US blackmails Switzerland to boost military support to Ukraine
By Lucas Leiroz | March 17, 2023
The US is apparently blackmailing Switzerland to force the country to play a more active role in the Ukrainian conflict. The American embassy in Switzerland suggests that neutrality would no longer be a possible path for the European country, which sounds like a kind of threat if the Swiss government does not adopt an anti-Russian military policy.
In a recent interview, the American ambassador in Switzerland Scott Miller stated that Switzerland was going through a serious crisis, in which the country would need to decide on what “neutrality” means. Miller claims that the US supports Swiss neutrality but does not consider this principle to be “static”, believing in a Swiss obligation to help the West as much as possible to tighten sanctions against Moscow.
There is currently a huge debate among Swiss parliamentarians over whether to allow the shipment of Swiss-made weapons to the Kiev regime. NATO enthusiasts support the measure as a form of military aid to Ukraine against the Russians. On the other hand, more conservative politicians are against changes in legislation as they understand that this would affect the country’s historical neutrality. Under current law, there is a ban on all forms of re-export of Swiss-made weapons. This means that non-neutral countries are not able to buy Swiss weapons and ship them to Kiev. This law deeply irritates the member states of NATO, since, according to Scott Miller, it “benefits the aggressor, who violates all principles of international law.”
However, Ambassador Miller went beyond what was expected in his demands. In addition to banning the anti-re-export law, he openly demanded the freezing of all Russian assets in Swiss financial institutions. According to him, this is a way for Switzerland to endorse the sanctions and help Ukraine more actively.
“Switzerland is in the most serious crisis since the Second World War. It is confronted with what neutrality means (…) We understand and respect it. But it is not a static construct. Switzerland can’t call itself neutral and allow one or both sides to exploit its laws to their own advantage (…) I think we still have a lot of work to do (…) Sanctions are only as strong as the political will behind them. We need to find as many assets as possible, freeze them and, if necessary, confiscate them in order to make them available to Ukraine for reconstruction”, he said.
The spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova understood the words of the American diplomat as a real threat. According to her, there is a parallel between Miller’s suggestions and the recent crisis at Credit Suisse, an important local financial institution that went into deep debt and requested tens of billions in loans from the Central Bank to continue working. Zakharova also recalled the American banking crisis and suggested that Miller could be blackmailing the Swiss into serving US interests – possibly in exchange for some help to prevent local banks from going the same way as the American ones, or, in the worst case, this could even be a direct threat of sabotage.
“Considering that the second-largest Swiss bank plunged right after three American banks went bust, such a statement looks like direct blackmail”, she said, adding that the essence of Miller’s message is: “drop neutrality and start sending weapons to the Kiev regime, and you’ll keep living full-bellied and lavishly; refuse – and bad days are in order”.
Recently, blackmail and threats have become America’s main methods in foreign policy. Furthermore, the country has already demonstrated that it has no respect for its partners and allies, considering that illegal and even terrorist acts have been carried out to force them to meet US interests – such as what was seen in the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in Germany. So, it is possible that Miller’s message consists of a warning that either Switzerland changes its policy of neutrality, or it will be the target of American reprisals – certainly in the banking sector, which is the central part of the Swiss economy.
The Swiss government bears no responsibility for the Ukrainian conflict. As an historically neutral country, it is under no obligation to send weapons to Kiev and would be breaking with its own diplomatic tradition if it bans the anti-export law. Furthermore, as a country with a bank-centered economy, freezing all Russian assets does not sound strategic for Switzerland. Taking the measures demanded by the US would be disastrous for the country, both in terms of economy and defense.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
MQ-9 Drone Incident: Biden’s Dangerous Escalation
By Scott Ritter – Sputnik -16.03.2023
A US surveillance drone crashed off the coast of Crimea after an encounter with a Russian fighter aircraft. What does this incident say about the current state of the war in Ukraine and where Russia and the US might go from here.
In 2015, the United States established a permanent training facility in Yavoriv, western Ukraine, for the express purpose of training Ukrainian soldiers for combat against Russia.
At that time the conflict in Ukraine was an internal affair, pitting the Ukrainian Army against Ukrainians of ethnic-Russian background who had rebelled against a US-backed coup which, in February 2014, saw the constitutionally elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych replaced by a pro-American government.
This new Ukrainian government, hand-picked by the US, was deeply infused with radical ultra-nationalism linked to the ideology of Stepan Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, which fought alongside Nazi Germany during the Second World War and whose members were responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Many of the Ukrainians being trained by the US military were affiliated with the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, an organization which many in the US Congress at the time found so odious that the passed an amendment to the defense authorization act prohibiting US taxpayer dollars from being used to train its members.
These restrictions aside, there can be no doubt that the purpose of the US training mission in Ukraine was to prepare the Ukrainian military to go to war against Russia. That the US training not only instructed the Ukrainians troops on modern combined arms maneuver warfare, but also sought to elevate the Ukrainians to the same standard used to train the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), provided the first inkling that any future conflict between Ukraine and its disenfranchised ethnic Russian population that involved Russia would be far more than a simple confrontation between two regional neighbors, but a larger war between Russia and the US and NATO—the so-called “collective west”, using Ukraine as a proxy.
This reality was amplified further with the provision by the US and NATO of advanced anti-tank missile systems and other lethal military assistance.
Even before Russia initiated the Special Military Operation, in February 2022, the United States, the United Kingdom, and NATO began a program of intelligence sharing with the Ukrainian armed forces at the highest levels. Once the Russian troops moved across the border, the nature of this intelligence relationship shifted away from providing indications and warning of an impending attack, to the provision of operational and tactical intelligence about Russian military disposition, capabilities, and intent that was used by Ukraine to target Russian forces.
While the US and its NATO allies are understandably reticent about the nature of this intelligence, and the sources from which it is derived, over time it has become clear that every available intelligence collection platform is being used to gather relevant data about Russian military operations in support of the Special Military Operation.
It is also clear that this intelligence is used by joint operational planning cells comprised of US/NATO/Ukrainian forces to develop targets in real time, which are then transmitted to Ukrainian forces.
One of the more ubiquitous intelligence resources employed by the US in support of Ukraine is the MQ-9 Reaper. The MQ-9 is a large a large unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operated by the Air Force. It is remotely operated by a two-person team from a ground control station that is connected to the MQ-9 using satellite equipment. The team includes a qualified pilot who is responsible for flying the aircraft and an enlisted aircrew member who is charged with operating any onboard sensors or weapons the MQ-9 might be carrying.
The MQ-9 has a wingspan of 66 feet, is 36 feet long, 12 feet high, and weighs approximately 4,900 pounds. It is capable of flying at altitudes as high as 50,000 feet and has a range of some 1,400 miles. It can carry a wide variety of weapons and intelligence collection pods. Each MQ-9 costs about $32 million. The MQ-9 Reapers operating over the Black Sea are flown out of a Romanian Air Force base in Campia Turzii by members of the US Air Force’ Detachment 1, 31st Expeditionary Operations Group.
On March 14, 2023, an MQ-9 Reaper operating out of Campia Turzii was flying in international airspace over the Black Sea, west of Crimea. This was a standard flight profile for the MQ-9 Reaper, one that had the Russians concerned, given its proximity to sensitive Russian military installations.
Ukraine had a history of launching operations against Russian forces in Crimea using aerial and underwater drones, and the potential for intelligence collected by the MQ-9 Reaper being used in support of such attacks was very real. For this purpose, the Russian military had declared certain areas off the coast of Crimea as being off limits.
The US, however, does not recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea, or for that matter the four new territories of Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk, that joined the federation following referendums held in September 2022 and, as such, does not recognize any claim regarding the establishment of no-fly zones by Russia in support of its ongoing military operations against Ukraine. The decision to fly the MQ-9 Reaper was made knowing Russia would object, or worse.
Indeed, Russia dispatched a pair of Su-27 fighter aircraft to intercept the MQ-9 Reaper. After making 19 passes at the Reaper, the Su-27’s conducted what can only be described as aggressive maneuvering designed to either compel the MQ-9 Reaper to depart the area, or else bring it down. After one particular incident, which may or may not have involved one or more Su-27 aircraft dumping fuel onto the Reaper, the MQ-9 lost control and crashed into international waters off the coast of Crimea.
It is believed that Russian forces dispatched from Crimea recovered most, if not all, the wreckage, including the top-secret intelligence pod that had been mounted under the left wing of the aircraft. If this is the case, critical US intelligence collection capabilities would have been compromised, allowing Russia to better protect itself from sensors like the one carried onboard the downed MQ-9 Reaper aircraft.
While the US State Department has declared that the US will continue to fly missions in international airspace, the Commander of US forces in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli has ordered all MQ-9 Reaper operations to be halted pending a review of the incident and a decision on how best to proceed.
The fact that the US is using the MQ-9 Reaper to fly in direct support of Ukrainian military forces make the aircraft a direct participant in the conflict, and as such a legitimate target for Russia. Russia’s decision not to shoot the MQ-9 down, but rather provide multiple opportunities for the US aircraft to disengage and leave the contested airspace, is indicative of Russia’s desire to avoid unnecessary escalation of the conflict, especially one that could have US and Russian forces engaged in direct combat.
One of the options that the US could consider would be to fly the MQ-9 with a US fighter escort. But this would be contested by Russia, leading to the possibility of a dogfight that could result in casualties on both sides, and the probability of escalation. At the end of the day, the US will probably seek to fly an MQ-9 Reaper on a course that comes close to, but does not violate, a declared Russian no-fly zone, after which MQ-9 Reaper flights along the Crimean coast will probably be discontinued.
There are other ways to collect the intelligence that the MQ-9 Reaper gathers which do not put US military assets at risk, and which do not provide the possibility of military escalation between the US and Russia.
Such a decision would be a sharp departure from the confrontational stance taken to date by the US when it comes to intelligence collection targeting Russia. However, the devolving military situation in Ukraine, with the Ukrainian military facing a decisive defeat in Bakhmut and in general, alters the risk-gain analysis that accompanies the decision to fly missions such as the one that resulted in the downed MQ-9 aircraft. With little chance of a Ukrainian victory in sight, the US will be looking for ways to deescalate, rather than escalate, its involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.
Whether or not the MQ-9 Reaper incident will result in a top-down review of incidents of this nature, for example prompting the Biden administration to reflect on the apparent hypocrisy of the US approach toward responding to the Chinese balloon “threat”, namely by shooting the balloon down, while condemning the more restrained approach taken by Russia in responding to a genuine military threat on its borders in an active warzone, is yet to be seen. Such an abut-face would be unlikely, given the current political climate, where Russophobia runs rampant.
The fact remains that as long as the US is engaged in the implementation of a wartime policy that seeks the strategic defeat of Russia, the possibility for rational, logic-based policy formulation and implementation on the part of the US is almost nil.
The shortest path for the normalization of US-Russian relations lays in a decisive victory being achieved by Russia over Ukraine and the collective west in the shortest time possible. Such an outcome would force the US and its NATO allies to reexamine their approach toward Russia based upon the new realities that would accrue from such an outcome.
Lula Is Lying: The NATO-Russian Proxy War Isn’t Being Fought “Over Small Things”
By Andrew Korybko | March 16, 2023
Brazilian President Lula proved that his recalibrated worldview in recent years is a lot more closely aligned with the US’ than ever after downplaying the causes of the NATO-Russian proxy war. According to him, “In the 21st century, it shouldn’t be possible that we have war over small things”, which he uttered after declaring that he won’t visit either Russia or Ukraine due to the special operation. This position serves as further proof that he endorses the US’ narrative about the conflict.
Lula previously condemned Russia in a joint statement with Biden during his trip to DC in early February, after which Brazil voted in support of a fiercely anti-Russian UN Resolution demanding Moscow’s full and immediate withdrawal without any preconditions from all the territory that Kiev claims as its own, which includes Crimea. Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzia reacted to the passing of that motion by describing it as pushing a “militaristic Russophobic line”.
Removing any ambiguity about his government’s stance, Lula then called Zelensky shortly afterwards to reaffirm that “Brazil defends Ukraine’s territorial integrity”. Despite these objectively existing and easily verifiable pieces of evidence documenting his political support of Russia’s nemeses in Kiev, an intense information warfare campaign has been waged by forces allied with the ruling party to gaslight its base into falsely thinking that Lula isn’t aligned with the US on this issue or others like Nicaragua.
Elite members of the Workers’ Party (PT) fear that the rank and file might revolt upon becoming aware that their leader is moving Brazil closer to the US-led West’s Golden Billion than the Sino-Russo Entente or even the Global South of which it’s a part amidst the impending trifurcation of International Relations. With a view towards preemptively averting the scenario of them publicly pressuring him en masse to change this grand strategic trajectory, they sought to manipulate their perceptions about Lula’s policies.
This explains the intense information warfare campaign that’s being waged against their minds at this pivotal point in the global systemic transition, which he himself is directly participating in upon downplaying the causes of the NATO-Russian proxy war in an attempt to justify his political support of Kiev. Lula wants his supporters to discount the evidence before their eyes and ears in favor of agreeing with the US’ narrative that Russia supposedly “invaded” Ukraine for purely “imperialistic” purposes.
If the PT’s base was aware of the military-strategic dynamics that forced Russia to commence its special operation as a last resort for defending the integrity of its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them there, then they’d be against his political support of Kiev. It would thus be self-evident to them that Lula is placing Brazil on a US-aligned grand strategic trajectory in the New Cold War, which could lead to them publicly pressuring him en masse to change his policy.
The following analyses explain the larger context within which the special operation is being waged:
* 15 March 2022: “Why Did U.S. Prioritize Containing Russia Over China?”
* 26 March 2022: “Russia Is Waging an Existential Struggle in Defense of Its Independence & Sovereignty”
* 24 December 2022: “Putin Explained Why He Had No Choice But To Protect The Russian Population In Ukraine”
* 22 February 2023: “Putin Reminded Everyone That Russia Is Using Force To End The War That The West Started”
* 22 February 2023: “Russia Would Be Torn To Pieces Exactly As Medvedev Predicted If It Ended Its Special Operation”
A summary of the abovementioned insight will now follow for the reader’s convenience.
In brief, the US spent the preceding eight years between its successful Color Revolution in early 2014 and the start of the special operation in 2022 turning Ukraine into an anti-Russian bastion, the purpose of which was to degrade that targeted Great Power’s strategic capabilities to defend itself from the US. This was to be done through a combination of Hybrid War means related to Kiev’s support of information warfare- and terrorist-driven separatism as well as conventional ones connected to NATO.
The first half of this policy aimed to destabilize Russia from within through the cultivation of forces that could advance its “Balkanization” while the second intended to eventually employ biological weapons, clandestine NATO bases, and “missile defense” infrastructure to place it in a position of blackmail. The US envisaged forcing Russia into a never-ending series of unilateral concessions that would ultimately result in its geostrategic neutralization and thus facilitate the successful “containment” of China.
This plot to restore its declining unipolar hegemony was to begin with Kiev’s NATO-supported reconquest of Donbass, which threatened to genocide that region’s indigenous Russian population and ethically cleanse the survivors. That sequence of events was foiled by the special operation that was launched after President Putin realized that the West had no interest in discussing his country’s security guarantee requests from December 2021 for politically resolving their security dilemma.
While the US prepared for the possibility of some kinetic response to its support of Kiev’s imminent reconquest of Donbass, American policymakers hadn’t calculated that President Putin would launch a preventive campaign across all of Ukraine to avert the impending scenario of Russia’s strategic neutralization simultaneously with the preemptive one to stop the Donbass genocide. Had it been otherwise, then they’d have retooled the West’s military-industrial complex well in advance.
This major miscalculation explains why the NATO chief admitted last month that his bloc is in a “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia, which wouldn’t be the case if it truly expected a protracted conflict of this scale, nor would Kiev’s forces be faring as badly as the Washington Post just revealed. President Putin regularly reminds everyone of the existential nature of this conflict, which places his decision to commence an interconnected preemptive-preventive campaign into context.
Returning to Lula’s latest remarks that inspired this analysis, there’s no doubt that he’s well aware of these military-strategic dynamics that forced President Putin’s hand, which thus means that he’s deliberately downplaying them in order to manipulate his base. He can’t claim ignorance after over a year of Russia explaining this at length, hence why it can now confidently be concluded that Lula politically aligned Brazil with the US in the most geostrategically significant conflict since World War II.
Sunak grants £5 billion boost to the military despite growing issues of poverty and inflation
By Ahmed Adel | March 16, 2023
Britain’s updated defence and foreign policy strategy envisages an additional £5 billion for armaments and is a demonstration that London’s priority is confrontation with Russia and China. Although UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised this considerable appropriation for the military over two years, it is unlikely to appease British conservatives as the figure did not meet the demands of spending 3% GDP on defence.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace wanted a larger military budget but officials are reportedly “delighted” with the settlement. This is unlikely the case behind closed doors.
Most of the £5 billion will be used to replenish ammunition stockpiles given to Ukraine and work on the AUKUS project to develop nuclear-powered submarines for Australia. Effectively, the main priority of London’s updated defence and foreign policy strategy is to oppose the main geopolitical threats to Anglo hegemony – Russia and China.
Speaking from San Diego on March 13, Sunak said: “It’s clear that the world has become more volatile, the threats to our security have increased. And that’s why we’re investing £5 billion more in our world-beating armed forces over the next two years and increasing our defence spending to 2.5% of GDP so we can continue to be a world leader when it comes to defence and keeping our country safe.”
Of course, this omits the obvious failures in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and the fact that neither Russia or China pose a threat to Britain. In fact, it is evident from the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that the threat is the UK.
Russophobia guides the British political and media establishment, and has thus shaped British public opinion for more than 200 years. Therefore, in the context of Russia’s special military operation, the updated strategy does not represent anything new in terms of escalation. Rather, it just merely shows the British establishment’s continuous Russophobia.
The procurement of ammunition and atomic armament demonstrates that the Sunak government is continuing what Boris Johnson, and those before him, started. What is telling though is that a £5 billion boost is being allocated to the military, partially to replenish stocks given to Ukraine, just as the UK is experiencing the worst economic catastrophe of the 21st century, thus far.
According to the latest figures (2020/21), around one in five people in the UK (20%) were in poverty, or 13.4 million people. Of these, 7.9 million were working-age adults, 3.9 million were children and 1.7 million were pensioners. Therefore, one in four children in the UK are living in poverty (27%).
However, a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an independent social change organization working to solve poverty in the UK, said in January 2023 that “living standards are likely to have fallen since the latest official data covering 2020/21.”
“Since the last official poverty data, the direct impact of the pandemic on society has lessened, but some of the changes it has brought about will be long lasting,” the report said, citing the war in Ukraine and the continuing effects of Brexit as examples of difficulties.
The report published that across the poorest fifth of British families, the JRF’s cost of living tracker in October 2022 found that around six in ten low-income households are not able to afford an unexpected expense, over half are in arrears, around a quarter use credit to pay essential bills, and over seven in ten families are going without essentials.
However, due to centuries of indoctrination, there is little condemnation from the British public that £5 billion is being used to replenish military stocks sent to Ukraine instead of dealing with an inflation that is currently forecast to peak at around 11%, which will be the highest rate in forty years, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Although Russia is the main adversary for London, China is rapidly becoming its second. This is becoming increasingly apparent considering that the UK and US are not only each other’s main political and military ally, but are also in anti-China formations together, such as AUKUS.
Therefore, it should not be surprising either that the second part of the renewed strategy is arming Australia so that it becomes an Anglo stronghold in the South Pacific. This is all part of preparations to set the stage for a new big showdown with China, especially given that the situation related to Taiwan confirms that the current trajectory is towards military confrontation.
Either way, although the £5 billion is not as much as the British hawks wanted due to budgetary constraints, it still symbolises that the UK is committed to opposing Russia and advancing future hostilities with China.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Let’s compare China’s ‘agents’ in Canada to Israel’s
By Yves Engler | March 11, 2023
What would happen if the media and intelligence agencies applied the same standard used regarding China to the Israel lobby?
In the Globe and Mail Andrew Coyne has written two columns in recent days arguing that the discussion over Chinese interference should focus on “domestic accomplices”. “What we need a public inquiry to look into is domestic complicity in foreign interference”, noted the regular CBC commentator.
In a similar vein Justin Trudeau responded to criticism regarding purported Chinese interference by noting, “We know that Chinese Canadian parliamentarians, and Chinese Canadians in general, are greater targets for interference by China than others.” The prime minister added, “We know the same goes for Iranian Canadians, who are more subject to interference from the Iranian government. Russian speakers in Canada are more vulnerable to Russian misinformation and disinformation.”
Why ignore how Israel and its Canadian lobby use Jewish MPs and Jewish organizations as their agents?
The leading Israel advocate in parliament, Anthony Housefather chairs the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group. That group was previously led by another Jewish Liberal MP, Michael Leavitt, who resigned to head Israel lobby group Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. Housefather and Leavitt have repeatedly met Israeli officials in Canada.
As part of the media frenzy about Chinese interference, there has been significant discussion about Trudeau attending a 2016 Liberal Party fundraiser at the Toronto home of Chinese Business Chamber of Canada chair Benson Wong. Among the attendees was Chinese Canadian billionaire Zhang Bin who is alleged to have donated to the Trudeau Foundation/University of Montréal at the request of a Chinese government official.
But Trudeau has far more extensive ties to pro-Israel funders. Since 2013 the chief fundraiser for the Trudeau Liberals has been Stephen Bronfman, scion of an arch Israeli nationalist family. Bronfman has millions invested in Israeli technology companies and over the years the Bronfman clan has secured arms for Israeli forces and supported its military in other ways. Bronfman openly linked his fundraising for Trudeau to Israel. In 2013 the Globe and Mail reported:
“Justin Trudeau is banking on multimillionaire Stephen Bronfman to turn around the Liberal Party’s financial fortunes in order to take on the formidable Conservative fundraising machine…. Mr. Bronfman helped raise $2-million for Mr. Trudeau’s leadership campaign. Mr. Bronfman is hoping to win back the Jewish community, whose fundraising dollars have been going more and more to the Tories because of the party’s pro-Israel stand. ‘We’ll work hard on that,’ said Mr. Bronfman, adding that ‘Stephen Harper has never been to Israel and I took Justin there five years ago and he was referring at the end of the trip to Israel as ‘we.’ So I thought that was pretty good.’”
In 2016 Trudeau attended a fundraiser at the Toronto home of now deceased billionaire apartheid supporters Honey and Barry Sherman. The event raised funds for the party and York Centre Liberal party candidate Michael Levitt. In 2018 CBC reported on multimillionaire Mitch Garber attending one of Bronfman’s fundraisers with Trudeau. On Federation CJA Montréal’s website Garber’s profile boasts that his “eldest son Dylan just completed his service as a lone soldier serving in an elite Cyber Defense Intelligence Unit of the IDF in Israel.”
A thorough investigation of pro-Israel Liberal fundraising would uncover a litany of other examples. And they’ve had far greater success. While the Trudeau government has banned Chinese firms, arrested a prominent Chinese capitalist and targeted that country militarily, they’ve been strikingly deferential to Israel. The Trudeau government has expanded the Canada-Israel free trade agreement, organized a pizza party for Canadians fighting in the Israeli military, voted against over 60 UN resolutions upholding Palestinian rights, sued to block proper labels on wines from illegal settlements and created a special envoy to deflect criticism of Israeli abuses. During a 2018 visit to Israel former foreign affairs minister Freeland announced that should Canada win a seat on the United Nations Security Council it would act as an “asset for Israel” on the Council.
Part of the Chinese interference story is about funding University of Montréal and University of Toronto initiatives tied to China. But Jewish Zionist donors have set up far more initiatives, including numerous Israel and Israel-infused Jewish studies programs.
Having fought to establish Israel and with major investments in Israel, David Azrieli spent $5 million to establish Israel studies and $1 million on Jewish studies at Concordia University. At the University of Toronto more than $10 million was donated to establish the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Chair in Israeli Studies. Millions of dollars more have been donated to launch similar initiatives at other universities.
On many occasions pro-Israel donors have leveraged donations to block academic appointments or suppress discussion of Palestinian rights. The hundreds of millions of dollars donated by Israel supporters (Schwartz/Reissman, Peter Munk, Seymour Schulich, etc.) partly explains why over a dozen Canadian university presidents recently traveled with apartheid lobby group, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, to Israel despite opposition from significant segments of their institutions.
Much more influential than the ‘China lobby’, the Israel lobby has largely been ignored in recent discussion about the need for an inquiry into foreign interference. But any serious foreign agent registry ought to include the apartheid state’s domestic accomplices.
Kosovo wants NATO-Serbia war – Belgrade
RT | March 11, 2023
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has accused the ethnic Albanian authorities in the breakaway province of Kosovo of attempting to provoke a war in which NATO would once again take their side.
“They want to drag Serbia into a conflict with NATO. Kurti wants to be like [Vladimir] Zelensky, and I would be some kind of [Vladimir] Putin,” Vucic said on Friday, referring to Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and the presidents of Ukraine and Russia.
“It’s what they’re after, what they’ve been doing all along. And in this, they have the support of a significant part of the international community, because [Kosovo] is their child,” he added.
Vucic was commenting on the recent arrest of an ethnic Serb on charges of “war crimes” dating back to the 1998-99 conflict, which ended with NATO bombing Serbia on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists. The provisional government in Pristina declared independence in 2008, with Western support, which Belgrade has refused to recognize.
“They don’t want normalization, they want to humiliate Serbia,” argued Vucic. “But I’m telling you, that won’t happen. There will be no humiliation, no capitulation.”
The proposal for “normalization of relations” between Pristina and Belgrade, made public last month by the EU, amounts to a de facto recognition of the breakaway province, which would have the right to join NATO, the EU, and the UN. Vucic insists he did not sign anything and will never agree to those terms.
“We are preparing for talks on Monday or Tuesday,” he said, referring to the EU-sponsored talks in neighboring North Macedonia. “But it’s not clear to me why. They said they wouldn’t agree to a deal. Well, why are you coming then? For us to recognize Kosovo?”
Vucic insists that before anything else can happen, the EU needs to enforce the 2013 Brussels Agreement, which among other things envisioned political autonomy for ethnic Serbs in the province. The ethnic Albanian authorities have refused to implement that part of the deal for ten years now, insisting it clashes with the ‘constitution’ of Kosovo. Neither the EU nor the US has done anything to influence Pristina to change its mind, Vucic noted.
Instead, the EU has just granted Kosovo visa-free travel to the bloc, while threatening an economic boycott against Serbia unless it joins the Western sanctions against Russia.
Twitter Files expose ‘censorship-industrial complex’ – journalist
RT | March 9, 2023
Social media platforms colluded with non-governmental organizations and the US government to suppress information they did not like in the name of fighting “disinformation,” journalist Matt Taibbi testified at a congressional hearing on Thursday.
Taibbi appeared alongside Michael Shellenberger, another journalist who has covered the “Twitter Files” for the past several months, before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Congressman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio.
Taibbi described what he called the “censorship-industrial complex,” calling it “a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives,” and the exact opposite of a free press envisioned in the US Constitution.
Right before his testimony, Taibbi also published a lengthy thread on Twitter, laying out the evidence he entered into the congressional record.
According to Taibbi, Twitter acted “more like a partner” to the government, censoring based on requests it received from federal agencies as well as taxpayer-backed NGOs. Intelligence agencies, dubious “disinformation researchers” and corporate executives effectively worked as a team, he argued.
Taibbi’s thread described an “incestuous self-appointed truth squad moving from law enforcement/intelligence to the private sector and back,” with the same agencies inviting the same “experts” funded by the same foundations and covered by the same reporters to every panel and every conference.
He identified the key players in the censorship-industrial complex as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab, and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, authors of the infamous Hamilton 68 dashboard. Many of the NGOs involved received funding from the US government, while legacy media outlets acted as their proxies, demanding censorship.
Taibbi described the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and its “Election Integrity Partnership” – renamed the Virality Project after the 2020 election – as “perhaps the ultimate example of the absolute fusion of state, corporate, and civil society organizations.” By its own admission, it labeled 22 million tweets during the 2020 election campaign, and was then given access to Twitter’s JIRA ticketing system, which is able to tackle 50 million tweets a day.
SIO is run by Renee DiResta, who helped design Hamilton68 and worked at New Knowledge – a group caught creating fake “Russian bots” to help Democrats in the 2017 Alabama special election for the US Senate. That did not stop them from advising the Senate Intelligence Committee on “Russian interference” in US elections, and the US legacy media from not questioning any of their conclusions.
“Packaged as a bulwark against lies and falsehood, [the CIC] is itself often a major source of disinformation, with American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality,” Taibbi wrote. “Without real oversight mechanisms, there is nothing to prevent these super-empowered information vanguards from bending the truth for their own ends.”
During the hearing, multiple Democrats tried to pressure Taibbi into revealing his sources, insinuating Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, was behind the disclosures.
EU’s solutions for Ukraine don’t work – member state
RT | March 6, 2023
The first step in bringing peace to Ukraine should be to stop people from being killed and establish a ceasefire as soon as possible, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Sunday, during an interview with Sweden’s SVT.
The diplomat dismissed the idea of supplying Ukraine with weapons, currently being done by a number of NATO countries, as a viable method to achieve peace. Asked why Hungary refuses to send weapons to Kiev, Szijjarto pointed to the devastating consequences of the war, and how Western arms have only exacerbated the conflict.
“Look at the infrastructure, look at the people, look at the number of people leaving the country, look at their former houses, look at the damage, the energy infrastructure. This country is being demolished, destroyed. I don’t think that would be of interest to anyone,” he said.
Szijjarto stated that Hungary, as opposed to other European countries, sees the first priority in the Ukrainian conflict as being to “stop killing people,” and suggested that the only way to achieve that is to enter discussions that would hopefully lead to a sustainable peace agreement.
He also noted that the solutions that were being offered in Europe “simply did not work” because everyone is too invested into the “war psyche.” As for sanctions, the minister pointed out that they have also failed to achieve an effect.
“We have introduced packages of sanctions already. Did it bring us any closer to a solution? No. Did it make the war less brutal? No. Did it put Russia on its knees? No. Did it hurt us? Yes.”
Szijjarto’s comments come after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated last month that “the only way” to guarantee a “lasting and just peace” in Ukraine was to continue to provide Kiev with military support.
Moscow, however, has repeatedly blasted Western arms shipments to Ukraine, arguing that it only serves to prolong the conflict and is essentially making NATO countries participants in the now one-year-long conflict. Last month, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu warned that if Kiev receives long-range weapons from the West, Moscow will be forced to “push the threat away” from Russia’s borders even further.
UK Embassy Sought to Pay Sudanese Students to Protest Against Russia
By Wyatt Reed | Sputnik | March 4, 2023
Britain’s Embassy in Sudan attempted to pay students who had studied abroad in Ukraine to participate in anti-Russian protests, a new report indicates.
Sudanese outlet Al-Rakoba wrote Friday that its staff spoke with an unnamed student who reports being approached by British embassy officials, who urged him to help put together an organization called the “Association of Sudanese Students in Ukrainian Universities” which would engage in anti-Russian provocations outside Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The student in question, who “refused to reveal his name for security reasons” according to the report, reportedly said the Brits offered the students money as well as protection from Sudanese authorities if they participated in the alleged plot.
As some of those contacted by the UK’s diplomatic staff have participated in anti-government protests, they were told they would be shielded from prosecution, Al-Rakoba writes.
Just how successful the British embassy officials were in their apparent efforts is unclear — as is the identity of the culprits. But British intelligence officers are known to use diplomatic cover which employment at their embassy provides to carry out their clandestine activities.
If true, it wouldn’t be the first time the Brits organized chaos in the streets of a foreign land to effect their political will.
Decades ago, former MI6 officer Norman Darbyshire spilled the beans about his personal role in overseeing the bloody 1953 coup in Iran, which overthrew its democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh.
“My brief was very simple,” Darbyshire revealed. “Go out there, don’t inform the ambassador, and use the intelligence service for any money you might need to secure the overthrow of Mossadegh by legal or quasi-legal means.”
After bragging that he spent “vast sums of money, well over a million-and-a-half pounds,” Darbyshire added, “I was personally giving orders and directing the street uprising.”
RT DE accounts frozen
RT | March 3, 2023
RT’s German production company has had its bank accounts frozen amid an EU-wide crackdown on Russian media. The company was already prohibited by the bloc’s sanctions from carrying out its work in Germany, but said it will continue publishing and broadcasting news online.
“The bank accounts of RT DE Productions have been frozen,” RT’s press service said in a statement on Friday. “Despite this move and the ongoing liquidation of RT DE Productions GmbH, RT DE’s online, broadcast and social media platforms will continue to provide German-speaking readers and viewers across the world with quality content.”
RT Productions GmbH is a German-based company that produces content for the RT DE TV channel and website in Moscow. The firm announced at the beginning of February that it would halt journalistic activities in Germany, due to the “repressive state of media freedoms within the EU.”
An EU sanctions package introduced in December blacklisted RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, as well as revoking the EU broadcasting licenses of Russian media outlets including NTV, NTV Mir, Rossiya 1, REN TV and Perviy Channel. These measures left RT DE Productions cut off from funding and unable to work in Germany.
RT’s French subsidiary faced a similar situation in January. With its accounts frozen by authorities in Paris, the network shut its doors but continued to broadcast on various online platforms and to publish news in French on its website. While the French government had previously been content to allow RT France to operate, a number of prominent French media outlets campaigned for its closure at the beginning of the year.
Even before the conflict in Ukraine, RT DE faced a difficult legal battle to broadcast in Germany. German banks refused to work with the broadcaster, and regulators in Berlin threatened legal action when the network finally began broadcasting into Germany from Serbia in December 2021.
The regulators eventually blocked RT DE last February, a month before the European Commission ordered a bloc-wide ban on all RT channels and websites. Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded by withdrawing the press accreditation of German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and listing the network as a foreign agent.
Twitter received ‘state-sponsored blacklists’ from US State Department
RT | March 2, 2023
The US State Department, both directly and through third-party organizations, pressed Twitter to censor American users for their non-existent connections to Russia, China, and Hindu nationalism, according to internal documents.
Published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Thursday, the latest ‘Twitter Files’ reveal that the company’s former trust and safety chief, Yoel Roth, was approached in 2021 and given a list of 40,000 accounts suspected of engaging in “inauthentic behavior” in support of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
The list was provided by the ‘Digital Forensics Research Lab’ at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US State Department’s ‘Global Engagement Center’ (GEC), as well as a host of NATO governments and weapons manufacturers.
According to the files, Roth investigated the list and found that “virtually all appear to be real people” rather than Indian bots, while Taibbi contacted several and learned that they were “ordinary Americans” with no connection whatsoever to Indian politics.
Created in the final year of the Obama administration, the GEC is a State Department entity that works with multiple US intelligence agencies to “counter foreign disinformation.” It is forbidden from operating within the United States, and recently had to cut its ties with a George Soros-backed NGO that was using its funding to target American conservative news sites.
While the list of supposed Hindu nationalists was given to Twitter via the Atlantic Council, the GEC directly passed other lists to the social media platform, including 500 accounts that were allegedly spreading Iranian “disinformation,” and 5,500 “Chinese accounts” engaged in “state-backed coordinated manipulation,” despite the fact that this latter list included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees.
Roth described the Chinese list as “a total crock,” while fellow employee Aaron Rodericks said it provided “more entertainment value than anything.”
The GEC and its organizations tangentially connected to the State Department – such as the infamous ‘Alliance for Securing Democracy’ that published the ‘Hamilton68’ dashboard of “Russian bots” – had long pressed Twitter to crack down on allegedly Kremlin-connected accounts, but Roth told staff that it was impossible to detect “Russian fingerprints” on any of the accounts.
Instead, accounts that retweeted “news sources linked to Russia” were considered Kremlin-sponsored. One list handed to Twitter by the GEC considered membership in France’s anti-government ‘Yellow Vests’ movement as “being Russia-aligned.”
While Twitter’s executives may have been skeptical of the GEC’s ‘blacklists’, the US media was not. Emails show that multiple news outlets and agencies – including the Associated Press – would receive reports from the organization, and then press Twitter to take action and ban the listed accounts.
“Reauthorization for GEC’s funding is up for a vote this year,” Taibbi wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “Can we at least stop paying to blacklist ourselves?”
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Book Review
A Palantir Manifesto
By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2026
Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America’s future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the “soft” influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the country’s engineering talent to focus on national defense. Karp and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, argue that tech bros should “grow up” and start killing America’s enemies before they kill us. … continue
Blog Roll
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- Al-Akhbar’s Amal Khalil assassinated by Israel, left to die under rubble
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- On Mass Surveillance, Will the Deep State Win Again?
- Fire breaks out aboard identity-fluid $8bn USS Zumwalt
- A Palantir Manifesto
- If Americans Knew
- Meet the Top “Content” Producers Linked to Canary Mission
- Lebanese Journalist Amal Khalil Bombed and Left to Die by Israel
- Israel Moves to Re-establish Ganim Colony In Jenin
- Two Iranian Women in ICE Detention Are Not, In Fact, Related to Qasem Soleimani, Documents Show
- “The shooting was not in the air”: Testimonies from the Flour Massacre
- Israel chases down, kills Lebanese journalist, massacres 5 in Gaza, all during “ceasefires” – Daily Update
- Gaza’s unseen casualties: A surge in stillbirths and birth defects
- ‘Day of Ordinary Terror’: Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child
- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
- Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
Aletho News 