Germany’s Fridays For Future Spokesperson: We’re Planning “How To Blow Up” African Oil Pipeline!
Rich, privileged (white) eco-fanatic says her group is thinking about “how to blow up” huge African oil pipeline!
By P Gosselin – No Tricks Zone – 14. June 2022
Most of Europe’s climate activists come from rich families, who lavish in all the amenities the fossil fuel economy offers. No exception to this are Sweden’s Greta Thunberg, and Luisa “Longhaul” Neubauer of Germany.
Not only are they spoiled rich, leading pampered lives, but they’re also becoming dangerously fanatic it appears and even feel entitled to tell poor countries what they can and cannot have.
Recently Longhaul Luisa, spokesperson for Fridays for Future Germany, posted Sunday on Instagram with her Fridays for Future mates joking how right now they are planning on how to blow up” an African oil pipeline that will immensely improve the lives of among the world’s most needy.
“Of course we are thinking about how to blow up” the longest crude oil pipeline in the world, she professed on Instagram on Sunday.
Much needed Uganda-Tanzania pipeline
In the posted video, Neubauer is referring to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). The EACOP is currently under construction and, once completed, will transport crude oil from Uganda to Tanzania. It will be around 1,400 kilometers long and deliver around 216,000 barrels of oil per day.
White activists kicking Africans in the face?
We assume that Luisa and her crazed FFF radical group would be content to see poor Africans be denied even just a tiny fraction of the pampered life she herself is privileged to follow. She tells of the pipeline in the video: We’re going to stop that one.”
Pentagon-NATO Blowback in Nicaragua?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | June 13, 2022
In what is obviously a tit-for-tat response to the Pentagon’s role in ginning up the Russia-Ukraine war, Nicaraguan officials have announced that they have invited Russian troops to visit the country for “humanitarian”and “training” purposes. They are saying that the visit will be “routine,” but there is actually nothing routine about it.
It will be fascinating to see how the Pentagon and its loyal supporters within the mainstream press respond to the announcement. So far, there have been no Pentagon reaction and no mainstream press editorials or op-eds coming to the defense of Nicaragua’s “right” to enter into a military alliance with Russia.
Don’t forget, after all, that that is the root cause of the crisis in Ukraine — the “right” of Ukraine to join NATO, the old Cold War dinosaur. If NATO ends up absorbing Ukraine, the Pentagon will be able to fulfill its longtime aim of installing nuclear missiles pointed at Russia’s cities along Russia’s border with Ukraine.
For its part, Russia has long made it clear that this was a “red line” that it would not permit to be crossed, just as U.S. officials refused to permit Soviet nuclear missiles to be installed in Cuba in 1962. That’s what precipitated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — the attempt to establish Russia’s control over the Ukrainian regime in order to prevent the Pentagon from fulfilling its longtime aim through NATO to install nuclear missiles along Russia’s border.
The U.S. mainstream press, which oftentimes acts like an American Pravda, has been vociferous in its defense of Ukraine’s “right” to join NATO. It’s an independent country, they have repeatedly pointed out, and, therefore, it has the “right” to join any military alliance it wants.
Okay, fair enough. But then what about Nicaragua? Isn’t it just as independent as Ukraine? Given such, why doesn’t it have the same “right” to enter into a military alliance with Russia or, for that matter, China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, or Vietnam?
Why are the Pentagon and its mainstream press acolytes remaining quiet about those questions?
Wouldn’t it be darkly ironic if the Pentagon’s NATO machinations with Ukraine ended up producing blowback in the form of a permanent Russian military base in Nicaragua? Wouldn’t it be darkly ironic if Russia accepted an invitation from Nicaragua to establish nuclear missiles in Nicaragua?
What then would be the response of the Pentagon and its mainstream-press acolytes? Would they opine that while Ukraine has the “right” to join NATO, which would enable the Pentagon to install its nuclear missiles on Russia’s border, Nicaragua has no “right” to enter into a similar military alliance with Russia (or China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, or Vietnam)? If they were to take that position, would not their evil NATO machinations and hypocritical two-faced policies be on open display for all the world to witness?
Of course, none of this had to be. If the old, rotten Cold War dinosaur NATO had been dismantled at the end of the Cold War, which it should have been, the Pentagon could not have used it to engage in its Cold War machinations that ultimately have led to the deadly and destructive Russia-Ukraine war.
And now we are witnessing blowback from the Pentagon’s NATO machinations in the form of a possible Russia military base in Nicaragua or, even worse, another Cold War crisis similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
As I point out in my new book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, President Kennedy was able to circumvent and nullify the Pentagon’s Cold War machinations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and everyone in both Russia and the United States was better off for it. Unfortunately, however, as everyone knows, President Biden is no John Kennedy, and therefore, it is impossible to predict how this latest crisis will be resolved.
Purchase An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story at Amazon: $9.95 Kindle version; $14.95 print version.
THE WHO, PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF FALSE MESSAGING
By Dr David Bell | Pandemics – Data and Analytics | June 9, 2022
The World Health Organization (WHO), and the growing pandemic preparedness industry sponsoring it, has faced considerable challenges in maintaining support for its COVID-19 response. It has addressed this difficult situation with simple and uniform messaging. The compliance thus achieved by the WHO has been vital to achieving a successful concentration of wealth, benefitting not just its major sponsors, but also the army of global health staff who have remained obedient throughout.
Threatening this progress, a skeptical minority within the public sphere have been using evidence and rational argument to undermine the pandemic industry’s potential. As the pandemic preparedness and response narrative is poorly defensible on rational criteria, such criticism and opposition must be dealt with and dismissed by other means. This is being achieved through the creation of a dogma around mass COVID-19 vaccination sufficiently separated from reality as to render the normal processes of debate irrelevant. If the gap between pandemic messaging and reality can be kept sufficiently wide, few passengers can step off, and this lucrative gravy train becomes unstoppable.
Small lies can be argued against, big lies become matters of faith
The development and mass deployment of vaccines has been a key component of the COVID-19 response, underpinning much of the transfer of wealth from lower-income people and countries to large Pharma, their investors and the global health workforce they sponsor. Against a background of rapidly increasing global poverty, this unprecedented increase in wealth has in turn raised the potential for unprecedented funding to global health institutions – the mostly Western-based industry that fills offices and drains aid budgets in Europe and North America. A significant cognitive decoupling has been necessary across this sector to achieve sufficient uniformity of voice and purpose, as the institutions involved were ostensibly intended to improve the health and uphold the rights of those less financially fortunate. To achieve success, staff of the WHO and other international organizations therefore had to be enabled to signal virtuous intent while acting in concert for corporate gain.
Vaccines traditionally protect the vaccinated against a target pathogen and humans tend to develop good immunity after respiratory virus infections. These two realities create an urgent problem for the pandemic preparedness industry, as the increased financing set to expand their reach is dependent on successfully convincing the world that these truths are indeed fallacies. Thus, to sell COVAX, the WHO’s financing facility for mass COVID-19 vaccination and the model for future pandemic responses, it was vital for the WHO to ensure that the obvious nonsensical nature of the programme would be ignored. This required coordination and adherence to a single simple message, repeated incessantly to stifle external opinion; a slogan so ridiculous that it becomes inarguable. In other words, it required propaganda.
It is essential to focus people on simplistic slogans if the aim is to suppress their tendency for independent thought and to make any venture in that direction a cause of stress. If people can see their respected authority figures standing behind a statement that is otherwise obviously false, it becomes easier to accept that the false must be true than to stand alone against authority and the crowd. Once one’s colleagues are on-board, the Asch conformity phenomenon kicks in – if everyone else is saying ‘X’, then it surely must be ‘X’, even if it looks like ‘Y’. If a health programme flies in the face of all existing medical knowledge, it must therefore be supported by a sufficiently strong dogma to negate evidence-based arguments. It is a testament to the power of group-think, loyalty to sponsors and the allure of money that this has, thus far, been brilliantly achieved.
COVAX – Selling the golden goose
“No one is safe, until everyone is safe”, the WHO’s COVAX motto, fulfills all the above criteria.
Most people want to be safe – and to achieve industry aims, the public must be convinced that others, not just themselves, are the key to their personal safety. They must support the blame or coercion being applied to these others. But the brilliance of ‘No one is safe, until everyone is safe’ is not just in its appeal to self-preservation and its divisiveness, but in its simple stupidity.
1) For the slogan to be true, the vaccine must be transmission-blocking only. It must not protect the vaccinated individual. Otherwise, their safety will not be dependent on the vaccination of others. However, the WHO and its partners also claim that “COVID-19 vaccines provide strong protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death”. Therefore, in promoting its ‘No one is safe’ slogan, WHO staff must collectively proclaim a falsehood. This builds loyalty and cohesion, as a lie is more easily maintained within a like-minded group.
2) To be ‘safe’ from a virus, one must either be intrinsically at very low risk (as most people are to most viruses) or gain immunity.
- ‘Intrinsic low risk’ created a huge problem for the mass-vaccination narrative early in the COVID-19 outbreak, as data from China showed the very strong skew of severe COVID-19 towards old age, and association with certain comorbidities. Most people are clearly at minimal risk. This had to be suppressed to enable mass-vaccination – all must consider themselves at risk. Public health agencies and their corporate backers even proclaimed impending catastrophe for the people of sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of whom are under 20 years of age. The use of age-based disease metrics, standard for disease-burden assessments up to 2019, were put aside and ‘COVID-19’ mortality reported as raw mortality numbers only.
- Immunity presents a problem, as it is both the pathway through which vaccines work, and the way we naturally gain protection. Immunity makes us safe, but natural immunity is useless to investors. While a safe vaccine would be preferable to a dangerous virus, once infection has occurred the gain from vaccination is minimal. This poses an immediate threat to profits and share price. The response to this dilemma included one of history’s more ludicrous statements from a global institution, when the WHO modified its herd immunity definition to only recognize immunity resulting from pharmaceutical intervention. This is nonsense to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of immunology, and of course the WHO’s staff have at least rudimentary knowledge.
Inevitably, SARS-CoV-2 has continued spreading, including from the vaccinated. Based on serology from Africa, India and the USA, and the highly transmissible Omicron variant, we can now be confident that nearly all the world’s population have post-infection immunity. It is no biological surprise that immunity gained from a respiratory tract infection with whole virus reduces disease severity more effectively than injection with spike-protein or its mRNA precursors. Claiming that mass vaccination still has public health relevance in these populations requires both abandonment of logic, and a willingness to dispense with decades of prior scientific learning. It requires acceptance of dogma.
A final component of the COVAX strategy, to lock-in celebrity support and enable those promoting the vaccine to still feel virtuous, is ‘vaccine equity’. People in rich countries are having boosters whilst many of the ‘global poor’ still await their first doses. The lack of benefit to be obtained from these doses, and the requirement of coercion to attain high coverage, are irrelevant – inequity in vaccine distribution simply has to be ‘bad’. Whilst pushing more boosters on high income markets, the same Pharma companies can look good by demanding vaccine equity, advocating for the ‘disadvantaged’. In reality this diverts resources from areas of greater need, thereby killing more children, but such fine print will never make the front pages. Commodity equity expands markets and provides returns, while health equity does not. Fear of being vilified as anti-equity helps keep skeptics quiet.
Bolting down the golden goose
Science, including public health, were previously held to be based on processes of logic, based on an acceptance that aspects of our world are grounded in discoverable truth. This concept is a threat to COVAX and the wider pandemic preparedness narrative. It is a threat to the return on investment of the pandemic industry’s sponsors. Greed is a stronger driver than truth, and it must be allowed to run free if society is to be truly reset in favor of those who wish to concentrate and control its wealth.
Despite its massive internal contradictions, disproportionate cost, coercion, and requirement for its promoters to live obvious lies, COVAX and the entire mass-vaccination paradigm has created a strong model for the success of the wider pandemic preparedness project. If truth in public health can be so readily dispensed with, and those working in the field so willingly corralled, the potential for milking the public’s trust and desire for safety presents unprecedented potential for profit. As this wealth accumulates, it supports the continuing advocacy and manipulation required to keep its adherents loyal. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle – we can expect to see more outbreaks, health emergencies and pandemics declared, more vaccines rolled out, and more wealth concentrated as a result. An unstoppable cycle burying truth under a growing fog of fear and falsehood.
That, at least, is the plan. The eventual outcome will depend on whether truth, human rights, equality and trust were ever fundamental to maintaining societal cohesion and peace. If they were, then let us hope the chaos that follows their abandonment is somehow contained. For now, business is business, and the golden goose, bolted down in a hall of lies, will keep on laying.
On Ukraine, ‘progressive’ proxy warriors spell disaster
Urging leftists to support the Ukraine proxy war, Bernie Sanders aide Matt Duss whitewashes the US role, attacks The Grayzone, and advocates dangerous militarism.
By Aaron Maté | The Grayzone | June 7, 2022
The unanimous vote by progressive lawmakers for the $40 billion Ukraine funding bill has been followed by a near-unanimous refusal to defend it. To date, no member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – with the sole exception of Cori Bush – has publicly explained why they chose to hand over billions of dollars to the weapons industry and intensify a proxy war against nuclear-armed Russia.
Amid this resounding silence, Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, has stepped in to fill the void. In a New Republic article titled “Why Ukraine Matters for the Left,” Duss attempts to convince fellow progressives that the “provision of military aid” to Ukraine “can advance a more just and humanitarian global order.” Duss has only praise for a Biden administration that, in his view, “should be applauded for its judicious reaction to the Ukraine crisis.” By contrast, Duss opts to launch an attack on dissident journalists, myself included, who don’t share his enthusiasm.
To make his case, Duss omits an abundance of inconvenient facts, betraying either considerable ignorance of the Ukraine-Russia conflict or a deliberate effort to distort it.
While apologia for US hegemonic projects is normal in DC foreign policy circles, Duss’ contribution is particularly noteworthy given his painstaking attempt to cast himself as an outsider. “Our political class,” Duss states, “advocates military violence with a regularity and ease that is psychopathic.” Duss’ comment is both accurate and wildly ironic, given his choice to advocate our political class’s military violence in Ukraine — with the remarkable ease that he identifies in others as psychopathic.
When it comes to how the Biden administration has handled the Ukraine crisis, Duss cannot identify a single fault. “The Biden team clearly did not seek this war,” Duss claims, and “in fact… made a strenuous, and very public, diplomatic effort to avert it.”
Duss does not explain what the administration’s “strenuous” diplomacy entailed, perhaps because even its top officials now openly admit that none existed.
In an interview with War on the Rocks, State Department counsellor Derek Chollet was asked if NATO expansion into Ukraine was “on the table” in pre-invasion contacts with Russia. “It wasn’t,” Chollet replied. The White House, Chollet explained, “made clear to the Russians that we were willing to talk to them on issues that we thought were genuine concerns they have that were legitimate in some way,” including “arms control.” (emphasis added) But when it comes to “the future of Ukraine” and its potential NATO membership, Chollet said, this was deemed a “non-issue.”
To Duss, the Biden administration’s (openly admitted) refusal to even discuss Russia’s core demands – and to only entertain issues that it deemed to be “legitimate” on Russia’s behalf – is apparently a “strenuous diplomatic effort.” If “diplomacy” amounts to enforcing US hegemony, as many in DC seem to believe, then Duss would have a case. But in the rest of the world, where diplomacy entails constructive dialogue with a semblance of parity, he does not.
Duss also takes aim at the argument, advanced by prominent leftists including former Brazilian President Lula da Silva, that a US-European pledge that Ukraine won’t join NATO “would have solved the problem” with Russia.
To refute Lula, Duss stresses that “in the weeks leading up to the war, U.S. allies, specifically German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, signaled clearly” that Ukraine’s NATO ascension “was not going to happen.” According to Duss, it is Putin who sabotaged their efforts by invading, and who “has now made that discussion moot.”
Duss omits what also happened in the weeks leading up to the war. While Germany and France did indeed float a proposal to keep Ukraine out of NATO, it was Ukraine – with US backing – that rejected it. According to an account in the Wall Street Journal, Scholtz proposed to Volodymyr Zelensky on Feb. 19 – five days before Russia’s invasion — that Ukraine “renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a wider European security deal,” signed by both Putin and Biden. But Zelensky rejected Schultz’s plan, a response that “left German officials worried that the chances of peace were fading.” In dismissing the Germans’ NATO proposal, Zelensky joined the Biden White House, as State’s Derek Chollet acknowledged and other Biden officials made clear in public.
Ignoring US-Ukrainian rejectionism, Duss then declares that “it seems absurd to suggest that even an ironclad public pledge from President Biden that Ukraine would never be accepted into NATO would have convinced Putin to draw back the 180,000 troops he had placed on Ukraine’s borders.” Perhaps, but that very public pledge happened to be the centerpiece of Germany’s last-minute diplomatic effort – one that Duss himself invoked, and that Zelensky (along with Biden) chose to reject.
Duss’ whitewashing of the Biden administration’s rejection of diplomacy before the Russian invasion carries over to the period since.
Since Russia’s invasion, Duss says, the White House has “acted with restraint and care not to get drawn into a wider war with Russia.” While it is true that Biden has opted not to start World War III – in other words, has opted not to trigger a global suicide pact — he has done anything but act with “restraint.” One day before Duss’ article was published, Biden authorized the delivery of medium-range advanced rocket systems to Ukraine. These rockets have the capacity to strike inside of Russia; the US is acting on Ukraine’s assurance that it won’t.
Duss may support undermining diplomacy in Ukraine and shipping off billions of dollars worth of heavy weaponry instead, but this can only be described as “restraint” if the sole measure is an immediate — rather than merely prospective — nuclear holocaust.
Duss is so impressed with Biden’s handling of the war that he cannot even detect a tangible path that could end it. “As of this writing,” Duss declares, “I have seen no evidence of a settlement in the offing—as in, a deal that Putin would actually entertain, let alone accept—that we’re refusing to ‘push for.'”
If Duss cannot see evidence of a realistic settlement that Russia could accept, then he is being willfully blind. Russia’s explicit proposals, issued before the war and after, including two weeks into the invasion, called on Ukraine to “cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.”
It is worth noting that the latter is Russia’s only new condition: for the eight years before the February invasion, Russia formally accepted the Minsk accords, which, to end the Donbas war, would have kept the Donetsk and Lugansk regions inside Ukraine’s borders, with limited autonomy.
Duss is free to argue that Russia’s terms for ending the war are unacceptable. But to pretend that Russia has not even laid out those terms, is to essentially advocate that the war never end.
By omitting Russia’s stated terms for a settlement, Duss also allows himself to erase one of the invasion’s key causes: the 2014 Maidan coup, and the ensuing eight-year Donbas war that had left more than 14,000 people dead by the time Russian forces crossed the border on February 24th.
In his 2500+ word piece, Duss makes no mention of the Donbas war and how it began: the 2014 ouster of a democratically elected Ukrainian president, with new leadership selected by Washington; the coup government’s assault on Ukraine’s ethnic Russian and anti-coup citizens, who launched a rebellion in the Donbas; the critical role of fascists and neo-Nazis in the Maidan coup and the Donbas war since; the fascist-led sabotage of the 2015 Minsk accords, which could have put an end to the conflict. By omitting this history, Duss can also omit how the US has helped undermine the Minsk agreements by siding with Ukrainian’s far-right and choosing to use the Donbas war to “fight Russia over there” (Adam Schiff) and “make Russia pay a heavier price,” (John McCain), because Ukraine’s “fight is our fight.” (Lindsey Graham).
After ignoring Russia’s stated grounds for a peace settlement, Duss goes on to disingenuously claim that the Ukrainian government has been pushing for one.
“Ukraine presented Russia with a far-reaching set of proposals over a month ago, including a commitment to ‘permanent neutrality,’” Duss claims. “Volodomyr Zelenskiy continues to offer to negotiate directly with Putin to end the war.”
It is true that Ukraine presented Russia with a 10-point plan in late March. But Duss omits what happened immediately after: while Russia “signaled its preliminary support,” (RAND analyst Samuel Charap) Ukraine’s Western backers sabotaged it, and Zelensky acquiesced. In early April, Ukrainian and Russian officials were finalizing details for a Zelensky-Putin summit. But UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev and ordered him to halt diplomacy. Citing sources close to Zelensky, Ukrayinska Pravda reports that Johnson informed his Ukrainian counterpart that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” Johnson also relayed that even if Russia and Ukraine chose to sign security guarantees, the UK and its allies would not take part – rendering any such agreement worthless.
Zelensky clearly received the message, as Duss’s own source makes clear. When Duss claims that Zelensky “continues to offer to negotiate directly with Putin to end the war,” he links to a Reuters article that reveals such an “offer” to be hollow. Zelensky, Reuters reports, said he would only negotiate with Putin if Russia first withdrew entirely from Ukraine – an obvious non-starter. “Get out of this territory that you have occupied since February 24,” Zelensky said. “This is the first clear step to talking about anything.” Zelensky also “ruled out suggestions… that Ukraine should make concessions for the sake of securing a peace agreement that would allow Putin to save face.”
Thus, returning to Duss’ rendering, Zelensky’s “far-reaching proposals” were immediately rescinded under Western orders, and Zelensky’s “offer to negotiate” was premised on a condition that would have made negotiations impossible.
None of this is to suggest that Russia was justified in launching an invasion of Ukraine. To defend the use of force, which has been so catastrophic, Russia has to meet a high burden of evidence that, in my view, it has not. But one does not need to defend Russia’s invasion to see through Duss’ attempt to whitewash the US role in provoking and prolonging it.
Tellingly, Duss is openly hostile to journalists who have reported on the context that he has omitted. Out of nowhere, Duss introduces an attack on The Grayzone, the Max Blumenthal-founded news outlet that I work for. While Duss has nothing but praise for Biden, he has nothing but ad hominems for us (“pernicious authoritarian agitprop,” “atrocity-denying grifters” “click-baiting provocateurs”). After sharing this vitriol, he then immediately declares that engaging with us is “wasting time.”
I feel the same way about his juvenile name-calling, but interested readers can judge for themselves whether his insults are supported by facts. (He links to two “sources,” one a Medium blog post that, true to the neo-McCarthyite norm, peddles innuendo that The Grayzone is funded by Russia, among other smears).
If Duss is genuinely concerned about wasting time, he also might reflect on why he devotes ample space to paying lip service to progressive principles, only to ultimately endorse policies that flagrantly violate them. “Centering opposition to U.S. imperialism and militarism is an entirely appropriate starting point,” Duss states. Yet Duss’ desired end point would see leftists center U.S. imperialism and militarism, with disastrous results: among them, prolonging a proxy war against a nuclear armed power, threatening a worsening global food crisis, and sentencing more Ukrainians to death.
Even putting aside US complicity in the Ukraine proxy war and its dangers for the planet, progressives like Duss might wish to consider the likely political consequences. One obvious guide is the election of 2016, when Donald Trump won over a significant portion of voters by claiming to oppose the military interventionism that Duss is now urging progressives to embrace. Having seemingly learned nothing from 2016, Democrats in 2022 are again ceding anti-war sentiment to Republicans, 68 of whom voted against the $40 billion Ukraine bill in the House and Senate (versus zero Democrats).
As at least some Republicans vote against the proxy war, Biden has defended the domestic pain caused by his Ukraine proxy war by blaming “Putin’s Price Hike” and trying to argue that “defending freedom is going to cost.” Biden’s defense of “freedom” in Ukraine is now costing him a transatlantic flight to grovel at the feet of the Saudi autocracy, in the hopes of staving off a humiliating cost in the November midterms.
Continuing his mealy mouthed approach, Duss both claims to support diplomacy while simultaneously declaring it to be unattainable. The US, he says, “should certainly be actively engaged in finding a diplomatic path to end the war, and avoid committing to maximalist aims that could foreclose one.” But yet, according to Duss, “for the moment that path is unclear.”
If the path toward peace for Ukraine is unclear to Duss, then that can only be because he has chosen to erase the factual background and the diplomatic solutions on offer, thereby reinforcing the “maximalist aims” that he claims to oppose. Duss’s proxy war apologia will certainly win him a warm reception in establishment DC circles. For the US progressive movement, Ukraine, and the rest of the planet, it only spells disaster.
Zionism has ‘failed’ and Israel is in ‘trouble’ concedes prominent pro-Israel lobbyist
MEMO | June 6, 2022
A prominent Israel lobbyist has conceded that Zionism may have “failed” and that the Occupation State is in “far bigger trouble than anyone understands.” The remarks were made by Michael Koplow of the Israel Policy Forum. The pro-Israel lobby group says it is “dedicated to advancing the goal of a two-state solution in order to preserve Israel’s future as Jewish, democratic, and secure” state.
Koplow is thought to be an intellectual leader of the Israel lobby. Like countless other Israeli lobby groups, Koplow’s job is to provide the US establishment with a positive spin on Israel in order to maintain ongoing American support for the Apartheid State. Their carefully curated image of Israel as a democracy and a vital US ally facing an existential threat, has preserved decades of unwavering support in Washington.
This image is beginning to shatter not least because of the consensus amongst major human rights groups that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. Koplow appears to also be resigned to the fact that Israel may have passed beyond the point of redemption. Throughout history many justified their support for Zionism through the hope that the racism and ethnic cleansing entailed by the ideology of Jewish supremacy would be redeemed through the end of the illegal occupation of Palestine and the creation of a flourishing democracy. Instead, Israel has morphed into an Apartheid State.
In his article, Koplow comments on a bill in Israel banning the raising of Palestinian flags. “If waving a flag threatens Israel’s existence, then not only is Israel in far bigger trouble than anyone understands, but Zionism itself has failed,” said Koplow. “Protestors waving Palestinian flags and mourners displaying them at funerals does not threaten Israel’s sovereignty or security in any tangible way, and to think otherwise betrays a deep and unwarranted sense of insecurity about Israel’s durability and legitimacy,” he added.
Though Koplow expresses dismay at the Israeli overreaction to the display of Palestinian flags he does not mention that this is part of an ongoing attempt to criminalise expressions of Palestinian nationhood and symbols of their identity which began through the ethnic cleansing of 1947/48 and crystallised seven decades later into an Apartheid State.
“The Palestinian flag is a display of ideology and emotion and treating it like a weapon will make it more potent and more popular a symbol,” Koplow continued, pointing to an obvious double standard highlighted by the so-called right-wing Flag March. “There was a particular irony at work this week with Israeli arguments that marching through the Old City with Israeli flags is nothing but a demonstration of legitimate Israeli pride and should not be construed in any way as incitement or threatening toward Palestinians, while at the same time insisting on multiple fronts that Palestinian flags are inherently illegitimate and should be construed as incitement and threats toward Israelis.”
Koplow also acknowledged that it is an error to view Israel’s occupation of Palestine as a conflict between two equal forces; a view which Palestinian advocates have sought to convey all the time in the US and the Israel lobby seeks to obfuscate: On one side is a nuclear state with the most powerful military in the Middle East, on the other a people under occupation with boys with slingshots.
“Israel has a state and is operating from a position of power, and Palestinians do not have a state and are operating from a position of weakness,” Koplow argued. “That structural imbalance should in theory make Israelis less sensitive to the symbolic aspects of Israeli and Palestinian nationalism, but it doesn’t. The fact of Israel’s existence and Israel’s strength—not only relative to the Palestinians but in absolute terms—has not appreciably lessened Israelis’ insecurities, and Palestinian flags are still treated in many instances as physical threats that somehow have the ability to snuff out Zionism or Israel’s existence.”
New Zealand PM uses Harvard acceptance speech to complain about online “disinformation”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 5, 2022
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently received an honorary degree from Harvard University. She used the opportunity to give a speech that attacked online “disinformation.”
Ardern attacked social media companies, saying that they needed to be more transparent and responsible.
“That means recognizing the role they play in constantly curating and shaping the online environments that we’re in,” she said.
“We seek validation, confirmation, reinforcement. And increasingly with the help of algorithms, what we seek, we are served, sometimes before we even know we’re looking.”
Ardern called on “social media companies and other online providers to recognize their power and act on it.”
“Let’s start with transparency in how algorithmic processes work and the outcomes they deliver. Let’s finish with a shared approach to responsible algorithms – because the time has come,” the New Zealand PM said.
Citing the “conspiracy theories” surrounding COVID-19, Ardern stressed the importance of facts, saying: “When facts are turned into fiction, and fiction turned into fact, you stop debating ideas and you start debating conspiracy.”
She also attacked some internet users, calling them “keyboard warriors.”
“In my mind, when I read something especially horrific on my feed, I imagine it’s written by a lone person, unacquainted with personal hygiene practices, dressed in a poorly fitted superhero costume – one that is baggy in all the wrong places,” she said.
“Keyboard warrior or not though, it’s still something that has been written by a human, and it’s something that has been read by one too.”
On democracy, she said that people ”wrongly” think that “somehow, the strength of your democracy was like a marriage – the longer you’d been at it, the more likely it was to stick.”
Moscow responds to German spying allegations
Samizdat | June 5, 2022
Moscow has shot back at Germany’s accusations of spying, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying on Sunday that Berlin forgot about America’s wiretapping practices. The remark was in response to German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s recent warning that Russia could be wiretapping government offices in the capital.
In an interview with German newspaper Bild on Saturday, Faeser said her ministry “is keeping an eye out for what intelligence means the Russian government is using.”
It is this vigilance, according to the official, that led Berlin to expel 40 Russian embassy staff in April. Faeser claimed they were working for Russian intelligence services.
Moscow vehemently denied the accusations and responded with a tit-for-tat expulsion of 40 German diplomats.
Bild’s report went on to quote unnamed officials from Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as saying that “particularly in sensitive areas such as the government quarter in Berlin, the risk of wiretapping and the threat of unauthorized data collection are real and should not be underestimated.”
“Nancy Faeser forgot to add that German officials have always been wiretapped by the Americans,” Zakharova said in a Telegram post.
In 2013, it was revealed that the mobile phone of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel had been monitored by the NSA as part of systematic wiretapping operations worldwide. Merkel famously said “spying on friends” is unacceptable.
Last May, Danish state broadcaster DR reported that the NSA had colluded with Denmark’s foreign intelligence unit to spy on officials in several neighboring countries, including Germany, from at least 2012 to 2014.
According to the revelation based on the Danish Defense Intelligence Service’s 2015 internal investigation, Merkel, along with then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former opposition leader Peer Steinbrueck, were among the targets.
Russian Embassy Rejects Criticism Included in US Religious Freedom Report
Samizdat – 04.06.2022
WASHINGTON – The Russian Embassy in the United States has denied the US State Department’s allegations of systematic violations of religious rights in Russia.
“We would like to remind you that Russia was originally formed as a multinational and multi-confessional state. It is in the blood of Russians to build mutually respectful and tolerant relations with representatives of various ethnic groups and religions,” the embassy said in a statement on Telegram.
“Protecting the rights of believers is our absolute priority. We have no religious persecution.”
The embassy said that the usual reproaches included in the State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report released on Thursday reflect Washington’s tendency to “arrogantly label” certain countries in order to have an excuse to interfere in their internal affairs.
The Russian embassy accused the US of provoking sectarian tensions in the countries of the Middle East, North Africa, and the former Yugoslavia for the sake of its geopolitical interests.
“Such actions have always led to conflicts and numerous victims,” the embassy stressed.
Biden pitches advantages for US stemming from EU’s Russian oil embargo
Samizdat | June 2, 2022
The US may try to buy some cheap Russian oil after the European oil embargo drives the price down, US President Joe Biden indicated on Wednesday. He aired the idea while talking to media about his administration’s plan to deal with the shortage of baby formula and surging prices for basic commodities such as food and gas.
Biden took credit for keeping US gas prices, currently at all-time highs, from going even higher. He blamed Russia and its military campaign in Ukraine for driving food and energy prices up and said his administration was working hard to deal with the problems.
“The issue that is occurring now is you have Europe deciding that they’re going to further curtail the purchase of Russian oil,” he said, referring to the sixth package of anti-Russian sanctions.
EU members reached an agreement several days ago partially banning imports of Russian crude. The Europeans want to cut oil trade with Russia by 90% by the end of the year. But Russia’s loss of European market may be an opportunity for the US, Biden implied.
“There’s a whole lot of consideration going on about what can be done to maybe even purchase the oil but at a limited price so that it has to be sold,” he said. “There’d be an overwhelming need for the Russians to sell it, and it would be sold at a significantly lower price than the market is generating now.”
The president warned that his administration would not be able to “click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline” in the near term and that the same was true for food.
Moscow downplayed Biden’s remarks, saying the global oil market would rebalance itself despite EU restrictions.
“Certainly, Russia will not sell anything without a profit. The demand may fall in one place and rise elsewhere. The supply chains reorient as parties seek the best conditions for trade,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
Inflation is currently the biggest concern for many American voters. Political experts predict that Biden’s Democratic Party may be wiped out at the ballot box come November, unless his administration manages to rein in the surging prices soon.
The White House has repeatedly pointed the finger at Russia, and personally President Vladimir Putin, for the ongoing problems. It even coined the term “Putin’s price hike” to explain why American working families find it harder to make both ends meet with every passing month.
However, food and energy prices were going up globally long before Russia attacked Ukraine in February. The disruption of supply chains amid the Covid-19 pandemic was a major factor. Moscow said Washington’s blame game ignored many causes of the problems, including some that resulted from the US campaign to punish Russia with economic sanctions.
The US banned all imports of Russian oil, liquified natural gas and coal in March.
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Three Reasons Macron is a Hypocrite when it Comes to Venezuela
By Jim Carey | Geopolitics Alert | January 29, 2019
Paris – French President Emmanuel Macron recently voiced support for protesters in Venezuela as his own country has been ground to a halt by protests every weekend.
There is an overused saying that “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” While these few words may be cliche there is definitely one man that they can be applied to after this weekend: Emmanuel Macron.
Even though the French President is into the third month of protests against his government, he has decided to weigh in on the legitimacy of another country’s government and his latest outrageous statements just highlight the hypocrisy of Macron and Western leaders in general. … continue
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