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BBC interview with Hamas deputy chief is a case study in state propaganda

By Jonathan Cook | October 4, 2024

The BBC no longer bothers to hide the fact that its news service acts as nothing more than the British state’s willing propaganda channel.

Last night on the News at Ten, Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen secured a rare interview with Hamas’s deputy political chief, Khalil al-Hayya.

Anchor Clive Myrie introduced the segment by warning: “Many will find his comments abhorrent.” But the only person making abhorrent assertions was Myrie himself, observing that, in the interview, the Hamas leader “claims the Palestinian people have faced violence at the hands of Israel for several decades”.

No, Clive. The world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, as well as every major human rights organisation, has concluded that Israel’s belligerent military occupation of the Palestinians’ territory is illegal and violent – not as a claim, but as an indisputable fact.

Israel’s refusal to recognise a Palestinian state and allow Palestinians self-determination; Israel’s building of hundreds of illegal settlements on Palestinian land and the transfer of Israeli Jews, often militia groups, into those settlements; Israel’s 17-year siege of Gaza; and Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinian people to force them to submit to these indignities, are all forms of structural violence. Again, that is not a claim. It is how international law judges what Israel has done and is doing.

Next, Myrie required Bowen to justify at length why the BBC was allowing a Hamas political leader – not a military leader – to be given air time. Note, al-Hayya’s boss, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated by Israel while he was involved in negotiations to bring about a ceasefire. Like some kind of gangster, Israel murdered the man on the other side of the table it was supposed to be talking to.

The BBC provided none of that as context, of course, for its interview. It was too busy placating Israel and the British government by issuing apologies and warnings before it offered a rare insight into Hamas’ side of the story.

So what did al-Hayya say that was so “abhorrent”? Here are the main points al-Hayya raised in the interview – you can listen to his precise wording via this link – under Bowen’s mainly hostile questioning:

1. Hamas launched its attack on October 7 because the world had forgotten about Gaza even as Israel was slowly strangling the tiny territory to death through its 17-year siege. Hamas wanted to put Gaza back on the international community’s radar, and had decided it could do so only through military action.

2. Hamas fighters had been told not to target Israeli civilians on October 7, only Israeli occupation soldiers. Hamas does not endorse harming civilians. However, there were failings by individuals in sticking to that plan.

3. Israel, not Hamas, is the party responsible for destroying Gaza as evidenced through its bombardments of schools, shelters and hospitals. Hamas’ killing of 1,200 people could not be used to justify Israel killing more than 50,000 people in Gaza. Israel is “motivated by the lust to destroy”.

4. The accusation that Hamas uses the people of Gaza as “human shields” is not true. “They [Israel] destroyed mosques on the heads of their owners when there were no fighters. They destroyed houses and high-rise buildings when no one was in them… It is all Israeli propaganda.”

5. Netanyahu is the one obstructing a ceasefire. Even if Hamas surrendered today, Gaza’s next generation would take up the struggle because the Palestinian people want their freedom and have a legitimate right to resist the occupation. “People need to understand that Israel wants to burn the whole region.”

6. The Palestinians need a state and self-determination, and the Palestinian refugees a right to return to their homeland, if the region is ever to calm down.

7. It is Israel trying to eliminate the Palestinian people, not the Palestinians destroying Israel. “Give us our rights, give us a fully sovereign Palestinian state… Israel does not recognise a one-state solution or a two-state solution. Israel rejects it all.”

8. [Responding to a question about whether he considers himself a terrorist] “I’m seeking freedom and defending my people. To the occupation, we are all terrorists – the leaders, the women and the children. You heard what Israeli leaders called us: we are all animals.”

Now, one can debate whether al-Hayya’s statements are accurate or truthful, or whether he is being sincere. But nothing at all he says here can be viewed as “abhorrent” – unless you are shilling for Israel. He deplores attacks on civilians, he accuses Israel of bringing about Gaza’s destruction, he blames Netanyahu for blocking a ceasefire, and he appears to be ready to settle for a two-state solution, though he doesn’t believe Israel will agree to it.

In fact, his comments are far, far more moderate and far less inflammatory than statements regularly made by Netanyahu and most of the Israeli political and military leadership. Netanyahu, remember, is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, while the country he leads is on trial for what its sister court, the ICJ, considers a “plausible genocide” Netanyahu has incited and overseen. Not that the BBC ever mentions either fact.

And yet the state broadcaster never prefaces remarks from Netanyahu or other Israeli leaders – such as the self-declared fascist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich – with any kind of warning, let alone one that many viewers may find their remarks “abhorrent”.

And while we are at it, if al-Hayya’s remarks are the yardstick, how was Keir Starmer’s comment that Israel had a right to deprive Palestinian civilians of food, water and fuel – that is, to collectively punish them by starving them to death – not also deemed “abhorrent” by the BBC?

What becomes ever harder to deny is that the BBC isn’t reporting what is happening in the Middle East. It is aggressively framing it in such a way as to present Israel as the victim of events, and thereby assist it in carrying out a genocide in Gaza and beginning a second slaughter in Lebanon.

October 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tehran rejects ‘baseless’ US accusations of meddling in presidential election

Press TV – October 4, 2024

Iran has rejected “baseless” US accusations that it is attempting to influence the upcoming presidential election, saying Washington, with a record of interference in other countries’ affairs, is “in no position” to make such claims against Tehran.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei made the remarks on Friday, two days after an annual assessment by the Department of Homeland Security alleged that Iran, Russia and China are trying to influence the November vote, including by employing artificial intelligence to disseminate fake or divisive information.

Baghaei said, “These repeated and baseless claims, which have been made by some US officials and institutions for some time, are politically-motivated and serve domestic political purposes.”

“The US government, which has a long history of illegal interference in the internal affairs of other countries, is in no position to level such accusations at other states.”

Back in August, the campaign of US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed that it had been hacked, pinning the blame on Iran without providing evidence.

Meanwhile, the FBI and other US agencies alleged that Iranian hackers had sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate.

The Islamic Republic said it does not accord any credence to the accusations, emphasizing that it has no intent or motive to meddle in the American election.

October 4, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

New York City Health Officials to Hold Bird Flu Tabletop Exercise

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 3, 2024

New York City officials are planning a tabletop simulation later this month to prepare for a hypothetical bird flu outbreak, a city health official revealed at the International Bird Flu Summit, taking place this week in Fairfax, Virginia.

The summit is sponsored by Gingko Biosecurity, which says it is “building and deploying the next-generation infrastructure and technologies that global leaders need to predict, detect, and respond to a wide variety of biological threats.”

Public health officials, doctors, scientists, researchers and pharmaceutical company representatives convened at the summit amid more reports of bird flu hotspots, including a cluster of eight possible bird flu cases in Missouri.

According to U.S. News & World Report, the Missouri cases “could be the first cases of bird flu spreading between humans in the United States.”

Italy and Hungary recently announced they detected bird flu outbreaks at farms, Reuters reported. According to CBS News, bird flu killed 47 tigers, three lions and a panther at zoos in Vietnam.

Epidemiologist Nicholas Hulscher told The Defender that the Missouri and other global outbreaks are not concerning.

“The current outbreaks of H5N1 among animal populations have not resulted in mass mortality with the exception of government-mandated culling,” Hulscher said. “Genotype B3.13, the currently circulating strain in U.S. cattle, is currently a very mild illness for humans. There has never been a reported human H5N1 death in the U.S.”

Dr. Clayton J. Baker, an internal medicine physician, told The Defender the latest news reports strike him “as classic ‘fear porn.’” He noted that before the U.S. News & World Report story, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report stating that only one H5N1 case in humans had been detected in Missouri.

Journalist and author John Leake is attending the Bird Flu Summit. He told The Defender that while mainstream media reports are hyping purported bird flu outbreaks, the atmosphere at the summit is subdued, albeit aligned with the prevailing narrative.

“They’re following, I’d say, the narrative that we’ve been treated to all year, that this new H5N1 is jumping from birds into mammals — for example, dairy cattle, marine mammals, which are genetically, genomically far closer to humans,” Leake said.

“So, the prevailing orthodoxy is that this pathogenic avian influenza is getting closer to making the evolutionary jump from animals into humans. And if that happens, it’s going to place a big burden on human health and the public healthcare system,” Leake added.

As for the Missouri outbreak, Leake said it’s been a topic of discussion at the summit — but no evidence has been presented to confirm that human-to-human bird flu transmission has occurred.

In addition to the news about New York City’s planned bird flu simulation, the topic of gain-of-function research involving the H5N1 virus came up, with some attendees speculating that the current predominant H5N1 strain may be a product of such research.

Simulation of bird flu outbreak ‘cause for tremendous concern’

According to Leake, Syra Madad, senior director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals, told summitt attendees that her agency is planning a “full pandemic tabletop exercise” on Oct. 21.

Noting the similarities with similar simulations that took place shortly before the COVID-19 and monkeypox outbreaks in 2019 and 2022, respectively, Leake said, “In my experience, once these guys start doing this kind of thing, they’re signaling that they think it’s for real.”

Baker said news of the tabletop simulation “is cause for tremendous concern.” He called the timing of the COVID-19 tabletop exercise, Event 201, which took place in October 2019, “in retrospect, ‘suspicious in the extreme.’”

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation organized the 2019 simulation of a coronavirus outbreak.

In March 2021, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, in conjunction with the Munich Security Conference, organized a “tabletop exercise on reducing high-consequence biological threats,” based on a hypothetical global monkeypox outbreak in May 2022.

The simulation preceded the May 2022 monkeypox outbreak.

“Any full-scale exercises for a pathogen should raise concerns about possible pre-planned release,” Hulscher said. “Event 201 should remind us that ‘drills’ are usually held before the real event.”

Hulscher suggested a bird flu outbreak could be weaponized to disrupt this year’s U.S. presidential election or the next administration.

“Peter Hotez, Bill Gates and Robert Redfield have warned of future pandemics worse than SARS-CoV-2 with high confidence that it will be avian influenza,” Hulscher said. “Many groups would benefit from disrupting the 2024 election and/or society in general. Thus, I think there’s a high probability of another intentional laboratory leak.”

‘Abundant evidence’ current bird flu strain a product of gain-of-function research

According to Baker, the H5N1 bird flu virus is the subject of gain-of-function research by several scientists and laboratories, including Yoshihiro Kawaoka, Ph.D., at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Ron Fouchier, Ph.D., at Erasmus University in the Netherlands; and the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory (SEPRL) in Georgia.

Leake said Kawaoka and Fouchier “have published papers in which they have proclaimed that they have successfully created an H5N1 variant that is transmissible by aerosolized droplets amongst ferrets,” noting that “the pulmonary tract or the respiratory tract of Ferrets is considered very almost eerily close to that of humans.”

According to Hulscher, “There is abundant evidence that the current circulating strain of H5N1 in the United States — Genotype B3.13 Clade 2.3.4.4b — is a consequence of serial passage gain-of-function research being conducted at SEPRL.”

“The accelerated evolution of H5N1 via serial passage in mallard ducks may be the reason behind the adaptations to new species,” Hulscher said, referring to a preprint study he co-authored with Leake and cardiologist Peter McCullough, which Hulscher said “provides the entire rationale for a possible laboratory leak.”

The preprint has been accepted by a journal and is awaiting publication, Hulscher said.

According to Baker, “It’s a documented fact that gain-of-function manipulation of bird flu has been going on for many years. There is no legitimate reason to perform this type of research, other than to weaponize these viruses.”

Writing for the Brownstone Institute, Baker said there are at least five laboratories in the U.S. conducting gain-of-function research on H5N1, in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1975.

In a recent post on Substack, Leake said that the “Pandemic Flu Industry will likely need lab assistance to amplify human-to-human transmission and virulence.”

Baker said, “All a malicious group of people would have to do is have their meeting, ‘get their ducks in a row,’ so to speak, then release those gain-of-function-infected ducks into the environment. Or use whatever vector of spread they choose.”

Leake told The Defender that during the Bird Flu Summit, he asked Karen Murphy, senior director of biosecurity for Gingko Biosecurity, if the company is “doing any kind of surveillance of this pathogen being manipulated and released from a lab.”

In her response, Murphy confirmed that her company has developed a product that can detect whether a pathogen developed organically or is man-made — but that this product is only being made available to government and intelligence agencies.

She said:

“When we think about biosecurity surveillance at large, we’re thinking about things that develop organically.

“We actually do have a product on the market today. It’s called NR, and NR will help — It is mostly for government organizations and the intelligence community, but the concept behind NR is to help understand if something has been man-made or female-made or if it’s organic.”

Remarking on Murphy’s response, Leake said “We’re once again left with these national security state assurances.”

“How are we the citizens going to know if it’s another example of what we saw coming out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Leake asked, referring to the likelihood that the SARS-CoV-2 virus leaked out of that facility.

Leake said companies like Gingko Biosecurity are “well within the biopharmaceutical complex,” adding that they represent “commercial interests that seem pretty revved up about pandemics, when the money flows.”

“Until we outlaw gain-of-function research entirely and enforce the Biological Weapons Convention, which is being flouted by gain-of-function researchers, we’ll have this sword of Damocles hanging over our heads forever,” Baker said.

Several key scientists and researchers, including Redfield, former director of the CDC, have called for a moratorium on gain-of-function research or for the total cessation of such research.

Last month, the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed S.4667, the Risky Research Review Act, out of committee, sending the bill to the full Senate. If passed, the bill will subject research involving risky pathogens, including gain-of-function research, to strict oversight.

NYC plan includes isolating bird flu patients, administering Tamiflu

Leake said there has been only limited discussion of bird flu vaccines so far during the summit.

“We were excited to attend a vaccine talk that was in the published program … but when we got our updated program electronically at the conference, that vaccine presentation had apparently been removed,” Leake said.

In contrast, Leake said that there was plenty of discussion around pandemic preparedness and response during this week’s Bird Flu Summit.

According to Leake, Madad, an infectious disease epidemiologist, said New York City hospitals are preparing a bird flu outbreak preparedness plan focused on isolating people suspected of infection and administering antiviral medications.

“She really didn’t offer a satisfactory answer at all,” Leake said. “She said, ‘We have got an idea or a concept for isolation [and] we’ve got antivirals like Tamiflu.’”

“Antivirals administered in the hospital setting to an acutely ill patient? It’s too late by then,” Leake said. “Based on her testimony, they don’t have a hospital treatment plan. Instead, vague talk of isolating the patient, which of course is cold comfort if you’re severely ill, if you can’t breathe in a hospital.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

October 3, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

1-Minute Junking: Emissions caused Hurricane Helene to intensify?

JunkScience.com | September 30, 2024

Washington Post article

October 1, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

Words kill: Why Israel gets away with murder in Gaza and Lebanon

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 1, 2024

The official Israeli army version of why it targeted civilian areas during the intense and deadly bombardment of southern Lebanon on 20 September is that the Lebanese are hiding long-range missile launchers in their homes. This official explanation was meant to justify the killing of 492 people and the wounding of 1,645 in a single day of Israeli air strikes.

This off-the-shelf explanation will be repeated throughout the Israeli war in Lebanon, however long it takes. Israeli media is now citing these claims and, as usual, US and western media are parroting the same narrative. Keep this in mind as you reflect on earlier statements made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog on 13 October last year when he argued that there are no civilians in Gaza, and that, “There is an entire nation out there that is responsible [for 7 October ].”

Israel does this in every war it launches against the Palestinians or any Arab nation.

Instead of removing civilians and civilian infrastructures from its target bank, it immediately turns the civilian population into the main targets for its bombs.

A quick glance at the number of civilians killed in the ongoing war and genocide in Gaza should be enough to demonstrate that Israel targets ordinary people as a matter of course. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, children and women constitute the largest percentage of the war’s victims at 69 per cent . If we factor in the number of adult males who have been killed — including doctors and other medical staff, civil defense workers and numerous other categories — it will be obvious that the vast majority of all of Gaza’s victims of Israeli brutality were civilians.

Only Israeli media, and their allies in the west, continue to find justifications for killing Palestinian and now Lebanese civilians in large numbers.

Compare the following two statements, which received much attention in the media, by Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari regarding both Gaza and Lebanon: “Hamas systematically uses hospitals to wage war and consistently uses the people of Gaza as human shields,” said Hagari on 25 March. Then he claimed on September 27, “Hezbollah’s terror headquarters was intentionally built under residential buildings in the heart of Beirut, as part of Hezbollah’s strategy of using human shields.”

For those who routinely give Hagari and other Israeli spokespeople the benefit of the doubt, just review what has taken place in Gaza in the past year. For example, Israel claimed that the massacre at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital was not of its doing, and that it was a Palestinian rocket that killed the nearly 500 displaced refugees and wounded hundreds more on 17 October 2023. All evidence, including investigations by well -respected rights groups, concluded the opposite. However, the false Israeli claims still dominated the media headlines.

The Baptist Hospital episode was repeated with other lies on numerous occasions. In fact, the lies started on 7 October, not 17 October, when Israel made claims about decapitated babies and mass rape. Even though much of that has been proven conclusively to be wrong, some in the media, and pro-Israel officials, continue to speak of it as if it is a proven fact.

Moreover, although no Hamas headquarters were ever found under Al-Shifa Hospital, the unsubstantiated Israeli claims continued to be repeated as if they were the full truth of the matter, and thus justified the death and destruction at Gaza’s main medical facility.

The same logic is now being applied to Lebanon, where Israel claims that it does not target civilians and, when civilians are killed, that it is the Lebanese themselves who should be blamed for supposedly using civilians as human shields.

The Gaza playbook is now the Lebanon playbook.

Of course, many are playing along, not because they are irrational or unable to reach proper conclusions based on the obvious evidence. They do so because they are happy to be part of the Israeli narrative, not neutral storytellers or honest journalists.

Even the BBC plays its part within that narrative, as it uses Israeli claims as the starting point of any conversation on Palestine or Lebanon. “Israel has said it carried out a wave of pre-emptive strikes across southern Lebanon to thwart a large-scale rocket and drone attack by Hezbollah,” reported the corporation on 26 August. That’s just one example of many.

Israel gets away with its lies pertaining to the mass killings in Gaza, and now in Lebanon, because Israeli propaganda is welcomed, in fact, embraced by western officials and journalists. Thus, when US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan described the 20 September air strikes on Lebanon as “justice served”, he was telling mainstream media that its coverage should remain committed to that official assessment.

Imagine the outrage if the tables were turned, and Israeli civilians were slaughtered in their own homes by Lebanese bombs. There would be no need to have to explain the reactions of the US or western media, as they would be obvious to anyone who is paying attention.

Lebanon is a sovereign Arab state. Gaza is an occupied territory, and its people are protected under the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Neither Lebanese nor Palestinian lives are without worth, and their mass murder should not be allowed to take place for any reason, especially based on lies communicated by an Israeli military spokesperson and repeated by complicit media.

Perpetuating Israeli lies is dangerous, not only because truth-telling is a virtue, but also because words kill. Dishonest reporting can, in fact, succeed in justifying genocide, which is why Israel gets away with murder in Gaza and Lebanon.

October 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Jerusalem Post deletes article claiming Lebanon is part of Israel’s ‘promised land’

A man walks over debris of the building, where Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah lost his life, after Israeli army’s airstrike, carried out by F-35 fighter jets, in Dahieh, Beirut, Lebanon on September 29, 2024 [Houssam Shbaro – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | October 1, 2024

The Jerusalem Post has prompted a controversy after publishing then swiftly deleting an article suggesting that Lebanon and several other Middle Eastern countries are part of Israel’s “promised land”.

“Is Lebanon part of Israel’s promised territory?” was published on 25 September, coinciding with Israel’s assault on Lebanon and subsequent ground invasion. The timing and content of the piece have been viewed by critics as evidence of Israel’s expansionist ambitions in the region.

In the now-deleted article, Mark Fish claimed that the land “promised by God” to the “children of Israel” includes parts of modern-day Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and even Turkey. Fish cited religious texts to support its claims.

“The Torah provides clear guidelines regarding the areas we were commanded to conquer when taking possession of the land,” he wrote. He elaborated further on the concept of “Greater Israel”, suggesting that the Biblical boundaries stretch “from the ‘River of Egypt’ [interpreted by some as the Nile or a smaller river in Sinai] to the Perat River [Euphrates].”

The Jerusalem Post removed the article following a backlash on social media, with many accusing the newspaper of promoting expansionist ideology under the guise of religious justification. However, the article has been archived and continues to circulate online.

Notably, the author provides Torah-based justifications for holding onto occupied land. He said that “Hashem [God] tells us that we are granted every land we will conquer within the borders mentioned,” suggesting that God has sanctioned territorial expansion and occupation. This is an argument that aligns with a core tenet of Zionist ideology, which often cites Biblical prophecy about God’s promise to the Jews as justification for claiming Palestine and surrounding areas.

“Every place where the sole of your foot will tread shall be yours — from the wilderness and the Lebanon, from the river — the Euphrates River — until the western sea shall be your boundary,” wrote Fish. “This promise from the Creator clearly places the land of Lebanon within the Promised Land of Israel, or what some refer to as ‘the Complete Land of Israel’, or ‘The greater Israel’.”

Critics argue that the publication of such content, especially during another Israeli invasion of Lebanon, serves to legitimise Israel’s ongoing colonisation efforts in the Middle East. They contend that it reflects a broader ideology within certain Israeli circles that seeks to justify territorial expansion based on religious beliefs.

The controversy has reignited debates about the role of Israel’s religious claims to Palestine and the potential consequences of such rhetoric in an already volatile region. Like the early Zionists who concealed their true intention about ethnic cleansing and the complete colonisation of all of Palestine, Israeli leaders tend to avoid commenting on the concept of Greater Israel.

As of the time of writing, the Jerusalem Post had not issued an official statement regarding the publication and subsequent removal of the article.

October 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Of Cool Heads and Hot Heads

By Philip Kraske • Unz Review • September 29, 2024

Ever more desperate, Israel is working hard to start a world war with the United States on its side. The elimination of Hassan Nasrallah won’t make much difference to Hezbollah’s fight; the new leader will soon step up. But Israel might regret the absence of the cool-headed Nasrallah.

Cool-headedness has actually been the norm this past year, and is among the few hopeful notes on the international scene. Lots of leaders are keeping calm, holding back the factions in their governments that would love to take a crack at the folks thumbing their military noses at them.

China merely tut-tuts about foreign navy ships traversing the Strait of Taiwan, Hezbollah keeps its big missiles in their silos, Iran responds to Israeli attacks with a few half-hearted firecrackers, and Vladimir Putin frowns and issues warning after warning when Ukraine, with Nato help, hits Russian refineries and radar installations. Meanwhile Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Syria, and Turkey — and I’ve probably missed a few — itch to put holes in Israeli runways.

But restraint is the watchword. Unlike before World War One, when governments decided to declare war from one day to the next, countries are looking before they leap. Why? To what do the world’s citizens owe this clear shift to reluctance among national leaders to jump into conflict? It’s often been observed that nuclear weapons have kept the peace among the great powers. Nowadays, however, other elements keep the peace just as well. Here are the three most important ones.

The first is economic. It’s true that capitalist consumerism has atomized the citizenry, but it also keeps people quiet. National leaders figure that the only way to keep everybody fed and employed and hypnotized by Netflix series is to keep the economy running. Take tourism, for example — a labor-intensive industry that absorbs a lot of workers with little formal education. Israel’s has been hammered. Who wants to retrace the steps of Christ in the Holy Land amidst the squall of sirens announcing incoming missiles from Hezbollah? Israel now has to rotate its forces in and out of the military just to keep the economy going. But they’re finally going to throw the Palestinians out, and figure it’s worth the tradeoff.

Other touristy countries have much less to gain. In Turkey, tourism makes up more than ten percent of the economy, and is still growing. In Egypt, it’s 24 percent. Take that away, and the ensuing unrest will topple governments. But their leaders have less to gain from tackling Israel.

The second element is strategic. Just over the last several years, war has turned into a video game of missiles and missile-defenses and drones of all different kinds. As the commentator Alistair Crooke has observed, American aircraft carriers parked in the eastern Mediterranean look like something out of the 1950s. A couple of missiles sent from Crimea would send them to the bottom of the sea in a question of minutes.

Conventional war has all but disappeared. Imagine what would happen to American troop and supply ships traversing the Atlantic. If German U-boats sank nearly three thousand, Russians would sink every one of them, and not from a dank submarine but from a cosy office in Moscow. And crossing the Pacific to attack China would be a suicide mission.

National governments see the destruction wrought by Russian missiles — not its army shelling villages, but the attacks from afar on major cities and infrastructure — and they quickly figure that restraint is the better part of valor.

The third element that makes governments hesitate to get into a fight is that societies are far more fragile than before. Imagine what would happen if the Chinese got mad at the Americans and dropped a few missiles on highway overpasses, which then collapsed highways, between San Diego and San Francisco. Of course, hackers could wreak havoc on just about everything, but if software defenses proved troublesome to them, a couple of missiles — or just bombs placed by hired thugs — on data centers would quickly affect the internet in all kinds of random ways. Well-paid jokers could send drones flying around Atlanta and Chicago airports — or Istanbul’s or Frankfurt’s or Tokyo’s — closing them down. And if some leader were in a bloody frame of mind, he could order the downing of just two commercial airliners, one taking off in Paris and the other in Miami — and watch every flight reservation in the the western hemisphere get canceled in an hour. Citizens of the world’s poorest countries would finally have the last laugh.

In fact, there is a never-declared Mutually Assured Destruction that restrains governments, or quasi-governments like Hezbollah. All to the good, except that conventional war seems to be morphing into terrorism. Now that Israel has opened the Pandora’s box of booby-trapping consumer items, how long will it be before desk lamps — or shoes or avocados — begin to explode in Tel Aviv? Will Kurds need to take apart their Turkish-made earphones? As readers of Unz.com know, attacking China is far more cost-effective through untraceable biological attacks against its people and livestock, and invites no revenge — at least for the moment.

Israel’s attack with pagers and radios, Ukraine’s worthless drone strikes on Moscow apartment buildings, America’s aimless pecking at “terrorists” in Syria and Iraq — these are harbingers of the terrorist world to come.

And as defeat approaches, the losers are bound to raise the ante — especially the Israelis and Ukrainians. As in World War Two, the years of war have corroded their last vestige of ethics, and they know that the Washington elite will ultimately excuse their tactics. The western media would give nothing but dashing accounts of how Zelensky and Netanyahu — harried, exhausted, yet persevering — listened to their advisers, rubbed their necks, and gave the green lights to “limited” chemical or nuclear attacks against advancing enemies. For an excellent example of how flexible, how downright protean, mainstream journalists can be, read New York Times columnist Amanda Taub’s article on the legality of Israel bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus: “Israel Bombed an Iranian Embassy Complex. Is That Allowed?” She concludes that it was.

In short, if Hezbollah’s next leader, not so restrained as Nesrallah, unleashes missile hell down the whole length of Israel, Netanyahu and his hard-eyed friends may come to regret finishing him off. Doesn’t history tell the best jokes?

September 29, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Scientist jumps the climate gun

Is the Pacific Jet Stream drifting poleward?

By Dr David Whitehouse | NetZero Watch | September 26, 2024

This week’s prize for jumping the climate gun goes to New Scientist, twice.

Firstly, it tells us that low sea ice levels in Antarctica signal a permanent shift. This, they say, because for the second year in a row Antarctic sea ice has reached near-record low levels, “initiating concern that climate change has initiated a ‘regime shift’ in the amount of ice that forms in the Southern Ocean each year.”

Sorry New Scientist, but two years does not a trend make. Looking at the data, 2023 was indeed a record low and 2024 slightly above that, but if you look at previous years, especially the 2011–2020 average, you will see no trend, just confirmation that 2023 and 2024 are outliers. Much more data than the past two years will be required to signal a permanent regime change.

Their second example of spurious trend-setting concerns the questions of if there is a long-term poleward shift in the jet stream, and if it might be the result of global warming.  The jet stream is powered by the Earth’s rotation and by temperature differences between the tropics and higher latitudes. Its poleward drift is a prediction of some climate models.

According to New Scientist, a new analysis indicates that the Pacific Jet Stream has started its poleward drift, moving at 30–80 km a decade. The problem with this research, which is clearly stated in the paper, is that the Jet Stream’s natural bounds of variability are not known, and despite the data going back several decades, if the past ten years are excluded from the analysis then no poleward trend is seen. The researchers say it’s going to take to the end of this century to be sure of any systematic Pacific Jet Stream drift.

Over the past few months, something very unusual has been happening in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean. Temperatures have declined at their fastest for over 40 years. Climate scientists are at loss to explain it, as the usual culprit – trade winds – haven’t developed as expected.

It has been called an “Atlantic Niña.” Along with the developing La Niña in the Pacific, it is expected to reduce global temperatures. It’s a puzzle, as the equatorial Atlantic was hot throughout 2023 – in fact the warmest for decades. Again the reaction by some has been alarmist, fearing that the climate system has gone off the rails, but my initial response is to wait and see, as it is probably an example of misunderstanding of natural variability.

September 29, 2024 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

What does Putin have to do with Israel’s attacks on Lebanon?

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | September 23, 2024

On September 17, Israel launched one of the largest and cruelest terrorist attacks in modern history. For Lebanon and Syria, the victim countries, 9/17 will now have a meaning akin to that of 9/11 in the US. That date will be remembered for a very long time, and beyond those two states, as the start of two waves of explosions, mostly affecting pagers on the first day and walkie-talkies the following day. There have been reports of other everyday objects, such as laptops and tablets as well as solar energy systems blowing up as well.

While some details are still murky, we already know that the attacks were devastating: According to an Amnesty International summary from September 20, more than 2,931 victims were injured and at least 37 were killed. Amnesty International tends to be cautious and conservative with its figures, and it is still too early for a full assessment of casualties and damage. It is certain that the final count will be worse.

Events are moving fast. The onslaught seems to have served to either provoke or start a larger war; UN General Secretary António Guterres quickly – and plausibly – suspected that 9/17 was meant as a preventive strike and prelude to a larger escalation. It has been followed by more and increasingly brutal bombings and massacres, in the manner that we know so well from the rogue state Israel. For now, it is already clear that after a horrific scene of mass terror in shops, streets, and homes, many of the victims of 9/17 have been injured severely, often leaving them with “life-changing injuries.”

An ophthalmologist at Mount Lebanon University Hospital in Beirut told us 60 to 70 percent of his patients “had to have at least one eye removed. [For] some of the patients, we had to remove both eyes. It kills me. In my past 25 years of practice, I’ve never removed as many eyes.”

Israel, the perpetrator regime, has done what it always does, namely release a barrage of lies. The first step, as so often, has been to boast of its crime without, however, officially admitting it. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a chief genocidaire in the Gaza slaughter, has spoken of a “new era” of war with Lebanon and extolled the “excellent achievements” of the Israeli intelligence services. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Get it, get it? By the way, that is a technique that Western propagandists just love to ascribe to Russia. Yet it’s as Israeli as (stolen) shakshuka and (authentically Zionist) ethnic cleansing. But that’s okay in the West. Because – Israel.

Israeli politicians, propagandists, and many cut-outs and useful idiots in the West claim that this was a legitimate intelligence operation to strike at Hezbollah, the resistance organization and political party based in Lebanon with which Israel is, in effect, at war. In reality, things are as clear as can be: Using civilian devices in this manner is a war crime.

Legally, two points are decisive as well as incontrovertible: First, Hezbollah is both a military and a civilian organization. Under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which applies here without a doubt, only those Hezbollah members serving in a military capacity are combatants. All others are and remain civilians, who have and retain a right to protection – obviously also during armed conflict because (duh…) armed conflict is what IHL is all about. Amnesty International has found evidence that the exploding devices of 9/17 had indeed been distributed to members of Hezbollah’s civilian offices, too, as was perfectly expectable for the Israeli perpetrators.

Second, 9/17 was, in any case, fundamentally criminal because, as Amnesty International has explained, it was “indiscriminate […] according to” IHL as “those who planned and carried out these attacks could not verify who would be harmed when the devices exploded, or even if only fighters had been given them.” Indeed, booby-traps spread throughout a civilian population – yes, even while perhaps in immediate possession of a Hezbollah member – are “inherently indiscriminate,” as one expert has put it. That is also why booby-trapping things that are generally associated with civilian use – such as pagers, which are not, obviously, tanks or trenches – is explicitly forbidden by the 1996 Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps, and Other Devices, a United Nations treaty.

Against this background, Western Israel apologists have bent over backwards to spin 9/17. Indeed, this time they are doing overtime, not only downplaying and justifying brazen Israeli criminality as usual but also celebrating it as exemplary and clever (Ironically, dwelling on the stereotypical “cleverness” of Jews is a classic anti-Semitic prejudice, but let’s not dwell on that.) The Wall Street Journal editorial board has framed 9/17 as an example of Israel’s “remarkable” abilities. As if being bankrolled and protected by the US is a skill set. For the reliably warmongering British outlet The Telegraph, the attack was “audacious.” Interesting: how? Did the perpetrators show their face for an open fight? The Bild, a powerful, ultra-Zionist German yellow press outlet from the right-wing Springer group, admired the “almost movie-like spy thriller” behind the operation, that is, the criminal infiltration of civilian supply chains to plant explosives.

If you think that such comments are ever appropriate for a terror attack, try using them for the 9/11 assault on the US in 2001 instead of the 9/17 one on Lebanon and Syria now. See? Not funny, right?

Then there’s the more sophisticated and yet still completely misguided take. Writing for the Daily Mail, Mark Almond, not a stupid man, also felt he had to acknowledge how “spectacular” the “operation was on its own merits” and dwell on Israel’s “excelling” at this kind of “warfare.” That kind of “warfare” is criminal, and if Hezbollah had used it against Israel, Mark Almond would have found the correct word for it: terrorism. It is a principally wrong step to avoid facing or naming the true legal and ethical nature of an act of violence by focusing on how well it was executed, or, in Almond’s words, its “brutal ingeniousness.”

It’s also, frankly, immature. It’s what young bro’ish boys do, when they admire a war criminal such as Nazi Otto Skorzeny because his glider landing on Gran Sasso mountain to snatch washed-out Mussolini must have looked just so damn commando cool. But a world of Israeli genocide and mass murder forbids such infantilism. In a sadly fitting manner, and quite perversely, Almond has not one word for civilians, except Israeli ones.

Almond, however, does see a real downside to Israel’s “sophisticated” attack nevertheless: He fears that its perpetrators may have miscalculated this time and, in essence, bitten off more than they can chew, inviting a backlash he compares with what happened to Japan after its – by the way, non-terrorist – attack on Pearl Harbor. Again, not a thought about Israel’s victims.

What’s the worst that could happen, according to Almond’s unfortunately typical Western mind? That the Israeli terrorists get some pain in return for the suffering of their victims which he has painstakingly made sure not to even mention. Not a word, either, about Lebanon’s or Syria’s right not to be attacked by a terrorist rogue regime next door. Not a word about their sovereignty or their governments’ right and duty to protect their citizens. If this isn’t a racist bias, I don’t know what is.

And then, finally, it’s time for – you must see this coming by now – RUSSIA! Yes, Russia. Not that Almond has any factual reason to bring it up in this context. None at all. Strictly zero. But you see, when we talk about a horrific crime committed by, actually, Israel, but we can’t actually say that, then we talk about Russia. To be on the safe side, let’s add China, too. “How long before Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping,” Almond dramatically asks, “works out how to make millions of iPhones around the world burst into flames in the pockets of their foes?”

Holy Sigmund Freud! Displacement is a powerful force indeed. Yet here’s the thing: If Moscow or Beijing wanted to do the same horrible things Israel routinely does, they easily could. There’s no issue of “working out” here. What Almond can’t face is that they simply are not like that. Israel is like that, criminal to the core, completely spoiled by decades of US-sponsored impunity, and addicted to underhanded violence and lying. It’s Israel that he supports with the absurd propaganda trick of talking about Russia and China instead of the state that has actually committed the crime and set the precedent he wants to warn about. The West is delusional. Clinically speaking.

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.

September 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Victoria Nuland Counters Her Own State Propaganda

By James Wile | The Libertarian Institute | September 23, 2024

Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland gave an interview with exiled Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar that was published to YouTube on September 3 and the conversation deserves more attention than it received. While an interview from three weeks ago might seem like old news, it contained an astonishing admission from Nuland that seemed to slip under the radar of many listeners.

The part of the conversation that received the most coverage was Nuland saying the United States government persuaded Ukraine to walk away from peace negotiations with Russia in the early weeks of their war. People who get their news from sources outside the corporate media were already aware the West had almost certainly talked Ukraine out of accepting a peace deal, but it was still shocking to see a former U.S. State official smile as she acknowledged that her government had acted as an obstacle to peace.

But there was another part of the interview that was equally damning and of greater relevance to the current threat of global war.

Almost an hour into the interview, Nuland was describing the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and said, “But it was also really interesting to see how bad the Russian military was. I mean in the United States it really completely dispelled this myth of this massive superpower military that could roll across Europe any time it felt like it.”

My eyes nearly popped out of my skull when I heard this statement. The fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin is hell-bent on conquering a new Russian Empire has been a constant justification for American support for this proxy war. But according to Nuland, the United States government has known Russia is not powerful enough to “roll across Europe” since early 2022. Nuland said this as if she were merely adding an interesting factoid to her interview, unaware that she was contradicting years of propaganda designed to keep the West afraid that the Soviet Union could rise from the dead at any moment.

This fear of a new Russian Empire has not been a secondary point in the pro-war position. It has been the cornerstone on which the entire argument is built. If the world does not unite to resist this Russian aggression against Ukraine, then it will only be a matter of time until Russia does the same to the rest of Eastern Europe. Nations will fall under the thumb of Putin one by one until half of Europe finds itself once again living behind an iron curtain of tyranny.

This new domino theory of Russian ambition has been the subject of countless headlines, articles, and interviews meant to keep the faucet of American support for Ukraine open and running.

In April, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison claimed that Putin’s “goal is to recreate the Soviet Union so that means he will have to go into NATO countries.”

Headlines in 2022 included “Restoration of empire is the endgame for Russia’s Vladimir Putin,” and “Putin’s dark designs: Restore the pre-1917 Russian empire.”

You can even find articles from ten years ago associating Putin with “The rebuilding of ‘Soviet’ Russia.”

But in twenty seconds of an interview, Victoria Nuland revealed that for over two years the United States government has known Russia is not powerful enough to recreate the Russian Empire. So, any corporate media outlet or government mouthpiece who used this threat as a legitimate reason to continue funding the proxy war was either lying or being a useful idiot.

Antiwar voices have been arguing for years that the fear of Putin reconstituting an empire from Siberia to Central Europe is ridiculous, but Nuland is not some antiwar dove. She has been among the most hawkish voices in the United States when it comes to the situation in Eastern Europe.

Nuland, of course, would describe herself differently. According to her, Putin has overstated the part she played in Ukraine. Despite being an assistant secretary of State, she was “a nobody,” and Putin’s exaggeration of her role was a “bizarre act of desperation” that demonstrated his “own insecurity about losing Ukraine,” but there is no doubt her fingerprints can be found all over the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

The most infamous example is the phone call leaked in 2014 where Nuland can be heard talking openly about the United States meddling in the government of Ukraine. In the call, she said, “I don’t think Klitsch [Ukrainian politician Vitali Klitschko] should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” She was talking about who should be a part of a foreign government as casually as she would discuss which intern in her department should be considered for a permanent position. You do not need to be an expert in Ukrainian politics to be taken aback by such shamelessness.

Nuland has also called for the continuation of U.S. support for the war. In February 2024 she gave a speech at the Center for Strategic & International Studies where she said, “With the sixty billion dollar supplemental that the administration has requested of Congress, we can ensure that Ukraine not only survives, but she thrives.” If she wants to ensure Ukraine continues to receive U.S. funding, she has no incentive to downplay the threat posed by the Russian military. This makes it even more unbelievable that she admitted the United States knows the threat of a new Russian Empire is nonexistent.

One of the U.S. regime’s chief actors has fact-checked her own regime’s propaganda. This would be like Colin Powell giving an interview in 2003 saying the United States knew that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

For readers who did not live through the deluge of propaganda leading up to the Iraq War, Colin Powell was the secretary of State under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He gave a speech at the United Nations on February 5, 2003 in which he used Hussien’s WMDs as justification for invading Iraq. The invasion uncovered no evidence of WMDs, but the threat of these weapons had been enough to get the U.S. government the invasion of Iraq that they were after.

If Powell had given an interview a few weeks later equivalent to Nuland’s, the entire pretext for war with Iraq would have evaporated.

It is difficult to believe a majority of the American public would have supported invading Iraq if Powell had made such an admission. Nuland’s concession should be equally impactful, but the world has continued moving forward as if the interview never happened. Kamala Harris and other war hawks continue to repeat the “myth” that Putin is going to march through Europe unless we stop him here and now.

Maybe Nuland’s shocking rebuttal of her own State Department’s propaganda was overshadowed by other stories. Maybe the corporate media was happy to keep the interview buried and out of the spotlight. One way or another, the American people need to wake up to the fact that the war in Ukraine is just another war sold on lies.

September 23, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Hillary Clinton’s Sordid History of Secrecy and Censorship

By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | September 23, 2024

“You could drop Hillary into any trouble spot, come back in a month and… she will have made it better,” former President Bill Clinton declared in a 2016 speech championing his wife’s presidential candidacy. But Hillary’s entry into the brawls surrounding the 2024 presidential election will leave many Americans wishing to drop her elsewhere.

As the race enters the home stretch, Hillary Clinton is riding in like Joan of Arc to rescue truth—or at least to call for hammering government critics. But Hillary has been a triple threat to American democracy for fifteen years.

Last Monday evening, Hillary declared on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC talk show that the federal government should criminally prosecute Americans who share “propaganda”—which she made no effort to define.

Hillary has long been one of America’s foremost censorship advocates. In 2021, she announced that there must be “a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the [social media] platforms currently enjoy.” Hillary made her utterance at a time when freedom in much of the world had been obliterated by governments responding to a pandemic that occurred as a result of U.S. government funding reckless experiments in Chinese government labs. The U.S. denial of its role in the lab leak was perhaps the biggest deceit of the decade but Hillary never kvetched about that scam regarding a program that contributed to millions of deaths. But that wasn’t disinformation—that was public service.

In 2022, Hillary wailed that “tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability” and endorsed European Union legislation to obliterate free speech. But “disinformation” is often simply the lag time between the pronouncement and the debunking of government falsehoods.

That awkward fact didn’t deter Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz from declaring last month, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.” Who knew the Minnesota version of the First Amendment has a loophole bigger than Duluth?

After the New York Post shot down Joe Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board in 2022, Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris as chief of a White House disinformation task force to find ways to protect women and LGBTQI+ politicians and journalists from vigorous criticism on the Internet (“online harassment and abuse”). Harris declared that such criticism could “preclude women from political decision-making about their own lives and communities, undermine the functioning of democracy.” To save democracy, the government must suppress criticism of women.

Five years ago, at an NAACP Detroit “Freedom Fund” dinner, Harris proclaimed, “We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy.” She did not specify the precise degree of alleged rancor required to nullify a speaker’s constitutional rights. Based on Harris’s prior comments, she will likely sharply increase repression of her critics on social media if she wins in November.

Biden administration censorship schemes have been denounced by federal courts and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), chair of the House Cybersecurity Subcommittee, sent the White House a letter last week noting that the Biden administration always “advertised its willingness to manipulate the content of social media sites” and called for a cessation of all federal censorship tainting the 2024 election. Mace requested copies of all official “communications with social media companies…concerning the concealment or suppression of information on their sites.” At last report, nobody on Capitol Hill was sitting on the edge of their chair waiting for an informative White House response.

Hillary’s own career exemplifies a political elitist righteously blindfolding all other Americans.

When she was secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, Clinton exempted herself from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), setting up a private server in her New York mansion to handle her official email. The State Department ignored seventeen FOIA requests for her emails and said it needed seventy-five years to comply with a FOIA request for Hillary’s aides’ emails. The Federal Bureau of Investigation shrugged off Hillary’s aides using a program called BleachBit to destroy 30,000 of her emails under subpoena by a congressional committee. Federal Judge Royce Lamberth labeled the Clinton email coverup “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.” An Inspector General report slammed FBI investigators for relying on “rapport building” with Team Hillary instead of using subpoenas to compel the discovery of key evidence. The IG report “questioned whether the use of a subpoena or search warrant might have encouraged Clinton, her lawyers… or others to search harder for the missing devices (containing email), or ensured that they were being honest that they could not find them.” The FBI’s treatment of Hillary Clinton vivified how far federal law enforcement will twist the law to absolve the nation’s political elite, or at least those tied to the Democratic Party.

During Clinton’s tenure, the State Department gave grants to promote investigative journalism in numerous developing nations as part of its “good governance” programs. But exposing abuses was only a virtue outside U.S. territorial limits. Clinton vigorously covered up debacles in the $200 billion in foreign aid she shoveled out. From 2011 onward, AID’s acting inspector general massively deleted information on foreign aid debacles in audit reports, as The Washington Post reported in 2014. Clinton’s machinations helped delude Washington policymakers and Congress about the profound failures of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.

Pirouetting as a champion of candor is a novel role for the former secretary of State. Shortly before the 2016 election, a Gallup poll found that only 33% of voters believed Hillary was honest and trustworthy, and only 35% trusted Donald Trump. The Clinton-Trump tag team made “post-truth” the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2016 word of the year.

Hillary believes that the lesson of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is that good citizens should shut up and grovel. In her 2017 memoir, Hillary claimed that Nineteen Eighty-Four revealed the peril of critics who “sow mistrust toward exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves.” Did Hillary think Orwell dedicated the novel to Stalin? Hillary’s book noted that the regime in Orwell’s novel had physically tortured its victims to delude them. Hillary is comparatively humane, since she only wants to leave people forever in the dark—well, except for the scumbags who undermine the official storyline.

Hillary was a key player in the Barack Obama administration that believed that Americans had no right to learn the facts of the torture committed by the CIA after 9/11. When she was secretary of State in 2012, she declared, “Lack of transparency eats away like a cancer at the trust people should have in their government.” But the more secrets politicians keep, the less trust they deserve.

Hillary’s vision of democracy permits only token interference by underlings. She believes that poohbahs like her have the right to rig elections to sanctify their power. In 2015, when she was running for the presidency, she condemned voter identification requirements as part of a “sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people.” A Washington Post headline aptly summarized her message: “Hillary Clinton Declares War on Voter ID.” This is the bargain Hillary offered; voters didn’t have to identify themselves and she didn’t disclose what she did in office. Subsequent Democratic Party attacks on Voter ID were more successful, leading to sixty million ballots for Biden, millions of which were counted but not verified.

To sanctify censorship, Hillary is again invoking the Russian peril. A 316-page report last year by Special Counsel John Durham noted that in mid-2016, after the shellacking she suffered from her email scandal, “Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to tie Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” President Barack Obama was briefed on the Clinton proposal “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” FBI officials relied on the “Clinton Plan” to target the Trump campaign even though no FBI personnel apparently took “any action to vet the Clinton Plan intelligence.”

The first three years of Trump’s presidency were haunted by constant accusations that he colluded with Russians to win the 2016 election. In 2019, an Inspector General report confirmed that the FBI made “fundamental errors” and persistently deceived the FISA Court to authorize surveilling the Trump campaign.

Hillary’s scams were even too much for federal scorekeepers. The Federal Election Commission last year levied a $113,000 fine on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee for their deceptive funding to cover up their role in the Steele dossier, which spurred the FBI’s illegal surveillance of Trump campaign officials.

In Hillary’s new improved version of the Constitution, there is no free speech for “deplorables”—the vast swath of Americans she openly condemned in 2016. But this is the same mindset being shown by the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Harris has scorned almost every opportunity to explain how she would use the power she is seeking to capture over American citizens. Instead, she is entitled to the Oval Office by acclamation of the mainstream media and all decent folks—or at least those who drive electric vehicles and donate to her campaign.

Is “disinformation” becoming simply another stick for rulers to use to flog uppity citizens? Denouncing disinformation sounds better than “shut up, peasants!” But if politicians have no obligation to disclose how they use their power and can persecute citizen who expose their abuses, how in Hades can American freedom survive? How can we permit our rulers to selectively squelch citizens based on alleged hateful comments when, as historian Henry Adams pointed out a century ago, politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”

Ambitious politicians never lack pious pretenses for destroying freedom. But will censorship by the Biden administration steal the 2024 election for Harris? Unfortunately, according to Hillary Clinton, you are not worthy of knowing the answer.

September 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Media Cover Up Their Own People Setting Themselves on Fire to Stop the Gaza Genocide

US citizen Matt Nelson set himself ablaze in solidarity protest of his country’s support of the genocide in Gaza. (Photo: video grab)
By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | September 22, 2024 

So far, three US citizens have self-immolated in protest of their government’s support for Israel’s ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza.

However, in two of the cases, American media actively worked to cover up that it even happened, and the most prominent example they deflected, trying to hint at mental illness being the reason.

On September 11, a man named Matt Nelson set himself ablaze across the street from the Israeli consulate in Boston.

“My name is Matt Nelson and I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” echoing the speech delivered by Aaron Bushnell who also self-immolated on February 24.

Matt Nelson went on to say that “we are slaves to capitalism and the military-industrial complex. Most of us are too apathetic to care,” adding that “we are all culpable in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

He then stated:

“The protest I’m about to engage in is a call to our government to stop supplying Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians, to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, and to support the (International Criminal Court) indictment of (Israeli Prime Minister) Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government.”

There can be no mistaking the intentions of Matt Nelson’s actions and even without the video, the fact that he was positioned right across from the road from the Israeli consulate when he self-immolated is enough of an indicator that this was a political act. However, not for the likes of NBC Boston who ran the headline “Man sets himself on fire outside Four Seasons hotel in Boston, witnesses say”.

Even Israeli media outlets like The Jerusalem Post and The Times of Israel covered the story with correct headlines, but not Western corporate media. In the US media, they either ignored it altogether or decided to twist it to make it seem like a random act of suicide.

On December 1, a similar instance occurred when a woman – whose name still has not been released to the public – self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia.

While the Atlanta Police Department publicly stated that what happened was an “act of extreme political protest”, the story was completely ignored in Western Corporate media.

The only exception to the story was the self-immolation of 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, who was an active-duty airman, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington this February.

While the coverage began with a similarly biased slant, where his act was depicted as a man lighting himself on fire, without any reason being presented, the truth could not be ignored in the end after it went viral on social media.

Aaron Bushnell had live-streamed the whole event, giving his very clearly stated reason for his actions that day and providing the world with a video of him burning alive while screaming “free Palestine” literally until his dying breath. Everyone who watched the video, either with blur over his body as he burned, or without it, was similarly in shock.

The fact that a young American man would put on his military uniform, cover himself with flammable liquid and scream the words “free Palestine” until he literally couldn’t speak anymore, should have been enough to shock the world. However, the corporate media decided to try and paint him as being mentally ill, later burying the story.

Instead of being praised as heroes who sacrificed themselves in order to try and prevent a genocide from continuing, the US media has put the interests of Israel ahead of its own people, hiding the truth, and actively participating in blocking their voices from being heard. Luckily, however, in the era of social media, their words still remain free for those who seek to hear them.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

September 22, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

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