U.S. mercenaries killed in Russia, West goes hysterical on dubious North Korea claim
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 29, 2024
“It’s a grave escalation in this war and a threat to global peace,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week.
It certainly is an alarming development that American, Canadian and Polish mercenaries were killed in action on Russian soil this week. The members of a recon and sabotage unit were eliminated by Russian forces as they crossed into Russia’s Bryansk region from Ukraine.
But von der Leyen and other Western leaders said nothing about that. They were hyperventilating instead over ropey claims about North Korean troops sent to Russia.
Credible Russian security footage showed the dead men lying beside supplies of heavy weapons, including Semtex explosives and anti-tank grenade launchers, “enough to blow up a small city,” it was reported. One of the casualties bore the tattoo of the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite airborne special forces unit. It is unclear if the American soldier was a former member of the U.S. Army who had joined a private mercenary contractor or if he was redeployed from army ranks to fight in Ukraine against Russia.
Either way, the presence of military combatants from the United States and other NATO states on Russian territory is stark evidence that the NATO powers are directly involved in the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia.
Washington and Brussels have maintained the tenuous fiction that they “only” supply weapons to Ukraine but that NATO is not a participant in a conflict with nuclear-powered Russia.
That fiction has always been an insult to common sense. NATO countries have been actively involved in recruiting foreign mercenaries to go fight in Ukraine. Russia estimates that 15,000-18,000 militants have traveled to deploy with the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the conflict erupted in February 2022. Large numbers have been killed or taken prisoner.
Mercenaries have been identified from the U.S., Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Poland, the Baltics, and Georgia, as well as jihadists from Syria trained by American occupation forces at bases such as Al Tanf. It is estimated that foreign fighters from over 100 countries have ended up in Ukraine, aiding the NATO-sponsored Kiev regime.
Some of them are no doubt “soldiers of fortune” making a payday. Others would have to be NATO servicemen because the operation of technical weapons such as HIMARS artillery and so on must involve NATO handling expertise.
The desperate incursion into Russia’s Kursk region that began on August 6 was thought to have included many foreign mercenaries. One American private military contractor identified was the Forward Observation Group.
The Western media have largely ignored or obscured the reports of NATO connections to the ground fighting. Not surprising given the propaganda function of Western “news” media in what is information warfare.
Meanwhile, this week, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced concern that North Korean troops were fighting in the Kursk region. This was the first time that NATO had officially made the claim. For weeks there have been speculation and rumours about North Korean troops joining Russian forces.
The U.S. and European media ran headlines implying that the NATO claims were fact.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated: “North Korean soldiers are deployed to support Russia’s war of aggression. It’s a grave escalation in this war and a threat to global peace.”
Healthy skepticism is warranted. NATO’s Rutte did not provide any evidence to support his claim. He simply referred to his discussions with South Korean military intelligence officials.
The Ukrainian de facto dictator Vladimir Zelensky (he canceled elections months ago) has for months been pushing claims that thousands of North Korean troops are joining Russia’s ranks in Ukraine.
It seems significant that Zelensky met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol last year at the G7 summit in Hiroshima. It was their first meeting. Immediately after that encounter, South Korea pledged more military and financial aid to Ukraine. Zelensky’s wife also made suspicious trips to South Korea to attend “media events”.
President Yoon’s approval rating among the South Korean public has hit rock bottom over a range of grievances, including soaring cost of living. Yoon is a hawk on relations with North Korea. Pyongyang has slammed Seoul for deliberately antagonizing tensions.
Under President Yoon, South Korea has become a major weapons exporter, having sold an estimated $20 billion worth of arms over the last two years. South Korea is warning that it will increase military supplies to Ukraine on the back of claims that North Korean troops are being deployed in Russia.
There seems to be a lot of dramatizing about the purported North Korean contingency. The Kiev regime is amplifying claims as a way to get the United States and NATO more involved in the proxy war. The White House has expressed concerns about the claims of Pyongyang’s alleged participation. For President Yoon, Ukraine represents opportunities to boost his flagging poll numbers and economic gains from increased weapons exports.
The Western media are wishfully claiming that the deployment of North Korean troops is a sign of desperation by Russian President Vladimir Putin over supposed military losses in Ukraine.
That contention does not make sense. Russian forces are rapidly advancing to fully take control of the Donbass region in Ukraine. The NATO-backed side is losing territory at the fastest rate in more than two years of conflict. The idea that Russia needs North Korean military help is implausible, if not absurd.
Moscow signed a mutual defense pact with Pyongyang earlier this year. If North Korean soldiers are deployed to Russia, perhaps for training, that is entirely a legal and sovereign matter between consenting parties.
It is not Russia that is being “desperate”. The deployment of American and other NATO mercenaries to Ukraine is a real sign of desperation that the Kiev regime has run out of cannon fodder and is engaging in cross-border provocations.
Of course, NATO and Western leaders would prefer to fantasize about North Korea than to admit the truth of their “grave escalation” on Russia’s borders and reckless threat to world peace.
US money flows to anti-Orbán, left-liberal Hungarian news outlets
Remix News | October 29, 2024
The American Embassy in Hungary has once again invested heavily in the Hungarian – left-liberal – media. The 3rd Free Media tender was announced, with the aim once again to “protect and strengthen our freedom of the press.”
Last year, most of the national left-wing media received support from the first two tenders, but Magyar Hang, which calls itself “bourgeois,” also received money from U.S. taxpayers. David Pressman will [not] say where this year’s 160 million forints (€395,000) will go, but notably, a new outlet, Kontroll, which is close to Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar, debuted just a few days ago.
In the 2024 tender, 160 million forints will be distributed courtesy of American taxpayers. Media companies can apply for two purposes. The first can be the development and maintenance of the already existing medium, including technical development, enabling new subscriptions, professional training for journalists, or even the implementation of financing for new content and larger investigations.
The second category is specifically the development of internship programs to support the supply of journalists, as well as media literacy programs for vulnerable social groups, such as the elderly, children and Roma.
In category A, the amount that can be awarded for one project is at least 1.775 million forints and at most 10.5 million forints. In category AB, the amount that can be awarded for one project is at least 1.775 million forints and at most 7.1 million forints.
The Mérték Media Analysis Center and the Ökotárs Movement help in the selection of news outlets for funding. Mérték Media Analyst was previously supported with €15,000 by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and €33,000 by the National Endowment for Democracy, which is believed to be an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The other organization responsible for the selection is the Ökotárs Foundation, which is also supported by Soros foundations, but according to the European Union’s records, the Austrian environmental protection Ministry and the United States Agency for International Development are also generously funded.
Of course, it is already clear from the announcement that the final decision will be made by U.S. Ambassador David Pressman:
“The senior staff of Mérték and Ökotárs will review the written evaluations during a joint meeting, and on the basis of these, if possible, the applications recommended for support will be selected by unanimous decision. The list of these will be sent to the Embassy of the United States of America in Budapest for final approval.”
It should be noted that Pressman has been so worried about the situation of the Hungarian media for years that last year he distributed 118 million forints and another 30 million forints to the left-liberal national and rural media in two rounds. The self-proclaimed independent-objective Telex and 444, as well as Átlátszó, also benefited from this support. However, Magyar Hang and the company publishing the YouTube channel called Jólvanezígy also received a few million forints.
The claims that Hungary has no free media expression is undeniably refuted by the wide range of opposition media outlets. There are plenty of left-liberal media outlets supported directly by American money.
Hungary’s Magyar Nemzet criticized the money flowing from international sources, writing: “The question is, of course, whether it is the duty of the ambassador of a foreign country to intervene at such a level in the internal political relations of another country instead of developing cultural cooperation between the countries. And let’s just play with the idea of what would happen if a representative of the Hungarian government did this in the U.S.”
China demands that US stop militarizing space
RT | October 28, 2024
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has urged the US to stop the militarization of space and to refrain from actions that threaten global security. The warning comes days after Washington announced plans for the first delivery of satellite jammers.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, the ministry’s spokesman Lin Jian said that Beijing insists on the peaceful use of what it called outer space and opposes the arms race and the placement of weapons there.
“China once again urges the US to stop spreading irresponsible remarks, stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and make due contribution to upholding the lasting peace and security in outer space,” Lin said, when asked to comment on China’s response to the potential threat to its satellites from US ground-based jammers.
The spokesman stressed that China is not planning to participate in a space race with any country and is not seeking space superiority. He also said that Washington openly defines space as a war zone, continues to expand its space capabilities and is working to establish a military alliance in outer space.
Last week Bloomberg reported, citing the US Space Force, that the first five of a planned 32 weapons meant to jam Chinese and Russian satellites in the early stage of a possible conflict could be declared operational between January and March 2025. The Counter Communications System known as Meadowlands is more than two years behind schedule.
Technological weaponry of this type is intended to cause temporary damage in a conflict “to counter the growing number of Chinese and Russian space systems,” the news agency noted.
The Pentagon has repeatedly accused China of amassing anti-satellite weapons, voicing concerns about the country’s focus on space-war capabilities. The Chinese government has denied the allegations, saying that Washington poses the greatest threat to security in space and is the main instigator behind the militarization of its various domains.
Washington has voiced similar allegations against Russia on multiple occasions, suggesting that Moscow has undisclosed anti-satellite capabilities that, it claims, are possibly nuclear in nature. The Kremlin has dismissed the insinuations as unfounded, saying that they are merely a smokescreen intended to distract from Washington’s own military activities in space.
West ‘arm-twisting’ Georgia over elections – Kremlin
RT | October 28, 2024
The West is openly trying to interfere in Georgia’s parliamentary elections, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, stressing that voters in the former Soviet republic have every right to independently choose their own future.
In Saturday’s high-stakes election, the ruling Georgian Dream party, which seeks to build pragmatic relations with Russia, secured 54% of the vote, while various opposition forces garnered between 11% and 3% each, according to the Central Electoral Commission.
Pro-Western opposition parties, however, have refused to recognize the results, calling the vote a “constitutional coup.” The nation’s French-born President Salome Zourabichvili joined the chorus, urging the people to protest and claiming that Georgia had become a “victim of a Russian special operation.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Peskov unequivocally denied the allegations. “We are not trying at all and hardly have the opportunity to influence the development of the situation” in the country, he said, stressing that “it is the Georgian people’s business to make the relevant decisions.”
“However, we see completely unprecedented interference attempts from the West. They are trying not only to twist Tbilisi’s arms, but also to impose their terms. It is hard for me to imagine how the proud Georgian people can tolerate such ultimatums that pour in daily.”
On Sunday, the EU Commission issued a statement voicing concerns of “a tense environment, with frequent compromises in vote secrecy and several procedural inconsistencies” as well as “irregularities” in the election, insisting that those issues must be addressed. European Council President Charles Michel also noted that Georgia must prove its commitment to continuing the path to joining the bloc.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has demanded that Georgia conduct an investigation into reports on violations during the vote while sounding the alarm about suspected “vote buying, and voter intimidation.”
This summer, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze warned that pro-Western opposition in the country would open a “second front” against Russia in addition to the Ukraine conflict if it won the parliamentary elections. Around the same time, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said that the US was seeking a regime change in the Caucasus country by fomenting protests during the vote.
Relations between the West and Tbilisi soured in recent months after Georgia passed the ‘foreign agents’ law requiring entities and individuals which receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “promoting the interests of a foreign power.” While its proponents insisted it would increase transparency, the EU condemned the legislation, warning that it goes against Georgia’s goal of joining the bloc.
Western media headlines manufacturing consent for Israeli aggression against Iran
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | October 27, 2024
In a twisted interpretation and in line with the preestablished propaganda narrative, the Western media unanimously declared Israel’s aggression against Iran as “retaliation.”
From CNN to Fox News to Axios to the New York Times to the Washington Post – all major Western media outlets rallied behind the Tel Aviv regime as it added fuel to the already raging flames.
In the early hours of Saturday, the regime jets carried out a fresh act of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, attacking several sites in Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam provinces with missiles.
Although most of the missiles were intercepted and the military damage was minor, the regime’s move represented a serious escalation as four servicemen on Iranian soil were martyred in the attacks.
The motive for the attack was face-saving after a barrage of Iranian ballistic attacks pounded Israeli military and intelligence sites earlier this month that again laid bare the inefficacy of much-hyped Israeli air defense systems such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow.
Iran’s ‘Operation True Promise II’ was carried out as a response to the cowardly assassinations of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Iranian military commander Abbas Nilforoushan by the Israeli regime.
Iran’s military action was in full accordance with its inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, and a direct response to the regime’s repeated acts of aggression, including the violation of Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Manipulative headlines used by major US television networks and newspapers
The same applied to ‘Operation True Promise I’ in April when Iran retaliated after the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
These facts, however, were deliberately disregarded by most of the Western media outlets while reporting on Saturday’s aggression against Iran, offering the audience a decontextualized interpretation of the Israeli regime as a victim “retaliating” against the Iranian attack.
Manipulative headlines
A cursory look at Western media, of which a sample of about 20 are selected here, it is noticeable that they all shaped the headline in the same suggestive way, using the same terminology.
The term “retaliation” has been used by all these outlets for the Israeli act of aggression against Iran, while also employing other terms such as “reprisal”, “response” and “payback,” while ignoring the full sequence of events that have shaped this region in the past year.
The list of media outlets that employed such terminology includes major US networks CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News, together covering over three-quarters of the American audience.
It also includes six of America’s most circulated newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Post.
Among them, Fox News went the farthest in its pro-Zionist bias, stating in its headline that Israeli “retaliatory” strikes against Iran followed a “missile barrage targeting Israelis,” although only military targets were precisely targeted and there were no settler casualties.
The Washington Post stated that the Israeli attacks add to the “cycle of tit-for-tat strikes” between the two sides, without specifying who started that cycle by provocatively targeting the other side.
Most other media outlets in the story summary and the text itself treated the Iranian retaliatory ballistic attack as the “cause” and did not mention what preceded it.
In this way, media analysts say, the deception of the majority of the American public has been completely achieved and there has been no progress since the times when by similar propaganda methods they turned the majority of the population for military aggressions in the West Asia region.
Other US media that resorted to the same distortions by describing Israeli aggression as “retaliatory” are the news agency Associated Press (AP), National Public Radio (NPR), the state propaganda broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), news websites Al-Monitor and Axios, etc.
Among the international media, the same terminology in the headlines was also used by the French pan-European television network EuroNews, the newspaper Le Monde, the British television news channel Sky News, the Saudi television network Al Arabiya, Emirati news website The National, and of course, the Israeli media.
Congruently, the headline of the five mentioned major American television networks for the Iranian retaliatory attack from the beginning of the month was again almost uniform, “Iran launches missile attack on Israel,” without mentioning that it was retaliatory in nature.
Headlines in Western media seek to manufacture consent for Israeli terrorism
These identical headlines with unanimous manipulation of the context are by no means a coincidence, according to media analysts, but a reflection of centralized propaganda emanating from the top of the American regime and projected further onto the media and client states.
Such statements and the aforementioned media headlines are the result of unquestioningly following the official American narrative that the Israeli regime is a “victim” and that their aggressions on all surrounding countries are “the right of self-defense.”
Social media users took to X to call out the hypocrisy of Western media outlets.
“This is ridiculous pro-Israel propaganda in the media. Israel’s attack on Iran was not “retaliatory”; Iran’s response to Israel was retaliatory,” wrote journalist Ben Norton.
“Israel started this by first bombing Iran’s consulate in Syria, then launching an attack inside Tehran, then killing an IRGC general.”
Peter Daou, a political analyst, said these distortions are how the propaganda works.
“You’ll notice mainstream US media outlets using the word “retaliatory” in describing Israel’s attack on Iran. That’s how state propaganda works,” he wrote.
The Kims Are Coming!
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | October 26, 2024
After a few cat and mouse days of Defense Secretary Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin’s denials, the Pentagon finally yesterday affirmed that there was evidence of a North Korean military presence in Russia. Asked what they were doing in Russia, Austin replied, “What exactly they are doing? Left to be seen. These are things that we need to sort out.”
For days, South Korea (no conflict of interest there) and Ukraine (nor there) had been claiming that thousands of North Korean soldiers had swooped in to rescue a beaten and bloodied Russian army from certain defeat at the hands of Ukraine (which has lost nearly a million men at arms in the nearly three year war). As the Russian army accelerates its pace, burning through the last fortified towns in eastern Ukraine, the mainstream media continues – with a few reluctant but panicked exceptions – to push the “Russia is losing” narrative.
The added twist of thousands of “evil communists” from North Korea screaming across the Russian tundra (on horseback, no doubt) promises to add new plot lines to the drama concocted by the mainstream media and most of Washington, and indeed the usual suspects are biting furiously at the bait.
Take US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael Turner. He is so outraged that there might be members of the North Korean military in Russia that he actually sent a letter to President Biden calling for war. “If North Korean military forces join Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Fox News reported him to say, “the US should consider the possibility of direct military action.”
Against whom? We are already involved in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine. We are already directly involved in Israel’s seven-front war against its neighbors and Iran. Who does Chairman Turner think we should attack if North Korean troops are present in Russia? Russia? North Korea? China? All of them?
North Korea and Russia have just signed a treaty whereby their two militaries will more closely collaborate and even come to each other’s aid if one is threatened. While such an agreement may give Turner and the other neocons the vapors, it is nothing different than the mutual defense treaty the US has with its NATO partners and with many others on a bipartisan basis.
Treaties for me but not for thee? Is that the name of the “rules-based international order” game?
The hypocrisy runs even deeper. It is well-known and widely reported that NATO countries are training Ukrainian troops not only in NATO countries but inside Ukraine itself. So it’s absolutely fine for the US and its NATO partners to insert troops inside Ukraine to train its military to kill more Russians and to even operate sophisticated weapons systems inside Ukraine that the Ukrainian military could never operate on its own, but if Russia strikes up a deal with North Korea where the two armies can train together inside Russia, it’s a “red line” (as Chairman Turner wrote) that demands that we start WWIII.
It seems we are not sending our best and brightest to Congress.
What we are witnessing is the birth of a new narrative after some 500 Ukraine narratives have already collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions. Remember the two years of “Russia is losing” narrative? Well just this week NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, said in an interview with the German Spiegel magazine that Russia would emerge from this conflict actually STRONGER than when it entered!
But of course they are losing…
So what to do? Just as the Hollywood writers do once a sit-com has run too many seasons and is playing itself out, plot-wise, insert a new character. Insert a new twist, to bamboozle the viewers and give them a new reason to keep watching the program. It’s funny but not funny, because the future of the world hangs in the balance. Just like the film “Idiocracy” has become a documentary in our absurd times, so has “Wag the Dog.” The military industrial complex with its Hollywood-like allies producing endless narratives to keep the gravy train rolling…
P.S. if anyone believes this whole insane and hysterical anti-North Korea narrative is not political…well I have a bridge in Brazoria, TX, to sell you…
This article first appeared as an exclusive for Ron Paul Institute subscribers. Subscribe for free here.
Joe Biden Allowed His Friend Bibi to Destroy His Presidency and Legacy
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 22, 2024
In 2020, amid lockdowns, Joe Biden prevailed in the election, running his campaign from his home. Biden was clearly experiencing significant cognitive decline, so the American people were presented with a carefully choreographed message that a vote for Biden was a return to normalcy.
Since Donald Trump descended the golden escalator, Americans have been subject to a non-stop barrage from establishment media and politicians wailing that we are in an existential battle for our country’s soul. We were told Russia hacked the election, Trump was Hitler, Democracy was on the ballot, and the sitting president was bowing to dictators around the world.
But Biden would save us: no more inflammatory rhetoric, no more prosecutions of the political opposition, and a more stable world.
While Biden was never going to return the US to a normal country in a normal time, he had the potential to significantly de-escalate America’s foreign entanglements. However, during his time in the Oval Office, 46 has done the opposite, starting wars and undermining international norms.
Upon taking office, Biden had two easy foreign policy victories he could have secured. Firstly, the current White House could have followed Trump’s deal with the Taliban and exited Afghanistan in a coordinated manner during May 2021.
Rather, the White House mishandled the situation, first by pushing back the exit from Afghanistan until September, the height of the Afghan fighting season. By then, the US-built government in Kabul had collapsed. This chaos culminated in an ISIS-K bombing at the Kabul airport that killed hundreds of desperate Afghans and 13 US soldiers.
Botching Iran Talks
The other easy win for the new president was returning to the Iran Nuclear Deal. Negotiated during the Barack Obama administration, the deal implemented additional safeguards on Iran’s civilian nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Tehran was entirely in compliance with the deal in May of 2018 when Trump unilaterally pulled out of the agreement at Tel Aviv’s behest. Washington then placed crippling sanctions on Iran aimed at cutting the Islamic Republic’s oil output to a minimum.
Upon taking office, Biden could have easily negotiated with the moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to return to the deal and lift the sanctions. But, the Biden team was determined to demand Tehran agree to a “longer and stronger” agreement, and at the same time, looked the other way as Israel began attacking Iranian shipping and nuclear facilities.
Over the following two years, US and Iranian officials would engage in several rounds of indirect talks while Israel continued to attack Iranian shipping and conducted assassinations and other sabotage inside Iran. Under those conditions, a deal was never reached, and talks were abandoned last year.
Pushing Tehran from the table and the crippling economic sanctions on Iran had an important impact on Biden’s Ukraine policy.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Washington and its NATO partners engaged in a two-front strategy to use Ukrainian soldiers to bleed and “weaken” Russian invaders. The first was providing billions in weapons, training, and intelligence. The second was launching an economic war to cripple and isolate the Russian economy and bring the Kremlin’s war machine to a halt.
However, as the Iran Nuclear Deal is what ostensibly tied Tehran to Western economies, once the war broke out, the Islamic Republic saw no downside in strengthening its ties with Moscow. Additionally, as is the case with Iran, Russia’s main export is energy. The law of supply and demand says it would have been easier to push the Russian supply off the market if the US was not attempting to simultaneously remove the Iranian oil supply.
Genocide, War, Annexation
After a few years out of power, Netanyahu returned to his post as Prime Minister of Israel, leading a far-right-wing government in late 2022. That government included two extremist settlers in key positions who made clear a top priority was the annexation of the West Bank.
That government ushered in a brutal regime for the Palestinians, with 2023 killings in the West Bank before October 7 reaching a multi-year high.
Still, when Hamas broke the Israeli siege of Gaza on October 7, the White House pretended that Israel had been a normal democracy, not a declared Jewish state with apartheid oppression directed at the native Arab population.
The White House was a key amplifier of the atrocity propaganda put out by Tel Aviv following the Hamas attack. This gave Israel an unlimited blank check for killing in Gaza.
Netanyahu has cashed in that check for $23 billion in military aid from the US, Washington’s protection from UN resolutions at the Security Council, and the killings of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, thousands of Lebanese civilians, and hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank.
The killing has intentionally targeted civilians and civilian targets such as hospitals, schools, shelters, and aid convoys. After each Israeli war crime, the US State Department acts as an Israeli PR firm and insists the world must blame Hamas, not Israel.
What Happened to International Law?
So now President Biden has spent the final year of his presidency providing arms to Netanyahu so his government can commit war crimes every day. This is the same president who has insisted to every American that we must send nearly $200 billion to Ukraine to defend international law.
If Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine, why can Israel invade Lebanon?
If Russia is violating international law to extend its border, why is Israel allowed to continue settlement expansion in the West Bank?
If Russia was wrong to detain American journalists in Russia, why has Israel been allowed to kill at least 170 Palestinian journalists, including Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen?
If Russia is wrong to attack civilian targets in Ukraine, why has Israel been allowed to destroy nearly every hospital, school, and shelter in Gaza?
One could go on at some length citing the myriad hypocrisies intrinsic to Biden’s murderous foreign policy. When it comes to starving the people of Gaza, assassinations in Iran, bombing diplomatic facilities in Syria, and attacking UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon, it’s clear that Netanyahu wipes his ass with the international “rules-based order” that Joe Biden claims to love so much on a daily basis.
Currently, Americans care more about domestic issues, but history will evaluate Biden by his elective and catastrophic wars. The x-rays of Israeli bullets lodged into the brains of Palestine’s pre-teen children will define the legacy of Biden and his good pal Bibi during the coming decades.
EU President Likens Free Speech to Infectious Disease
Ursula von der Leyen advocates “pre-bunking” in the public forum to “vaccinate” people against “disinformation”
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | October 23, 2024
EU President Ursula von der Leyen just joined the ranks of former Senator John Kerry and other globalist ghouls in declaring war on free speech by perversely proclaiming that the EU citizenry needs to be “vaccinated against disinformation.”
Like every censor in history, she characterizes her censorship program as a means of expunging erroneous information and ideas from public discourse. By using the word “disinformation,” she implies that she and her clique are already the sole possessors of the truth about everything, and that everyone who has and shares heterodox ideas is necessarily in error.
Her entire premise is FALSE for the following reasons:
1). Knowledge about the world is constantly evolving through constant inquiry, discussion, and dissemination. Knowledge is NOT a static thing. This is why countries with stifling censorship regimes have experienced intellectual, scientific, and artistic stagnation. Their rulers try to freeze the human mind in its state at their moment in history.
2). NO state, university, or ecclesiastical committee has ever been in possession of the full truth of any matter. Official orthodoxies have always been challenged by heterodox thinkers. Indeed, virtually every major advance in human insight has been performed by heterodox thinkers.
3). As John Milton observed in his 1644 pamphlet, Areopagitica, contending with error is an intrinsic part of learning and discovery. We literally learn by making mistakes and correcting them. If free speech is suppressed for the objective of preventing the propagation of erroneous thought—or “vaccinating against it”—it will become extremely difficult if not impossible for people to learn and discover.
4). Without a single exception in history, the people who hold power always advocate the orthodoxy that sustains and extends their power and that of their friends and supporters.
Ursula von der Leyen is the quintessence of this principle. As president of the EU, she conducted secret negotiations with Pfizer CEO to purchase a 20 billion Euros of Pfizer’s fraudulent and dangerous vaccine so that it could be inflicted on all the citizens of the European Union. She is currently under criminal investigation for her conduct in this affair that has come to be known as Pfizergate.
It takes a special kind of chutzpah for a powerful state official who is probably guilty of committing a major crime—a crime that has been systematically and ruthlessly concealed—to lecture the public about the need for censorship. The time has come for the citizens of Europe to rid themselves of Ursula von der Leyen and her clique of corrupt tyrants.
To be sure, there is increasing evidence that the Biden Administration has been exerting pressure on Germany—which remains an American vassal state—and the EU to step up its censorship regime. I will cover this strange development in a subsequent post.
US Government Behind Campaign Violating North Korean Airspace
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – October 23, 2024
North Korea has recently warned against the use of drones over its sovereign airspace to spread subversive propaganda.
CNN in its October 11, 2024 article, “North Korea accuses South of flying drones over Pyongyang,” reported, “North Korea accused South Korea of flying propaganda-filled drones over Pyongyang and threatened “retaliation,” state media reported.”
The same article admits that “South Korean activists and North Korean defectors have sent balloons to the North, loaded with propaganda material criticizing leader Kim Jong Un, along with USB sticks filled with K-pop songs and South Korean television shows.”
What the article omitted is that this campaign is not an organic activity carried out by independent activists, but a campaign of subversion organized and funded by the US government.
A US State Department Provocation…
As early as 2014, the Western media promoted what was called, “Thumb Drives for Democracy,” a campaign organized by the New York-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF).
The Atlantic published an article in early 2014 titled, “We Hacked North Korea With Balloons and USB Drives,” by HRF founder Thor Halvorssen, which admits its balloons carry “subversive information” meant to undermine the North Korean government. It also admits that before HRF began its campaign, “the U.S. government provided support for these groups through the National Endowment for Democracy* and the State Department’s DRL [The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs] programs.”
The balloons were just one part of a much wider campaign of subversion and ultimately regime change.
HRF also organizes the annual “Oslo Freedom Forum” (OFF) funded in part by the Freedom Fund, which includes the US State Department as a “key investor.” The OFF is a continuation of US State Department-funded training programs gathering agitators from around the globe, training, funding, and equipping them to then return to their respective nations and attempt to overthrow them.
The New York Times in its 2011 article, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” admits the US government prepared years ahead of the so-called “Arab Spring,” backing the core organizations that ultimately carried it out across the Middle East and North Africa. The article explicitly states:
A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
Clearly, HRF serves as an intermediary continuing US government-funded sedition around the globe in a way more difficult to trace directly back to the US government itself. Its objectives nonetheless remain to undermine, divide, destabilize, and overthrow nations targeted by the US State Department for regime change, including North Korea.
More Than Just Balloons…
Considering the aftermath of the admittedly US-engineered “Arab Spring” which included the full-scale destruction of Libya, a deeply divided Egypt, and a nearly destroyed Syria, North Korea’s concerns regarding similar US government-sponsored activities being aimed at it falls far short of an overreaction.
The CNN article reporting on North Korea’s recent warning notes that previous South Korean governments prohibited the use of balloons to spread subversive information across North Korea, recognizing the role it plays in damaging relations and raising tensions. This decision has since been reversed by a client regime more obedient to Washington.
This years-long campaign of subversion aimed at North Korea eventually prompted North Korea itself to respond with its own balloons laden with garbage. The collective Western media depicted this action out of context, omitting the US government-sponsored program targeting North Korea for over a decade, or that the ultimate goal of the campaign is “Arab Spring-style” regime change.
In 2023, when a Chinese weather balloon flew off course across the continental United States, headlines were undulated with hysteria and hostility toward China. The US Department of Defense, without providing evidence, identified it as a “high-altitude surveillance balloon,” implying it was spying on American territory. F-22 fighter jets were eventually deployed, launching air-to-air missiles at the balloon, destroying it off the eastern US coast.
Clearly, the US government itself desires other nations to respect its airspace, considering the unauthorized flight of any object, including balloons, as a potential danger to both national security and public safety. Yet, it is funding a program admittedly designed to subvert the government of a sovereign nation by flying balloons and now most likely drones into its airspace, obviously endangering both national security and public safety.
South Koreans may be convinced that the greatest obstacle to peace on the Korean Peninsula lies across the northern border, but the US has repeatedly demonstrated that it itself obstructs peace for the Korean people, and deliberately so. Continued tensions allows the US to perpetually justify the presence of its military on the Peninsula – not to defend South Korea from North Korea – but to encircle and threaten South Korea’s largest trade partner – China.
While Washington has appointed itself underwriter of stability on the Korean Peninsula, peace cannot be achieved as long as this deliberate obstruction to it remains stubbornly entrenched upon it.
ECHR orders Russia to compensate ‘foreign agents’
RT | October 23, 2024
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Russia to pay out hundreds of thousands of euros in compensation to 107 organizations and individuals it has designated as ‘foreign agents’. Russia rejected the court’s jurisdiction after leaving the Council of Europe in 2022.
Russia’s foreign agent law, similar to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938, was first adopted in 2012 and expanded in 2022. It requires anyone who receives support from abroad or is under the influence of entities from outside the country to register and be labeled as such. The designation does not ban persons or entities from operating in Russia, but introduces a range of restrictions. Those in violation of the law face fines of up to 5 million rubles and up to six years in prison.
Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin has explained that the law is necessary in order to protect the country’s sovereignty and “prevent outside interference in internal affairs.”
A number of these individuals and organizations have since filed a joint complaint with the ECHR, including Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, the International Memorial and the Memorial Human Rights Center, journalist Yuri Dud, opposition activist Lyubov Sobol, who is also designated as an extremist, and political scientist Ekaterina Shulman.
In a ruling published on Tuesday, the ECHR claimed that the law violates the rights of NGOs, media organizations, and individuals by introducing “restrictions on their freedom of expression and association” and infringing on the individual applicants’ “right to respect for private life.” The court also claimed that those who received the designation have been “discriminated against and subjected to restrictions” that are not in line with the ECHR’s conventions.
“The Court held that Russia was to pay the applicants amounts ranging from 5,500 euros (EUR) to EUR 10,000 [$5,900-$10,700] in respect of non-pecuniary damage, and various other amounts in respect of pecuniary damage and costs and expenses, indicated in the appendix to the judgment,” the ECHR said in a press release outlining the ruling.
While Russia has yet to comment on the ECHR’s decision, the court’s jurisdiction was earlier rejected, with President Vladimir Putin signing a law nullifying all ECHR verdicts after March 15. The move came after Russia left the Council of Europe (COE) in 2022, accusing the body of taking a blatantly anti-Russian stance and turning into an “obedient instrument” of the West, while becoming immersed in “double standards.”
Last year, in light of the ECHR accepting complaints from individuals and entities declared ‘foreign agents’ by Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin described the court as a “mad printer rubber-stamping politically charged complaints against Russia,” while “censoring” any cases considered to be linked to Russian interests.
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From the Archives
What is the Israeli Lobby in Australia Doing in Interfaith Dialogue?
By Ali Kazak | Dissident Voice | October 11, 2015
For years Israel and its lobby around the world have been trying to normalise their relations with Arabs and Muslims without solving the Palestine Question.
One of the methods they resorted to in the last few years is using human rights and community organizations such as interfaith dialogue and Multiculturalism to achieve this objective and to: isolate the Palestinians, marginalise the Palestine question, end Israel’s isolation, and prevent criticism of Israel, knowing that these organisations will be the first to stand against Israel’s violations, racial and religious discrimination.
The group responsible for this task in Australia is The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC); its Director of International & Community Affairs, Jeremy Jones is in charge of lobbying religious community organizations, specifically Muslims and Christians. Consequently he convened the Faith Communities for Reconciliation, founding participant in the Australian Partnership of Religious Organisations and the Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims & Jews.
AIJAC is a private political propaganda group. It is recognised as the main Israeli lobby in Australia. It coordinates its activities and works intimately with the Israeli embassy in Canberra and different institutions in Israel. It is privately funded by some Jewish businessmen. It monitors closely Australian politicians, the media, ethnic and religious groups, (especially Arabs and Muslims), unions and academics on their stands towards Israel and the Palestine question. … continue
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