Persecution against Scott Ritter shows US not democracy anymore
By Lucas Leiroz | June 4, 2024
The persecution of political dissidents in the US is becoming commonplace. People who oppose Washington’s aggressive foreign policy are being seen as enemies and treated as criminals, even when there is no plausible reason to charge them. Recently, military analyst Scott Ritter had his passport confiscated by US authorities without any specific reason, showing the advanced levels of tyranny in the country.
Ritter was on a plane at the New York airport. His plan was to travel to the Russian Federation, as he had a special invitation to participate in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which will begin in the next few days. Ritter was already boarding when three policemen suddenly forcibly removed him and seized his documents. When asked about the reason for this action, the policemen said they were following orders from the US State Department and refused to clarify any details about the case.
“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me (…) They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport,” he told journalists.
Without his passport, Ritter is unable to leave the US territory. In practice, he will begin living under a regime similar to house arrest, not only being monitored by American authorities, but also being prevented from leaving the country. It is curious that this happened precisely during a trip by Ritter to Russia. It seems that Washington is trying to make it clear to all its citizens that there will be no tolerance for citizens who maintain any form of ties with Moscow.
Ritter has long been one of the most vocal critics of military support for Ukraine. In his interviews and articles, he openly advocates for an end to arms supply and for a friendly policy between the US and Russia. Ritter has repeatedly exposed the truth about Ukrainian Nazism and Western collusion with ultranationalism and racism. In addition, his main work as a military analyst consists of providing detailed, technical analyses that show the situation of the sides in the conflict.
While Western media have long claimed that Kiev is “winning the war,” Ritter has emerged as a dissenting voice proving the opposite, saying that military control of the conflict belongs to the Russian Federation. He has refuted fallacious narratives such as the “Ukrainian victory in Kiev” or the “Kherson counteroffensive.” Using impartial and technical military analysis, Ritter has substantiated each of his arguments about Russia winning the war. Today, his work is recognized as one of the best among military experts around the world, with many of his predictions having come true.
This is not the first time that Ritter has suffered persecution in his own country. In the past, he has been criticized, defamed and even detained by American authorities because of his stance against Washington’s war initiatives. Ritter severely criticized the American decision to invade Iraq, stating that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country. At the time, he was a UN weapons inspector and had privileged information about the real situation in the Middle East.
Currently, in addition to providing military analysis on the war in Ukraine, Ritter has also been strongly critical of Israeli violence in the Gaza Strip, which has certainly generated discontent among radical Zionists in American domestic politics. In addition, he has worked to refute fallacies and stereotypes about Russia and the Russian people, making frequent trips to Russia to show the local reality. Recently, Ritter was in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg and spoke to the Western media about what real life is like in Russia today, explaining that the country is in a favorable economic situation, without any effect of Western sanctions.
It is already clear that persecution is the fate of any American dissident. When US citizens disagree with their country’s policies, the authorities attack, arrest and defame them. Unfortunately, this is the reality in the country that claims to be the global guardian of democracy. However, this lie is increasingly discredited. Despite all the propaganda efforts, it is already clear to the world that the US is no longer a democracy.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.
Columbia Law Review website put offline to censor Palestinian scholar
The Cradle | June 4, 2024
The Columbia Law Review (CLR) board of directors has taken down the publication’s website in response to its editors publishing a lengthy article about the Nakba by a Palestinian legal scholar, The Intercept reported on 4 June.
The CLR publishes scholarly articles, essays, and student notes and is edited by Columbia Law School students.
Five months ago, editors of the CLR had reached out to Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, asking him to contribute an article establishing the “Nakba” as a formal legal concept. Palestinians use the word, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, to refer to the expulsion and dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1948.
The Nakba cleansed Palestine of most of its indigenous Muslim and Christian inhabitants, paving the way for the establishment of the state of Israel for Jews from Europe and elsewhere.
Eghbariah is completing his doctoral studies at Harvard Law School and has tried landmark Palestinian civil rights cases before the Israeli Supreme Court. A previous article he prepared about the Nakba for the Harvard Law Review was also censored at the last minute.
He noted that in its current case charging Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice, South Africa’s legal team referred to the Palestinian “ongoing Nakba” as the context for the current genocide case.
Eghbariah’s article for the CLR, which is more than 100 pages long, underwent a rigorous editorial process before publication, with input from 30 CLR members.
“Every single piece that we publish goes through an incredibly, incredibly rigorous publication process. We just have high publication standards,” said Jamie Jenkins, one of the main editors. Jenkins noted the piece was given even more scrutiny because of the controversial nature of the subject matter. “So there was some additional work put into it, but in general, it was the same steps of production.”
However, when the article was scheduled to be published in the May edition, members of the CLR board of directors insisted that publication be delayed and made the unusual request that the article be sent to the rest of the law review for additional scrutiny.
Fearing a draft of the article would be leaked, the editors finally published it on 3 June at 2:30 am.
In response, the board of directors contacted the editors again, requesting the entire May edition to be taken down. When the editorial leadership refused the request, the entire CLR website was taken down and remains offline as of 4 June.
Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, pro-Israel lobby groups and business elites in the US have sought to suppress the speech of Palestinians and those opposing Israel’s war on Gaza, including through police suppression of protests at universities, limiting the scope and reach of pro-Palestinian social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and by banning Tik Tok.
Despite this, the horrific images of Israeli bombs killing Palestinian women and children over the past seven months have made it difficult for pro-Israel interests to control the perception of events. Israel’s war on Gaza is now widely viewed as genocide.
The Intercept adds that both Eghbariah and numerous editors at the CLR remain committed to the importance of the legal scholarship concerning the Nakba.
“What we need to do is to acknowledge the Nakba as its own independent framework that intersects and overlaps with genocide and apartheid,” Eghbariah told The Intercept while adding that the Nakba also “stands as a distinct framework that can be understood as its own crime with a distinctive historical analytical foundation structure and purpose.”
Threat to Arrest Russian Journalists Signals Growing Political Persecution in West
By John Miles – Sputnik – 04.06.2024
Western governments are increasingly turning towards overt methods of repression as they lose their grip on control of the masses.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) has been forced to disavow comments by a legal director with the organization calling for the arrest of Russian journalists after intense backlash.
Anna Neistat, who leads the foundation’s The Docket project, claimed Thursday that her team is urging international authorities to prosecute Russian reporters.
“We want them to travel to other countries and be arrested there,” said Neistat, revealing that she is pressuring the European Union and International Criminal Court to pursue the matter. Neistat made the comments during an interview with the US state-backed propaganda outlet Voice of America.
The organization has since backpedaled on the provocative claim with a statement asserting that “someone in our foundation misspoke,” but observers see the proposal as yet another sign of the West’s growing authoritarianism and intolerance of dissenting voices.
Author and political analyst Caleb Maupin joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Monday to discuss the incident.
“There’s a lot of things to keep in mind in reaction to this news story,” said the author and reporter. “The first of which is that the European Union has basically already outlawed all Russian media within the EU space, right? You can’t watch RT. Websites are suppressed, blocked, and it’s pretty hard to look at Russian media in the EU.”
“RT France has been shut down. You can’t watch RT in Belgium, you can’t watch RT in EU countries,” he continued. “What is a little bit different, though, about this is that this was specifically aimed at journalists who would report in Russian, for Russian audiences, but would do so from EU countries. And the idea was that they would be charged, and what’s interesting also is that the warrants for their arrest would be secret.”
“They would be arrested upon arrival and it would be a way to basically just kidnap these reporters and journalists and hold them hostage. And, if you look at it, it’s a particularly nasty proposal. And that’s probably why I noticed that George Clooney is now backing away from it and saying, ‘oh, people from our foundation misspoke, we didn’t mean this,’ etcetera.”
European countries have made increasingly aggressive attempts in recent years to restrict media and control the flow of information across the continent. The EU has outright banned Russian media outlets from broadcasting within the 27-nation bloc, but measures have been taken against third-party platforms, as well. The video sharing website Rumble was forced to block French users from accessing the platform after refusing to comply with government demands to block Russian content.
Politicians in the UK have also explored blocking the website, and the country recently detained journalist Kit Klarenberg at an airport in London, questioning him for five hours about his political views.
Across the Atlantic, the United States has famously condemned journalist Julian Assange to 12 years of effective confinement after the Wikileaks founder published leaked material revealing US war crimes in Iraq. Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made plans to kidnap and murder the firebrand transparency activist, it was recently revealed.
The uproar over the CFJ’s comments comes as Sputnik contributor Scott Ritter was denied travel to speak at a conference in Russia Monday, having his passport confiscated by authorities on apparent orders from the US State Department. Free speech concerns have also been raised over police crackdowns on campus pro-Palestine encampments, a move demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I will say, though, that the Ukrainians have been saying this from the beginning,” said Maupin of the calls to arrest Russian journalists. “I mean, they have this list of ‘information terrorists’ – which I’m proudly on, by the way, I’m listed by the Ukrainian government as an ‘information terrorist’ – and they have been calling for the assassination and murder of journalists, and they’ve done it since the war has begun.”
“This is not a change for Ukraine. What’s changed here is that the Clooney Foundation made such a statement and wanted to enlist EU governments in carrying it out.”
Western governments are usually more subtle in their attempts to control information, noted Maupin, typically relying more on efforts to influence popular narratives rather than outright censorship. The move towards more overt repression may be seen as a response to the increased transparency allowed by the Internet, or perhaps another sign of the West’s loss of power as a multipolar world order comes into view.
“They like subtly bringing up points they like,” Maupin noted. “Finding people who say things that they agree with and boosting them rather than saying it themselves. This is how the intelligence world works, and a huge amount of what the American intelligence apparatus does is construct media narratives and insert ideas into media discourse.”
“A lot of what the intelligence apparatus does is just boost certain messages and try to control the conversation in a subtle way to advance US foreign policy goals.”
US seizes Scott Ritter’s passport
Scott Ritter. © David McNew/Getty Images
RT | June 3, 2024
The US State Department has seized the passport of former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, he told RT on Monday.
Ritter was on his way to Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) when he was pulled off the plane and had his documents confiscated.
“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me,” Ritter told RT. “They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.”
Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, who later served as the US and UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He is also a RT contributor, writing about international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.
He most recently visited Russia in January, spending time in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg, among other places.
The most recent post on Ritter’s Telegram channel put the Clooney Foundation for Justice on notice for its alleged crusade against “Russian propagandists.”
“Here I am. In your face. If telling the truth about Russia makes me a propagandist in your book, then I accept the title,” he wrote. “Bring it on. I’ll school you on the First Amendment.”
“You have zero concept of what free speech is. Try and arrest me and you’ll find out. In spades. It’s war,” he added.
DOJ: Americans Can’t Hear The Biden-Hur ‘Memory Interview’ Because of ‘Deepfakes’
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 02.06.2024
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to prevent the release of the audio of the infamous “memory interview” between US President Joe Biden and special counsel Robert Hur, arguing that “deepfakes” may appear as a result.
Hur was investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents he obtained as a senator and vice president. While Hur wrote in his report that Biden likely violated the law intentionally, he declined to press charges because he thought Biden would appear to the jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” It also noted that Biden had trouble remembering when he was vice president and which year his son Beau died.
The DOJ issued a filing on Friday that argued “The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files. If the audio recording is released here, it is easy to foresee that it could be improperly altered, and that the altered file could be passed off as an authentic recording and widely distributed.”
While the DOJ admits that there is plenty of “other raw material to create a deepfake of President Biden’s voice” available to unscrupulous actors, it argues that if the public became aware that the legitimate recording was released, they would be more apt to believe a fake recording is legitimate.
The filing was first obtained by Politico.
It is not known how the court will respond to the strange reasoning. If a legitimate copy of the recording were released, it stands to reason it would become easier –not more difficult– to disprove fake versions.
As the DOJ admits in its filing as part of its argument that the release of the audio recording is unnecessary, the full transcript of the interview has already been released. It would be trivial for someone with AI experience to use the “raw material” already available of Biden to create a deepfake version of the interview and say it was leaked. A legitimate version being released would make that much easier for other internet users and the media to definitively debunk.
The filing also comes after Biden used his executive privilege to stop the release of the tape to House Republicans who had sought to obtain it as part of their investigation into the Biden family. The latest filing was in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The DOJ also argues that the release of the audio would be a violation of Biden’s privacy. However, since we already know what he said thanks to the transcript– and we have no reason to believe that the transcript is incorrect, the only thing that would be revealed is everything between those words. How long did Biden pause before answering? How many times did he stumble on his words? Did he sound confused or angry during the interview?
These are the questions that could be revealed through the release of the audio and according to the filing, the DOJ doesn’t think it is in the “public interest” to reveal the answers, so much so that they are willing to resort to absurd fear-mongering over a new technology in hopes that the judge will be cowed into blocking its release.
Google Tightens Influence on UK Elections with New “Moderation” Tactics
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 2, 2024
Google has found itself yet another election to “support.”
After the company made announcements to this effect related to the EU (European Parliament) June ballot, voters in the UK can now also look forward to – or dread, as the case may be – the tech giant’s role in their upcoming general election.
A blog post by Google UK Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy Katie O’Donovan announced even more “moderation” and a flurry of other measures, most of which have become tried-and-tested instruments of Google’s censorship over the past years.
They are divided in three categories – pushing (“surfacing”) content and sources of information picked by Google as authoritative and of high quality, along with YouTube information panels, investing in what it calls Trust & Safety operations, as well as “equipping campaigns with the best-in-class security tools and training.”
Another common point is combating “misinformation” – together with what the blog post refers to as “the wider ecosystem.” That concerns Google News Initiative and PA Media, a private news agency, and their Election Check 24, which is supposed to safeguard the UK election from “mis- and dis-information.”
Searches related to voting are “rigged” to return results manipulated to boost what Google considers authoritative sources – notably, the UK government’s site.
As for AI, the promise is that users of Google platforms will receive “help navigating” that type of content.
This includes the obligation for advertisers to reveal that ads “include synthetic content that inauthentically depicts real or realistic-looking people or events” (this definition can easily be stretched to cover parody, memes, and similar).
“Disclosure” here, however, is still differentiated from Google’s outright ban on manipulated media that it decides “misleads people.” Such content is labeled, and banned if considered as having the ability to maybe pose “a serious risk of egregious harm.”
And then there’s Google’s AI chatbot Gemini, which the giant has restricted in terms of what types of election-related queries it will respond to – once again, as a way to root out “misinformation” while promoting “fairness.”
This falls under what the company considers to be “a responsible approach to generative AI products.”
But as always, AI is also seen as a “tool for good” – for example, when it allows for building “faster and more adaptable enforcement systems.”
Victoria’s Premier unveils new parliamentary role to change men’s behavior, researching internet and social media
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 30, 2024
Australian politics is simply a gift that keeps on giving. Over the last years, several draconian measures have been enacted, from the pandemic to free speech restrictions, and now the time has come to establish a parliamentary role the focus of which will be to change people’s behavior.
Specifically – men’s behavior. This is happening in the state of Victoria, where Premier Jacinta Allan was proud to announce the role has been entrusted to MP Tim Richardson. Richardson’s official title is Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behavior Change.
It’s a first in Australia, and that’s another thing Allan was happy to point out. The result of Richardson’s work should make Victoria safer for women and children, the premier stated.
One of the snarky reactions to the announcement left on Instagram wondered if Richardson will, as part of his efforts to change men’s behavior, work to “teach men they cannot identify as women.”
But that is highly unlikely what Allan has in mind – instead she spoke about stopping “the tragedy of deaths of Victorian women at the hands of men” and building “respectful relationships.”
Yet, how is Richardson supposed to influence such things and do a better job than say, the police, or therapists? Apparently, he will deal with social media and the internet – that Australian authorities at various levels are positively obsessed with, in terms of attempts to control them.
Allan said Richardson will “focus largely on the influence the internet and social media have on boys” and their “attitudes” toward women.
The MP confirmed his appointment, opting for a statement strong on sloganeering that said, “We know that the time to act on men’s violence against women is now and it starts with us men and boys.”
Aside from the fact that “the time” to act against that and other types of violence is surely “always” – it remains largely unclear from these announcements how exactly Richardson’s activities will help with this matter.
What has been revealed is that the Victoria MP will work with the state’s Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Vicki Ward.
Australians must be hoping that Richardson will on one hand be successful – and on the other, that the “focus on the influence the internet and social media have” will not be taken as yet another formalized way for the Australian authorities to further crack down on online speech and communications.
Alternative Media Giants Sue The Censorship Industrial Complex
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 29, 2024
In a new lawsuit, Webseed and Brighteon Media have accused multiple US government agencies and prominent tech companies of orchestrating a vast censorship operation aimed at suppressing dissenting viewpoints, particularly concerning COVID-19. The plaintiffs, Webseed and Brighteon Media, manage websites like NaturalNews.com and Brighteon.com, which have been at the center of controversy for their alternative health information and criticism of government policies.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
The defendants include the Department of State, the Global Engagement Center (GEC), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and tech giants such as Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), Google, and X. Additionally, organizations like NewsGuard Technologies, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) are implicated for their roles in creating and using tools to label and suppress what they consider misinformation.
Allegations of Censorship and Anti-Competitive Practices:
The lawsuit claims that these government entities and tech companies conspired to develop and promote censorship tools to suppress the speech of Webseed and Brighteon Media, among others. “The Government was the primary source of misinformation during the pandemic, and the Government censored dissidents and critics to hide that fact,” states Stanford University Professor J. Bhattacharya in support of the plaintiffs’ claims.
The plaintiffs argue that the government’s efforts were part of a broader strategy to silence voices that did not align with official narratives on COVID-19 and other issues. They assert that these actions were driven by an “anti-competitive animus” aimed at eliminating alternative viewpoints from the digital public square.
According to the complaint, the plaintiffs have suffered substantial economic harm, estimating losses between $25 million and $50 million due to reduced visibility and ad revenue from their platforms. They also claim significant reputational damage as a result of being labeled as purveyors of misinformation.
The complaint details how the GEC and other agencies allegedly funded and promoted tools developed by NewsGuard, ISD, and GDI to blacklist and demonetize websites like NaturalNews.com. These tools, which include blacklists and so-called “nutrition labels,” were then utilized by tech companies to censor content on their platforms. The plaintiffs argue that this collaboration between government agencies and private tech companies constitutes an unconstitutional suppression of free speech.
A Broader Pattern of Censorship:
The lawsuit references other high-profile cases, such as Missouri v. Biden, to illustrate a pattern of government overreach into the digital information space. It highlights how these efforts have extended beyond foreign disinformation to target domestic voices that challenge prevailing government narratives.
Webseed and Brighteon Media are seeking both monetary damages and injunctive relief to prevent further censorship. They contend that the government’s actions violate the First Amendment and call for an end to the use of these censorship tools.
As the case progresses, it promises to shine a light on the complex interplay between government agencies, tech companies, and the tools used to control the flow of information in the digital age. The outcome could have significant implications for the future of free speech and the regulation of online content.
Global Elections Face Growing Censorship Threat: The Rise of “Prebunking”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 28, 2024
The feverish search for the next “disinformation” silver bullet continues as several elections are being held worldwide.
Censorship enthusiasts, who habitually use the terms “dis/misinformation” to go after lawful online speech that happens to not suit their political or ideological agenda, now feel that debunking has failed them.
(That can be yet another euphemism for censorship – when “debunking” political speech means removing information those directly or indirectly in control of platforms don’t like.)
Enter “prebuking” – and regardless of how risky, especially when applied in a democracy, this is, those who support the method are not swayed even by the possibility it may not work.
Prebunking is a distinctly dystopian notion that the audiences and social media users can be “programmed” (proponents use the term, “inoculated”) to reject information as untrustworthy.
To achieve that, speech must be discredited and suppressed as “misinformation” (via warnings from censors) before, not after it is seen by people.
“A radical playbook” is what some legacy media reports call this, at the same time implicitly justifying it as a necessity in a year that has been systematically hyped up as particularly dangerous because of elections taking place around the globe.
The Washington Post disturbingly sums up prebunking as exposing people to “weakened doses of misinformation paired with explanations (…) aimed at helping the public develop ‘mental antibodies’.”
This type of manipulation is supposed to steer the “unwashed masses” toward making the right (aka, desired by the “prebunkers”) conclusions, as they decide who to vote for.
Even as this is seen by opponents as a threat to democracy, it is being adopted widely – “from Arizona to Taiwan (with the EU in between)” – under the pretext of actually protecting democracy.
Where there are governments and censorship these days, there’s inevitably Big Tech, and Google and Meta are mentioned as particularly involved in carrying out prebunking campaigns, notably in the EU.
Apparently Google will not be developing Americans’ “mental antibodies” ahead of the US vote in November – that might prove too controversial, at least at this point in time.
The risk-reward ratio here is also unappealing.
“There aren’t really any actual field experiments showing that it (prebunking) can change people’s behavior in an enduring way,” said Cornell University psychology professor Gordon Pennycook.
Former Biden Homeland Security Official Criticizes Free Speech, Cites “Disinformation” Impact on Election Security
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 28, 2024
A former Biden administration official has declared that disinformation around elections is “becoming the norm rather than the exception.”
Samantha Vinograd, until recently of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), also asserted that these days, because of what she considers to be election disinformation, “there is an unprecedented level of physical threats” while the US information ecosystem is “incredibly vulnerable.”
Dramatic and alarmist statements like this may be necessary to justify the rest of Vinograd’s message, which in effect attacks free speech, as it is legally protected in the US.
Appearing on CBS, Vinograd – who was until last December Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention – warned that the First Amendment might protect free speech, but that engaging in free speech is apparently not “cost-free.”
The Face the Nation hosts framed the problem as, essentially, federal laws (the Constitution) protecting speech, but the damage being done at the state level – and then what states, who organize elections, can do to fix that “problem.”
Spreading lies about candidates, as they put it, was given as an example of legal, protected speech becoming an issue by having the ability to create “a threat at the state level” – and asked Vinograd who she thought was supposed to correct the situation.
Vinograd – who has been bouncing between various administrations (including those of Bush and Obama, and private companies like Goldman Sachs and Stripe before landing at Biden’s DHS) – seemed to suggest that Big Tech (i.e., social media companies) should be assisting the government.
The federal government said Vinograd, “should not be the omnipresent fact checker for the American people.”
And even though, according to her, the government is debunking information about elections that is deemed to be inaccurate, social media companies “should be thinking about what kinds of election disinformation violate their terms of service.”
It’s difficult not to take this as a not-so-veiled added pressure on social platforms to not only continue with censoring content but perhaps expand it in terms of what qualifies as election disinformation.
Either way, Vinograd is in favor of enlisting “every American” to help out as well (although it is not clear in what specific way), invoking even the concept of patriotic duty.
And Vinograd did not miss the opportunity to assert that election misinformation threats are now of such magnitude as to present a national security issue.
The Drive for War
By Craig Murray | May 18, 2024
The collective shrug with which the Western media and political class noted the attempted assassination of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has been telling.
Can you imagine the outrage and emotion that would have been expressed by Western powers if not Fico but a pro-Ukraine, anti-Russian leader within the EU had been attacked? The new orders for weapons that would have been presented to the arms manufacturers, the troops that would have been deployed, the sabres that would have been rattled?
Instead we have the media telling us that Fico opposed sending arms to Ukraine and opposed threatening Russia. We are told he did not accept the mainstream narrative on Covid vaccinations. The media do not quite say he deserved to be shot, but they come very, very close.
Fellow EU leaders followed correct form in making statements of shock and disgust at the attack on Fico, but they were formal and perfunctory. The “not actually one of us” message was very clear.
There are now an ordered set of neoliberal beliefs to which anybody in a Western nation participating in public affairs must subscribe, or they are beyond the pale.
Not to subscribe to all of these beliefs makes you a “populist”, a “conspiracy theorist”, a “Putin puppet” or a “useful idiot”.
These are some of the “key beliefs”:
No. 1) Wealth is only created by a small number of ultra-wealthy capitalists on whom the employment of everybody else ultimately depends.
No. 2) The laws governing financial structures must therefore tend to concentrate wealth to these individuals, so that they may deploy it as they choose.
No. 3) State-created currency must only be concentrated in and distributed to private financial institutions.
No. 4) Public spending is always less efficient than private spending.
No. 5) Russia, China and Iran pose an existential threat to the West. That comprises both an economic threat and a physical, military threat.
No. 6) Colonialism was a boon to the world, bringing economic development, trade and education to people of inferior cultures.
No. 7) Islam is a threat to Western values and to world development.
No. 8) Israel is a necessary project for spreading Western values to the uncivilised Middle East.
No. 9) Security necessitates devoting very substantial resources to arms production and the waging of continual war.
No. 10) Nothing must threaten the military and arms industry interest. No battle against corruption or crime can override the need for the security military industrial complex to be completely unchallenged and internally supreme.
Dependent Orthodoxies
Within this architecture of belief, other orthodoxies hang dependent, such as the correct way to respond to a complex pandemic, or support for NATO and impunity for the security services. (Support for Israel is probably better portrayed as a dependent point, but with the subject of Gaza so prominent at the moment I have figuratively moved it into the main structure.)
Any deviation on any point of belief is a challenge to the entire system, and thus must be eradicated. You will note there is no room whatsoever, within this architecture of thought, for values like freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. They simply do not fit. Nor is it possible within this architecture to incorporate actual democracy, which would give people a choice of what to believe.
If you accept this architecture of thought, then you must argue that the genocide in Gaza is a good thing, and it threatens the entire structure if you state that it is not a good thing. That is why we have witnessed the spectacle of politicians defying and then repressing their own people, willing to place all of their political capital at the service of genocidal Zionism.
Words struggle to convey the horrors we have all seen from Gaza, and in no way does it lessen the terrible suffering nor the extent of the crime to observe that it has caused a major rift in the neoliberal belief system which cannot be hidden from the people.
Gaza has ramifications leading to questioning throughout the system. Why is Tik Tok being banned, to stop people getting information on Gaza? Why is it a problem that the platform is owned by China?
What has China done that makes it an enemy? China has no military designs on the West. Of recent purchases most of us have made of physical goods, a high proportion have come from China. Why is an important trade partner an “enemy”?
Why is Russia our enemy? The notion that the Russian army is going to land on the Wash is utterly implausible. The Russian state, over centuries and wildly differing regimes, has never had the slightest desire to invade the British Isles. In the U.K., under various governments, for almost three centuries charlatans have been claiming a threat of Russian invasion to justify higher defence expenditure.
Why the need to have “enemies” at all?
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support.
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Because no animal reservoir has been found for SARS-CoV-2, it cannot properly be termed a zoonosis.* Should we call it a labnosis? And what does that mean?
By Meryl Nass, MD | July 12, 2021
After a year and a half of seeking but not finding SARS-2 in any wildlife anywhere (apart from domesticated or zoo animals that appear to have caught it from humans) is it time to say, yes, it didn’t just escape from a lab. It was created, built, assembled in a lab. Or many labs
Coronavirus scientists have been constructing new viruses out of bits and pieces of other viruses for a long time.
Why did they do it? … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The Story the Media — and the Government — Don’t Want You to Hear
- Deep Dive Intel Briefing 6/20/2026 Lt Col Daniel Davis
- The Targeted Assassination of Studies Showing Vaccines Cause Injury
- BMJ Probe Into Excess Mortality Study Drags On for Two Years With No Resolution
- Securing Peace with Iran Compels Trump to Divorce Israel
- Old Iraq war architects rise up to wag finger at Trump’s Iran deal
- Strait of Hormuz closed over Israeli aggression on Lebanon
- Keir Starmer arson mysteries multiply
- IRAN WAR “ON PAUSE” – w/ Prof. Glenn Diesen
- Zelensky threatens to attack Belarus
- If Americans Knew
- Israelis Invaded Lebanon And Then Cried Victim When Their Soldiers Got Killed
- FARA Docs: Israel is Spying On Millions Of Christian Americans In Their Churches
- Why US presidents from both parties end up cursing Benjamin Netanyahu
- Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show
- Deaths in Gaza undercounted, possibly by 100s of thousands; “Psychopath” Ben-Gvir talks trash – Daily Update
- UNICEF: “Trauma is woven into the very fabric of childhood in Gaza”
- 15 articles a day: The extent of the Israeli army’s media interference
- Greek Orthodox Patriarchate denounces Israeli seizure of church land in Jerusalem
- How Hillel International uses antisemitism training and ‘campus climate’ concerns to attack Palestine solidarity
- Old Iraq war architects rise up against Trump’s Iran deal
- No Tricks Zone
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
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