US has ‘new tool’ for Georgian elections – Russian spy agency
RT | September 11, 2024
The US wants to use a European election monitor to kickstart mass protests in Georgia after the upcoming parliamentary election, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed.
Washington is seeking to oust the ruling Georgian Dream party and is using the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in its plan, the Russian agency stated on Tuesday.
One of ODIHR’s key activities is monitoring elections, and it intends to do this during voting in the former Soviet republic, when Georgians will choose a new parliament on October 26. An advance team visited Tbilisi in May to assess the situation.
The SVR expects the body to release a critical preliminary report ten to 20 days prior to the vote, in which the ODIHR will declare that there are “no conditions in the country to hold free and fair elections.”
“After the first results of the ballot are published, it would issue a statement to declare the electoral process not to be up to democratic norms,” the Russian agency claims.
The US Department of State sees the ODIHR as “a tool” and has pre-arranged the content of its statements, the SVR claimed. Georgian opposition forces will cite its criticism to justify “mass protests aimed at seizing power in the country,” the message predicted. The purported arrangement clearly violates the OSCE’s stated mission, the Russian agency added.
”Under the circumstances, the reduction of Russian funding for the OSCE in a bid to at least weaken the destructive activities of this formerly respectable international structure appears justified,” the SVR suggested.
The Georgian government and its ruling party came into Washington’s crosshairs earlier this year due to the passage of a law, which required political and media organizations that receive foreign funding to publicly declare their affiliations. Tbilisi says the legislation was modeled on a similar American law, the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act.
US officials have stated that Georgia is walking down “the wrong path,” and that Washington is preparing sanctions against people whom it deems responsible for that.
The SVR previously warned that the Georgian government was facing a “color revolution” similar to the one that brought former president Mikhail Saakasvili to power in the early 2000s, or a violent coup, similar to what happened in Ukraine in 2014.
Did the IRS Manipulate the 2020 Election?
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | September 9, 2024
Hunter Biden pled guilty on Thursday to a barrage of federal tax crimes. But will the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department ever plead guilty to stealing the 2020 election for Joe Biden?
In 2023, the IRS assessed 18,599,109 penalties on individuals who allegedly underpaid or failed to pay federal income taxes. How did the IRS miss Hunter Biden for so long?
In 2021, the Biden administration sought to compel banks to report to the IRS any bank account with more than $600 in transactions per year. But the feds effectively disregarded multimillion dollar windfalls pouring into Hunter’s coffers from around the globe.
Hunter is a tax dodger straight out of IRS Central Casting. Between 2014 and 2019, he pocketed more than $8 million from shady foreign sources, triggering a bushel of Treasury Department Suspicious Activity Reports. Hunter failed to pay more than $1 million in taxes and was slapped by a tax lien of $112,805 for his 2015 taxes. The IRS even threatened to cancel his passport, but no criminal charges were filed.
The IRS began formally investigating Hunter in 2018; by January 2020, a team of a dozen IRS employees were working on his case. The Justice Department failed to file any charges before the statute of limitation expired on Hunter’s 2014 and 2015 tax violations.
IRS investigators vigorously pushed to search part of Joe Biden’s Delaware estate prior to the 2020 election. On September 3, 2020, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf agreed with Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory special agent, that there was “more than enough probable cause for the physical search warrant” and “a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden.” Wolf reportedly told Shapley that U.S. Attorney David Weiss “agreed that probable cause had been achieved.” But Wolf declared that “optics were a driving factor in the decision [not] to execute a search warrant,” according to Shapley.
Like the “optics” Team Biden unleashed when they sent heavily-armed FBI agents to raid Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022 to choreograph government documents for photographers? The FBI recently admitted that the documents they seized were arranged prior for a publicity shot. There has been scant media criticism of the Biden White House for seeking to destroy the president’s political opponent with high profile tactics that did better on CNN than in federal court.
IRS investigators were kept out of an October 2020 Justice Department briefing on an alleged “criminal bribery scheme” investigation on Joe Biden and his family. This severely limited the potential political damage to the presidential frontrunner at that time. A female FBI supervisor stated in a congressional interview last year that the Justice Department used the 2022 midterm election as a pretext to delay further action on Hunter’s tax case. CNBC reported in April 2023 that the IRS reportedly “finished its investigation more than a year ago,” but no charges were filed.
The IRS’s Shapley filed a whistleblower complaint in April last year asserting that the investigation of Hunter Biden’s tax violations was being blocked by “preferential treatment and politics.” In May last year, a special agent in the IRS’s international tax and financial crimes group who had spent five years investigating Hunter Biden also filed a whistleblower complaint on the Biden case. The IRS responded with accusations of criminal conduct and warnings to other agents in an apparent attempt to intimidate into silence anyone who might raise similar concerns,” according to Mark Lytle and Tristian Leavitt, Shapley’s lawyers.
After two IRS officials formally became whistleblowers, the Justice Department dismissed the entire IRS team from the Hunter investigation, potentially crippling the ability to pursue Hunter’s million-dollar plus tax violations.
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee reported last year that IRS investigators were met with a “‘Delay, Divulge, and Deny’ campaign that ultimately shielded the president’s son by allowing the statute of limitations to expire on several tax crimes for…when Joe Biden was the Vice President.” Attorneys for Hunter Biden were tipped off ahead of time about searches, resulting in the removal or destruction of evidence. “Prosecutors instructed investigators not to ask witnesses questions about Joe Biden or references to the ‘big guy,’” the congressional committee noted.
An FBI agent was interviewed last year by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigators regarding the potential coverup. The interview transcript confirms official skullduggery. Just the News website excerpted the transcript of the questioning:
“In September of 2021, are you aware that Lesley Wolf emailed Gary Shapley stating, ‘I do not think you are going to be able to do these interviews as planned,’ adding that they would require approval from DOJ Tax Division. ‘Are you aware of that?’ the FBI agent was asked at one point.
“At another point, the FBI agent was asked: ‘Are you aware in October of 2021 Lesley Wolf emailed Gary Shapley and the investigative team that ‘It will get us into hot water if we interview the President’s grandchildren’?”
In July 2023, the Justice Department sought to close Hunter’s case with a wrist-slap plea for tax misdemeanors. But federal judge Maryellen Noreika did not agree that ‘there is nothing to see here, move along.’ She asked lawyers a few questions about the blanket immunity that prosecutors provided for Hunter’s other possible crimes and the deal collapsed. Hunter missed his chance to win the Emmy Award for Best Tear-Jerking Performance on Courthouse Steps by a Media Darling. The Washington Post reported that Hunter had written “a statement about his desire to close a difficult chapter in his life, and was planning to read it to news cameras outside the courthouse after entering his plea” at the federal courthouse in Delaware.
Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed that David Weiss, the Special Counsel he appointed to investigate Hunter’s alleged crimes, had independent authority to file charges as he pleased. But it was later revealed that Weiss’ charging ability was severely restricted outside of Delaware and by Justice Department tax attorneys. Curtailing Weiss’ ability to prosecute the case enabled President Biden to continue scoffing at reporters who ask about kickback allegations: “Where’s the money?”
Biden won the 2020 election by a margin of 43,000 votes in three swing states because far more Americans considered Biden “honest and trustworthy” than Trump (52% vs. 40% according to a Gallup poll in October 2020). But Biden’s honesty was always a mirage created by a craven media and federal coverups. Biden campaigning as “Mr. Clean” was as absurd as if Bill Clinton had campaigned as the Chastity Kid, or Donald Trump campaigning as Humility Incarnate.
In the final debate with Trump before the election, Joe Biden proclaimed that “my son has not made money” from China. But while he was vice president, Biden took Hunter with him to Beijing in 2013 to help his boy snare sweetheart deals.
Any tax indictment of Hunter or criminal search of Joe Biden’s Delaware home prior to Election Day 2020 would have shattered Biden’s moral pretenses. And once his Teflon shield vanished, the New York Post’s revelations of Hunter’s laptop would have done far more damage to Uncle Joe.
At the least, a federal search of Biden’s home shortly before the 2020 election could have had the same blunderbuss effect as the October 2016 FBI re-opening of its investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email crimes.
Hunter’s guilty plea may have been a subsidy for the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Pleading guilty before the trial got rolling will prevent a deluge of potentially riveting evidence of Biden family corruption and official coverups. Instead, Team Biden and the Harris campaign is hoping for a single news cycle of bad publicity.
The rigging of the Hunter Biden IRS investigation is no surprise to anyone familiar with the agency’s history. As author David Burnham wrote in his 1990 masterpiece A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power, “In almost every administration since the IRS’s inception the information and power of the tax agency have been mobilized for explicitly political purposes.” Burnham noted, “The reality that so many are somehow in violation of a supremely murky law gives the agency and the individual agent an astonishingly free hand to pick and choose their targets.” This arbitrary power can be compounded when the feds choose to ignore or overlook brazen tax offenses by the politically connected.
A pardon for Hunter is as certain as Joe Biden’s next verbal hairball. But will federal agencies have the decency to drop the “equal justice” hokum and admit that “optics” trumps fair play almost every time?
Sanctions Against Russian Media Aimed at Discrediting Potential Trump Victory – Expert
Sputnik – 07.09.2024
The recent US sanctions against Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya international media group and the RT broadcaster is an effort by Democrat-leaning federal government to contest a potential win by former President Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election by rehashing anti-Russia narratives, historian and political analyst Paul Gottfried, told Sputnik.
“It is clear why the departments of our federal government, which are now subsidiaries of the Democratic Party, are screaming ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ for the umpteenth time. They are being mobilized to contest the presidential election if they can’t prevent Trump from winning. Unfortunately [for them], the same actors were involved in the same farce throughout the Trump presidency and may be losing credibility,” Gottfried, who is the editor-in-chief of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and Raffensperger professor of humanities emeritus at Elizabethtown College, said.
On September 4, the US Department of the Treasury announced sanctions against the editor-in-chief of Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya international media group and the RT broadcaster, Margarita Simonyan, and her deputies Anton Anisimov and Elizaveta Brodskaia. Deputy Director of the RT English-Language Information Broadcasting Andrey Kiyashko, RT’s Digital Media Projects Manager Konstantin Kalashnikov and a number of other employees of the broadcaster were also added to the sanctions list.
The US State Department, in a parallel move, tightened the operating conditions for Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries, designating them as “foreign missions.” Under the Foreign Missions Act, they will be required to notify the department of all personnel working in the United States and disclose all real estate they own.
US authorities also announced restrictions on the issuance of visas to individuals they allege are “acting on behalf of Kremlin-supported media organizations.” However, the Department of State refused to disclose the names of those subject to the new visa restrictions. Commenting on the new sanctions, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller claimed the measures did not target any particular individual Russian journalists, but rather the employees of the targeted companies who were involved in “covert activities.”
Meanwhile, US authorities have charged Kalashnikov and another RT employee, Elena Afanasyeva, with money laundering conspiracy and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Iran’s UN mission rejects Western allegations of supplying ballistic missiles to Russia
Press TV – September 7, 2024
Iran has rejected allegations of supplying ballistic missiles to Russia as baseless and misleading. The allegations are leveled against Tehran by the US and its Western allies.
The mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations said on Friday that the country regards as inhuman any military assistance to parties of the Ukraine conflict that would increase damage to lives and infrastructure in Ukraine.
Therefore, not only does it not do so, but also invites other countries to stop sending weapons to the parties involved in the conflict, the mission said.
“The position of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding the conflict in Ukraine has not changed,” the mission said after American, British and French envoys leveled coordinated accusations at Tehran concerning the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict during a UN Security Council meeting on August 30
The mission also called on other countries to follow suit and end the supply of weapons to the warring sides.
Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani previously also rejected the “baseless and misleading” accusations of the United States, England and France regarding Tehran’s role in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.
“The United States and its allies cannot deny the undeniable fact that sending advanced Western weapons, especially from the United States, has prolonged the war in Ukraine and harmed civilians and civilian infrastructure,” Iravani said.
He made the remarks in a letter sent to the UN chief and the Security Council’s president on Wednesday.
He said Iran “categorically rejects” any allegations suggesting its involvement in the sale, export, or transfer of arms in violation of its international commitments to Russia as “misleading, completely unfounded.”
Tehran has repeatedly dismissed Western allegations of its involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Iran has called for a ceasefire, blaming the lingering conflict on Western arms supplies to Kiev.
Russia launched what it called a special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 partly to prevent NATO’s eastward expansion after warning that the US-led military alliance was following an “aggressive line” against Moscow.
Russia has repeatedly warned against the flow of Western weapons to Ukraine, saying it prolongs the conflict.
If TikTok Is Liable for ‘Blackout Challenge’ Video — Is Facebook Liable for Sharing CDC Press Releases Advising COVID Patients Not to Take Ivermectin?
By Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D. | The Defender |September 4, 2024
A federal appeals court in Philadelphia last week handed down a decision that could have outsized effects on internet censorship.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that a lawsuit filed against TikTok by the mother of a 10-year-old girl seeking to hold the social media platform liable for her daughter’s death can proceed.
The 3rd Circuit is the same court that in July threw out the “Protocol 7” fraud case against Merck.
The lawsuit against TikTok centered around a video posted on the social media platform of a person asphyxiating herself until she passed out, and challenging viewers to upload videos of themselves.
The plaintiff, Tawainna Anderson, was the mother of the girl who died trying.
Clearly, the people who offer such “challenges” online are guilty of a provocation that predictably will result in some people dying.
However, the legal question is whether the host site, TikTok in this case, can be held liable for the algorithm that offered this video in someone’s personal feed.
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 includes Section 230, which explicitly immunizes social media websites for content they did not create but was uploaded by others.
In Anderson v. TikTok, the Court recognized this provision but argued that the TikTok algorithm “amalgamat[ed]” third-party videos that the algorithm predicted would interest particular users.
It is the amalgamation — (automatically) prepared for the deceased plaintiff — that creates liability for TikTok.
An appeals court decision is, by convention, precedent, not only for other states of the 3rd Circuit but generally for any federal court anywhere. This one raises a number of questions and possibilities.
Legal decisions often have unintended consequences
TikTok, known as a free-speech platform, has been targeted by the U.S. Congress. In April, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that would ban TikTok from app stores in the U.S. unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sold TikTok to a more friendly parent company by the end of 2024.
Telegram is another free-speech platform under attack. Telegram’s founding CEO, Pavel Durov, was arrested last week in Paris, reportedly for refusing to comply with French government requests for users’ confidential information.
Durov is Russian, but he grew up in Italy and now lives in Dubai.
Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube also “amalgamate” content and recommend videos to users. But it is difficult to imagine a U.S. court treating Facebook or YouTube the way they treat TikTok and Telegram.
During the pandemic, Google, Twitter and Facebook actively directed subscribers to videos that discouraged the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as early treatments for COVID-19.
Heirs of a future plaintiff who died of COVID-19 might argue that the person would not have died if the messages in his inbox had not steered him away from life-saving early treatments.
It is a safe bet that the 3rd Circuit never intended to create an obligation for Facebook to fact-check press releases from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — but this could be the consequence if the 3rd Circuit’s decision in Anderson v. TikTok is cited as precedent in future lawsuits against social media.
Aside from government sources, there is a great deal of medical information online. Dr. Joseph Mercola recommends that you irrigate the nose with peroxide. Dr. Aseem Malhotra recommends you stop taking statins. Deepak Chopra has advice for avoiding suicidal depression.
Inevitably, this advice will be helpful to some and harmful to others. Can YouTube be sued for directing me to a Chopra video, in which the advice turns out to be wrong for me?
The U.S. Army makes recruitment videos, and Facebook sends them to unemployed teenagers. Predictably, some of them enlist in the Army and are deployed to places where they die. Can Facebook be sued for these deaths?
Algorithms that drive cars have been field-tested for several years now, and have caused deaths of pedestrians and motorists. Can the programmers be held liable for what their algorithms do?
Legal decisions often have unintended consequences. We will be interested to see where this one goes.
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.
Why would six Israelis receive more attention than 41,000 murdered Palestinians
By Jamal Kanj | Al Mayadeen | September 5, 2024
On September 1, 2024, 27 Palestinian families woke up to mourn their loved ones, including at least 11 who were killed at a supposedly “safe” shelter, in Safad School in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood east of Gaza City. On the same day, the Israeli occupation military recovered the bodies of six Israeli captives, who were killed as a direct or indirect result of an Israeli incursion into a tunnel in Rafah.
By the end of the day, the smiling faces and names of these six Israelis were prominently featured across digital and print media, while the murdered Palestinians were reduced to mere statistics, nameless and faceless. Both groups, however, share one tragic commonality: their demise was caused by the same killer. Indiscriminate bombing is a murder without distinction.
Despite being warned of the risk of attempting to retrieve the captives by force, Netanyahu opted to sacrifice them to eliminate a political burden that could be seen as an obstacle to achieving his “war goals.” Their disappearance — by a deal or death — would free Netanyahu’s hand and ease pressure from the public, who otherwise supports his war of genocide in Gaza.
Inarguably, there is an inherent interest for the Palestinian Resistance in protecting the lives of the Israelis, simply to exchange them with Palestinian hostages held in Israeli jails. On the other hand, the Netanyahu coalition government has a political motive to reduce the value of Israeli captives in the hands of the Palestinians, and their death could be an option.
The Israeli public protesting in the streets today, individually and collectively, is responsible for nurturing Netanyahu’s unrealistic war objectives. The findings of a Pew Research poll conducted last March and April revealed that 67% of Israelis supported Netanyahu’s “war goals.” In fact, a staggering 86% believed Palestinians in Gaza should not have self-governance, not even the Palestinian Authority. Less than half of Israelis supported a prisoner exchange, and 60% opposed halting the war for any such exchange.
In December 2023, support for Netanyahu’s war goals was even higher, between 76 and 84%. It’s significant to mention that the support for the war among Israeli Jews mirrored that of Jewish Americans. In the US, 62% of American Jews approved “Israel’s” war conduct, compared to 38% of the general American population.
These statistics reflect a broader issue of deep-seated Israeli-Jewish dehumanization of Palestinians. A bigotry germinated in the political Zionist culture, where in the Israeli religious and cultural plurality most Jews perceive themselves to be more equal than non-Jews. Before anyone from the professional victim pack cries out on October 7, this predominant attitude among Israeli Jews is neither an anomaly nor a new phenomenon.
In a 2016 poll, an undisputed majority of Jewish Israelis (79%) believed that Jews are entitled to “preferential treatment” over non-Jews. When asked if Palestinians should be deported from their homes, the majority of Israelis agreed.
Imagine, the American Jewish leadership protestation if 40% (1/2 of the Israeli percentage) of white or Christian Americans supported a preference over the other. In the meantime, progressive Americans can ruminate on their reaction if a similar percentage of Americans favored expelling Native Americans from their homes.
Palestinians need not imagine, for this is what they face under the American-financed Israeli apartheid.
It is this Israeli public mindset that drove Netanyahu and his racist ministers to take a chance to recover the Israeli captives by force, calculating that success would yield significant political rewards from the same public who is protesting today. In case of failure, the retrieval of bodies reduces the value of the exchange for the Palestinian Resistance. In other words, the Netanyahu coalition favors playing the victim over dead Israelis rather than releasing Palestinian hostages from Israeli jails.
Currently, there are approximately 97 Israeli captives held in Gaza, with 33 confirmed dead, mostly due to “Israel’s” indiscriminate bombings. Additionally, Netanyahu has “successfully” recovered the bodies of 37 dead settlers in the past eleven months. Despite this blunder, Netanyahu capitalized on the innate anti-Palestinian Israeli Jewish bigotry to maintain strong support among Israelis and American Jews for the war of genocide in Gaza.
This time, however, the same public who supported Netanyahu’s “war goals,” amassed in the streets of Tel Aviv blaming him for choosing to save his government coalition at the expense of Israeli captives. Even US President Joe Biden broke his public silence blaming Netanyahu for not doing enough to reach a deal.
Biden’s latest remarks belied statements by his own government officials who absolved the Israeli Prime Minister regarding the ceasefire negotiation. Last week, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken claimed Netanyahu had accepted the so-called “bridging proposal,” while CIA Deputy Director, David Cohen blamed the Palestinian Resistance for the breakdown in ceasefire talks.
To contextualize the extent of the influence of the Israeli firsters within the Biden administration, consider recent developments in “Israel”. During last week’s Israeli cabinet meeting, the Minister of War stormed out accusing Netanyahu of endangering the lives of Israeli captives. Meanwhile, the otherwise pro-genocide Israeli public, filled the streets protesting Netanyahu’s new conditions on the American ceasefire plan. This is while American officials and Israeli firsters, Sayanim, including Zionists like Blinken and Cohen, continue to provide Netanyahu with political cover to further his intransigence.
Western appeasement of “Israel”, based on the flawed belief that this would give them leverage over Israeli leaders, is rooted in a corrupt philosophy promoted by Israeli firsters, Sayanim. Israeli firsters in the West use their positions to sanctify Israeli Jewish life while demonizing Palestinian one. In the media, the Sayanim sanitize Israeli atrocities against Palestinians, and as government officials, they help “Israel” escape accountability and avoid global scrutiny.
Surrounded by Sayanim, Joe Biden has been beguiled by Israeli firsters throughout his political career. This is one of the many reasons the “sanctified” six Israeli Jews count more than the lives of the 41,000 “dehumanized” Palestinians.
Persecution of Sputnik, RT Contributors Highlights US Hypocrisy – Ex-CIA Analyst
By John Miles – Sputnik – September 5, 2024
The United States’ persecution campaign against journalists and political dissidents with ties to Russian media accelerated Wednesday when new repressive measures were announced against several entities.
New sanctions were announced against 10 individuals and two organizations under the umbrella of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, including RIA Novosti, RT, Sputnik and Ruptly. The sanctions target these entities for alleged “hostile interference in the presidential elections,” the US Treasury Department claimed. The measures also target editor-in-chief of Rossiya Segodnya and RT Margarita Simonyan and several top managers at RT.
Ex-CIA analyst and former State Department counterterrorism expert Larry Johnson spoke with Sputnik Wednesday about the startling development, the latest attempt by the Biden administration to shape political discourse online and in the media.
“The latest stunt pulled by the Biden Department of Justice to declare all of these sanctions on Russia for alleged interference in the US political system is a level of hypocrisy that is staggering in its magnitude and in its foulness,” Johnson said.
“Let’s be clear about one thing: the one country in the world that has been involved with more interference in the internal political affairs of every other country is the United States. During the reign of President Eisenhower in the 1950s, there were 170 different covert actions carried out against other countries.”
“This year [the US has] allocated almost $4 billion to interfere or meddle in the political affairs of other countries,” he continued. “$315 million of that goes to the National Endowment for Democracy. $300 million is specifically what they call counter-Russian influence. And another $2.9 billion is for ‘democracy’ programs. And these have been used basically to run propaganda, to pay people, to organize ‘democracy’ programs in places like Georgia.”
The US frequently funds pro-Western media and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in foreign countries it targets for regime change to pave the way for a pro-US government to come to power. Author and journalist William Blum documented over 50 examples of significant US interference in other countries since World War II in his classic book Killing Hope, largely based on the shocking revelations of ex-CIA agent Philip Agee.
More recently the US has interfered in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Ukraine, paving the way for the latter country’s extremist anti-Russia government through its support for the Euromaidan coup in 2014.
“I don’t know how many millions of dollars are allocated to the Central Intelligence Agency for additional covert actions designed to plant stories in media, to create electronic media, to influence social networks across the board,” Johnson continued. “It’s the United States that’s meddling. With respect to the entire bogus claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, we now know without a doubt that that was a Democrat operation led by Hillary Clinton and her team,” he added.
“Everything we were told about Donald Trump and the Russians was a lie. I was one of the few writing about it at the time to call it out… The notion that RT is manipulating and influencing the presidential election is beyond laughable,” he claimed, noting that the Russian television channel’s app is banned from many app stores in the West while its content has been removed from YouTube and other websites.
“How is a news network that’s not allowed to broadcast and that’s shut [out] of social media in the United States supposed to influence [the election]? … It just goes across the board that they’re going to try to attack any kind of alternative voice in the media.”
Johnson noted that he has been subjected to a “pre-interview” with most television news outlets he has appeared on, such as the BBC, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS and the CBC, during which employees for each outlet attempted to ascertain what he would say when interviewed live on air. RT was one of only two outlets that never subjected him to the practice, he said.
“It’s the so-called ‘free democracies’ that want to run that litmus test,” he said.
Johnson said the recent persecution of figures connected to RT and Sputnik is merely another attempt to run the “Russiagate” playbook, attempting to discredit alternative media outlets that critique US foreign policy. “Electoral interference” continues to take place, Johnson claimed, but it is not the Russians but the US government that is engaged in an attempt to influence and control the popular narrative for its own benefit.
US criminal charges against Hamas prompt concerns for Gaza ceasefire talks
Yahya Sinwar, Palestinian leader of Hamas in Gaza Strip in Gaza City, Gaza on December 14, 2022. [Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | September 4, 2024
In a move that has sparked concerns over its potential to disrupt ongoing ceasefire negotiations, the US has filed criminal charges against six Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, for their involvement in the 7 October attack on Israel. The indictments were announced by the US Department of Justice.
The charges include the alleged killing of American citizens and “conspiracy to finance terrorism”. However, analysts note that the action is largely symbolic, as some of those named in the indictment are already believed to be dead.
“Yahya Sinwar and the other senior leaders of Hamas are charged today with orchestrating this terrorist organisation’s decades-long campaign of mass violence and terror, including on 7 October,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland. “The defendants are responsible for financing and directing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the security of the United States.”
Of the six defendants mentioned, three are already dead. Those still alive are Sinwar, who is believed to be in Gaza; Khaled Meshaal, who is based in Doha and heads the group’s diaspora office; and Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official based in Lebanon.
The charges, which were filed in February but only made public on Tuesday, cover a range of alleged attacks by Hamas over several decades. At least 43 American citizens were reportedly killed in the October attack. Garland did not disclose details regarding how they died or whether any of the 43 Americans are among the dozens of civilians killed by Israeli forces under the so-called Hannibal Directive.
The controversial policy, also known as the Hannibal Protocol, essentially authorises the use of maximum force to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers and citizens, even at the risk of harming or killing the soldiers and citizens themselves.
Garland also made no mention of the right of Palestinians to resist foreign occupation let alone a foreign occupation that is also illegal. In July, the highest legal body in the world, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled that Israel’s occupation is unlawful. In its determination the ICJ further affirmed that both Gaza and the West Bank are under illegal occupation, which means that armed resistance against Israel is permissible under international law, provided it is conducted in accordance with the rules of engagement established by international humanitarian law.
Critics argue that the timing of Washington’s announcement could complicate ongoing efforts to broker a ceasefire and secure the release of hostages. Professor Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow at the UK think tank Chatham House, told the BBC that the charges could affect Sinwar’s mindset, stating, “I don’t think this will be encouraging him to show flexibility.”
The situation was complicated further by Israel’s assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh at the end of July. Haniyeh was the key negotiator for the movement. The political murder took place in Tehran at a critical juncture in the negotiations, and has been criticised widely for derailing the peace process. Many observers argue that Haniyeh’s assassination has impeded negotiations significantly, setting back progress towards a ceasefire and hostage release.
Speaking to Associated Press, however, an unnamed US official attempted to downplay concerns about the impact on negotiations, saying that, “There is no reason to believe this will affect the ongoing talks.” However, the cumulative effect of these actions on the ceasefire process remains uncertain.
The effectiveness of these charges is questionable. Nevertheless, the US Justice Department maintains that they send a strong message to Hamas and its supporters.
Biden to take ‘law enforcement action’ against RT – CNN
RT | September 4, 2024
The administration of US President Joe Biden is planning to accuse Russia of meddling in this year’s presidential election, and will announce “law enforcement action” against those supposedly responsible, CNN reported on Wednesday. RT will be the prime target of this action, the network stated.
The White House will accuse Russia on Wednesday of “a sustained effort to influence the 2024 US elections” by using “Kremlin-run media” to spread so-called “disinformation,” CNN reported, citing US government sources.
Alongside a public condemnation from the White House, the US Department of Justice will announce “law enforcement action targeting the covert Russian campaign,” the network said.
RT is “a major focus of the US announcement,” CNN added, noting that “US officials see the Russian outlet as a key piece of Kremlin propaganda efforts.”
“Dear CNN,” RT’s press office responded following Wednesday’s article. “We certainly have a response. Actually, we have several, but we couldn’t decide on one (we even thought of running an office poll), so here they are:
1. Ha!
2. Hahahaha!
3. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
4. 2016 called and it wants its clichés back
5. Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT’s interference in the US elections
6. We gotta earn our Kremlin paycheck somehow
7. Somewhere, Secretary Clinton is sad that it’s not because of her
SINCERELY,
RT Press Office”
Democrats like Biden have accused Russia of interfering in the last two presidential elections. During the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, US intelligence agencies repeatedly claimed that Moscow was deploying hackers and using “information warfare” to swing the vote in favor of Donald Trump. These allegations, coupled with claims that Trump had colluded with Moscow to win the election, formed the basis for a two-year investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but were ultimately found to be baseless.
In 2020, more than 50 “former intelligence officials” published a letter claiming that files on Hunter Biden’s laptop – which implicated the Biden family in multiple foreign corruption schemes – were fabricated by Russia. The laptop’s contents have since been proven genuine.
Throughout the past decade, American officials have repeatedly accused RT of spreading “disinformation” – a term that these officials rarely define. Back in 2017, the Department of Justice forced RT America to register as a foreign agent, after a host of US intelligence agencies claimed that RT had helped to elect Trump by publishing “negative coverage” of Clinton and criticizing the US’ “corrupt political establishment.”
RT America ceased operations in 2022 after the network was dropped by its US distributors in response to the Ukraine conflict.
Despite their claims of “Russian interference” in US elections being repeatedly proven to be without foundation, American spies have stuck to them. Earlier this summer, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in Washington alleged that the Kremlin had mounted a “whole-of-government” effort to turn the American public against Biden and his fellow Democrats.
This accusation paved the way for the FBI to raid the homes of Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and RT contributor, and Dimitri K. Simes, a Soviet-born US political pundit who hosts a show on domestic Russian television. Ritter described the raid as an attempt to intimidate “anyone who goes against official [US] policies and particularly against the deep state.”
Danish Justice Minister Under Fire for Pushing Encryption Ban While Using It
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 31, 2024
The unprecedented case of the attack on Telegram via the arrest of Pavel Durov – and the nature of the charges against him – has clearly emboldened not only the lovers of censorship (such as the EU) but also the enemies of encryption (the EU).
Encryption itself has long been in the crosshairs in the bloc, but also in various individual countries in Europe individually, and others around the world. This push to undermine encryption – despite it being the key component of security, and privacy online – is habitually justified as necessary for law enforcement to do its job.
Now EU member Denmark is trying to come for end-to-end encryption, and not only Telegram, but also Signal, WhatsApp, and others. In this particular instance, Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard’s preferred course of action would be to just block these apps (perhaps as a stopgap measure) rather than taking the much longer path of building encryption backdoors.
Judging by reports in the Danish press, Hummelgaard wants to use this moment to further increase pressure on encrypted services, unsurprisingly giving “fighting crime” as the reason.
And while Hummelgaard considers such services as “safe havens” for criminals (it’s the same as saying states are safe havens for criminals because criminals operate in them), a large number of Danish MPs use encrypted apps – according to an investigative report in frihedsbrevet.dk, at least 70. (The country’s parliament has 179 seats).
To make matters even more absurd, Hummelgaard was (or still is) one of them.
And now those perplexed by his idea to block encrypted messengers are calling for him to “lead by example” and make his own messages publicly available – if that is, private communications are an evil that justifies resorting to blocking apps.
Reports quote Danish Reddit users making this suggestion, with one sarcastically noting that this shouldn’t be a problem – “surely he has nothing to hide, and therefore nothing to fear?”
The push around the world to get encrypted apps to “cooperate” by allowing the authorities to expand mass online surveillance to them as well, is defended by those sympathetic toward such policies as the need for “transparency” and “accountability.”
Kamala and the Deadly Perils of Sham Idealism
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | August 26, 2024
As the presidential race enters the final stretch, politicians are recycling the usual cons to make people believe this election will be different. At last week’s Democratic National Convention, sham idealism had a starring role, accompanied by ritual denunciations of cynicism.
But idealism has a worse record in Washington than a New Jersey senator. “Idealism is going to save the world,” President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed shortly after World War I left much of Europe in ruins and paved the way for communist and Nazi takeovers. Wilson’s blather provoked H.L. Mencken to declare that Americans were tired “of a steady diet of white protestations and black acts… they sicken of an idealism that is oblique, confusing, dishonest, and ferocious.”
The same verdict could characterize today’s political rogues. On the closing night of the convention, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promised that “we will choose a better politics, a politics that calls us to our better selves.” And how can Americans know they are fulfilling their “better selves”? By swallowing without caviling any hogwash proclaimed by their rulers in Washington.
Kamala Harris is being touted for bringing idealism back into fashion after the supposedly tawdry Trump era. But we heard the same song-and-dance with Barack Obama.
Obama declared that America’s “ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake” in his first inaugural address. But one of Obama’s most shocking legacies was his claim of a prerogative to kill U.S. citizens labeled as terrorist suspects without trial, without notice, and without any chance for the marked individuals to legally object. Obama’s lawyers even refused to disclose the standards used for designating Americans for death. Drone strikes increased tenfold under Obama, and he personally chose who would be killed at weekly “Terror Tuesday” White House meetings which featured PowerPoint parades of potential targets.
Year by year, Obama’s lies and abuses of power corroded the idealism that helped him capture the presidency. As a presidential candidate, he promised “no more illegal wiretaps”; as president, he vastly expanded the National Security Agency’s illegal seizures of Americans’ emails and other records. He promised transparency but gutted the Freedom of Information Act and prosecuted twice as many Americans for Espionage Act violations than all the presidents combined since Woodrow Wilson. He perennially denounced “extremism” at the same time his administration partnered with Saudi Arabia to send weapons to terrorist groups that were slaughtering Syrian civilians in a failed attempt to topple the regime of Bashar Assad. Obama helped establish an impunity democracy in which rulers pay no price for their misdeeds. As The New York Times noted after the 2016 election, the Obama administration fought in court to preserve the legality of defunct Bush administration practices such as torture and detaining Americans arrested at home as “enemy combatants.”
When Donald Trump won the 2016 election, idealism was temporarily roadkill along the political highway. After Trump was defeated in November 2020, the media scrambled to portray Joe Biden as a born-again idealist and to put the federal government and Washington back on a pedestal. A Washington Post headline proclaimed, “Washington’s aristocracy hopes a Biden presidency will make schmoozing great again.” The Post quickly changed its initial headline to “Washington’s Establishment” but “aristocracy” remained in the body of the article, which assured readers that “the classic friendly-rivals dinner party will be back, likely bigger than ever.” That same aristocracy hoped that idealism would provide the magic words to make the peasantry again defer to their superiors.
But Biden’s idealism was difficult to distinguish from his rage at anyone who resisted his power. Rather than a new Camelot, Biden’s reign vindicated historian Henry Adams’ assertion that politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
Regardless, the same media outlets that slapped a halo over Biden’s head are now hustling to saint Kamala Harris. Amazingly, the prime evidence of her idealism is the fact that she was a prosecutor. And since prosecutors claim to work “for the people,” her record of wrongful prosecutions, tormenting parents of truant children, and detaining convicts after their sentence ended (California needed extra firefighters) is automatically expunged.
Idealism long since surpassed patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel. Idealistic appeals were used by Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon to vindicate the Vietnam War, by President Bill Clinton to sanctify the bombing of Serbia, and by President George W. Bush to dignify the devastation of Iraq. The mainstream media is almost always willing to help presidents shroud foreign carnage with pompous claptrap. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius declared in late 2003 that Bush’s war on Iraq “may be the most idealistic war fought in modern times.”
Idealism encourages citizens to view politics as a faith-based activity, transforming politicians from hucksters to saviors. The issue is not what government did in the past—the issue is how we must do better in the future. Politicians’ pious piffle is supposed to radically reduce the risk of subsequent perfidy.
Soviet Union dictator Vladimir Lenin used the term “useful idiots” to describe foreign sympathizers who dutifully repeated Soviet propaganda. Nowadays, we have “useful idealists”—pundits and others who mindlessly praise politicians as if they were more trustworthy than other serial perjurers.
The more deference that idealists receive, the more deceitful idealism becomes. Ideals become character witnesses for the politician who tout them. No matter how often a politician has been caught trashing facts, he is still credible on idealism. One freshly-flourished ideal expunges a decade of perfidy. The media exalts: “He has seen the light! He invoked an ideal!”
In Washington, idealism is an incantation that expunges all past warnings about political power. Nowadays, idealism is often positive thinking about growing servitude. Americans cannot afford to venerate any more Idealists-in-Chief hungry to seize new power or start new wars. Any doctrine that begins by idealizing government will end by idealizing subjugation.
EU Rejects Legitimacy of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro – Foreign Policy Chief Borrell
Sputnik – 30.08.2024
The European Union rejects the legitimacy of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.
“We cannot accept the legitimacy of Maduro as the elected president. He will remain president de facto, but we deny democratic legitimacy based on results that cannot be verified,” Euronews quoted Borrell as saying after an informal foreign ministerial meeting in Brussels.
Presidential elections in Venezuela were held on July 28. The next day the National Electoral Council declared Nicolas Maduro president-elect for 2025-2031. On July 29, protests started in Venezuela, protesters clashing with the police. Over 2,000 people were detained. Violent unrest in Venezuela lasted one day after the elections, after which the government restored control over the situation on the streets.
US and European lawmakers in charge of foreign affairs matters issued a joint statement claiming opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez won Venezuela’s presidential election and vowing to hold Maduro accountable if he refuses to relinquish power. Moscow said the Venezuelan opposition must admit defeat in the elections. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned third countries against supporting attempts to destabilize the situation inside Venezuela.
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Israeli rabbi says ‘kill everyone in Gaza, including babies’
The Cradle | March 24, 2024
Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, head of the Shirat Moshe yeshiva (religious school) in the occupied city of Jaffa, called on the Israeli army to kill everyone in Gaza, including babies.
During a conference on 8 March, Mali said that “according to the halachic principle (a religious-ethical system of legal reasoning in Judaism), all residents of Gaza must be killed.”
When asked during the conference if babies should be killed as well, he said: “The same thing. You can’t be clever with the Torah. Today he’s a baby, tomorrow he’s a fighter. There are no questions here. Today’s terrorists were previously 8-year-old children.”
“Those who create the terrorists” should also be killed, he said in reference to women in Gaza.
The Rabbi went on to explain that Israel’s war on Gaza is a “Mitzvah war,” which is defined as a war of “commandment” in Jewish tradition. According to Jewish law, this kind of war does not require permission from a “Sanhedrin,” also known as a council or assembly, such as the war against Amalek – previously declared in a biblical reference by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the start of the war on Gaza.
“There is a difference between a civilian population in other places and a civilian population in Gaza. In Gaza, according to estimates, 95 to 98 percent want us destroyed.”
“Since this is a sensitive issue, and I was told that it is being uploaded on the Internet, I want to be ahead of the curve and say that the bottom line is that you have to do exactly what is said in the IDF’s order,” Mali added.
The rabbi’s students in the Shirat Moshe yeshiva serve in the Israeli army. The Yeshiva is sponsored by the Israeli government. … Full article
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