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ICC applies for arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Sinwar

The Cradle | May 20, 2024

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the movement’s military wing chief, Mohammad Deif, and Political Bureau head, Ismail Haniyeh, for war crimes.

Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to believe that all bore criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity from at least 7 October 2023.

The ICC, based in The Hague, opened an investigation into Israel’s actions in the occupied territories in 2021. The investigation has been expanded to cover both Israeli and Hamas actions since the start of the Gaza war on 7 October.

The ICC accused Hamas of killing several hundred Israelis and of committing various war crimes during its assault on Israeli military bases and settlements during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The ICC accusations include extermination, murder, taking hostages, rape and other sexual crimes, and torture.

The ICC statement also does not mention that during the 7 October Hamas attack, Israeli forces killed many of their own civilians by responding with heavy weapons. Israeli media has reported that the army used helicopters, drones, and tanks to open fire on Hamas fighters and their Israeli captives in settlements (kibbutzim), military bases, and the Nova music festival site.

These heavy weapons burned many Israelis alive or buried them under the rubble of the houses they destroyed. The killings and resulting mutilation of the bodies were then blamed on Hamas by Israeli authorities, who suggested fighters from Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, had tortured them.

UN investigators have sought evidence that Hamas has committed mass rapes on 7 October in response to Israeli claims, but Israel has failed to provide it. Many reports of Hamas committing mass rape, including in a widely publicized article in the New York Times in December, have been shown to be false.

The ICC also accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes, including extermination, murder, directing attacks at civilians, and using starvation as a weapon of war.

The ICC statement focused on Israel’s efforts to starve Palestinians in Gaza, citing its efforts to cut off food, water, medicine, and electricity to the enclave starting on 9 October. The ICC statement mentions Israeli attacks on civilians, including those queuing for food.

The statement claims that Israel carried out these war crimes as part of a right to self-defense and to defeat Hamas, win the release of Israeli captives held by the group, and punish civilians it viewed as a “threat.”

At the same time, the ICC statement did not mention the reason for the Hamas attack, namely to break the 17-year siege on Gaza, end decades of illegal occupation and settlement in the West Bank, and free thousands of Palestinians held hostage in Israeli prisons.

The ICC statement makes no mention of Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza, of Israeli sniper drones killing civilians, and of the torture and sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees swept up in Gaza and taken to detention facilities in Israel. The ICC statement also makes no mention of Israeli efforts to ethnically cleanse Gaza nor of the estimated number of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombings and other actions, which now exceeds 34,000, including some 8,000 children, according to conservative UN estimates.

In response, an Israeli official told the Times of Israel that Karim Khan’s “baseless blood libel against Israel has crossed a red line in his lawfare efforts against the lone Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East.”

“The blood libel will not deter Israel from defending itself and accomplishing all its just war objectives,” says the official. Netanyahu will issue a video statement later in the day.

May 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Moscow responds to latest EU ban on Russian media

RT | May 18, 2024

Russia’s State Duma chairman has accused the EU of censoring alternative opinions and curtailing freedom of speech, with the goal of deceiving citizens.

Vyacheslav Vlodin was commenting on Brussels’ latest ban on Russian media outlets, which has sparked a warning of countermeasures from the Foreign Ministry in Moscow.

On Friday, the European Council announced it was suspending the broadcasting activities of four additional media organizations, claiming that they “spread and support” Russian propaganda.

The blacklist includes RIA Novosti news agency, newspapers Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and the Czech-based portal Voice of Europe.

Writing on Telegram on Saturday, Volodin described the move as showing the EU’s desire “to close access to objective and reliable information” for residents of member states.

According to the lawmaker, “the policy of double standards has become an integral part of European structures” as they only “talk about freedom of speech, but do not tolerate it in reality”.

Officials in Brussels have no arguments to convince EU citizens that they are right and as soon as they see any problems, they just block “any alternative point of view, destroy freedom of speech, and violate the right to freely disseminate and receive information,” Volodin stressed.

“In fact, they introduce censorship with the only purpose – to deceive their citizens and stay in power,” he argued.

The Russian Foreign Ministry, commenting on Brussels’ move, noted that Moscow has repeatedly warned the EU that “repressive measures” against Russian media will not go unanswered.

“Ignoring these warnings forces us to take countermeasures, which will follow inevitably,” the ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova said on Friday.

According to the diplomat, Brussel’s decision is proof “of the neglect by the EU and its member states for their international obligations in the field of ensuring media pluralism and another example of the degeneration of democratic societies” in the West.

Since the Ukraine conflict escalated into open hostilities in February 2022, the EU has barred several Russia-associated media outlets from engaging with audiences in member states. Even hosting content made by the targeted organizations is illegal in the bloc.

Moscow has also taken a harsh stance on Western media. Citing anti-Russian sentiment, misinformation and censorship, the national media regulator has barred access to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the websites of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, along with other media outlets.

May 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Slovak government blames assassination of Robert Fico on opposition parties and liberal mass media

By John Cody | Remix News | May 16, 2024

Following the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico, the ruling government is pinning the blame for the heinous and anti-democratic attempted murder on the opposition and dominant left-wing media.

“You have made us all targets,” said Ľuboš Blaha, the deputy speaker of the Slovak parliament, and a member of Fico’s Smér party, during a heated press conference. “You have spread a haunting hatred for years. You hated that people elected us so much that you went after us like wild animals. These are the fruits of your labor. The prime minister is fighting for his life because of you.”

He noted that “liberal media” had whipped up hatred of Fico related to his commitment to nationalist politics and his desire to end the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire.

The country’s interior minister, Matúš Šutaj Eštok, further noted that the constant media and opposition attacks on Fico helped fuel the climate that led to his attempted assassination, including the use of dehumanizing language.

“I am asking all of you to stop piling on the attacks and expressions of hatred that are directed at one political camp or another. From what was unleashed and many of you sowed, a storm arose today. And we are slowly standing on the threshold of civil war,” Minister Šutaj Eštok told journalists.

Fico was shot by a 61-year-old assailant in Handlová, central Slovakia, with the alleged far-left political activist and writer immediately arrested by the police. Slovak media reports that several gunshots hit Fico, who was operated on for a total of seven hours following life-threatening gunshot wounds.

The suspect, Juraj C., has been said to be a pro-Western liberal angered that Fico was shuttering one of his favorite television channels.

“The investigation is still ongoing. But I can openly say that this assassination was politically motivated and the perpetrator’s decision was made just after the presidential election,” said Interior Minister Šutaj Eštok, according to news outlet Irozhlas.

Other politicians also called for the hatred coming from the left to end now before it fueled more bloodshed.

“It’s hard to find words at this moment because Slovakia has never been confronted with this situation before. I call for us to stop this hatred,” said Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kaliňák.

While Fico was still lying on the operating table fighting for his life, the same Slovak media and opposition attempted to place the blame for the shooting on Fico himself.

“This type of politics practiced by Fico, ex-prime minister Igor Matovič, Andrej Danko, and Ľuboš Blaha has long been a prototype of hateful rhetoric. It’s a whole list of politicians who sowed hatred and used the lowest forms of personal attacks,” said sociologist and ex-prime minister Iveta Radičová, during a broadcast on Czech Radio Plus.

The government office reported that Fico was transported by helicopter to the hospital in Banská Bystrica, where he arrived at approximately 4:00 p.m.

The operation was reportedly successful, and there are reports that Fico is currently in stable condition. However, it is unclear what his prognosis is, what kind of permanent damage he may have suffered, and whether he will be able to perform his duties as prime minister at a later date.

May 16, 2024 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

NATO boss attacks China over Russia ties

RT | May 13, 2024

Beijing is “enabling” Moscow in the Ukraine conflict, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has claimed, arguing that the US-led bloc has to be involved in Asia and not just in the North Atlantic.

Stoltenberg’s comments came during a question-and-answer panel at the NATO Youth Summit, in response to an inquiry from a Yale University student in the US.

“The war in Ukraine demonstrates that security is not regional, security is global,” Stoltenberg said. “The main country that is enabling Russia to conduct its war of aggression against Ukraine in Europe, is China.”

Stoltenberg went on to argue that China is “by far the biggest trading partner” of Russia, supplying Moscow with “critical components” for missiles, drones and other weapons. He also accused Iran of “providing drones” to Russia and North Korea of “providing ammunition and weapons.”

“Iran, North Korea and China, they are key for Russia’s capability to fight against [the] European friend [and] neighbor of NATO,” Stoltenberg said, referring to Ukraine. “So, this idea that we can divide Asia from Europe doesn’t work anymore.”

The US had pushed for NATO to expand its mission into Asia long before the Ukraine conflict boiled over in February 2022, however. Washington also appears to have been the source of claims that Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang provided weapons and ammunition to Moscow, without offering much in the way of evidence to back that up.

China has repeatedly rejected pressure from the US and its allies to join their embargo against Russia, calling it unilateral and illegitimate. Beijing has also proposed a peace plan for the Ukraine conflict, which Moscow seemed interested in, but Kiev and its Western backers rejected.

Russia has denied US claims about North Korean weapons and ammunition deliveries. Iran has clarified that it provided Russia with prototypes and plans for drones before the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, suggesting that Moscow has been producing them domestically.

The US and its allies have sent over $200 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and cash to Ukraine over the past two years, while insisting that this does not make them direct participants in the conflict.

May 14, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 3 Comments

Calling out UK for its brazen protection of pro-occupation forces

By Hannan Hussain | Al Mayadeen | May 12, 2024

The protests are spreading.

From Oxford University to Edinburgh, students in considerable numbers are pushing academic institutions in the United Kingdom to end ties to the Israeli occupation. As the genocide reaches devastating highs in Gaza, many faculty and staff members are on-board to push for divestment demands and are calling out the Israeli systemic campaign of mass slaughter and starvation.

But that same sense of aversion to Israeli genocide and war crimes appears absent among UK policymakers, who quietly cheerlead Israeli belligerence. According to damning new revelations, the Conservative Party of the UK has consistently catered to the pro-genocide occupation by protecting Israeli politicians, spy agents, and other officials from glaring war crimes. These developments reveal the extent of London’s complicity in the Israeli-led genocide, and illustrate the use of “special” immunity to protect war criminals that have Palestinian blood on their hands.

Consider Israeli war criminal General Herzi Halevi, among the chief architects of a planned Israeli onslaught on Rafah. Rather than joining international momentum to support prosecution of Halevi and his allies, the UK granted the war criminal a visiting permit without fear of arrest. These are glaring examples of Britain deluding the public on legal rights, and twisting its own laws to enable support and protections for a genocidal regime.

London is thus unqualified to offer rhetoric against Israeli offensives when it consciously sustains its partisan support for the same occupation. Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s deputy foreign minister, put on a false show of morality this week, claiming that an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah would ‘break international humanitarian law.’ Lets be clear: the UK doesn’t care about international law or the astounding scale of Palestinian suffering and mayhem. Mitchell even refused to spell out any meaningful consequences for the occupation in the event of a full-scale invasion, exposing the cosmetic nature of British rhetoric on Gaza.

The British government is also wrong to give the benefit of the doubt to a genocidal regime by claiming that international humanitarian law was about to come under threat. Britain’s stance on Gaza should be condemned for deluding the public because “Israel” has been breaking international law from the outset and for decades. It is evident in a process of systemic Israeli annihilation, mass slaughter and glaring war crimes that London’s own diplomacy justifies in practice.

At a time when the International Criminal Court (ICC) has occupation premier Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies fearing arrests and isolation, Britain appears determined to obstruct justice and do “Israel’s” pro-genocide bidding. After all, it is a country that Amnesty International has declared a  “deliberately destabilising” force for human rights on the world stage, and proves that point by allowing Israeli war criminals to visit without fearing arrest. Make no mistake: Britain is seriously unqualified to speak to any semblance of democratic values because its pro-occupation tilt signals violation of British commitments to universal jurisdiction laws. That includes the Rome Statute which holds that the most serious crimes are tried regardless of where they occurred.

Palestinian rights groups are absolutely correct to turn the heat on London and hold it accountable for its own breaches of international law in Gaza. This includes the West Bank-based Al-Haq, which is taking Britain to court over arms exports funding the genocide. As UK’s diplomatic “immunity” becomes the latest weapon to shield Israeli war criminals, it is in the interests of Britain-based activists and their international counterparts to form a legal challenge of their own. This is imperative to hold the government accountable for sponsoring pro-genocidal forces under the garb of diplomacy.

London’s denial would carry zero weight because its support for Israeli war criminals is rooted in history. Look back to 2011 when Labour chief Keir Starmer blocked arrest warrant prospects for occupation foreign minister and suspected war criminal Tzipi Livni. A government so deeply in cahoots with a decades-old Israeli military occupation cannot be trusted to drive accountability from within. London’s contribution to more Palestinian bloodshed thus demands that the government is tried with the full force of the law.

There is also a common thread that binds escalating anti-genocide protests across Britain: the truly urgent situation for besieged Palestinians in Gaza. The Israeli occupation continues to launch airstrikes in Rafah and pursues a systemic campaign of civilian massacres that is now centered around the southernmost Gaza city. And yet, Britain played a principal role in aiding “Israel’s” genocide capacities on the intelligence front ahead of time. That includes 50 British espionage missions that were conducted since the start of December with the principal goal of aiding the occupation.

With these realities in mind, how can Britain even stand up to the international community and tout the occupation’s so-called “truce” proposal as generous? There are striking double standards in the way UK plays up public rhetoric on peace and prosperity over Gaza, while profiting from its bloodshed.

Its broader occupation support through information-gathering, espionage, diplomatic immunity, and weapon supplies firmly establish complicity in the ongoing genocide.

The Declassified UK revelations are only the tip of the iceberg.

May 12, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The Myth of Online Radicalisation

By Iain Davis | The Disillusioned Blogger | May 10, 2021

In 2021, following the tragic murder of David Amess MP, the UK legacy media reported that Ali Harbi Ali, the man subsequently convicted of murdering Mr Amess, was quite possibly radicalised online:

Social media users could face a ban on anonymous accounts, as home secretary Priti Patel steps up action to tackle radicalisation in the wake of the murder of MP David Amess. [. . .] Police questioning Ali Harbi Ali on suspicion of terrorism offences are understood to be investigating the possibility that the 25-year-old [. . .] was radicalised by material found on the internet and social media networks during lockdown.

The police had already stated that the crime was being investigated as a terrorist incident. They reported a potential motive of Islamist extremism.

Ali Harbi Ali had been known to the UK government’s Prevent counter-radicalisation program for seven years, prior to murdering Mr Amess. In 2014 Ali Harbi Ali was referred to the Channel counter-terrorism programme, a wing of Prevent reserved for the most radical youths. A referral to Channel can only have come from the UK Police. The official guidance for a Channel referral states:

The progression of referrals is monitored at the Home Office for a period, with a view to offering further support if needed. An audit of non-adopted referrals is undertaken where these did not progress to police management. The Home Office works with Counter Terrorism Policing Headquarters to share any concerns and agree necessary steps for improvement in partnership with the local authority and police.

It is likely, therefore, that Ali Harbi Abedi was known to the UK government, counter-terrorism police and the intelligence agencies. Yet we are told, having been flagged as among the most concerning of all Prevent subjects, for some seemingly inexplicable reason, Ali Harbi Ali was not known to the intelligence agencies. To date, there has been no explanation for this, frankly, implausible claim.

Following his conviction, the UK legacy media reported that Ali Harbi Ali was an example of “textbook radicalisation.” This was a quite extraordinary claim because there is no such thing as “textbook radicalisation.”

Ali Harbi Ali said that he had watched ISIS propaganda videos online. This was also highlighted at his trial. Consequently, the BBC reported:

[. . .] for a potentially bored teenager living a humdrum life in suburban London – the [Syrian] war not only appeared like an exciting video game on social media, it came packaged with an appealing message that there was a role for everyone else. [. . .] Harbi Ali told himself he could [. . .] join the ranks of home-grown attackers – on the basis of an instruction [online videos] from an IS propagandist who played a major role in the spread of terrorism attacks in western Europe.

The story we are supposed to believe about Ali Harbi Ali’s alleged path toward radicalisation is that he became a terrorist and a murderer because he watched YouTube videos and engaged in online groups that support terrorism. This is complete nonsense.

What is the Radicalisation Process?

In 2016, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson issued a report to inform potential UN strategies to counter extremism and terrorism. Emmerson reported there was neither an agreed-upon definition of “extremism” nor any single cogent explanation of the “radicalisation” process:

[M]any programmes directed at radicalisation [are] based on a simplistic understanding of the process as a fixed trajectory to violent extremism with identifiable markers along the way. [. . .] There is no authoritative statistical data on the pathways towards individual radicalisation.

This was followed, in 2017, with the publication of “Countering Domestic Extremism” by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The NAS report stated that domestic “violence and violent extremist ideologies” were eventually adopted by a small minority of people as the result of a complex and poorly understood “radicalisation” process.

According to the NAS, there were numerous contributory factors to an individual’s apparent radicalisation, including sociopolitical and economic factors, personality traits, psychological influences, traumatic life experiences and so on. Precisely how these elements combined, and why some people were radicalised, while the majority who experienced the same weren’t, remained unknown:

No single shared motivator for violent extremism has been found, but the sum of several could provide a strong foundation for understanding

In July 2018, researcher team from from Deakin University in Australia largely corroborated Emmerson’s and NAS’ findings. Adding some further detail and research, their peer-reviewed article, “The 3 P’s of Radicalisation,” was based upon an meta-analysis of all the available academic literature on the radicalisation. They identified three broad drivers that could potentially lead someone toward violent extremism. They called these Push, Pull, and Personal factors.

Push factors are created by the individuals perception of their social or political environment. Awareness of things likes state repression, structural deprivation, poverty, and injustice can lead to resentment and anger. Pull factors are the elements of extremism that appeal to the individual. This might include an ideological commitment, a group identity and sense of belonging, finding a purpose, promises of justice, eternal glory, etc. Personal factors are the aspects of an individual’s personality that may predispose them to being more vulnerable to Push or Pull influences. For example, mental health problems or illness, individual characteristics, their reaction to life experiences and more.

Currently, the UN cites it’s own report—Journey To Extremism in Africa—as “the most extensive study yet on what drives people to violent extremism.” Building on the work we’ve just discussed, the report concluded that radicalisation is the product of numerous factors that combine to lead an individual down a path to extremism and possible violence.

The myriad of contributory factors to the radicalisation process acording to the UN’s “best study.”

The UN stated:

We know the drivers and enablers of violent extremism are multiple, complex and context specific, while having religious, ideological, political, economic and historical dimensions. They defy easy analysis, and understanding of the phenomenon remains incomplete.

The BBC report of “textbook radicalisation” was total rubbish. Everything we know about the radicalisation process reveals a convoluted interplay between social, economic, political, cultural and personal factors. These factors, which “defy easy analysis,” may combine to lead someone toward violent extremism and potentially terrorism. In the overwhelming majority of cases they do not.

It is extremely difficult to predict which individual’s may be radicalised. Millions of people experience all of the Push, Pull and Personal contributory factors and only a minuscule minority turn to extremism and violence.

We can say that watching videos and hanging around in online chat groups may be part of the radicalisation process but, absent all the other contributory elements, in no way is it reasonable to claim that anyone becomes a terrorist simply because they are “radicalised online.” The suggestion is absurd.

This absurdity was emphasised by the UN in its June 2023 publication of its report “Prevention of Violent Extremism.” The UN reported:

[. . .] deaths from terrorist activity have fallen considerably worldwide in recent years.

During the same period global internet use had increased by 45%, from 3.7 billion people in 2018 to 5.4 billion in 2023. Quite clearly, if there is a correlation between internet use and terrorism—doubtful—it’s an inverse one.

Adopting the precautionary principle we should perhaps be encouraging more people to have more access to a wider range of online information sources. There is a remote, but possible chance that this assists, in some unknown way, the reduction of violent extremism and deters the tiny minority from turning toward terrorism.

Marianna Spring

Exploiting the Online Radicalisation Myth

State propagandists, like the BBC’s Marianna Spring, have been spreading disinformation about online radicalisation for some time. They have been doing this to deceive the public into thinking that government legislation, such as the Online Safety Act (OSA), will tackle the mythical problem of online radicalisation.

In a January 2024 article she titled “Young Britons exposed to online radicalisation following Hamas attack,” Marianna Spring wrote:

It is a spike in hate that leaves young Britons increasingly exposed to radicalisation by algorithm. [. . .] Algorithms are recommendation systems that promote new content to a user based on posts they engage with. That means they can drive some people to more extreme ideas.

Building on her absurd Lord Haw-Haw level tripe, in reference to the work of the UK Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) Spring added:

The focus is on terrorism-related content that could lead to violence offline or risk radicalising other people into terror ideologies on social media.

Building on this abject nonsense Spring continued:

So what about all of the hate that sits in the middle? It’s not extreme enough to be illegal, but it still poisons the public discourse and risks pushing some people further towards extremes. [. . .] Responsibility for dealing with hateful posts – as of now – lies with the social media companies. It also lies, to some extent, with policy makers looking to regulate the sites, and users themselves. New legislation like the Online Safety Act does force the social media companies to take responsibility for illegal content, too.

This blurring of definitions from “terrorist” to “hate” to “hateful posts” to “extremes” was a meaningless slurry of specious drivel designed to convince the public that terrorists become terrorists because they watch YouTube videos or are influenced by the “hurty words” they read and share on social media. None of which was true.

Spring’s evident purpose was to lend some credibility to the State’s legislative push to silence all dissent online and censor legitimate public opinion. Spring spun the idea, that online radicalisation exists, to encourage people to give away their essential democratic rights in order to stay safe.

This moronic argument convinced the clueless puppeticians—we keep electing to Parliament by mistake—to pass the Online Safety Act into law in October 2023. They were told that it would protect children and adults from “harm”:

The kinds of illegal content and activity that platforms need to protect users from are set out in the Act, and this includes content relating to [. . .] terrorism.

Imagining this is what the Online Safety Act was supposed to protect adults from, the OSA received its Royal assent. Now that we have it on the statute books all the anti-democratic oppression it contains has been let loose.

The UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) creates the offence of “sending false information intended to cause non-trivial harm.” Quite what “non-trivial harm” is supposed to mean isn’t entirely clear. The UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) certainly doesn’t understand it:

Section 179(1) OSA 2023 creates a summary offence of sending false communications. The offence is committed if [. . .], at the time of sending it, the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience. [. . .] Non-trivial psychological or physical harm is not defined  [. . .]. Prosecutors should be clear when making a charging decision about what the evidence is concerning the suspect’s intention and how what was intended was not “trivial”, and why. Note that there is no requirement that such harm should in fact be caused, only that it be intended.

Its seems the legal profession can’t quite grasp the horrific implications of the new punishable offence the UK State has created. Perhaps because they still imagine they serve a democracy. There’s no need for any confusion. The UK State has been quite clear about the nature of its dictatorship:

These new criminal offences will protect people from a wide range of abuse and harm online, including [. . .] sending fake news that aims to cause non-trivial physical or psychological harm.

“Fake news” is whatever the State, the Establishment and their “epistemic authorities” say it is. what constitutes “non-trivial harm” is also an entirely subjective judgement for the State. The Online Safety regulator, Ofcom, will decree the truth and the State will punish those who dare to contradict its official proclamations based upon whatever the Secretary of State tells Ofcom to outlaw.

If you think this sounds like “thought crime,” you are right. That is precisely what it is.

The idea that the OSA has something to do with protecting children and deterring people from online radicalisation was a sales pitch. Propagandists like the BBC’s Marianna Spring were dispatched to make the ridiculous arguments to deceive the public into believing their own speech needs to be regulated by the State.

The State is Completely Disinterested In Terrorist Content Online

Inciting violence, crime or promoting terrorism, sharing child porn and the online paedophile grooming of children has been illegal in the UK for many years. The Online Safety Act adds absolutely nothing to existing laws. The problem has never been insufficient law it has been insufficient enforcement.

In addition, it couldn’t be more obvious that the UK State and its propagandists are not in the least bit interested in tackling alleged “online radicalisation.” It is revealed in Marianna Spring’s article (referenced above) she reportedly got her wacky ideas about online radicalisation from CTIRU team members.

The CTIRU was set up in 2010 to remove “unlawful terrorist material” from the Internet. It makes formal requests to social media and hosting companies to take down material deemed to be terrorist related. If online radicalisation were a thing, which it isn’t, the CTIRU has been tasked for 14 years with stopping it. It doesn’t appear to have done anything at all.

The group Jabhat Fateh al Sham (JFS) was formerly known as the Al-Nusra Front or Jabhat al-Nusra (alias al-Qaeda in Syria, or al-Qaeda in the Levant). It subsequently merged with Ansar al-Din Front, Jaysh al-Sunna, Liwa al-Haqq, and the Nour al–Din al-Zenki Movement to form Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), or ‘Levant Liberation Front’.

HTS’ objective is to create an Islamic state in the Levant. According to the UK Government’s listing of proscribed terrorist groups:

The government laid Orders, in July 2013, December 2016 and May 2017, which provided that the “al-Nusrah Front (ANF)”, “Jabhat al-Nusrah li-ahl al Sham”, “Jabhat Fatah al-Sham” and “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” should be treated as alternative names for the organisation which is already proscribed under the name Al Qa’ida.

HTS, then, is officially defined as Al-Qa’ida. It is the same group supposedly responsible for 9/11.

In 2016, six years after the CTIRU was formed, BBC Newsnight interviewed Al-Qa’ida’s Director of Foreign Media Relations, Mostafa Mahamed, about the ambitions of Al-Qa’ida. The BBC gave him ample airtime to explain how Al-Qa’ida was leading the fight against the elected Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. The BBC claimed that JFS—now HTS—had formerly split from Al-Qa’ida. Probably attempting to justify its promotion of a proscribed terrorist organisation. The UK Government does not share the BBC appraisal but its Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit doesn’t appear to be overly fussed.

The BBC HTS promo video is still available to watch on YouTube. Alternatively, you could watch a JFS promotional video, or perhaps spend less than a minute searching YouTube to find the slew of videos it provides promoting proscribed Islamist terrorist groups.

You can still watch Channel 4’s in-depth 2016 report extolling the heroics of the Nour al-Din al-Zenki terrorists. This is the group that publicly beheaded a twelve-year-old boy. In fact, Channel 4 promoted those directly responsible for the despicable crime. Channel 4 said the child murderers had won a “famous victory”.

When it was pointed out that these people decapitate children, the BBC leapt to their defence, pointing out that the child was probably a combatant. The BBC didn’t ask its terrorist interviewee, Mostafa Mahamed, whether he was against murdering children in principle.

Such videos have been available online for years and have been shared liberally by mainstream media outlets such as Al-Jazeera, Channel 4, the BBC, AP, France24 and many others. This all seems rather odd, because in 2018, then CTIRU Commander Clarke Jarrett said:

It’s vital that if the public see something online they think could be terrorist-related, that they ACT and flag it up to us. Our Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) has specialist officers who not only take action to get content removed, but also increasingly, are in a position to look at those behind online content — which is leading to more and more investigations.

What does CTIRU mean by “terrorist-related” if not promotional videos made by terrorist organisations? How much investigation is needed to “take down” BBC interviews with Al-Qa’ida spokesmen, and to prosecute those who made and broadcast it?

Why aren’t the hundreds, if not thousands, of terrorist promos currently available via Google services deemed unlawful? Are only some terrorist groups unlawful while others are fine? Why are some terrorists promoted and others not?

The truth is the whole thing is a monumental sham. Not only is online radicalisation a myth the State couldn’t care less about terrorist promotional material. The online radicalisation myth has been punted by propagandists for one reason only. To convince you to submit to online censorship.

May 10, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Ireland Calls on Tech Giants to Muzzle Election “Misinformation”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 8, 2024

Ireland’s Electoral Commission Chief Executive Art O’Leary is warning tech companies behind major social media platforms to adhere to what he considers their responsibilities in the electoral process.

On the one hand, O’Leary is effectively threatening they could be facing unspecified “reputational consequences” that are “not good” in case they are found to be uncooperative in what appears to be the ultimate goal here – censorship, i.e., “removal of material” that is found to be causing “damage to democracy.”

On the other hand, the Electoral Commission chief seems satisfied that the companies the Irish authorities would like to keep under control during the campaign period are in fact “very conscious” of the circumstances, and will, in other words, “behave.”

This obvious attempt to secure that tech firms censor content of their own accord is necessary since the current laws in Ireland do not allow the Commission to impose such decisions; but O’Leary is optimistic and says that the organization he heads has forged “positive relations” with these companies – all the way to “mechanisms to ensure disinformation is taken down quickly,” say reports.

The elections O’Leary has in mind are local Irish and European Parliament ballots scheduled for early June, and as far as the authorities in that country are concerned, “disinformation” is expected from only one corner of the domestic political spectrum – what they brand as “the far-right.”

That’s because groups allegedly espousing such views are planning protests in Dublin – and despite the fact that their political opponents plan the same, that is, to hold so-called “counter-rallies.”

But only the “far right” is singled out as the potential source of “disinformation,” which has a decent chunk of the state apparatus, (national police security and intelligence department, broadcasting regulator, etc.) mobilized to deal with it and what are considered “online harms.”

Now the Election Commission is also joining these efforts, with O’Leary sharing his thought process in an interview he gave the Irish Examiner.

He admitted that there has been “no real evidence” that foreign countries are trying to interfere in the elections, yet this does not prevent alarmist rhetoric, including around that possibility, and AI generated content.

Another of O’Leary’s ideas is to consider extending the moratorium on election coverage imposed on legacy media to online outlets.

May 8, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

US Report on Israel’s Conduct in Gaza Strip Delayed Indefinitely – Reports

Sputnik – 08.05.2024

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration’s report on whether Israel violated US law and international humanitarian law during its military operations in the Gaza Strip has been delayed indefinitely, Politico reported on Tuesday.

If the report determines that US and international law have been violated, the Biden administration would be expected to stop sending military assistance to Israel.

The administration emailed Congress notifying lawmakers that it will miss the deadline to submit the report but did not provide additional details.

When the National Security Council was asked to explain the delay, they referred any inquiries to the State Department.

Earlier on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the US government is trying very hard to meet the “self-imposed deadline.”

Miller said it is possible to “slip” a little bit, but the administration is trying to get the report done by Wednesday.

On Monday night, some 200 attorneys, 27 of whom are currently in the Biden administration, sent a letter to top US officials arguing that sending weapons to Israel would be illegal.

The report’s delay comes as Israel started a military operation in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where some 1.4 million Palestinians – are sheltering.

May 8, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The beast of ideology lifts the lid on transformation

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 6, 2024

The Transformation is accelerating. The harsh, often violent, police repression of student protests across the U.S. and Europe, in wake of the continuing Palestinian massacres, exposes sheer intolerance towards those voicing condemnation against the violence in Gaza.

The category of ‘hate speech’ enacted into law has become so ubiquitous and fluid that criticism of the conduct of Israel’s behaviour in Gaza and the West Bank is now treated as a category of extremism and as a threat to the state. Confronted by criticism of Israel, the ruling élites respond by angrily lashing out.

Is there a boundary (still) between criticism and anti-semitism? In the West the two increasingly are being made to cohere.

Today’s stifling of any criticism of Israel’s conduct – in blatant contradiction with any western claim to a values-based order – reflects desperation and a touch of panic. Those who still occupy the leadership slots of Institutional Power in the U.S. and Europe are compelled by the logic of those structures to pursue courses of action that are leading to ‘system’ breakdown, both domestically – and concomitantly – provoking the dramatic intensification of international tensions, too.

Mistakes flow from the underlying ideological rigidities in which the ruling strata are trapped: The embrace of a transformed Biblical Israel that long ago separated from today’s U.S. Democratic Party zeitgeist; the inability to accept reality in Ukraine; and the notion that U.S. political coercion alone can revive paradigms in Israel and the Middle East that are long gone.

The notion that a new Israeli Nakba of Palestinians can be forced down the throats of the western and the global public are both delusional and reek of centuries of old Orientalism.

What else can one say when Senator Tom Cotton posts: “These little Gazas are disgusting cesspools of antisemitic hate, full of pro-Hamas sympathisers; fanatics and freaks”?

When order unravels, it unravels quickly and comprehensively. Suddenly, the GOP conference has had its nose rubbed in dirt (over its lack of support for Biden’s $61bn for Ukraine); the U.S. public’s despair at open border immigration is disdainfully ignored; and Gen Z’s expressions of empathy with Gaza is declared an internal ‘enemy’ to be roughly suppressed. All points of strategic inflection and transformation – likely as not.

And the rest of the world now is cast as an enemy too, being perceived as recalcitrants who fail to embrace the western recitation of its ‘Rules Order’ catechism and for failing clearly to toe the line on support for Israel and the proxy war on Russia.

It is a naked bid for unchecked power; one nevertheless that is galvanising a global blow-back. It is pushing China closer to Russia and accelerating the BRICS confluence. Plainly put, the world – faced with massacres in Gaza and West Bank – will not abide by either the Rules or any western hypocritical cherry-picking of International Law. Both systems are collapsing under the leaden weight of western hypocrisy.

Nothing is more obvious than Secretary of State Blinken’s scolding of President Xi for China’s treatment of the Uighurs and his threats of sanctions for Chinas trade with Russia – powering ‘Russia’s assault on Ukraine’, Blinken asserts. Blinken has made an enemy of the one power that can evidently out-compete the U.S.; that has manufacturing and competitive overmatch vs the U.S.

The point here is that these tensions can quickly spiral down into war of ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ – ranged against not just the China, Russia, Iran “Axis of Evil”, but vs Turkey, India Brazil and all others who dare to criticise the moral correctness of either of the West’s Israel and Ukraine projects. That is, it has the potential to turn into the West versus the Rest.

Again, another own goal.

Crucially, these two conflicts have led to the Transformation of the West from self-styled ‘mediators’ claiming to bring calm to flashpoints, to being active contenders in these wars. And, as active contenders, they can permit no criticism of their actions – either inside, or out; for that would be to hint at appeasement.

Put plainly: this transformation to contenders in war lies at the heart of Europe’s present obsession with militarism. Bruno Maçães relates that a “senior European minister argued to him that: if the U.S. withdrew its support for Ukraine, his country, a Nato member, would have no choice but to fight alongside Ukraine – inside Ukraine. As he put it, why should his country wait for a Ukrainian defeat, followed by [a defeated Ukraine] swelling the ranks of a Russian army bent on new excursions?”

Such a proposition is both stupid and likely would lead to a continent-wide war (a prospect with which the unnamed minister seemed astonishingly at ease). Such insanity is the consequence of the Europeans’ acquiescence to Biden’s attempt at regime change in Moscow. They wanted to become consequential players at the table of the Great Game, but have come to perceive that they sorely lack the means for it. The Brussels Class fear the consequence to this hubris will be the unravelling of the EU.

As Professor John Gray writes:

“At bottom, the liberal assault on free speech [on Gaza and Ukraine] is a bid for unchecked power. By shifting the locus of decision from democratic deliberation to legal procedures, the élites aim to insulate [their neoliberal] cultish programmes from contestation and accountability. The politicisation of law – and the hollowing out of politics go hand in hand”.

Despite these efforts to cancel opposing voices, other perspectives and understandings of history nonetheless are reasserting their primacy: Do Palestinians have a point? Is there a history to their predicament? ‘No, they are a tool used by Iran, by Putin and by Xi Jinping’, Washington and Brussels says.

They say such untruths because the intellectual effort to see Palestinians as human beings, as citizens, endowed with rights, would force many Western states to revise much of their rigid system of thinking. It is simpler and easier for Palestinians to be left ambiguous, or to ‘disappear’.

The future which this approach heralds couldn’t be farther from the democratic, co-operative international order the White House claims to advocate. Rather it leads to the precipice of civil violence in the U.S. and to wider war in Ukraine.

Many of today’s Woke liberals however, would reject the allegation of being anti-free speech, labouring under the misapprehension that their liberalism is not curtailing free speech, but rather is protecting it from ‘falsehoods’ emanating from the enemies of ‘our democracy’ (i.e. the ‘MAGA contingent’). In this way, they falsely perceive themselves as still adhering to the classical liberalism of, say, John Stuart Mill.

Whilst it is true that in On Liberty (1859) Mill argued that free speech must include the freedom to cause offence, in the same essay he also insisted that the value of freedom lay in its collective utility. He specified that “it must be utility in the largest sense – grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being”.

Free speech has little value if it facilitates the discourse of the ‘deplorables’ or the so-called Right.

In other words, “Like many other 19th-century liberals”, Professor Gray argues, “Mill feared the rise of democratic government because he believed it meant empowering an ignorant and tyrannical majority. Time and again, he vilified the torpid masses who were content with traditional ways of living”. One can hear here, the precursor to Mrs Clinton’s utter disdain for the ‘deplorables’ living in ‘fly-over’ U.S. states.

Rousseau too, is often taken as an icon of ‘liberty’ and ‘individualism’ and widely admired. Yet here too, we have language which conceals its’ fundamentally anti-political character.

Rousseau saw human associations rather, as groups to be acted upon, so that all thinking and daily behaviour could be folded into the like-minded units of a unitary state.

The individualism of Rousseau’s thought, therefore, is no libertarian assertion of absolute rights of free speech against the all-consuming state. No raising of the ‘tri-colour’ against oppression.

Quite the reverse! Rousseau’s passionate ‘defence of the individual’ arises out of his opposition to ‘the tyranny’ of social convention; the forms, rituals and ancient myths that bind society – religion, family, history, and social institutions. His ideal may be proclaimed as that of individual freedom, but it is ‘freedom’, however, not in a sense of immunity from control of the state, but in our withdrawal from the supposed oppressions and corruptions of collective society.

Family relationship is thus transmuted subtly into a political relationship; the molecule of the family is broken into the atoms of its individuals. With these atoms today groomed further to shed their biological gender, their cultural identity and ethnicity, they are coalesced afresh into the single unity of the state.

This is the deceit concealed in classical Liberalism’s language of freedom and individualism – ‘freedom’ nonetheless being hailed as the major contribution of the French Revolution to western civilisation.

Yet perversely, behind the language of freedom lay de-civilisation.

The ideological legacy from the French Revolution, however, was radical de-civilisation. The old sense of permanence – of belonging somewhere in space and time – was conjured away, to give place to its very opposite: Transience, temporariness and ephemerality.

Frank Furedi has written,

“Discontinuity of culture coexists with the loss of the sense of the past … The loss of this sensibility has had an unsettling effect on culture itself and has deprived it of moral depth. Today, the anticultural exercises a powerful role in western society. Culture is frequently framed in instrumental and pragmatic terms and rarely perceived as a system of norms that endow human life with meaning. Culture has become a shallow construct to be disposed of – or changed.

“The western cultural elite is distinctively uncomfortable with the narrative of civilisation and has lost its enthusiasm for celebrating it. The contemporary cultural landscape is saturated with a corpus of literature that calls into question the moral authority of civilisation and associates it more with negative qualities.

“De-civilization means that even the most foundational identities – such as that between man and woman – is called into question. At a time when the answer to the question of ‘what it means to be human’ becomes complicated – and where the assumptions of western civilisation lose their salience – the sentiments associated with wokeism can flourish”.

Karl Polyani, in his Great Transformation (published some 80 years ago), held that the massive economic and social transformations that he had witnessed during his lifetime – the end of the century of “relative peace” in Europe from 1815 to 1914, and the subsequent descent into economic turmoil, fascism and war, which was still ongoing at the time of the book’s publication – had but a single, overarching cause:

Prior to the 19th century, he insisted, the human way of being had always been ‘embedded’ in society, and that it was subordinated to local politics, customs, religion and social relations i.e. to a civilisational culture. Life was not treated as separated into distinct particulars, but as parts of an articulate whole – of life itself.

Liberalism turned this logic on its head. It constituted an ontological break with much of human history. Not only did it artificially separate the ‘economic’ from the ‘political’, but liberal economics (its foundational notion) demanded the subordination of society – of life itself – to the abstract logic of the self-regulating market. For Polanyi, this “means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market”.

The answer – clearly – was to make society again a distinctly human relationship of community, given meaning through a living culture. In this sense, Polanyi also emphasised the territorial character of sovereignty – the nation-state as the pre-condition to the exercise of democratic politics.

Polanyi would have argued that, absent a return to Life Itself as the pivot to politics, a violent backlash was inevitable. (Though hopefully not as dire as the transformation through which he lived.)

May 7, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Macron warns about Russian missiles in a defeated Ukraine

RT | May 5, 2024

A total Russian victory over Ukraine in which the entire country is defeated would be detrimental to European and NATO security, as it could allow Moscow to place missiles at the EU’s doorstep, French President Emmanuel Macron has said.

In an interview with the French daily La Tribune on Saturday, Macron, who has famously refused to rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine, once again advocated a policy of “strategic ambiguity” towards Russia, arguing that the key idea behind such an approach is to project strength while “not giving too many details.”

Describing Russia as “an adversary,” the French president stressed that establishing “a priori limits” would be interpreted as weakness. “We must remove all visibility from it, because that is what creates the ability to deter,” he argued.

Macron further noted that Ukraine is crucial to France’s security because it is located only 1,500 kilometers from its borders. “If Russia wins, the next second, there is no longer any security possible in Romania, in Poland, in Lithuania and not in our country either. The capability and range of Russian ballistic missiles expose us all,” he said.

The president’s comments come after he suggested last month that Western nations “would legitimately have to ask [them]selves” whether they should send troops to Ukraine “If the Russians were to break through the front lines, [and] if there were a Ukrainian request.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded by calling Macron’s statement “very important and very dangerous,” adding that it was further testament to Paris’ direct involvement in the conflict. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also warned that “nothing will remain” of NATO forces if they are sent to the front line in Ukraine.

Some Western nations have spoken out against sending troops to Ukraine, including the UK, one of Kiev’s staunchest supporters. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron insisted on Friday that while London would continue to support Ukraine, NATO soldiers in the country “could be a dangerous escalation.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has repeatedly dismissed speculation that Moscow could attack NATO as “nonsense,” saying that his country had no interest whatsoever in doing so.

May 5, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | | 1 Comment

Hand of Soros: Georgian Prime Minister Denounces US Color Revolution Tactics

By John Miles – Sputnik – 05.05.2024

The leader of the country of Georgia has criticized US efforts to interfere in the country dating back several years.

A major scandal emerged in 2016 over the disproven conspiracy theory of Russian interference in the United States presidential election. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Americans were told, had spent vast sums of money to influence the outcome of the vote via social media. According to the conspiracy’s most dedicated adherents, US democracy had been near-fatally wounded by the pernicious meddling of a hostile foreign power.

What adherents of the unfounded Russiagate narrative failed to acknowledge is that the United States is guilty of precisely the same type of political interference it accuses others of, and on a far larger scale.

Claims of such foreign meddling came to a head Friday when Georgia’s head of state slammed US support for “violence” and “revolution attempts” amidst anti-government protests in the country’s capital of Tbilisi.

“Spoke to [US ambassador Derek Chollet] and expressed my sincere disappointment with the two revolution attempts of 2020-2023 supported by the former US Ambassador and those carried out through NGOs financed from external sources,” wrote Irakli Kobakhidze, Georgia’s prime minister and head of the social democratic Georgian Dream party, on social media.

The prime minister also criticized “false statements” from the US and European Union concerning draft “Transparency of Foreign Influence” legislation currently working through the country’s parliament.

The proposed law, which is currently the subject of protests in the country’s capital, is aimed at disclosing foreign influence over organizations and media outlets operating in Georgia. Kobakhidze claims the legislation is necessary to promote “transparency and accountability of relevant organizations vis-à-vis Georgian society.” Western critics have portrayed it as a clampdown on civil society, likening it to Russia’s “foreign agents law” – protesters have even taken to deriding the bill “the Russian law.”

But such legislation is common throughout the world, with similar regulation taking place in Canada, Australia, the European Union, and elsewhere. The US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires foreign-affiliated news outlets, such as the one you’re reading now, to register with the US Department of Justice and send copies of all “informational materials” to US authorities.

The United States has frequently opposed such legislation in countries it deems to be foreign adversaries because it threatens the influence of US “soft power.” The United States frequently funds foreign activists, media outlets, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to spread US influence in foreign countries. The US has specifically focused on former Soviet-aligned nations after the end of the Cold War, seeking to ensure leaders are elected who will orient such countries towards the West and away from Russia.

When necessary, the United States has even sought to foment regime change in foreign countries through such methods, paving the way for unrest that generates a change in leadership. Such events are commonly known as “color revolutions,” after a series of such incidents such as Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is a primary tool of such “revolutions.”

Investigation by Sputnik has uncovered the historical influence of the United States and allied groups in influencing Georgian politics. USAID’s website boasts that the organization has poured a staggering $1.9 billion into the country since 1992. The agency reports funding 39 ongoing projects in Georgia “with a total value of approximately $373 million, and an annual budget of more than $70 million.”

Additionally, USAID’s Georgian Media Partnership Program backs a range of opposition media outlets in the country, including TV Pirveli, Radio Marneuli, Formula TV, and Mtavari Arkhi. The US agency allocated $10 million in 2021 alone. Samira Bayramova, an administrator of the program, has been noted as a prominent leader of the current protests in Tbilisi.

The Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) has also strongly backed the ongoing demonstrations. The organization partners with USAID under the pretense of promoting “fair electoral processes in Georgia.”

Additionally, the US allies with partnered “philanthropic” foundations to further strengthen opposition forces. The Georgian branch of George Soros’ Civil Society Foundation openly promotes the current protests, backing a petition initiative to promote hostility toward the current government. The Civil Society Foundation has operated in the country for 30 years, claiming to have poured $100 million into political interference.

Political opposition leader Nika Gvaramia, whose party has helped organize the ongoing protests, is promoted on the foundation’s website.

The US, naturally, has attempted to coerce Georgia’s government to shelve the current draft law, with Chollet expressing “concern for Georgia’s current trajectory.” Senators from both major US political parties have warned the country could face sanctions for attempts to move forward with the transparency legislation.

The United States’ foreign subterfuge has increasingly come to light in recent years, with former President Donald Trump offering a rare acknowledgment of US efforts in Iran, Belarus, and Hong Kong.

Still, millions of others remain uninformed about the destructive influence of the United States and billionaire oligarchs like George Soros.

May 5, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

The West’s double standards on Georgia’s ‘foreign agents’ bill

By Paul Robinson | Canadian Dimension | May 3, 2024

The Republic of Georgia has not enjoyed a stable life in the 30 years or so since it gained independence from the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, it was wracked by civil war and ethnic conflict, at the end of which it lost control of the autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In 2003, the so-called Rose Revolution overthrew the government of President Edvard Shevardnadze, after which Georgia experienced the rather erratic reign of Mikheil Saakashvili, who promised to turn the country permanently towards the West, including membership of NATO and the EU.

Saakashvili, however, overplayed his hand, and in August 2008 launched an attack on South Ossetia in an effort to recapture it by force. The Russian army immediately responded, drove the Georgians out and advanced to within a few kilometers of the Georgian capital Tbilisi before agreeing to a ceasefire and heading home. Saakashvili left Georgia in 2013, discredited both by the 2008 war and revelations of rape and torture in the country’s prisons.

Since Saakashvili’s departure, the ruling party in the country has been Georgian Dream, an organization considered somewhat left-of-centre economically but also quite conservative socially, favouring traditional Christian family values. In terms of foreign policy, it remains committed to joining NATO and the EU, and has signed an association agreement with the latter. But it has resisted sending military aid to Ukraine or imposing sanctions on the Russian Federation lest this provoke Russian retaliation that might harm the Georgian economy. This has led critics to denounce it as ‘pro-Russian.’

The rather paranoid perception that Georgian Dream is a tool of Moscow lies at the heart of protests now rocking Tbilisi and threatening Georgia with yet another ‘colour revolution.’ The cause of this is legislation introduced by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze that would oblige organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funds from foreign sources to register as ‘foreign agents’ and submit details of their finances to the government. Organizations that fail to do so would be fined.

Kobakhidze says the law is necessary to increase transparency, an argument much used by advocates of similar laws in Western countries. The obvious target of the legislation is the large number of Georgian NGOs who receive money from Western countries for the purported aim of promoting European integration, ‘Western values,’ and so on, and also to carry out tasks such as election monitoring. Kobakhidze complains that such NGOs have promoted revolution (as in 2003), propagated ‘gay propaganda’ and attacked the Georgian Orthodox Church. It would appear that he wishes to rein them in. It is this that riles the thousands of people who have come out on the streets of Tbilisi this past week to protest against the proposed legislation. Wrapping themselves in EU flags, they claim that Georgian Dream is acting under orders from Moscow with the intent of destroying pro-Western forces in the country. “Everything shows that this government is controlled by Putin,” one protestor told the New York Times, while others shouted “No to the Russian law!”

According to Eto Buziashvili, a former advisor to the National Security Council of Georgia, the law is a method of “political repression,” whose aim is “to exhaust civil society and media, … leaving them with no capacity to defend the elections in October.” She continues: “those of us who desire an independent and free Georgia with a liberal democracy and a Euro-Atlantic future will be faced with the choice of either submitting to Russia-dictated rule or leaving the country. If we do neither, they will imprison us.”

Georgian Dream, however, is standing firm. Its leaders see the protestors as ideological zealots bent on revolution and on provoking conflict with Russia. In a speech on Monday, the party’s founder, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, accused the ‘Global War Party’ of being behind the protests. According to Ivanishvili, the Global War Party “wields influence over NATO and the EU, stirring conflicts between Georgia and Russia, and exacerbating Ukraine’s situation.” “Foreign agents still aim to restore a cruel dictatorship in Georgia, but Georgian Dream will prevent this, advocating for governance elected by the people, not appointed from outside,” he says.

The ‘outside’ Ivanishvili mentioned is quite obviously the West, whose leaders have been outspoken in their criticism of Georgia’s foreign agent legislation. The EU’s diplomatic service, for instance, declared that, “This is a very concerning development and the final adoption of this legislation would negatively impact Georgia’s progress on its EU path. The law is not in line with EU core norms and values.” Meanwhile, a group of 14 US Senators signed a letter to Prime Minister Kobakhidze, arguing that the law “would be used to silence civil society and media that play a significant role in advancing Georgia’s democratic institutions.” They urged him to abandon his “destructive path” as a result of which “Georgia’s transatlantic aspirations are being undermined.”

The hostile reaction of the West once again raises questions of hypocrisy and double standards. After all, not only does the United States itself have a foreign agent law, but the concept is becoming increasingly popular elsewhere in the West, with an ever growing number of countries, including Canada, either adopting such a law or considering it. It would appear that requiring foreign-funded organizations to register with the government is acceptable as long as it is Western states doing the requiring. But when the tables are turned, and it is Western-funded institutions that are being obliged to register, suddenly foreign agent laws turn out to be threats to democracy that are incompatible with fundamental values.

No doubt, those leading the charge against Georgia’s law would argue that the comparison is a false one—that Western-funded NGOs are promoting human rights, democracy, and other universal values and institutions that are for the good of all, whereas foreign agent laws elsewhere are used to do the opposite. But what is a good objective is all in the eye of the observer. In countries like Georgia, Western-funded organizations openly seek to fundamentally alter the political, economic, and social institutions of their host countries to bring them in line with those of the West, and also to turn those countries into the West’s political and military allies. If you live in such a country and happen to disagree with such a fundamental alteration of your homeland, then indeed you could view this process as threatening.

It’s also not as democratic as we might like to think. Integration with the EU, for instance, requires one to bring one’s country in line with a host of demands from Brussels. Those overseeing the process are often more concerned with doing what the EU says they must do than with doing what their own people want. Moreover, what are nowadays referred to as ‘Western values’ are not universally popular, and the fact that those promoting those values are the beneficiaries of substantial foreign funding while those opposing them have very few resources of their own can be seen as not just unfair but deeply undemocratic.

In short, if Western states have their reasons for being cagey of foreign influences, so too do those in other countries. Moreover, while the push towards Western integration may work in countries that are relatively united in favour, elsewhere it can prove deeply divisive and, as shown by Ukraine, eventually extremely destructive. This is particularly so in cases such as Georgia, where the issue is wrapped up in geopolitical rhetoric that casts it as a struggle of good (the West) against evil (Russia). Contrary to the protestors’ claims, there is no evidence that Moscow is pulling the strings in Tbilisi, but their insistence that it is risks turning a domestic pursuit into something much wider and consequently much more dangerous.

Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.

May 4, 2024 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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