NBC Blasts Trump and Kennedy for Wanting to Conduct Vaccine-Autism Studies
NBC claims this issue has been debunked … but has it?
Injecting Freedom by Aaron Siri | December 8, 2024
NBC today blasted DonaldTrump and RobertKennedyJr for wanting to study a possible connection between “autism and childhood vaccines” because NBC claims it has been “debunked” by “hundreds of studies.” But has it? The answer is unmistakably “no!” Here is the proof:
Most parents with autistic children claim vaccines – including DTaP, Hep B, Hib, PCV13, and IPV, each injected 3 times by 6 months of age – are a cause of their child’s autism.* Yet the studies to support that these vaccines do not cause autism have not been conducted.
In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in which it ordered federal health authorities (HHS) to study whether pertussis vaccine can cause autism due to parental complaints regarding same.
In 1991, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued its report on this question and could not find a single study on the question of whether pertussis vaccine causes autism. Meaning, the science had not been done.
In 2012, the IOM was again commissioned to study this question, this time by CDC, and also the question of whether tetanus and diphtheria vaccines can cause autism (DTaP), and again the IOM could not find a single study to support the claim that these vaccines do not cause autism. Not one. But it did find one study supporting that DTaP vaccine is correlated with autism but threw it out since it was based on VAERS data.
In 2018, I deposed the world’s leading vaccinologist about the 2012 finding by the IOM and while admitting there are no studies to support that these vaccines do not cause autism, he said he would nonetheless tell parents vaccines do not cause autism even though he has no evidence to support that claim.
In 2019, we sued CDC for the studies it claims support that the vaccines given in the first six months of life do not cause autism. CDC then identified 20 studies: 18 of those studied a different vaccine (MMR) or an ingredient not in these vaccines (thimerosal), and one irrelevant study looked at antigens. Incredibly, the final study CDC identified was the 2012 IOM review that found no studies supporting that DTaP doesn’t cause autism.
In 2020, in a lawsuit specifically about vaccines and autism, one the world’s leading vaccinologists admitted under oath that there were no studies to support that vaccines given in the first six months of life do not cause autism.
This is why actually studying whether vaccines cause autism is important: Video report
While CDC claims that vaccines do not cause autism, despite demanding the studies to support this claim for the vaccines given in the first six months of life, and asking, suing, deposing, etc., for them for years, we still have not received a single such study.
But NBC doesn’t really care about the facts, rather it just repeats the dogmatic claim that “vaccines do not cause autism” like a mantra.
One final thought: given the lack of studies regarding vaccines and autism – the issue CDC and “health” authorities claimed to have most thoroughly studied – imagine the state of the “science” with regard to the 100 other serious harms (often immune or immune-mediated disorders) parents claim are caused by vaccines. (For more meat on that bone watch Episode 388)
France is a perfect example of centrist elites wrecking the West
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | December 7, 2024
It is almost as if some EU capitals have a tenacious death wish. After Berlin’s amazing and ongoing self-Morgenthauing act of industrial suicide for the greater glory of America’s NATO and Zelensky’s Ukraine, Paris is now self-Waterlooing. As France’s newly-discharged prime minister Michel Barnier almost correctly noted, the “country is going through a profound crisis.”
‘Almost,’ because it’s not ’going through’, but stuck in it.
Meanwhile, the man who set this train to nowhere in motion with a hissy fit of an early-election at the beginning of June, former investment-banker-turned-president Emmanuel Macron, won’t quit, although he’s politically bankrupt. He also keeps blaming everyone but himself, while promising to provide “stability.”
The president’s obstinacy would be funny if it weren’t so tragic for France. As French newspaper Libération has put it, “how can you embody stability when you’re the one who’s produced the chaos?” But then, to be fair to the former Wunderkind of Centrism, for the West’s “elites” and their offspring, too (Hi there, Crack Hunter, lawless son of Genocide Joe!), taking responsibility is just so passé. More importantly, Macron’s personal if humungous failure as a politician and, worse, national leader is not the whole story.
Despite the broad powers of the French presidency and Macron’s narcissistic tendency to over-estimate his own significance, he has been a devastating catalyst, an unwitting tool of history rather than a mover-and-shaker in his own right. This, not to be misunderstood, does not absolve him of guilt. It simply means that focusing on him is much less interesting than he himself believes.
Instead, the deep crisis that has come to a head with parliament’s sacking, on December 4, of Barnier and his short-lived minority government, is the result of two large social forces, and one overarching trend that pervades in the West and deserves the label of historic.
Regarding the social forces, on one side, there are economic stagnation and budgetary stress, and, on the other, a pervasive loss of popular legitimacy for politics-as-usual and, in addition, of basic trust and confidence. Concerning the historic trend, we’ll get to that in a moment.
As for the economics of the mess, just consider a few basic facts and key indicators: The trigger for the government collapse was, as recently in Germany, a crisis of state finances: Barnier’s short-lived minority government fell over its attempt to push through a budget for 2025. The deficit for this year, 2024, is forecast to reach at least 6% of GDP, which is, of course, twice the official EU limit of 3%.
For comparison, the Russian Finance Ministry estimates that country’s 2024 budget deficit to reach just over 1%. Even accounting for potential bias on the side of a government agency, the difference is striking, especially if you consider that Moscow has been the target of unprecedented Western economic warfare and has also had to mobilize to defeat the West in the proxy war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, France’s economic growth is at barely 1%, according The Economist and, according to the European Commission, will slow to 0.8% in 2025. Economists say that’s too optimistic. In other words, there is no “growth,” only stagnation-by-another-name. French business struggles with high energy prices, high interest rates, and waning consumer confidence. Major French firms are cutting jobs by the thousands, bankruptcies “are soaring,” and there is a cost-of-living crisis, again similar to the other Sick Man of the EU, Germany. Long gone seem the days when a Franco-German duo was supposed to be the EU’s beating heart.
To round off the misery, Paris sits on sovereign debt totaling almost €3.3 trillion, equivalent to over 110% of GDP. What the EU allows officially is 60%. That’s a situation The Economist calls “alarming,” with fine English understatement. In reality, “alarming” was yesterday. Paris is now at la-merde-is-hitting-the-proverbial-fan level. Just consult the international ratings agencies: Already at the end of October, Moody’s downgraded France’s credit outlook from “stable” to “negative”; now, the agency has reacted to the budding crisis-on-top-of-a-crisis by highlighting France’s political deadlock and concluding that the probability of consolidating its public finances has been reduced. Some French observers at least are wondering if a full credit rating downgrade is coming. And what about Standard and Poor’s and Fitch, Moody’s competitors? Pardon my French, but just don’t ask.
It’s a dismal picture on the economic front but wait till you see the politics and the national mood!
In the most immediate terms, Macron’s reckless early-election gamble in the summer and his devious and undemocratic maneuvering to keep out the victorious Left after his party’s predictable trouncing, has left France, in effect, ungovernable. Barnier’s predictable failure makes no difference to that fact. Fresh parliamentary elections, once again, would probably not help either. And anyhow, they are ruled out by the constitution before next summer.
Macron will now try out yet another prime minister, number six since he became president. That is a high attrition rate: In 7 years, the would-be embodiment of “institutional stability” has gone through as many heads of government as De Gaulle in 19 years.
It’s also an accelerating attrition rate: Macron’s prime ministers get used up ever faster. The future will show if this trend can be broken. If so, then not because of but despite the president’s baneful influence. As a French commentator noted, he won’t provide a solution, but he can still cause a lot of problems.
There are good reasons for declaring this moment the death of Macronism. Its core project of leaving behind the politics of left and right and replacing them with a combination of Centrism and a “Jupiterian” (Macron’s own, early term) personality cult now lies in tatters.
Specifically, Macronism’s claim to, at the very least, stave off the populist right of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) is a sad joke: No matter what you think about the RN, there is no doubt that its power has never been as great as now, and its chances of capturing the presidency, with or without Marine Le Pen in the lead, have never been better.
Macron has become the Biden of France: in both cases, while building their rule on a promise to keep out right-populist challengers, the two presidents’ incompetence and egotism has facilitated the rise of those challengers.
And how do the French feel in the midst of all of this? Spoiler alert: Not grand. According to French newspaper Le Monde’s summary of comprehensive polling by Ipsos, France is a “country anxious and discontent, hit by a political crisis,” and bereft of trust in its “political personnel and institutions.” In terms of their individual experiences, only 50% are content, 70% believe that the conditions of their life are “less and less favorable,” and 55% say they find it hard to make ends meet.
Regarding their country as a whole, a whopping 87% consider it in decline, which is 18% worse than when Macron was elected for the first time in 2017: National slow claps for “Jupiter.” But the rest of the political elites don’t look much better: Solid, even preponderant majorities consider them “corrupt” (63%), “not representative” (78%), and out for their own, personal good (83%).
In principle, there’s a difference between being miserable and being afraid. But the two states of mind go together really well, too: Almost all of the French (92%) have a bad feeling they are living in a “violent society”, and almost a third think “very violent” is the more precise term. You may say things could hardly get worse. Yet the French firmly believe they can: 89% see violence on the rise, and the majority of those respondents (61%) think it is rising “a lot.”
In sum: A selfish boss from hell (who could fire himself but swears he won’t), no functioning government, a tanking economy, and a mood like there’s no tomorrow. How did that happen to the “Grande Nation”? This is where we get back to the third factor mentioned above: the overarching historic trend. Let’s zoom out from unhappy France and small-minded, selfish Macron, and what we are seeing is an exemplary case of Centrism ruining a country.
True, you would never guess that if you relied on, for instance, The Economist. There, the same old, tired, and dim story is relentlessly told: How a heroic “center” and its stalwart defenders are resisting (or not so much) dastardly attacks from the “populists” and “extremists.” It’s an epic battle of light and darkness, Hobbits and Orcs, almost as if lifted straight from a fantasy novel. It even features glorious last stands: For the New York Times, Britain’s Keir Starmer, “one of the last centrist leaders on the global stage” is “trying to fight populism from the lonely center.” “Remember the Alamo,” I guess.
And yet, look at the real world: Clinton, Biden, Harris, Scholz, Macron, to name only a few – What do they all have in common? They stand for the failed, rejected project of elitist Centrism, dragging down their countries. For a stubborn, snobbish, and manipulative style of politics, complete with lawfare, mass media campaigns of calumny and disinformation, incipient authoritarianism and police-state methods, a dead-end foreign policy of blaming others (Russia and China most of all) for their countries’ problems and decline, and a resolute surrender to the forces of “the market,” which, here, is simply code for globalized capitalist interests.
It is a project that systematically confuses securing the power and privileges of traditional elites with national stability and welfare. Last but not least, its practitioners stand for an aggressive hubris that routinely derides and demonizes all challengers as beyond the pale of propriety. None of this has anything to do with democracy. On the contrary, as Macron’s handling of elections has illustrated, this is a policy of preventing popular participation and empowerment from below. Centrism is in deep crisis. That much, dear Economist, is true. It should be and only has itself to blame.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Syrian Women Exploited in MI6 Propaganda Ops
By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | December 5, 2024
The propaganda value of women in conflicts has long-been cynically exploited by Western intelligence services. A leaked CIA memorandum from March 2010 on covert means of increasing flagging support for NATO’s Afghanistan mission noted women “could serve as ideal messengers” in “humanizing” the military occupation. This was due to their “ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory”:
“Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories… could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the mission. Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences.”
Throughout the US occupation of course, Afghanistan remained one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman, by some margin. Roughly a year after that CIA memo was authored, Gay Girl in Damascus, a blog purportedly written by Syrian-American lesbian Amina Arraf, garnered significant mainstream attention. Widely hailed for her “fearless” and “inspiring” eyewitness reporting, she was lauded as a symbol of the “progressive” revolution erupting in the country.
In June 2011, Amina’s cousin announced on the blog Amina had been kidnapped by three armed men in the Syrian capital. In response, numerous Facebook pages were set up calling for Amina’s release and ‘liked’ by tens of thousands, #FreeAmina trended widely on Twitter, journalists and rights groups begged Western governments to demand her release, and the US State Department announced it was investigating Amina’s disappearance.
Six days later, it was revealed ‘Amina’ was in fact Tom MacMaster, a middle-aged American man living in Scotland, who had penned extensive lesbian literotica fantasies under that alter ego. While corporate news outlets quickly forgot all about the hoax they’d so comprehensively fallen for, their appetite for dubious human interest stories emanating from the crisis wasn’t diminished.
‘Huge Global Coverage’
In July 2019, an image of two young Syrian girls trapped in rubble in opposition-occupied Idlib attempting to haul their sister to safety as she dangled off the precipice of a dilapidated building, their father looking on in horror above, spread far and wide on social media.
The photo, snapped by a photographer for Syrian news service SY24, went viral the world over. Unbeknownst to viewers though, SY24 was created and funded by Global Strategy Network, a prominent British intelligence cutout founded by Richard Barrett, former MI6 counter-terrorism director. In leaked submissions to the British Foreign Office, Global Strategy boasted of how its propaganda “campaigns” broadcast via SY24 generated “huge global coverage,” having been seen by “many hundreds of millions of people,” and “attracting comment as far as the UN Security Council.”
SY24 content was produced by a network of ‘stringers’ in Syria that Global Strategy trained and provided with equipment, including “cameras and video editing software.” The firm drew particular attention to a team of female journalists it had tutored, “who provide about 40 percent of all SY content,” and were part of “a broad ‘network of networks’” enabling the company “to drive stories into the mainstream.”
Global Strategy also established a dedicated centre for training female journalists to produce content for SY24 in Idlib, “accessing stories that male journalists cannot,” which were then shared on social media. It boasted that almost half of SY24’s followers were women, “a remarkably high ratio for Syria-focused platforms.”
Carefully cultivating an entirely misleading image of an inclusive, credible ‘moderate’ Syrian opposition was of paramount importance to British inelligence. It helped whitewash the barbarous nature of the various ‘rebel’ factions London was backing in the region, while simultaneously engendering support among Western citizens for regime change.
In order to engage the “international community” to this end, Global Strategy, in conjunction with ARK – a shadowy “conflict transformation and stabilization consultancy” headed by veteran MI6 officer Alistair Harris – planned “communication surges” around “key dates” such as International Women’s Day.
In a particularly elaborate example of such a “surge”, the pair collaborated on “Back to School”, a campaign in which young Syrians returned to education. Idlib City Council, opposition commanders, and other elements on the ground concurrently engaged in a “unified” communications blitz, using “shared slogans, hashtags and branding.” Rebel fighters were sent to “clear roads” and “enable children and teachers to get to schools,” all the while filmed by the pair’s voluminous local journalist network, footage of which was then “disseminated online and on broadcast channels.”
Ensuring “female teachers” received sizeable coverage in the Western media was a key objective of the campaign. Furthermore, in many leaked files, ARK boasted of the huge network of journalists it had trained and funded in Syria, who would cover such PR stunts, secretly orchestrated by the organisation. Their reports in turn fed to the firm’s “well-established contacts” at major news outlets including Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, New York Times, and Reuters, “further amplifying their effect.”
‘Thrust by Tragedy’
Other documents make clear ARK well-understood the immense difficulties of promoting the role of women internally and externally during the crisis. One file on “[incorporating] the role of women in the moderate opposition” notes Syrian women in rebel-occupied areas faced “an almost overwhelming variety of problems,” and “the space for women to participate in public life has contracted significantly as the conflict has progressed.”
As a result, ARK was “extremely aware of the risks of promoting women’s participation beyond currently accepted social norms… given the potential to hinder message resonance or result in a backlash against female participation.” It therefore proposed to “subtly reframe the narrative of women… increasing the amount of coverage of their initiatives and opinions as the context allows.”
One means of “subtle reframing” was Moubader (which translates to “person who takes initiative”), a media asset created by ARK in 2015, comprising a “high-quality hard copy monthly magazine with widespread distribution across opposition-held areas of Syria,” with a website and Facebook page boasting almost 200,000 likes. Moubader was established by ARK to achieve “behavioural change” in readers. “Given the importance of broadcast television as a trusted source” in Syria, ARK also sought British intelligence funding to develop a Moubader TV programme, to “leverage stories and values to maximum effect and reach an even wider audience.”
Documents submitted to the Foreign Office by another intelligence cutout, Albany, similarly noted women’s access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunity had “been debilitated” during the crisis, which issues such as early marriage, child military recruitment, and “transactional sex” exacerbated. The UN defines the latter as “non-commercial sexual relationships motivated by an implicit assumption that sex will be exchanged for material support or other benefits.”
Still, Albany considered so many Syrian women having been “thrust by tragedy into head of household and breadwinner positions” over the course of the crisis as a golden opportunity to propagandize them and, in turn, their families, while promoting the ‘inclusive’ nature of the opposition, by creating and partnering with female civil society organizations and journalists.
ARK likewise believed women to be a “critical audience”, given the number of Syrian households with female heads –“up to 70 percent”. So, the organisation sought to ensure they were well-represented in all its domestic and international “broadcast products”, as well as on social media.
‘Female Participation’
Unsurprisingly, the files do not acknowledge the increasingly hostile environment for women in Syria directly resulted from foreign efforts to destabilise and depose its government. ISIS and al-Nusra were and remain rightly notorious for their monstrous treatment of women in the areas they occupied, which included widespread rape, sexual violence and abduction.
However, many armed opposition groups backed by Britain and other foreign powers imposed stringent restrictions on women in the areas they occupied, requiring them to wear hijabs and abayas, doling out extreme punishments for failing to comply, imposing discriminatory measures prohibiting them from moving freely, working, attending school, and more.
There are indications British intelligence was in close quarters with such activities. For instance, in December 2017 BBC documentary Jihadis You Pay For alleged Foreign Office cash distributed on its behalf via contrator Adam Smith International in Syria ended up in the pockets of Free Syrian Police (FSP) officers who not only stood by while women were stoned to death, but closed surrounding roads to facilitate their murder.
The ‘Free Syria Police’ at work
FSP, an unarmed shadow civilian police force operating in opposition-controlled areas, was created, funded and trained under the auspices of the British intelligence-funded Access to Justice and Community Security (AJACS) program. In a perverse irony, leaked Adam Smith International files relating to the project indicate it too sought to exploit women for propaganda purposes, applying a gender policy “to encourage female participation in justice and policing.” The company boasted of how, of the 1,868 police officers it trained under the scheme, six – 0.32 percent – were female.
Quite some “revolution”. As Human Rights Watch noted in 2014, prior to the outbreak of civil war, women and girls across Syria were “largely able to participate in public life, including work and school, and exercise freedom of movement, religion, and conscience.” While the country’s penal code and laws governing issues such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance contained some discriminatory provisions, the country’s constitution guaranteed gender equality.
Why Ukrainian Soldiers Are Deserting
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 4, 2024
A November 29 article in the Los Angeles Times stated that the Ukrainian military is facing a big problem with desertions:
Desertion is starving the Ukrainian army of desperately needed manpower and crippling its battle plans at a crucial time in its war against Russia’s invasion, which could put Ukraine at a clear disadvantage in any future cease-fire talks… Tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops, tired and bereft, have walked away from combat and front-line positions to slide into anonymity, according to soldiers, lawyers and Ukrainian officials. Entire units have abandoned their posts, leaving defensive lines vulnerable and accelerating territorial losses, according to military commanders and soldiers. Some take medical leave and never return, haunted by the traumas of war and demoralized by bleak prospects for victory. Others clash with commanders and refuse to carry out orders, sometimes in the middle of firefights.
The explanation for the desertions turns on what Ukrainian soldiers have been fighting, killing, and dying for ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ever since the start of the war, U.S. officials, the U.S. mainstream press, and Ukrainian officials have steadfastly maintained that the war is about “freedom.” They say that Russia engaged in an “unprovoked” attack on Ukraine with the aim of conquering and subjugating the country and enslaving the Ukrainian people. From there, we’ve been told, Russia’s aim is to head west, conquer Europe, cross the English Channel and take England, cross the Atlantic and conquer South America, Central America, and Mexico, and then, ultimately, invade and conquer the United States.
The scenario is essentially a replay of the old Cold War racket, where Americans were told that there was an international communist conspiracy to take over the world, one that was centered in Moscow, Russia — yes, that Russia — the same one that is now supposedly doing the same thing today except for the communist part.
The big problem is that the official narrative of why Russia invaded Ukraine was a lie from the get-go. The war between Russia and Ukraine has never been about freedom. It was always about NATO, the military alliance that played a central role in the old Cold War racket. Specifically, it was about the Ukrainian government’s wish to join this old Cold War dinosaur at the behest of the U.S. government.
Is joining NATO worth dying for? Not for me — and obviously not for the large number of Ukrainian soldiers who are now deserting.
For a while, the Ukrainian people bought into the lie that was being fed to them by their own government and by U.S. officials. In the early days of the war, Ukrainians were rushing to join the military to fight for their “freedom.” But over time, many Ukrainians have come to the realization that the war never had anything to do with freedom. It was always about the “right” of the Ukrainian government to join NATO, which is something that is very different from freedom.
There is another important aspect to this phenomenon: the central responsibility that the U.S. government has for this massive disaster. It was the U.S. government, especially the Pentagon, that led the way toward the expansion of NATO eastward, with the aim of ultimately absorbing Ukraine, which would enable the Pentagon to install its bases, tanks, troops, and nuclear missiles along Russia’s border. Throughout that move eastward, Russia continued beseeching U.S. officials to stop and instead to comply with their repeated promises to not expand NATO an inch eastward after the ostensible end of the Cold War.
But the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — i.e., the U.S. national-security establishment — insisted on breaking those repeated promises. Ending the Cold War was the last thing they wanted to do. It had been too big a cash cow for them. They were not about to let it go without a fight. They knew that by expanding eastward toward Russia, in violation of their repeated promises they had made to Russia not to do that, they could succeed in provoking Russia into invading Ukraine. It was an ingenious — and diabolical — strategy, one that got them what they wanted — a renewed Cold War plus a hot war in which the U.S. government is using the Ukrainian people as its sacrificial puppets — and getting Russia and the United States ever closer to the prospect of all-out nuclear war.
We also mustn’t ignore the role of the U.S. mainstream press has played in this deadly, destructive, or sordid affair. Whenever critics point out the U.S. scheme that successfully provoked Russia into invading Ukraine, the U.S. mainstream press dutifully describes the criticism as repeating “Russian talking points,” implying that the criticisms cannot possibly be true.
While Ukrainians are now deserting the military, U.S. officials are exhorting their Ukrainian counterparts to crack down on their people. According to that L.A. Times article, “The U.S. urges Ukraine to draft more troops, and allow for conscription of those as young as 18.” Undoubtedly, U.S. officials are advocating the adoption of such coercive measures in the name of “freedom.”
The Pardoning of Hunter Biden’s Crimes in Ukraine
By Professor Glenn Diesen | December 3, 2024
Joe Biden promised not to pardon his son Hunter Biden, and was subsequently celebrated by the media for being principled and standing up for the rule of law. However, in a not-so-surprising move, Joe Biden reversed his position and issued a sweeping pardon with an incredible legal breadth. The pardon protects Hunter Biden from any crimes he may have committed over the past decade, since January 2014. This date is no accident, as it marks the beginning of the Biden family’s seedy and likely criminal activities in Ukraine.
Joe Biden was the Vice President when the West backed a coup in Ukraine in February 2014. The US sought to cement its control over Ukrainian resources for economic interests and as an instrument for political influence. Joe Biden involved his son to personally enrich himself and his family.
Three months after the coup, Hunter Biden and a close family friend of US Secretary of State, John Kerry, became board members of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The job paid $50.000 a month despite Hunter Biden having no experience or competencies in the gas industry or Ukraine. In 2017, the NATO think tank Atlantic Council and Burisma signed a cooperative agreement, with a focus on “energy security”.
Ukrainian General Prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, opened a corruption case against the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Joe Biden subsequently intervened by having Ukraine’s General Prosecutor fired with the threat of withholding a $1 billion US loan guarantee. Shokin, complained that since 2014, “the most shocking thing is that all the [government] appointments were made in agreement with the United States”. Washington’s behaviour, according to Shokin, indicated that they “believed that Ukraine was their fiefdom”.
Vice President Joe Biden insisted that the decision was not related to Burisma or his son, as he falsely alleged that he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealing”. However, Hunter Biden’s business partner in Burisma, Devon Archer, confirmed in July 2023 that Joe Biden was deeply involved in Hunter Biden’s business.
Scandals threatened Joe Biden’s campaign during the 2020 presidential election as the content of Hunter Biden’s communications was leaked. The criminal activities of Hunter Biden, which seemingly could implicate his father, could likely result in Trump winning the election.
The intelligence community intervened in the election as more than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter, published in Politico, supporting the narrative that the Biden laptop scandal was a Russian disinformation campaign and did not prove the crime of the Biden family. Twitter and Facebook immediately censured the story, while tensions with Russia escalated.
One year later, in September 2021, Politico acknowledged the authenticity of the Hunter Biden emails and that Russia was not involved in any way. Mark Zuckerberg also admitted that Facebook had been pressured to censor Hunter Biden laptop story, which was direct election interference in favour of Joe Biden.
Joe Biden’s pardon of his son’s decade-long involvement in Ukraine implicitly entails pardoning Joe Biden himself. It is very unlikely that anyone will be held accountable for the Biden crimes in Ukraine, and there will be continued loss of trust in both the legal system and the media.
UNESCO’s New Mission: Train Influencers About Combatting Online “Misinformation”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2024
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is now incorporating teaching influencers how to “fact check” into its activities.
UNESCO claims that influencers have become “primary sources of news and cultural information” around the world – which prompted it to carry out a survey into how these online personalities verify the “news” they present.
Citizens in UN member-countries may or may not be happy that this is how their taxpayer money funding the world organization is being spent these days. But UNESCO is not only conducting surveys; it is also developing a training course for said influencers (which are also interchangeably referred to as content creators in press releases).
It’s meant to teach them not only to “report misinformation, disinformation and hate speech” but also to collaborate with legacy media and these outlets’ journalists, in order to “amplify fact-based information.”
The survey, “Behind the screens,” was done together with researchers from the US Bowling Green State University. 500 influencers from 45 countries took part, and the key findings, UNESCO said, are that 63 percent of them “lack rigorous and systematic fact-checking protocols” – but also, that 73% said they “want to be trained.”
This UN agency also frames the results as showing that respondents are “struggling” with disinformation and hate speech and are “calling for more training.”
UNESCO is justifying its effort to teach influencers to “rigorously” check facts by referring to its media and information literacy mandate. The report laments that mainstream media has become “only the third most common source (36.9%) for content creators, after their own experience and their own research and interviews.”
It would seem content creators/influencers are driven by common sense, but UNESCO wants them to forge closer ties with journalists (specifically those from legacy, i.e., traditional media – UNESCO appears very eager to stress that multiple times.)
Under the guise of concern, the agency also essentially warns creators/influencers that they should be better aware of regulations and “international standards” that pertain to digital media – in order to avoid “legal uncertainty” that exposes them to “prosecution and conviction in some countries.”
And now, UNESCO and US-based Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas have launched a one-month course which is currently involving 9,000 people from 160 countries. The goal is to train them to “address disinformation and hate speech and provide them with a solid grounding in global human rights standards.”
The initiative looks like an attempt to get “traditional” journalists to influence the influencers, and try to prop up their outlets, that are experiencing an erosion in trust among their audiences.
Soros, sanctions and propaganda: How the US secretly controls the ‘world’s largest investigative journalism organization’
RT | December 3, 2024
An investigation published on Monday by France’s Mediapart and its partners, including Drop Site News (US), Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy), and Reporters United (Greece), has uncovered that the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the world’s largest investigative journalism network, is secretly controlled by the US government.
The report reveals that Washington has provided around half of the organization’s funding and has significant sway over its leadership and editorial direction, raising questions about the independence of the network’s reporting.
US govt funds more than half of OCCRP budget
Since its founding in 2008, the OCCRP has received at least $47 million from American government sources. This accounts for approximately half of the organization’s overall funding, making the US state the largest donor by far.
The OCCRP’s financial dependence on the US government has led to concerns about the potential influence of Washington on the organization’s editorial stance, particularly given the US government’s strategic interests.
According to Drew Sullivan, the OCCRP’s co-founder and publisher, the US government remains the organization’s largest donor, providing crucial financial support for its operations. In an interview with German state broadcaster NDR, Sullivan acknowledged, “I’m very grateful to the US government” for its support.
While OCCRP officials insist that government grants come with “impenetrable guardrails” to protect journalistic integrity, critics will argue that such substantial funding creates a structural dependence that could affect editorial independence.
Washington has veto power over OCCRP leadership
In addition to providing substantial funding, the US government also wields significant influence over the OCCRP’s leadership. Washington has the right to veto key personnel appointments within the organization, including the nomination of its publisher, Sullivan. Under agreements with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other government bodies, the OCCRP must submit resumes of potential hires for senior roles to the American government for approval.
USAID’s Shannon Maguire confirmed this in a statement, saying the agency has the “right to have its say” on personnel decisions. Sullivan himself admitted in an interview that the US can use this veto power, although he maintained that it has never been exercised. “If they veto somebody, we can say we don’t take the money,” he said. The power to dictate appointments, however, underscores the US government’s influence over the OCCRP’s leadership.
Soros provides significant funding
In addition to the US government, the OCCRP has also relied on funding from private donors, including the Open Society Foundations (OSF), the pressure group founded by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros. While OSF’s contributions are significant, they have not raised the same concerns about influence as the US government’s donations, as far as the authors of the investigation are concerned.
Still, OSF’s role adds to the complex web of financial support that the OCCRP has received over the years.
OCCRP founded based on secret US govt grant
The OCCRP’s origins are tied directly to US government funding. In 2007, the US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) provided the initial $1.7 million to establish the network. This secret funding, funneled through the Journalism Development Group (JDG) controlled by Sullivan, was key to the creation of the OCCRP.
Sullivan’s relationship with USAID and the US government dates back to the early 2000s, when he worked on a USAID-funded initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina to train local journalists. He later used his connections to secure funding from the US government to establish the OCCRP. The fact that such an influential journalistic network was born out of a covert US government grant raises concerns about the independence of its operations.
US govt funds investigations aimed at opponents such as Russia
One of the most striking revelations of the investigation is that the US government has directed the OCCRP to focus its investigations on specific countries, including Russia and Venezuela. The OCCRP received $2.2 million from the US to investigate Russian media in an effort dubbed ‘Balancing the Russian media sphere’.
Similarly, the organization was granted $2.3 million to investigate corruption in Cyprus and Malta, two locations where Russian business people have significant financial interests.
By funding investigations that target certain countries, the US government has influenced the scope of the OCCRP’s reporting, ensuring that its investigations align with American geopolitical interests. The OCCRP has worked on several high-profile international investigations, including ‘Cyprus Confidential’, which exposed Russian citizens allegedly using the island as a tax haven to bypass sanctions. These investigations are clearly in line with US foreign policy priorities.
OCCRP reports weaponized to justify US sanctions policy
The OCCRP’s investigative reports have also been used by the US government to justify its foreign policy, particularly sanctions. Through the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium (GACC), a program co-financed by the US State Department, OCCRP investigations have been directly linked to judicial actions and sanctions procedures.
The US government uses the OCCRP’s findings to push for greater sanctions on individuals and entities it frames as being associated with corruption, often targeting countries such as Russia and Venezuela.
Sullivan confirmed that the OCCRP works closely with governments, including the US, to apply the findings of its investigations in ways that support broader international policy goals. “We believe the GACC has proven to be highly successful,” Sullivan said. This program has been instrumental in lobbying for tougher anti-corruption and anti-money laundering legislation, he adds, often in countries that the US government sees as adversaries.
Propaganda tool designed to advise US foreign policy interests
The revelations of the OCCRP’s close ties to the US government will fuel criticism that the organization is not simply an independent journalistic entity, but rather a tool used by the US to promote its foreign policy interests. While the OCCRP maintains that it operates independently, its reliance on US funding and its role in advancing US political goals suggests that its reporting may be subject to external influence, particularly when it comes to issues that affect US geopolitical priorities.
As one director of a South American media outlet put it, “The OCCRP makes the US seem virtuous and allows them to set the agenda of what is defined as corruption.” While the OCCRP continues to investigate corruption in many parts of the world, its close financial relationship with the US government raises significant questions about the organization’s independence and the potential for its work to be used as a tool of American foreign policy.
In conclusion, the findings from Mediapart and its partners highlight the complex and often hidden relationship between the OCCRP and the US government. Despite its protestations, the scale of its financial dependence on the US government and the influence that Washington has over its operations will hardly be ignored.
Deception, manipulation, sabotage: What the UK does to keep the Ukraine war going
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | November 30, 2024
Unless you want to be blind, it is obvious that Ukraine under the Zelensky regime is not remotely a free country. In politics, after massive repression, there are only remnants of an opposition, which face continuing oppression and harassment by the government, as even the French newspaper Le Monde, generally naïve about the Zelensky regime, has reported.
Ukraine’s public sphere is stifled by nationalist propaganda, pressure, and demonstrative, intimidating terror. Before the escalation of 2022, even a robustly propagandistic tool of Western information warfare such as Freedom House could still acknowledge that much: its 2018 report, authored by Ukrainian researcher Vyacheslav Likhachev, identified Ukraine’s Far Right organizations as “a threat to democracy” and “aggressively trying to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society, including by using force against those with opposite political and cultural views.”
Regarding Ukraine’s media, expect not much resistance from there. They are tightly controlled and, often, pro-actively obedient, whether out of misguided conviction, fear, or careerism. Even Ukraine’s Western supporters, as well as some courageous critics in Ukraine, have voiced criticism of the crude propaganda habits of the Zelensky regime.
Make no mistake: The authoritarian features of the rule of Vladimir Zelensky – formerly the object of a veritable Western personality cult that, by now, at least some devotees must feel embarrassed about – are not the result of the large-scale war. The politics of Zelenskyism, to coin an ugly but handy term, were always unusually deceitful and manipulative and, by 2021 at the latest, openly bending toward authoritarianism, as many Ukrainian critics pointed out at the time.
And yet: Imagine a future trial, maybe to be held in Ukraine, of Zelensky and his team. The defense would not be able to do much about their record of corruption, but it would certainly at least try to blame some of the former leader’s underhanded and tyrannical tendencies on the war. It would be a stretch, but lawyers have to do their best, even for the worst of clients.
In the case of the Western users of the Zelensky regime, though, such a defense would not be merely far-fetched but completely absurd. Yet a defense some of them at least might come to need. Take for instance the case of Britain’s Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland and his shadowy but numerous associates.
The unfortunately important general – boasting of his pirate ancestors and in charge of “UK-led joint and multinational overseas military operations” – and his motley crew have just been the object of an investigative exposé by Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg. In, for now, two articles, the Grayzone has detailed how, in 2022, Stickland set up a below-the-radar network of “an assortment of leading academics, authors, strategists, planners, pollsters, comms, data scientists and tech.” Under the name Project Alchemy and overlapping and liaising with another group of wannabe keyboard Ninjas calling themselves – I kid you not – “the Elders,” this conspiratorial group has worked on, in essence, keeping the Ukraine war going at any price and by means foul and fouler.
Based on leaked documents, the Grayzone’s reporting is revealing in more ways than can be discussed here. Yet, as we are dealing with prose authored by militant bureaucrats and self-weaponizing intellectuals in the land of George Orwell, that old stickler for the English language, we would be remiss not to appreciate their bizarre lingo. It brings together a certain jejune rugby field boyishness – “mischief” is proudly being made – with a militarized sociolect of corporatese: “fusion players” and “sideways thinkers” get “badged” and “meshed in” to “move at pace,” and – greatest pride of the eminent executive – stand ready to work over the weekend!
Doing what exactly? All kinds of things, really, and all based on one stupid yet once immensely popular assumption: that the proxy war in Ukraine could be leveraged to defeat Russia, reduce it to geopolitical insignificance, impose regime change on it, and even break it up. Some, including the new de facto foreign minister of the EU, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas – imagine Annalena Baerbock, but without the brilliant intellect – still seem to be on that political equivalent of an LSD trip gone terribly wrong. What a hangover it will be one day, probably soon.
In Britain, highlights of Project Alchemy groupthink included hatching plans for stay-behind sabotage networks and recommending the example of the underground “Gladio” operations that NATO ran in Western – not, please note, Eastern – Europe during the Cold War. Strictly speaking, Gladio was an Italian label, while the same bad idea had different names in other countries. By now, though, Gladio stands for a whole plethora of clandestine organizations set up, ostentatiously, to engage in partisan resistance in case of a Soviet attack and occupation.
You may feel that, in principle at least, for generals, preparing for the possibility of future partisan warfare is not an objectionable activity. Yet the issue is that, in reality, the Gladio operations were not only extremely dubious in constitutional and legal terms, as being entirely beyond democratic control and oversight, as well as tied to foreign intelligence services. In addition, these networks served to fight a dirty war against the domestic left, including by terrorism, false-flag attacks, the systematic use of far-right conspirators and terrorists, and support for military coups.
An influential, black-ops-connected British general and his chums wanting to learn lessons from Gladio for underground networks in Ukraine? The country with the best-armed (compliments of the West), most whitewashed and naively underestimated (compliments of the Western media and self-weaponizing intellectuals of the Anne Applebaum/Tim Snyder variety), most aggressive, and most militarized far right in the world? Swimming in arms right next to an EU-NATO Europe they will soon feel bitterly disappointed by? What could possibly go wrong? But maybe Charlie ‘Pirate’ Stickland is “fusion”-”thinking” “sideways” in Churchillian terms: “Set Europe Ablaze!” Yet Stickland seems to have overlooked that Churchill wanted to set it ablaze against the Nazis, not with them.
All of this is, in and of itself, very bad, if unsurprising, news. But Project Alchemy has been prolific, producing lousy ideas the way Russian industry is churning out artillery shells and missiles. There also were: a frank emphasis on “creatively using” – let’s be honest: breaking – the law so as to get silly violent things done, including “deniable ops”; a daft idea to attack the Kerch Bridge, as if Russia would not strike back (both have by now happened, the militarily useless attack and the painful payback); an anticipatory strategy of how to manipulate the British public in case it should get tired of pumping money into the proxy war; attempts to undermine BRICS-plus (thinking big and bigger); plans to shut down Russian media in the West, obviously; and, last but not least, an aggressive strategy to use covert lawfare and deliberate financial pressure to bring down Western critical media as well, including, as it happens, the Grayzone. Say what you will, but Stickland and company seem to have had a foreboding from where exactly they would get their richly deserved come-uppance.
It would be tempting to think of this wave of disinformation and manipulation in the West as a kind of “Ukrainization.” As if the West had caught the contagion of the Zelensky regime’s very bad habits. But to be fair, the West has its own, well-established tradition of waging war by massive lying on the home front. In 2019, it was the Washington Post, usually hewing close to the American government line, that ran a series of in-depth stories detailing how, during the West’s long war in Afghanistan, started almost two decades before, the US had been “at war with the truth.” Suddenly, clearly in preparation of the impending Western retreat, readers were allowed to learn that while “officials constantly said they were making progress,” they “were not, and they knew it.”
And the name of that Washington Post series? The Afghanistan Papers. That, of course, was a reference to the famous Pentagon Papers, an internal and classified Defense Department review of US policy and warfare in Vietnam that was leaked to the New York Times by the historic whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who suffered severe, criminal attempts to silence, and in effect, destroy him. The long American intervention, begun indirectly in the 1940s and escalating into one of the most brutal US campaigns of the twentieth century in the 1960s, only ended with the total defeat of both Washington and its South Vietnamese proxy in 1975.
The New York Times began to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Once again, as with the later bloody Western fiasco in Afghanistan, the moment of truth – some truth – came late, only toward the end of a policy catastrophe that had long been supported by compliant mainstream media. The Grayzone is considered alternative media, and its reporters are doing a much better job at real journalism than their competition in the mainstream version. As to the mainstream media, they clearly have not yet reached the stage of always-too-late revelation that, during the proxy wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, was marked by 1971 and 2019, respectively.
How do we know? They are ignoring the Grayzone’s sensational revelations about a military-think-tank-industry conspiracy to undermine the law, deliberately manipulate the public, and wage proxy war in a way that is both dirty and bound to backfire very badly on the West itself. One more sign that all too many in the West are not yet ready to face reality, even while the Ukrainians they claim to help but only use keep dying.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Corporate Media Meltdown Over Trump’s CDC Director Pick Dr. Dave Weldon
A look a the possible changes ahead for the CDC under his leadership
By Jefferey Jaxen | November 25, 2024
Former seven-term congressman Dr. David Weldon was chosen by President-elect Donald Trump going into this past weekend to serve as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Amidst the flurry of possible appointments grabbing headlines, Dr. Weldon has the opportunity to change the way America has handled public health for decades.
The Washington Post described Dr. Weldon in the second sentence of its breaking news article as “… a strong critic of the CDC, especially its vaccine program.” The reporting meant the sentence to be a negative, ironically, it’s probably now a breath of fresh air for most Americans post-COVID.
“… increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves” wrote Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, less than a month ago when admitting most people don’t believe corporate/legacy media anymore. It’s like WAPO’s recent reporting on Weldon already forgot this warning.
The New York Times claimed that Dr. Weldon was “skeptical of vaccine safety,” a designation that would have worked to neutralize his voice in years past when the outlet still garnered attention and respect.
STAT News wrote, “The former Florida congressman sponsored legislation that would have carved out the CDC’s vaccine safety research…”
The Vaccine Safety Bill to ‘carve out research’ Dr. Weldon introduced in 2007 wanted to establish an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services to handle the nation’s vaccine safety. His reasoning at the time was that the CDC had an inherent conflict of interest being responsible for both vaccine safety and promotion—an issue unchanged to this day.
In Weldon, the public also finds a rare leader who has been willing to ask politically forbidden questions about links between vaccines and autism along with the greater questions about health outcomes of children receiving HHS’s childhood vaccine schedule compared with children who had not been vaccinated. In addition to why there’s been limited investigation to determine what children may be as risk of being harmed by vaccines.
“The thing I continue to find extremely disturbing is the fact that the CDC still does not allow researchers access to the vaccine safety data… The best way to get answers on the vaccine safety data is to open it up and let objective scientists come in and look at it.” – Rep. Dave Weldon at the Vaccines & Autism House Government Reform Committee 2002
One of the key data tranches Weldon is referring is vaccine safety datalink or VSD. A monitoring system using electronic health record data from health sites around the country to assess vaccine safety and detect adverse events in near-real time. Also a system that the public and independent researchers are blocked from accessing.
Besides the possibility of allowing the sunlight of independent researchers to comb through once-hidden vaccine data while dedicating resources to health-affirming tools outside of one-size-fits-all shots, Dr. Weldon will have veto power over the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
ACIP makes recommendations about which vaccines are added to the U.S. schedule, among other decisions. The committee needs final approval from the director of the CDC to implement their calls. Dr. Weldon would hold a power position over a committee who unanimously rubber-stamped every COVID vaccine and booster from infants to the elderly, among other questionable call throughout the years leading to reduced public trust.
Another approach long-called for, and even once implemented by the CDC, would be to automate their Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to instantly detect and report potential safety issues with the shots they promote.
In 2006 this was attempted through a $1M HHS grant to create a spontaneous reporting system to VAERS at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. The researchers found that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported” yet predictably, the CDC never followed up.
As many new to this conversation are rushing the gates to further their careers or gain influence and power on the back of the rapid political change we find ourselves at the beginning of, there have been those holding a strong space with little fanfare. Dr. Dave Weldon is one such individual.
His decades-long hopes to reform the CDC and, more importantly, protect American children and families from unrestrained harms brought upon so many by liability-free injectable pharmaceutical products which have enjoyed a privileged position away from full public and scientific scrutiny may soon see the light of day.
To the readers, is the CDC even salvageable at this point?
What other major areas of reform could help rapidly transform public consciousness around health and healing?
Israeli Soccer Hooligans Cry Out as They Strike You
By Kevin Barrett – American Free Press – November 22, 2024
On November 7, chaos erupted in the streets of Amsterdam. Soccer hooligans flown in from Israel, flanked by Mossad handlers, watched their their Maccabi Tel Aviv team lose 5-0 to the Dutch team Ajax. After the game, the Maccabi fans ran wild, arming themselves with wood sticks and metal pipes and attacking cabs, busses, police vans, and individuals unlucky enough to cross their path. Palestinian flags—a common sight in the Dutch capital—were torn down. As they rioted, the Maccabi fans showcased their favorite chants, including “There are no schools left in Gaza because there are no children left”; “F*** the Arabs,”; and F*** you terrorists, everybody die.”
A video account of the event by a teenage journalist known as Bender showed that the violence was incited by Israelis, not locals. Bender followed the Israelis from the stadium and filmed them arming themselves and attacking people and vehicles. He was threatened and told to stop filming, presumably by the Mossad handlers overseeing the event.
As often happens, the spectacle of foreign soccer hooligans attacking people in their own city led to a defensive response. Locals confronted the hooligans, in some cases getting the better of physical altercations. A few Israeli thugs managed to get themselves beat up, while others were unceremoniously introduced to the pleasures of swimming in Amsterdam’s insalubrious canals.
If British soccer hooligans had attacked Paris, or German soccer hooligans had attacked Prague, media accounts would have been reasonably evenhanded and accurate. But because the hooligans were Israelis attacking the city of Anne Frank, the media sought to convince the world that a third Holocaust had occurred. (The second, of course, was the Hamas raid of October 7, 2023.)
Here are a selection of headlines:
*Israeli Fans Attacked After Soccer Match in Amsterdam; Violence Condemned as Anti-Semitic (Washington Post ).
*Israeli soccer fans targeted in wave of violence in Amsterdam (Fox).
*Holocaust survivor calls vicious mob attack on Jews in Amsterdam a ‘modern-day Kristallnacht’ (New York Post ).
*Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam ambushed by gangs of anti-Israel attackers shouting ‘Free Palestine,’ Netanyahu sends planes to evacuate citizens (New York Post ).
*The New Kristallnacht: Antisemitic Attacks in Amsterdam Demand Global Action (Times of Israel ).
*Global leaders react to Amsterdam pogrom (The Jerusalem Post ).
*Amsterdam Has Failed Its Jews (Spectator ).
The United States Holocaust Museum issued a statement stating that the Museum “strongly condemns the vicious attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam and the outrageous celebrations of those attacks.” The Anti-Defamation League shrieked about the “obscene, unprovoked violence” which it described as follows: “This is what ‘globalize the intifada’ looks like. Mobs of hate-filled people chasing down and attacking innocent Israeli soccer fans who they have dehumanized as ‘Zionists,’ hunting down and brutalizing ordinary people who came to Amsterdam simply to enjoy a soccer match.”
But why did these Israeli “ordinary people” repeatedly commit assault, battery, and vandalism, long before any locals retaliated? Why did the Israeli attacks on people and vehicles draw no response from local police, who pointedly ignored the rioting until the tables had been turned? And why were the hooligans flanked by Mossad agents as they incited a riot?
Dutch scholar and author Alexander Wolfheze, who was in Amsterdam on November 7, describes the event as a “psy-op.” In a November 12 interview with this author Wolfheze agreed with critics who argue that the Israeli hooligans’ attack on Amsterdam was carefully orchestrated by intelligence professionals in order to produce precisely the headlines listed above, and thousands more like them: “I believe that there are PSYOP aspects (to the hooligans’ attack). It happened just before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, something that the mainstream media did not fail to exploit.”
Dr. Wolfheze added that the November 7 Mossad op was also designed to influence Dutch domestic politics: “Holland is once again at the forefront of the Israelization of Europe, the Zionisation of Europe. Holland was the first country to get a real neo-Zionist government (Geert Wilders). And exactly at that time, after the appointment of this new cabinet, this new government here, and this new reality here, we are seeing this program (total Israeli takeover of Holland -KB) being implemented through the hooligans.”
If Israel can attack your country, pretend to be the victim, and force your entire government and mainstream media to go along with the transparent lie, they basically own you. Fortunately, Israel does not own social media journalists like Bender and Max Blumenthal, both of whom were instrumental in exposing what really happened in Amsterdam.
The Israeli attack on Amsterdam once again illustrated the Jewish State’s perfidy, and provided more evidence that when they cry out as they strike you, it isn’t just a hobby—it’s how they make a living.
Trump’s election victory: the schism in the US is deepening, the fight is intensifying
By Veniamin Popov – New Eastern Outlook – November 23, 2024
Following a crushing defeat at the November 5 elections (Democrats are now in the minority in Congress), the US Democratic Party is gradually coming to its senses, consolidating and launching new attacks against the Republicans.
At the forefront of all this is the editorial board of the New York Times newspaper, which published an article the day after the vote titled ‘America makes a perilous choice’. The main idea is that Americans should clearly understand the threat to the country and its laws posed by the 47th President of the United States, since he prioritises “the accumulation of uncontrolled power and the punishment of his alleged enemies”. Recognising that the elections demonstrated deep dissatisfaction with the status quo, politics and the state of American institutions, the newspaper demands that Democrats unite and resist the destructive figure of Trump: the task now is to vote correctly in the midterm elections of 2026 and in 2028 “to get the country back on the right track”.
On November 14, the same editorial board published a new article ‘Trump’s reckless choices for national leadership’. “Donald Trump has demonstrated his incongruity with the presidency in countless ways, but one of the most obvious is the marginal figures surrounding him, conspiracy theorists and low liars who put loyalty to him above all else”.
The media loyal to the Democratic party have launched a vehement campaign against the candidates named by Trump for posts in his government. They are accused of a variety of sins and the Senate is being urged to reject many of these nominations.
The idea that many troubles and problems await the United States under Trump is being dispersed in various ways, while the ‘red thread’ is the idea that the president-elect is surrounded by incompetent people and that they are simply unworthy to perform state functions.
Famous US columnist David Ignatius noted in the Washington Post that Trump is by nature a destroyer and hopes to overthrow what he imagines to be the ‘deep state’, but American voters did not give him the opportunity to destroy the country’s military and intelligence services. If they approve Trump’s appointees, they will do more to collapse his presidency “than Democrats ever could”. The New York Times called Trump a “threat to global peace and security” on 11/18/2024.
The fight between Republicans and Democrats intensifies
It should be noted that Trump’s supporters are not indifferent. A number of newspapers and TV networks have been charged with disinformation (amounting to $10 billion), calls for an audit at the Department of Defence are growing louder and louder and demands for an investigation of the many miscalculations of the Biden administration are being voiced on television.
The plan for changing power in the US (‘Project 2025’), developed by one of the think tanks supporting Trump, is being criticised sharply. It proposes to enhance the powers of the head of state dramatically, put a number of departments under his direct control (and to abolish the FBI altogether), resolve the issue of illegal migration with an iron fist, expelling all illegal immigrants from the country, and to “make federal bureaucrats more responsible to the democratically elected president and Congress”. The ideological basis for these changes is the struggle for the revival of the ‘Christian foundations’ of American society and the task of increasing church attendance is also highlighted.
In one of his speeches, Trump himself promised to legislate that only two genders, male and female, are officially recognised in the United States.
A number of publications, including Politico, say that Trump’s victory actually means ‘the end of the era of American-style peace’.
Political scientist Daniel Dresner thinks that the election of Trump symbolises the end of ‘American exceptionalism’.
In the Foreign Affairs magazine articles are appearing stating that Republicans should now show a greater commitment to realism and restraint: “If the US political class could agree that the United States has been overzealous in its foreign policy and should adjust its course, it would help to ensure that the country will not repeat the deadly mistakes of the last 20 years, where the US got bogged down in various conflicts”.
Current events clearly indicate that a fierce battle in the ranks of the American elite is being aggravated; the supporters of globalism and aggressive liberalism do not want to give up their positions. Nevertheless, the huge public debt of the United States, which exceeds $36 trillion, should force authorities to have a more adequate approach to military interventions, which “bring limited benefits and impose high costs on the United States”.
Some comments from the countries of the Global South say that the US is apparently awaiting a long internal political struggle, which may limit US activism in the international arena. Along with this, it is suggested that Washington’s policy is unlikely to change overnight. For example, the Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper expressed on November 15 that “the next four years will not be any better”, however, most importantly, they should also not be worse. Trump should adopt a cooperative approach to foreign policy and security that recognises the limitations of the United States.
At the same time, the Egyptian Al Ahram, noting Trump’s pro-Israeli approach to the Middle East, stressed the other day that the newly elected US president recognises that Israel has lost what he called the ‘PR war’ and should therefore soon put an end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, since the world can no longer tolerate daily bloodshed and preposterous destruction.
The Democratic Party Faces Its Day of Reckoning
By Leonard C. Goodman | Scheer Post | November 19, 2024
Following its crushing defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party might finally face its day of reckoning. The party markets itself as the champion of the working class and a bulwark against the party of the plutocrats. But this has been a lie for at least three decades.
The Democratic Party has partnered with Wall Street donors since at least the 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, the party overturned Glass Steagall and other New Deal programs that had effectively restrained Wall Street greed for 60 years. It also sold out American workers with so-called trade deals that freed their bosses to ship American jobs overseas. It ended welfare “as we know it” and passed draconian crime bills that destroyed mostly black and brown communities, sending mothers and fathers to prison for decades in the name of a cruel and senseless war on drugs.
Into the 21st century, the Democrats continued pushing the lie that they were fighting for working people. After September 11, 2001, the party put up a token resistance to the Bush/Cheney regime of illegal regime-change wars, black sites, indefinite detention and torture. All the while, it continued soliciting campaign contributions from the arms dealers profiting from Bush’s wars.
In 2008, the party found a Black face to carry on its Wall Street-friendly agenda. Gullible Americans, myself included, were taken in by Barack Obama’s promises to end “dumb wars” and to institute a single payer healthcare system. We ignored the red flags, like the fact that Obama’s campaign broke records in pocketing Wall Street donations. It was later revealed by Wikileaks that nearly every member of Obama’s cabinet had been selected by the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup.
It didn’t take long for President Obama to crush our hopes that he was a different kind of Democrat. One of his first acts as president was to funnel trillions of dollars to the big banks that, newly freed by Clinton from FDR-era regulations, had embarked on an orgy of unbridled greed, swindling millions of Americans out of their homes and retirement savings with a scheme to sell worthless mortgage-backed securities.
Adding insult to injury, Obama saw to it that the bailed-out bank executives faced no criminal prosecutions and received their year-end bonuses. In their place, the Obama Justice Department brought federal mortgage fraud charges against thousands of poor people — I represented a half dozen of these folks — who had signed their names to the phony mortgage loans that the Wall Street bankers encouraged, packaged and sold to pension funds and other unwitting investors.
The pipe dream that Obama would be an anti-war president was also quickly dispatched. During his two terms, Obama ushered in a new era of continuous war, envisioned by George Orwell and favored by Wall Street. Obama expanded Bush’s bombing campaigns into Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. Today’s Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the Republicans in its ties to war profiteers and trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets.
Obama also effectively ended the Democrats’ promise to fight for a true national health care system in which all Americans would be able to go to the doctor when sick without fear of bankrupting their families. In its place, Obama pushed through a health care plan developed in right-wing think tanks, that guaranteed profits (and taxpayer subsidies) for the private insurance industry and did little to contain costs.
By 2012, Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report was describing the Democratic Party as the “more effective evil” for using its reputation as protector of the working class to neutralize effective opposition and push through right-wing policies that the Republicans could not get passed.
In 2016, the Democrats received a wake-up call when their chosen successor to Obama lost the White House to a crude-talking New York City real estate developer and game show host with no prior political experience. But with the help of its partners in corporate media, the party managed to limp along for another eight years, first by telling the American people that President Trump was an agent of Russia, and then by claiming that Trump was Hitler who was planning concentration camps and firing squads for his political enemies.
Now after the November 2024 elections in which Trump won every swing state and the popular vote, the Democratic party is finally being forced to face some uncomfortable truths. The party’s partners in the corporate media initially tried blaming the election result on the voters for being too misogynist, too racist, or too dumb to vote correctly. But there is little trust that remains in corporate media.
The party’s corporate consultants have put the blame on the party’s excessive focus on identity politics. But the issues for the Democrats run much deeper than bad messaging. The real problem is that the party takes direction from plutocrats whose interests are antagonistic to the needs of the working people it pretends to represent. Both Democrats and Republicans are financed by the same corporate interests. Thus, there is general agreement and support for policies that guarantee high rates of return on investment capital, policies like continuous war, for-profit health care, and outsourcing jobs. This leaves few issues for the parties to fight about other than abortion and identity politics.
Fifty years ago, American capitalists still relied on American workers to build everything from cars and televisions to sneakers and light bulbs. These titans of industry had to care about things such as functioning schools, decent wages, cities and public transportation. But the times have changed. Today’s plutocrats support outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and have little concern for the condition of American workers. And while ordinary Americans want the country’s resources to be spent at home, plutocrats are heavily invested in foreign wars, and they shun diplomacy.
These contradictions could only be covered up for so long. Even with reliable partners in the corporate press, the internet has given Americans alternative sources for their news. During the last few years, in a desperate effort to keep its scheme afloat, the Democrats embraced censorship and a regime of corporate “fact checkers” to police social media and remove or punish unsanctioned speech. In so doing, the party abandoned the last of its core principles: standing up for free speech and the right to dissent.
Many Democrats argue that they had to go after Wall Street money to compete with the Republicans. In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explained the strategy: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” But for this plan to work, the party still needed an actual message to take to the voters.
Forbes Magazine reports that during the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris’s campaign raised a billion dollars while Trump’s campaign raised $388 million. Harris’s substantial edge in fundraising allowed her to flood the airwaves with commercials. But she had nothing of substance to say to voters.
The Atlantic Magazine reports that early in her campaign, Harris gained ground by attacking Trump as a stooge of corporate interests—and touted herself as a relentless scourge of Big Business. But then, suddenly, Harris abandoned her attacks on big business at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer.
Many Democrats, especially in swing states, opposed the Biden Administration’s unfailing support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million residents. Harris could have gained the support of many of these voters by promising to stop arming Israel during the genocide. But her Party’s donors wouldn’t allow her to even hint at such a change in policy. Two days before the election, while campaigning in the swing state of Michigan, Harris stated, “I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.” But as Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada pointed out on election night, this promise carried no weight because Harris had also promised that she would never do the one thing within her power to stop the slaughter: cut off the flow of bombs to Israel.
After decades of malfeasance and deception, it has become evident that the corporate Democratic Party cannot serve as the lone opposition party to the corporate Republicans. The American people need a viable political party that represents the interests of ordinary working people.
A true workers party will not raise as much money as the corporate Democrats. But it will have an honest message with the potential to appeal to large numbers of Americans. Further, a political party that actually represents workers will press for reforms that begin to even the playing field between the haves and the have nots.
For example, one the most effective ways plutocrats game the political system is by flooding campaign contributions to the lawmakers who sit on the key committees that oversee their businesses. Members of Congress covet these committee chairs because they guarantee high fundraising numbers. Lawmakers who sit on the House Financial Services Committee have jurisdiction over banks and insurance companies and are targeted by those firms with campaign contributions. Lawmakers who sit on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees provide funding for lucrative government contracts and are flooded with war industry cash.
These practices are corrupt and deprive American citizens of their right to be governed by representatives free from conflicts of interest. A judge who has received political contributions from a litigant must be removed from the case. Similarly, the most important functions of government, such as determining tax and how our tax revenue will be spent, should be performed by lawmakers who have not been bribed.
In 2017, the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Democratic Party, proposed a “Committee Contribution Ban” for Congress. It asserted: “Congress should enact a law to make it unlawful for members of Congress to accept campaign contributions from entities that fall within the jurisdiction of their committees.” Unsurprisingly, this proposal never reached the floor of Congress, that I could find.
Some states have enacted similar conflict of interest rules. And Congress could certainly pass such a law, if it chose. Of course, this will never happen as long as we are ruled by two corporate parties that benefit from the corruption. But if we had a political party that represented ordinary people, countless opportunities for positive change would soon emerge.
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense lawyer and has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at DePaul University.
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From the Archives
How Europe’s New Political Class Began Rejecting Reality
By Glenn Diesen | October 26, 2024
Russia considers NATO’s incursion into Ukraine to be an existential threat, and NATO has openly stated its intention to make Ukraine a member state after the war. Without a political settlement that restores Ukraine’s neutrality, Russia will therefore likely annex the strategic territories it cannot accept ending up under NATO control and then turn what remains of Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. As the war is being lost, the rational policy for the Europeans would therefore be to offer an agreement based on ending NATO’s eastward expansion to save Ukrainian lives, territory and the nation itself. Yet, no European leader has been able to even suggest such a solution publicly. Why? … continue
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