrators from the Israel-Palestine topic area over conduct and still got a say in whether the cofounder was pure of heart.

The watchmen, it turns out, are lightly watched. The same community keeps neat little lists ranking which outlets a citation is permitted to come from.

CNN, The New York Times, and the BBC ride up front in the trusted carriage. Fox News, Newsmax, and The Federalist get seated in the marked-down section. Deciding in advance whose journalism is allowed to count, rather than the accuracy of the report and information itself, is the same reflex as deciding in advance whose intentions are allowed to be good. The site does both and files the whole operation under neutrality.

Sanger, for his part, is not charmed by the courtroom. “There is no due process,” he said to the New York Post.

“People are being blocked—in other words, disciplined—and yet there is no respect for certain expectations that any other serious disciplinary procedure would be held to.”

He compared it to a trial by “faceless mob.”

Ban discussions are meant to stay open at least 72 hours. An administrator blocked him before the clock ran out, thought better of it, reversed, then reinstated the ban as permanent the instant the window closed.

Wikipedia is also not a court and its defenders will tell you, correctly, that it never signed up to be one. The bar here is lower than a courtroom.

Anybody with the power to erase a person from a project he founded owes him more than a snap show of hands on whether he seems like their sort and owes a great deal more than that when the accusation boils down to his heart being in the wrong place.

June 25, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | | Comments Off on Larry Sanger Said Wikipedia Punishes Dissent. Then It Banned Him.

UK Speech Regulator’s Telegram Questions Point Toward Private Chats

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 21, 2026

Britain’s communications regulator is pressing Telegram to find ways of seeing what its users say to one another in private. Ofcom has begun questioning the messaging app about how it detects and prevents illegal incitement, following the conviction of a Ukrainian man for arson attacks on a car and properties connected to Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Roman Lavrynovych, 22, was reportedly drawn in through a public Telegram channel that advertised money to post and print leaflets, and that channel broke no laws. It offered legal work and told anyone interested to “contact in private messages.” The real offers, first for the poster work and later for the arson, reportedly moved into one-to-one chats away from public view.

A spokesperson for Ofcom said it had contacted the app “to seek further clarification” because the arsonist had been directed on Telegram by a handler linked to Russia.

The regulator frames this as a preliminary stage ahead of any formal investigation, though the questions point in one direction. If nothing illegal appeared in the open channel, the only place left to look is inside the private conversations between individual users.

That request carries a cost the regulator has not spelled out. Telegram cannot scan private messages for signs of incitement without reading private messages, all of them, belonging to everyone, not the handful that turn out to involve a crime.

The arson plot stayed hidden in personal chats precisely because that is where people expect to speak without an audience. Asking Telegram to surface that content means asking it to treat ordinary private conversation as something to be inspected by default.

It is not even settled what “private messages” covers here and the ambiguity raises the stakes. Telegram’s standard chats sit on its servers. Its secret chats use end-to-end encryption that the company itself cannot read, but only when turned on, and the feature is not turned on by default.

Court reporting has not made clear which kind carried the arson offers. Should Ofcom expect detection inside encrypted chats, it is effectively asking Telegram to build a route around its own encryption, most likely by scanning messages on the user’s device before they are sealed. That hollows out the protection for the people who relied on it. A message read before it is encrypted was never really encrypted.

A single conviction has become the occasion to ask a platform how it inspects private speech in general and the answer Ofcom seems to want is closer inspection.

The push runs in one direction across the Online Safety Act, through age checks, hash-matching against databases of banned images, automated tools to flag grooming and self-harm content, and now questions about catching incitement inside private chats.

Detection keeps moving inward, from public posts toward the conversations people assumed only their recipient would see. Real harms justify the steps one at a time and the cumulative effect normalizes a new baseline, where a messaging app is expected to read along and act as an extension of the regulator’s reach. The Act backs that expectation with fines of up to £18 million ($24M) or a tenth of global revenue, which is leverage enough to make most companies listen.

June 21, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on UK Speech Regulator’s Telegram Questions Point Toward Private Chats

Al-Jazeera demands punishment for Israeli officials following latest assassination of cameraman

The Cradle | June 21, 2026

Al-Jazeera Media Network condemned on 20 June Israel’s “deliberate killing” of one of its journalists in Gaza, Ahmad Washah, while calling on the international community to punish Israeli officials for this and other crimes against its media workers.

Ahmad Washah, a cameraman for Al-Jazeera Mubasher, was killed by an Israeli drone strike on a house in Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza on Saturday.

He is the 12th Al-Jazeera media worker to be killed in Gaza since Israel began its genocide of Palestinians in October 2023.

The network called on “the international community and legal institutions to take urgent, practical measures to hold the Israeli officials involved in these appalling crimes accountable,” the statement added.

Washah’s brother, Mohammad, was killed in an Israeli strike just two months earlier, in April, also while working as a correspondent for Al-Jazeera Mubasher. Before Mohammed’s death, the brothers worked together as a team, with Ahmad filming for Mohammad.

“Together, they formed a media duo that documented the suffering of the Palestinian people and the unfolding events of the war,” Al-Jazeera stated.

After Mohammad’s death, Ahmad also took care of his late brother’s children.

On Saturday, the network denounced “the continuation of the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces against its correspondents and staff in Gaza.”

Al-Jazeera said it was determined to take all legal measures to prosecute the killers of its journalists. The Qatar-based channel stressed it will continue to cover Israel’s crimes against Palestinians in Gaza despite the Israeli army’s attempts to silence the voices of its correspondents in the enclave.

Israel has killed at least 262 journalists and media workers since the start of Israel’s genocide, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.

In ‌August ⁠2025, Israel killed Al-Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and four of his colleagues in an airstrike in Gaza. Before his killing, Sharif became one of the most recognizable media voices from the front lines of northern Gaza.

In December 2023, his 90-year-old father was killed when an Israeli airstrike struck their family home in Jabalia. Sharif said the killing of his father came after Israeli officials threatened him by phone to cease his coverage.
Since October 2023, the ongoing war in Gaza has claimed the lives of countless other Palestinian journalists, including Al Jazeera staff members such as correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul, cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa, and correspondent Hossam Shabat, who were killed while reporting on the ground.

In May 2022, Israeli occupation forces shot dead another Al-Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, a US-Palestinian citizen, while she was covering an Israeli military operation in the West ​Bank city of Jenin.

Israel claimed she was killed by unintentional fire by its forces. However, multiple independent probes concluded that an Israeli military sniper killed her.

Israel has detained another 50 journalists since October 2023, holding them in detention facilities and prisons where torture and rape is common. Another three Palestinian journalists remain missing.

More than 420 journalists have been injured covering the genocide, which has killed 73,000 Palestinians by the most conservative estimates. Independent estimates reach into the hundreds of thousands of dead, in large part due to the direct effects of war.

Some of the wounded journalists have suffered serious injuries, leading to amputations and permanent disabilities.

Israel is waging the war in a bid to destroy Gaza and forcibly expel its roughly 2 million Palestinians. Israeli political and religious leaders wish to annex the strip to build Jewish settlements on the ruins of Palestinian cities and villages.

June 21, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Comments Off on Al-Jazeera demands punishment for Israeli officials following latest assassination of cameraman

The Targeted Assassination of Studies Showing Vaccines Cause Injury

Since they can’t win on the merits, they’ve resorted to other tactics

By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | June 18, 2026

A journalist from The Guardian recently contacted me for a comment on vaccine-related studies I have previously cited in my work. The publishers of these studies have decided—years after publication—that these studies were so flawed and “dangerous to public health” that they needed to be retracted or investigated. The journalist wanted to know if I would amend my book and my recent ACIP presentation now that these studies were under attack.

My response:

“I welcome the media noting the targeted assassination of articles that do not fit the religious belief of vaccine proponents; this is also exemplified by the media’s lack of interest in the hundreds of other articles, reviews, and trial documents from my book and ACIP presentation which make plain that the claim vaccines are ‘safe and effective’ is not supported by the available evidence.”

So which studies are under fire? You won’t be surprised that they are on some of the biggest hot-button topics when it comes to vaccine injury:

1. REMOVED: Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database 1990–2019 and review of the medical literature (Neil Miller, 2021). This study has not just been retracted—it has been removed. Completely wiped. This is reserved for only the most egregious publication offenses. Elsevier says it found “serious methodological flaws” and that the paper “may pose potential risks to public health.” Author Neil Miller explains their concerns were “either insignificant or plainly incorrect.” He has shared his emails with Elsevier publicly, so you can be the judge. A copy of the study can still be found here.

2. RETRACTED: Hepatitis B Vaccination of Male Neonates and Autism Diagnosis, NHIS 1997–2002 (Carolyn Gallagher & Melody Goodman, 2010). This paper was published sixteen years ago. Sixteen years. And only now was it retracted after the publisher claimed that “due to fundamental methodological flaws the study’s conclusions are unsound.” The authors stand behind the study and noted “many of the recent criticisms of the paper are consistent with what we recognized and noted at the time.”

3. UNDER INVESTIGATION: Analysis of health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children: Developmental delays, asthma, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders (Brian Hooker & Neil Miller, 2020). This study now has an “expression of concern” attached to it that says the study is “under investigation.” Miller stated that the investigation has to do with false allegations that the data came from another source and was not disclosed.

4. UNDER INVESTIGATION: Quantification of residual plasmid DNA and SV40 promoter-enhancer sequences in Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna modRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Ontario, Canada (David Speicher, Jessica Rose, & Kevin McKernan, 2025). The publisher may regret kicking the hornet’s nest on this one. Rose and McKernan have been posting regularly about their study, their conversations with the publisher, and how it turns out the person trying to get their study retracted is apparently one of the study’s original peer reviewers and who also happens to have received funding from the same German organization, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, that provided substantial funding to BioNTech. Go figure.

Behind each of these attacks is a plain desire to wipe from the record any evidence of vaccine harm and to chill the publication of any future studies that report vaccine harm.

Every scientist who values scientific integrity should publicly denounce these tactics. Anything less is not science. It is ideology.

June 20, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Comments Off on The Targeted Assassination of Studies Showing Vaccines Cause Injury

‘Biased censorship’: Iran deputy FM slams X for stripping him of blue tick

Press TV – June 19, 2026

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi has decried a recent “biased” move by the social media platform X to remove the blue checkmark from his account.

In an X post on Friday, Gharibabadi said that the online social network has removed the blue tick from his account after doing the same with the accounts of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Minister Abbas Araghchi, and spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei.

“This biased and politically-motivated measure is the continuation of the pattern of censorship aimed at silencing the truth and the official voice of governments, as well as instrumentalizing digital credibility,” he added.

Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022, the platform has faced criticism for arbitrarily removing verification badges and deleting accounts perceived as politically inconvenient.

Since February, X has stripped many Iranian officials of their blue checkmarks and deleted without explanation hundreds of accounts supportive of Iran’s brave resistance against the US-Israeli war of aggression.

June 19, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Comments Off on ‘Biased censorship’: Iran deputy FM slams X for stripping him of blue tick

Israel’s censor silenced 5,700 reports in 2025

Israeli forces detain a photojournalist in Hebron, West Bank on October 3, 2024. [Wisam Hashlamoun – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | June 18, 2026

Israel’s military censor blocked or altered more than 5,700 news reports in 2025, an average of 15 items per day, making it the second-highest year for media censorship in Israel since records began 15 years ago, according to new data published by +972 Magazine.

The figures, obtained through a freedom of information request submitted by +972 and the Movement for Freedom of Information, show that the censor demanded redactions in 4,974 news items in 2025, while completely barring 753 further items from publication. Both totals remain far above the previous annual average of around 2,300 redactions and 320 full bans recorded between 2011 and 2023. The year 2024, the height of Israel’s genocide on Gaza, still holds the record for the highest number of interventions.

The censor, a unit embedded within Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, received 17,176 article submissions from media outlets in 2025, compared to a pre-2024 annual average of just under 12,000. Israeli law requires media organisations to submit material touching on “security” issues for censor approval before publication, under emergency regulations enacted at the time of Israel’s founding that remain in force today.

According to +972, censorship was most intensive during Israel’s war with Iran. Police, municipal inspectors, and at times civilians enforced severe restrictions on reporting the locations of Iranian missile strikes on Israeli cities, with Arab and foreign journalists disproportionately subjected to obstruction in the field. Television studios regularly hosted a representative of the censorship authority to monitor live broadcasts in real time.

Media outlets are legally barred from informing their audiences that the censor interfered in a published article. The censor is also authorised to intervene retroactively, ordering the removal of articles published without prior approval as it did last year when it demanded the deletion of a column in Haaretz that disclosed the locations of Iranian missile strikes in Tel Aviv.

The censor holds sweeping powers of enforcement, including the authority to indict journalists and to fine, suspend, shut down, or file criminal charges against media organisations that fail to comply with its orders.

The data raises questions about the political direction of the censorship apparatus. The two men who led the censor over the past two years — Kobi Mandelblit, who served as chief censor until April 2025, and Netanel Kula, who replaced him — are both relatives of senior legal figures from Israel’s religious-Zionist movement.

Three months after Kula assumed the role, reports emerged that he had suppressed coverage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son purchasing an undisclosed property abroad. The story eventually reached the public through other channels.

The data also points to a striking double standard in enforcement. The far-right Channel 14, a broadcaster aligned with Israel’s ultranationalist camp, repeatedly published sensitive combat plans and military intelligence tools that security officials determined had caused “actual harm” to national security. Despite this, the channel was not penalised on any occasion.

“It is particularly important during times of emergency to receive reliable information about changes regarding the censor’s activities,” said Or Sadan, an attorney from the Movement for Freedom of Information. “Although there has been a slight decrease from last year, it is hard not to notice the alarming rise in the number of news reports being hidden from the public. Democracy is based on the transfer of information from the government to the public, and any infringement upon this is a direct infringement upon democracy.”

+972 notes that military censorship, while severe, is not the most acute form of press freedom violation committed by the Israeli military. Since 7 October 2023, more than 250 journalists have been killed across Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran — some of them in strikes that investigators have concluded were direct and deliberate, including so-called “double-tap” attacks targeting rescue workers who arrived at the scene of a first strike.

June 18, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Comments Off on Israel’s censor silenced 5,700 reports in 2025

Call for Hamas de-proscription

By Pete Gregson | MEMO | June 17, 2026

In the years of Pro-Palestine demonstrations I’ve attended since 7th October 2023, there is rarely a mention of the group at the core of the whole issue: Hamas. For people are fearful to talk about them. But whilst calling for support for Hamas may be illegal, seeking its de-proscription is not. The UK Government’s 2000 Terrorism act permits requesting the de-proscription of any “terrorist” group. You can’t be penalised for calling for de-proscription. Citizens have the right to appeal against proscription if you give a reason as to why its proscription affects you.

Following the events of 7th October 2023, I did exactly that and launched a petition to the Home Secretary. Initially I tried to get the petition before Parliament using the UK Government portal but was told it was beyond Parliament’s remit! So, I launched it online on Go-Petition, promoted it using 20,000 flyers – which I took to all the demonstrations around London and Scotland – and started getting signatures.

By January, the online petition had 45,000 views and 1,410 signatures which, though fearing arrest, I took to Downing Street. My two supporters and I had our photo taken outside No. 10 and were welcomed into the building by police carrying a big box with Hamas Petition written on it.

The mainstream media was completely absent, despite my mailing 270 journalists – not one of whom decided to cover it. Only Russia Today, Al Jazeera, The Canary and Middle East Monitor carried it.

I experienced no issue with the police despite threats of being arrested from two of the 650 MPs I had written to on the petition. Unhappily for these two public servants, I had broken no law.

To be clear, although I have previously been in touch with Hamas on a prior campaign to twin Edinburgh with Gaza, they did not request nor have any involvement with this one. Indeed, around this time, an organisation called Riverways Law were asked by Hamas to submit a de-proscription application.

Their submission was much more thorough than my 8-page submission to the Home Secretary. You can check it out in full on their website at https://hamascase.com. It had lots of witness statements, including from members of Hamas describing what they saw on 7th October as well as the impact de-proscription was having on people’s lives. It was a phenomenal amount of work. They asked for de-proscription on three grounds:

  1. They said the Home Secretary has a duty to prevent even a suspicion of genocide; the way that the rules are set out, it’s not that she needs to see someone committing genocide in order to stop them – if there is even a suspicion of genocide, it becomes incumbent upon her to act. But because she’s banned Hamas and Hamas is fighting genocide- proscription means she’s undermining that fight.
  2. The second issue of course was Freedom of Speech. The Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas) were banned in 2001 by Tony Blair, but the political part of Hamas was accepted by Britain as being legitimate – they were essentially the government of Gaza. It wasn’t until 2021 when Priti Patel went on holiday to Israel, met Netanyahu and banned Hamas on her return. No vote in Parliament was required. Yet as Hamas has never operated outside Palestine, there is no issue of protection within the UK. We in Britain should have a right to discuss Hamas and by banning it, the Home Secretary has taken away our freedom of speech, which is Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. So, it is the British Government who are breaking the law here.
  3. Finally, there is the lack of proportionality over banning. The Quartet (Russia, the US, UN and the EU) – set their preconditions after Hamas was democratically elected in 2006. Despite the fact that the UN has allowed the use of armed force against occupation since 1982, they said they would only engage with Hamas if they gave up arms, recognise Israel and accept all PLO/Israeli agreements that had been made in the Oslo Accords of 1993. Clearly, Hamas were never going to do that.

The Quartet later appointed Tony Blair because of his ability in Northern Ireland to get peace- which was an incredible achievement. But we got peace because we negotiated. We never asked Sinn Fein to recognise Britain’s authority over Ulster. We weren’t asking the same thing that he was then asking Hamas to do. Another example: Nelson Mandela, when he headed the armed wing of the ANC, wasn’t asked to renounce the ANC before discussing peace.

Also, Hamas is the Gaza administration- so proscription criminalises all public sector workers there. For example, Gaza City Council has 5,000 employees, just looking after the million people who lived in Gaza City. Technically, if you send money to one of those employees- you could be supporting Hamas. So its banning is simply unjust because it criminalises a vast swathe of people. It’s also pointless because they don’t have any influence over Britain.

The original charter was drafted when Hamas was established in 1987; there were some quite harsh things in there. It’s an Islamic resistance movement after all – but that wasn’t the full thoughts of Hamas, because it wasn’t written by all of them, it was written by one man. So, in 2017 they released a clarification – their Principles and Policies. In it, they even said they would settle for a “Hudna”, a truce, along the same lines as what the UN and UK demands – a return to the 1967 borders, Israel giving up the land it had taken then, giving up that occupation. Hamas also wanted the Palestinian prisoners to be released and the Palestinians who were driven out in 1948 to be given the right of return, as the UN had called for in resolution 194. But the Hamas offer of a truce was completely ignored; this proposal wasn’t covered in the West at all.

Each year Hamas calls for elections; but Fatah each year denies them. It’s true that Hamas would prefer Sharia law, but it has said it will go with the majority in a democratic Palestine. It seeks the end of Israel but would live alongside Jews who gave up Zionism. But none of this was or is talked about.

We get a very twisted view of Hamas. A brief look at its history: it all began with the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt, which was then constituted in Palestine in 1946. The Brotherhood concentrated on philanthropic acts- setting up mosques, schools, universities and so on. Back then Russia and China supported the liberation movements all over the world and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) benefitted from this. As the Soviet Union fell, political Islam rose. In 1987 much of the Brotherhood realised it could not refuse to fight any longer and so with the first intifada in 1987, Hamas emerged. Initially, Israel discreetly supported them as a counter to the secular PLO. But in 1993 matters exploded after Israeli Baruch Goldstein killed 29 worshippers at a mosque in Hebron (Goldstein is a hero nowadays to people like Ben-Gvir); he committed mass murder and injured hundreds more. As a response, the Qasam brigades (the Hamas armed wing) declared they would retaliate, using two suicide bombs in buses against civilians in 1994. This resulted in Hamas’ proscription by the US and then the UK and EU.

Recall that in 1993, Israel and the PLO had signed the Oslo Accords- without most Palestinians knowing about it. The PLO was led by Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s party.

Hamas rejected these accords and wouldn’t get involved in the first elections but chose to give the new Palestine Authority (PA) a chance. The PA began then doing what Israel had said they should do in the agreement, which was to jail people who were resisting Israel’s rule. The PA started jailing Hamas supporters, doing Israel’s dirty work. Also, it was becoming quite corrupt.

Hamas was under attack on all fronts. From 1996 onwards, Israel began murdering Hamas leaders; in 2004 they assassinated Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, its founder. Fatah’s Arafat also died in 2004, following which Abbas stood for election. Hamas boycotted this, because any president of theirs would have had to negotiate with Israel, which they did not wish to do- so Fatah’s Abbas took power. But in 2006 Hamas decided they would stand for election because they fundamentally believe in democracy. They did stand, winning handsomely. But Israel and the US immediately set about undermining the Hamas Government, which Fatah had also rejected, because they didn’t want to give up power. Abbas had his own US-trained police force versus the Hamas Government police force; this was just a recipe for disaster. There were many killings of Hamas supporters, then revenge killings; eventually it became clear that Fatah was planning a coup, which led to Hamas seizing power in Gaza.

Thereafter, Israel refused to negotiate over Palestinian statehood. They employed a Catch-22; they said they wouldn’t negotiate with Hamas, because they were “terrorists”; and they wouldn’t negotiate with the PA because it didn’t reflect all Palestinians. There was no way to win because Israel had every excuse in the book for refusing the things that they had agreed to.

In the West Bank, as expected, the PA became responsible for arresting Hamas supporters, making them very unpopular. Then when Hamas took power in Gaza, Israel began its blockade; Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel. Over 20 years from 2001 onwards, 44 Israelis were killed by rockets fired from Gaza; over the same period, Israel killed many, many thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

Note that Hamas made repeated attempts over the years at peaceful protest, culminating in the 2018 Great March of Return. It was just so shocking; people were getting murdered by snipers just because they wanted to go home, back through the fence. Many of us became aware of the true nature of the Israeli regime at this time.

But Israel continued to allow Qatar to fund Hamas; suitcases full of dollar bills went into Gaza because Israel wanted to keep Hamas going, as then they would continue in conflict with Fatah (the PA), who were being funded by the EU and the US. The more they became polarised, the more the Israelis benefitted.

This carried on until Donald Trump set up the 2020 Abraham Accords in an attempt to “normalise” relations between the Arab states and Israel, seeking the former’s recognition and trade with Israel. Bahrain, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates all signed and in 2023 it looked like Saudi Arabia was going to be next, even though up until then the Saudis had said they wouldn’t normalise unless Palestine attained  statehood. But the more the Israelis promised the Saudis- their own nuclear power stations for example- the more the Saudis were tempted, which gave the strong impression that Palestine was being negotiated away. Hamas felt it had to put Palestine back in the public eye. Also, there was a lot of anger about Israeli actions at Al Aqsa Mosque in 2023, where IDF soldiers attacked people at worship during Ramadan.

Hamas launched their strike pre-emptively as they became aware that Israel was about to attack again and take the Hamas leaders. In this strike, their stated aim was to capture soldiers- as the going rate for one Israeli soldier was about one thousand Palestinians, as evidenced by the various previous prisoner exchanges that had taken place.

The plan therefore was to take captives. On 7th October Hamas launched an attack with the IDF falling back quickly, which Hamas didn’t expect. They then moved to settlements seeking more captives. Israel now employed the Hannibal directive, which is to stop Israelis falling into Palestinian hands.  Clearly, the damage to cars at the scene could not have been done by guys on motorbikes with Kalashnikovs and were likely done by Hellfire missiles from IDF Apache helicopters. These cars were completely and utterly burned out. The cars had been taking Israelis back to Gaza as captives, but the IDF bombed them. Damage from IDF tank fire of kibbutz homes was also apparent. Whether there was a Palestinian in there and some Israelis, the IDF didn’t care, they just bombed the whole building because they knew that they could then blame Hamas. It’s believed as many as 800 Israelis were killed by the IDF. Furthermore, as more and more evidence has come to light following the attack, the claims of mass rape have by now been largely dismissed, despite the media frenzy. There were 19 breaches of the border fence, through which lots of people flooded out of Gaza, not just Hamas. The psychological state of these Gazans can be guessed at, after being starved and bombed for twenty years. They attacked the Nova festival that Hamas says they didn’t know was taking place.

The US and UK accepted Israel’s narrative. And now Israel uses the terrorist label to justify a genocide. And most Israelis have gone along with this because, they think “Oh no, they’re going to kill us all”. It’s got to that level of terror amongst your average Israeli – that they think “we can’t do anything but kill Palestinians, because otherwise we’re dead”. Which is exactly what Netanyahu and the Zionists want.

Even in this country, they brew up terror amongst Jewish people, because they know that just keeps the whole ball rolling that Jews everywhere are at risk– and nothing sells newspapers like antisemitism.

As long as Hamas represents the majority political view in Palestine, any negotiations would need to include Hamas, for any resulting deal to have any legitimacy within Palestine. Various UK Lords such as Lord Peter Hain and Lord Rickets have declared that wiping out Hamas is impossible. Even Tony Blair said it was a mistake to ban Hamas. Yet, these issues are shoved under the carpet and what we have is a very silent acceptance of proscription. But 80% of countries in the world do not label Hamas as terrorists. The UN does not define Hamas as terrorists. It’s actually the UK, the EU and the US that do so, which gives Israel all the cover it needs to continue killing Palestinians.

Pro-Palestine demonstrations are all very good but are not really getting at the root of what’s going on; Palestinians are fighting for their lives and land, and we should not ignore the fact that Hamas are fighting for them.

The tide is turning. A recent survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute indicated that more than a quarter of British undergraduates consider the Hamas attacks of 7th October to be “defensible”. Furthermore, Britain’s Muslim police body, the National Association of Muslim Police, recently defended Hamas and labelled the IDF as a “terrorist group”.

We must keep calling for de-proscription. If you agree, please sign the petition at www.tiny.cc/hamas – which also supports the Riverways Law bid. Although that was turned down, it is now being pursued through the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. We can then start getting people to write to their MPs. If enough people bug their politicians, we may succeed, not tomorrow perhaps, but if we persist for as long as it takes, it may lead to the establishment of a new democratic state for the most persecuted and oppressed people on this planet.

June 17, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Comments Off on Call for Hamas de-proscription

DHS docs: Govt bracing for nationwide anti-AI riots, preparing to crack down on dissent

By Alan MACLEOD | MintPress News | June 11, 2026 

New documents from government agencies such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security show that Washington is preparing for widespread anti-A.I. riots, as the technology destroys communities and industries across the country. Ironically, the Trump administration is already using invasive A.I. technology to identify and suppress what it calls anti-A.I. “extremists,” in the process, sweeping the entire nation into its massive surveillance dragnet.

More than 1,000 pages of leaked documents reviewed by WIRED Magazine show that government agencies are anticipating a huge wave of domestic unrest in the coming years, as artificial intelligence upends American society. Automation-related job losses could shatter entire industries, while the building of gigantic data centers will remove water and electricity from public use, ramping up the price of what little remains.

As one report from the New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau notes:

“The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent A.I. technology in the next five years may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City.”

An Environmental and Health Catastrophe

Last year, the tech industry collectively spent around half a trillion dollars on the construction of new data centers. These buildings consume near insatiable amounts of energy and water. By 2030, they are expected to represent around 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption. One large data center consumes up to five million gallons of water per day – as much as a small city. It has been calculated that a single 100-word A.I. prompt to a chatbot like Claude or ChatGPT uses over half a liter of water, equivalent to one bottle.

When a data center moves into town, utility prices skyrocket. In this situation, wholesale electricity, for example, jumps by up to 267%. Ordinary Americans cannot compete with the likes of Amazon or Microsoft, and can be priced out of even the most basic necessities of life, causing widespread resentment.

Living near a data center can also be hazardous to human health. Thanks to the low-frequency noises they produce, residents often report chronic symptoms such as insomnia, vertigo, and nausea. Worse still, to meet their enormous energy demands, data centers often rely on gas or diesel generators, which emit high levels of nitrogen oxides, fine particular matter, and so-called “forever chemicals” into the air, further complicating the situation.

A.I. will also have a profound effect on employment. Goldman Sachs predicts that, over the next decade, 300 million jobs could be lost to A.I.-based automation. Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, has suggested that whole industries may be replaced by his product. “Entire classes of jobs will go away and not come back,” he confidently stated in 2019. Facing growing public anger, last month, he walked those statements back, assuring the public that there would be no “jobs apocalypse.”

But if these predictions are anything close to correct, it will cause massive economic disruption across America, and send towns and entire cities dependent on certain types of work into potentially permanent depressions. The latest news that Washington is preparing to treat this unrest as akin to terrorism should be of great concern to all Americans.

The Dark Side of A.I.

The public, as a whole, is highly skeptical of artificial intelligence. A recent poll found that only 5% trust A.I. a great deal, while 77% think it could pose a fundamental threat to humanity.

The U.S. national security state, however, has fully committed to A.I., and is using it to mass surveil the public and to identify those not sufficiently supportive of the new technology. In March, FBI director Kash Patel confirmed that the bureau is buying Americans’ personal online user data from brokers in order to track the public. The Department of Homeland Security has spent millions purchasing A.I. software that detects the sentiment and emotions of Americans’ online posts, and is using it to identify activists and other potential “threats.” It has also sent subpoenas to Google, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Discord, and other large social media apps demanding they share the personal information and identities of anonymous users who have criticized the actions of the Trump administration. Government officials confirmed to The New York Times that platforms have often complied with their requests.

A.I. giant Anthropic publicly pulled out of a deal with the U.S. Department of War to develop A.I. systems in “classified environments,” stating that they feared the technology would immediately be used to carry out mass domestic surveillance in the United States. “We cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” they said, explaining their decision. The company was immediately labeled a national security “supply chain risk” by the Trump administration, and the contract was fulfilled by OpenAI.

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman is one of Trump’s most generous donors, having channeled $25 million to the president’s super PAC, MAGA Inc. He has also poured $50 million into Leading the Future, a bipartisan super PAC aimed at promoting pro-A.I. legislation in Washington, D.C., and defeating and silencing lawmakers who wish to curb the influence and power of the new industry.

It remains to be seen to what extent A.I. will actually become a revolutionary technology, but what is clear is that the U.S. government is preparing for major economic and social disruption in its wake. Instead of creating economic bailout plans and social welfare programs to help those negatively affected, however, it is preparing an authoritarian response, looking to crush dissent. What makes this future even more ironically dystopian is that, to do so, it is using the very A.I. that is triggering the problem in the first place.

June 13, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Comments Off on DHS docs: Govt bracing for nationwide anti-AI riots, preparing to crack down on dissent

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