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Israel deliberately destroyed all of Gaza’s hospitals with US approval and support

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | July 11, 2024

While the United States government attempts to lecture the world about its supposed “rules based order,” it‘s aiding, arming and providing diplomatic cover for Israel’s unprecedented assault on Gaza’s already collapsed healthcare system. In fact, Israel’s attacks, justified by Washington in some cases, have resulted in the territory being left without a single functional hospital.

It was only two months into the war in Gaza that no functional hospital was left standing in the north of the territory. One month later, there were only seven out of 12 hospitals in southern Gaza that remained partially functional. Today, there is not a single functioning hospital in the entirety of Gaza, with some medics still trying to use the facilities that haven’t been destroyed by bombardment for shelter in which to treat patients with limited supplies, often to no avail.

After only five months of the now nine-month-long war, over 1,013 Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities were recorded in the occupied Palestinian territories, breaking UN records.

Israel has killed more than 500 Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza since the beginning of the war. To put this in perspective, between 2011 and 2024, 949 medical professionals in total were said to have been killed during the Syrian war, with the worst year on record seeing the deaths of almost 200, according to Physicians for Human Rights. That means healthcare workers are being killed in Gaza at a rate around nine times greater than the yearly average during the war in Syria. According to the UN, “more healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since October than were reported killed in all conflicts globally in 2021 and 2022 combined.”

For those medical professionals who remain, Doctors Without Borders has reported a major mental health crisis, with some doctors being forced to choose between treating their own family members and other patients. In one horrifying case, Palestinian doctor Hani Bseiso was forced to amputate the lower part of his teenage daughter’s leg on a kitchen table without anesthetic and using little more than a pair of scissors and gauze. She miraculously survived. Another Palestinian doctor wasn’t as lucky, as he was forced to watch his son slowly die while amputating his leg without anesthetic.

Perhaps the most concerning fact, however, is that hospitals have openly been declared a primary target of the Israeli military’s ground offensive. In November, Israel built a case to invade Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in the besieged coastal enclave. The Israeli army released a CGI video depicting a multi-layered tunnel system under Al-Shifa medical complex, claiming that it was the primary headquarters for Hamas. The US government then backed Israeli claims that the hospital was being used as a headquarters, as airstrikes repeatedly rained down upon civilians in the complex’s courtyard.

After Israel’s army had violently invaded the hospital, killing dozens of civilians in the process, an analysis published by the Washington Post found “no immediate evidence” that a tunnel complex had been used by Hamas under the hospital. Despite the US-Israeli claims having been debunked, Washington did not even issue an apology, as Israel moved on to invade the city of Khan Younis the next month, claiming it was the “real Hamas headquarters.” At the heart of the Israeli invasion of Khan Younis was the objective of taking over Gaza’s second-largest medical complex, Nasser Hospital.

Israel would then go on to re-invade both the Nasser Hospital and Al-Shifa Hospital a number of times, ultimately putting both out of service and leaving behind mass graves containing more than 300 crudely buried bodies at both sites. The total number of dead, wounded and missing after the latest re-invasion of Al-Shifa Hospital was reported to be over 1,500, around 409 of which had been killed. In total, all 36 hospitals in Gaza have been either completely or partially destroyed in bombing attacks, or are unable to function as regular hospitals due to a lack of fuel, supplies, sanitation and damage to equipment or facilities.

Back in January, the United Nations had declared that the health system in Gaza was collapsing. We are long past that point now. In May, Doctors Without Borders reported that the healthcare system in Gaza had been “systematically dismantled” by Israel. On July 9, UN experts declared that famine had spread across the Gaza Strip, asserting that “Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.”

The experts also attributed this to the collapse of the healthcare system, stating that the deaths of children “from malnutrition and dehydration indicates that health and social structures have been attacked and are critically weakened.”

Even more concerning was a recent study conducted for the Lancet medical journal, which concluded that the true Gaza death toll, including indirect deaths, could plausibly be around 186,000. If this conservative estimate is true, that would mean that Israel’s war on the besieged territory has wiped out around 8% of the total civilian population.

The Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll currently sits at roughly 38,300, with around 88,300 reported injured and more than 10,000 reported missing under the rubble. Now that the health sector has collapsed, it has severely hindered the ability of healthcare professionals in Gaza to calculate the number of deaths each day, as there are no ways of recovering the remains of many who are frequently found scattered across the streets.

The true number of injuries is even more difficult to know, as most people do not have any access to proper treatment, not bothering to register their injuries with healthcare workers already burdened by an unthinkable number of serious and critical cases. In addition to this, more than 1 million cases of infectious disease have spread, affecting around half of the entire territory’s population. Due to the dismantling of the health and hygiene systems in Gaza, even basic illnesses are now potentially deadly. With 500,000 cases of diarrhea, and the return of diseases not seen in recent memory inside the enclave, the UN has warned that 1.1 million children could be at risk of dying due to the spread of disease.

Unprecedented is an understatement, and explaining what is happening to the people of Gaza due to Israel’s systematic targeting of hospitals and medical workers defies the English language. Yet, the US government continues to supply Israel with all the arms it seeks, protecting its actions in front of an international community in shock. Washington knows all of the details listed above and more, but it continues to aid and abet the horror story unfolding inside the Gaza Strip.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

As Zelensky visits Poland, Ukraine’s silence about the Volhynia massacre underscores one-sided alliance

BY GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK | REMIX NEWS | JULY 11, 2024

July 11 marks the 81st anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the most tragic episode of the Ukrainian-perpetrated genocide of Poles in Volhynia, which was a Polish territory before the Second World War in the “borderland” region, but is now part of Ukraine. On this day, tens of thousands of people were slaughtered in 99 villages, and to this day, the exact number of victims remains unknown. These victims have yet to be exhumed and given a dignified burial, a process continuously blocked by Ukrainian authorities, including the current administration.

Last year, on the 80th anniversary of this horrific crime, Poland received not a single word from the Ukrainian president, much less any substantive discussion. The issue of exhuming the victims and providing them with a proper burial remains at a stalemate. Tragically, the steadfast guardian of this cause, Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, is no longer with us.

This year, just three days before the anniversary, Volodymyr Zelensky visited our country. His visits, typically centered on what more Poland can offer Ukraine, did not deviate from expectations. The fact that the Ukrainian leader did not mention the impending anniversary is unsurprising and is reflective of a “Kyiv standard.”

However, it is scandalous that this omission was mirrored by every Polish politician he met. Both the left-liberal Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the conservative President Andrzej Duda seem to prefer that the Volhynia issue be forgotten, wishing away the uncomfortable problems of memory and the unburied dead.

Simultaneously, Poland signed an agreement with Ukraine on defense commitments that, in reality, encompasses much more. The format of this document is crucial: It is not formally an international treaty, thus it does not require legislative approval for ratification. If it were a treaty, such approval would be necessary given it involves a military alliance — a detail highlighted by the content of the agreement. The choice of agreement format also conveniently avoids parliamentary debate, which would likely raise uncomfortable questions about the benefits Poland receives from the arrangement and what it demands in return. Clearly, in this “bilateral” deal, Kyiv is practically the sole beneficiary.

The entirety of the 24-page document is staggering: a litany of Polish obligations to Ukraine, underpinned by a tally of what we have already done. The document does not address a single issue where Polish and Ukrainian interests might conflict, such as in agricultural production. In Poland, based on this agreement, a Ukrainian legion is to be formed, which we are of course expected to equip. No one has clarified how this will affect our security, especially given that Ukrainian soldiers will effectively be entering combat from Polish territory.

Tucked away at the very end of the agreement, on page 14, there is a vague mention of “enhancing cooperation in conducting searches, exhumations, and other activities aimed at the dignified burial of victims of conflicts, repression, and crimes.” Exactly which “conflicts, repressions, and crimes” are referred to remains unclear.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024

Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.

On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown.

Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody – unarmed, injured, surrendering and/or bound – began circulating on social networks and Telegram channels. However, save for a single incident in April 2022, when Georgian Legion fighters gleefully filmed themselves surveying a scene near Bucha, where they ambushed and killed multiple fleeing VDV soldiers, Western journalists have either ignored these abuses, or outright denied Kiev endorses or engages in such activity.

Georgian Legion chief Mamuka Mamulashvili has nonetheless justified this conduct, openly boasting that his soldiers “tie [POWs’] hands and feet sometimes” before killing them, and “not a single [Russian] will be taken prisoner.” The New York Times probe strongly suggests this strategy is not confined to the Legion. Multiple Chosen Company fighters testified to witnessing sadistic executions of POWs, and their fellow soldiers proudly bragging about carrying them out. A US veteran posted to the unit claimed they were flatly told by their recruiter:

“[It] was OK to kill POWs if they didn’t surrender in the strictest Geneva Convention standards.”

It may be the case that the New York Times revelations are a means of distancing Kiev’s Western backers from the actions of Ukraine’s forces. Yet, as we shall see, the proxy war’s leading sponsors had strong grounds to know precisely the nature of the government, military, and security services they were arming, funding and training long before Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

‘Intentional Strategy’

As an Al Mayadeen investigation of July 2nd made clear, Ukraine’s eight-year-long “anti-terror operation” in Donbass was a savage assault on largely defenceless residents of the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The grim reality of Kiev’s abuses throughout this time was largely shielded from Western public view. Occasionally though, damaging disclosures did emerge. In 2014, Amnesty International publicised horrendous crimes committed by fascist paramilitary group Aidar Battalion in Donbass.

Next year, the organisation reported on “overwhelming evidence” of fighters and civilians taken prisoner by the Ukrainian military and security services being tortured and killed. It branded the activities of Right Sector, an ultranationalist militia at the forefront of the Maidan coup, “especially disturbing”. The group had transformed an abandoned youth camp into “an ad hoc prison,” holding dozens of civilians there as hostages, “brutally torturing them and extorting large amounts of money from them and their families.”

These revelations received meagre mainstream attention, then were promptly ignored. But the abuses continued apace. As a grisly 2016 report submitted to the OSCE starkly concluded:

“Torture and inhumane treatment inflicted by the Security Forces of Ukraine (SBU), Ukrainian armed forces, National Guard and other formations within the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, as well as by illegal armed groups, such as Right Sector, have not only continued but are gaining in scale and are becoming systematic… the extent to which torture is being used and the fact that this is done systematically prove that torture is an intentional strategy of the said institutions, authorized by their leadership.”

The report contains a panoply of deeply disturbing, and frequently difficult-to-read, first-hand testimonies of torture by the SBU and its fascist paramilitary confederates. Many of the victims claimed to be innocent civilians violently snatched off the street by gangs of armed thugs, often associated with the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Right Sector, while going about their daily business. Once in Kiev’s custody, they admitted separatist supporters and fighters were subjected to hideous abuse almost without pause.

Most prisoners were “electrocuted, beaten cruelly and for multiple days in a row with different objects.” This included “iron bars, baseball bats, sticks, rifle-butts, bayonet knives, rubber batons.” “An absolute majority” reported being subject to mock firing squads, and suffered “death and rape threats to their families.” Waterboarding, strangulation, and suffocation were common. Other methods included “bone-crushing, stabbing and cutting… branding with red-hot objects, shooting different body parts with small arms.” Captured women were “frequently raped”.

All along, detainees were kept for extended periods in “freezing temperatures, with no access to food or medical assistance.” Some inmates were reportedly killed by being made to march across minefields, and run over with military vehicles. Others were “forced to take psychotropic substances,” causing them “agony.” Several reported being handcuffed to “hex bars” – weightlifting devices – and hung from ceilings. One victim of that technique reported: “I thought my bones would fall out. My hands still won’t listen to me, here and here.”

‘Risk of Retribution’

The purpose of this, on top of brutalising rebel forces and instilling fear into the civilian population of Donbass, was to secure false testimonies from prisoners. Typically, they were forced to admit to being part of the DPR and LPR defence forces, and committing grave crimes in that capacity. Others signed declarations implicating themselves as Russian assets, and/or validating the fiction that the rebels were controlled and armed by Moscow.

This of course served to reinforce Kiev’s claims its “anti-terror operation” was a righteous, legitimate crusade against Russian invaders in disguise, who were committing perverse acts of “terrorism”. And moreover, that Ukraine was successful in crushing this criminal incursion by their hostile, belligerent adversary. Nonetheless, there was another malign purpose to detaining and abusing so many innocent civilians. They could be traded for Ukrainian soldiers captured by breakaway authorities.

In June 2020, in a case brought by two Ukrainian draft dodgers seeking asylum in London, a British immigration court ruled that Kiev’s frontline forces in the “anti-terror operation” routinely committed grave war crimes. This included “unlawful capture and detention” of a “large number of civilians “with no legal or military justification… motivated by the need for ‘currency’ for prisoner exchanges” with the breakaway republics. The judgment moreover noted “systemic mistreatment of those detained by the Ukrainian military”:

“This involves torture and other conduct that is cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment contrary to Article 3 of the [European Convention on Human Rights] … There is likely to be official indifference to the mistreatment they have received. There is an attitude and atmosphere of impunity for those involved in mistreating detainees. No one has been brought to justice. Pro-Kyiv militia have been rewarded for their work by formal incorporation into the military. Lawyers are afraid of taking on cases due to the risk of retribution.”

Elsewhere, the ruling recorded that Kiev’s “adherence to the principles of distinction, precaution and proportionality when engaging with civilian targets has been poor, despite that being a task which calls for surgical precision.” This included infrastructure such as water installations, “a particular and repeated target” despite enjoying “protected status” under international humanitarian law. It further observed a “widespread civilian loss of life and the extensive destruction of residential property” in Donbass, partially attributable to “poorly targeted and disproportionate attacks carried out by the Ukrainian military.”

We can only speculate whether Kiev was tutored in torture by Western experts in the art. A February New York Times investigation revealed the very first act of Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, appointed SBU chief immediately following the Maidan coup, was to telephone the local heads of CIA and MI6, asking “for help in rebuilding the agency from the ground up, and [proposing] a three-way partnership.” This dark handshake gave rise to Ukraine’s assassination program, which US officials fear could lead to targeted killings the world over.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Top 10 NHS dietary advice FAILS (from a doctor)

Dr Philip Bosanquet | August 4, 2023

The NHS dietary guidelines are not fit for purpose (in my opinion).

Buy The Concise Nutrition and Lifestyle Guide: https://www.bosanquethealth.com/book-… (available worldwide via Amazon).

Visit Bosanquet Health: https://www.bosanquethealth.com The 10 fails are:

10. Approaching healthy eating / nutrition from a calories-in vs calories-out energy balance focus (failing to take into account Leptin).

9. Basing meals on starchy carbohydrates (failing to understand the root cause of insulin resistance, number one driver of obesity and chronic disease).

8. Minimising fat intake (due to it’s calorie density).

7. Promoting seed oils (vegetable oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil) as healthy, whilst stating saturated fat is bad / causes cardiovascular disease (papers on this are listed below, see also video on animal fat:    • Why ANIMAL FAT is the ultimate SUPERF…   ).

6. Advising people not to delay or skip meals, including breakfast (failing to appreciate time restricted eating / intermittent fasting).

5. Advice of healthy snacks.

4. Advice on artificial sweeteners as a substitute for sugar.

3. No mention of the gut microbiome, of organic food being better for humans and the environment than non-organic food, of minimally processed or unprocessed foods in preference to overly processed foods, or the quality or nutritional density of food choices.

2. Switching from full cream / full fat / whole milk to semi skimmed / reduced fat milk to help kids lose weight (!). Failing to take into account fat soluble vitamins including vitamin D.

1. Some of the recipe examples given.

Links to papers on saturated fat: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28864…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24723…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26268…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34796…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34547…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34717…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34509…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27071…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23386…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34290…

Dr Philip Bosanquet The Low-Tech Lifestyle Medic

content (except quotes) copyright to Dr Philip Bosanquet 2023 ©

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

New Study: ‘Carbon Dioxide And A Warming Climate Are Not Problems’

Instead, warmth and elevated CO2 are a boon for humanity

By Kenneth Richard | No Tricks Zone | July 8, 2024

A new peer-reviewed paper published in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (May and Crok, 2024) counters the prevailing “wisdom” that says a warmer climate and greener vegetation are problematic.

The authors detail the horrors of the much colder Little Ice Age that destroyed civilizations (crop failures, summerless years). Half the population of Finland and 15% of Scotland’s citizens died off in the 1690s due primarily to the cold-induced famines and frozen-over water supplies.

Elevated CO2 and warmth are 70% and 8% responsible, respectively, for a much greener, more vegetated landscape across the world since the 1980s.

The incidence and severity of storms, hurricanes, floods, and extreme weather in general have undergone flat to declining trends over the last several decades. Thus, “it is hard to find any unusual weather or weather-related disaster that can be blamed on climate change, whether natural or anthropogenic.”

“52 of 53 studies of disaster losses due to extreme weather were unable to attribute the events to human causes…”

The US government estimates the warming since 1950 has reduced the country’s gross domestic product by less than 0.5%, and an estimated 3°C of warming by 2100 still only reduces the GDP by less than 1%. Considering the US economy grew by 800% from 1950 to present, this means any assumed “damage” from warmth and elevated CO2 would not be detectable.

The quest to “save” the world from warming and elevated CO2 is devoid of scientific and socio-economic merit.

Image Source: May and Crok, 2024

July 10, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

NATO preparing for ‘protracted wars’ – Pentagon

RT | July 10, 2024

The US and its allies are planning to continue ramping up defense spending, which will ensure long-term demand for weapons, US Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told a gathering of arms manufacturers during a NATO event on Tuesday.

Speaking at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum, the official praised NATO members for boosting their military budgets since the initial flare-up of the Ukraine conflict in 2014, and particularly after the open hostilities between Ukraine and Russia erupted in 2022. Over the past decade, the average annual increase in spending was 72%, adjusted for inflation, she said.

That reversed a period when “defense industries across the Atlantic were affected by decades of inconsistent funding and blinkered demand signals,” she said. She said the current thinking is: “Production matters. Production is deterrence.”

Western arms manufacturers have the ability “not just to compete, but to out-compete and prevail” over Russia and other nations that the US considers its rivals, including China, North Korea and Iran.

“That includes ensuring we are prepared for the possibility of protracted war, which every ally must be prepared for – and not just in Europe, either,” Hicks warned.

Developing the manufacturing base on both sides of the Atlantic in a way that combines “information-age ingenuity and industrial-era capacity” will benefit US allies in the Pacific, such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, the official said.

She claimed that Western political systems are inherently beneficial for building “arsenals of democracy,” since they foster innovation and transnational cooperation. On the other hand, “autocracies,” according to her reasoning, can’t move beyond “just landing at each other’s airfields, or sailing ships alongside each other for a few days at a time.”

The Pentagon is looking for ways “to be a better customer,” Hicks said, by streamlining its internal processes, delivering targeted investments in the defense sector, and providing security services to weapons businesses.

Russian officials have described NATO as a tool of US geopolitical ambition and a way to secure a permanent market for American weapons in Europe. Moscow has cited Washington’s pledge that Ukraine will eventually join the bloc together with NATO’s increased presence in Ukraine since 2014 as among the key triggers of the ongoing conflict.

Beijing has accused the US of being stuck in a “Cold War mentality” and playing “zero-sum games” with non-Western nations, including China.

July 10, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Civil War in Donbass 10 Years On

Scroll down for video

By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | July 8, 2024

July 1st marked the 10th anniversary of a brutal resumption of hostilities in the Donbass civil war. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it passed without comment in the Western media. On June 20th 2014, far-right Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called a ceasefire in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation”. Launched two months prior following vast protests, and violent clashes between Russian-speaking pro-federal activists and authorities throughout eastern Ukraine, the intended lightning strike routing of internal opposition to the Maidan government quickly became an unwinnable quagmire.

Ukrainian forces were consistently beaten back by well-organised and determined rebel forces, hailing from the breakaway “People’s Republics” in Donetsk and Lugansk. Resultantly, Poroshenko outlined a peace plan intended to compel the separatists to put down their arms, during the ceasefire. They refused to do so, prompting the President to order an even more savage crackdown. This too was a counterproductive failure, with the rebels inflicting a series of embarrassing defeats on Western-sponsored government forces. Kiev was ultimately forced to accept the terms of the first Minsk Accords.

Anti-Maidan protesters gather in front of the occupied Donetsk Oblast regional administration building, April 2014

This agreement, like its successor, did not provide for secession or independence for the breakaway republics, but their full autonomy within Ukraine. Russia was named as a mediator, not party, in the conflict. Kiev was to resolve its dispute with rebel leaders directly. Successive Ukrainian governments consistently refused to do so, however. Instead, officials endlessly stonewalled, while pressuring Moscow to formally designate itself a party to the civil war.

No wonder – had Russia accepted, Kiev’s claims that its savage assault on the civilian population of Donbass was in fact a response to invasion by its giant neighbour would’ve been legitimised. In turn, all-out Western proxy war in eastern Ukraine, of the kind that erupted in February 2022, could’ve been precipitated. Which, it is increasingly clear, was the plan all along.

‘Grassroots Movement’

In the days prior to the April 2014 launch of Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation” in Donbass, notorious war hawk Samantha Power, now USAID chief, openly spoke on ABC of “tell-tale signs of Moscow’s involvement” in the unrest. “It’s professional, coordinated. Nothing grassroots about it,” she alleged. Such framing gave Ukrainian officials, their foreign backers, and the mainstream media licence to brand the brutal operation a legitimate response to a fully-fledged, if unacknowledged, “invasion” by Russia. It is referred to as such in many quarters today.

Yet, at every stage of the Donbass conflict, there were unambiguous indications that the Ukrainian government’s claims of widespread Russian involvement – endorsed by Western governments, militaries, intelligence agencies, pundits and journalists – were fraudulent. One need look no further than the findings of a 2019 report published by the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group (ICG), Rebels Without A Cause. Completely unremarked upon in the mainstream, its headline conclusions are stark:

“The conflict in eastern Ukraine started as a grassroots movement… Demonstrations were led by local citizens claiming to represent the region’s Russian-speaking majority.”

ICG noted that Russian leaders were from the start publicly and privately sympathetic to Russian-speakers in Donbass. Nonetheless, they issued no “clear guidance” to businessmen, government advisers or the domestic population on whether – and how – they would be officially supported by Moscow in their dispute with the Maidan government. Hence, many Russian irregulars, encouraged by “what they regarded as the government’s tacit approval, made their way to Ukraine.”

Per ICG, it was only after the conflict started that the Russian government formalised a relationship with the Donbass rebels, although the Kremlin quickly changed tack on what they should do. A Ukrainian fighter told the organisation that he “began hearing calls for restraint in rebel efforts to take control of eastern Ukrainian towns and cities” in late April 2014. However, “the separatist movement in Donbass was determined to move ahead.”

Due to this lack of control, and repeated calls for direct intervention in the conflict from the rebels, Russia replaced the Donetsk and Lugansk rebel leadership with hand-picked figures, who took an explicitly defensive posture. But the Kremlin was ultimately “beholden” to the breakaway republics, not vice versa. It could not even reliably order the rebels to stop fighting. A Lugansk paramilitary told ICG:

“What do you do with 40,000 people who believe that, once they put down their arms, they will all be shot or arrested? Of course, they are going to fight to the death.”

Elsewhere, the report cited data provided by “Ukrainian nationalist fighters”, which showed rebel casualties to date were “overwhelmingly” Ukrainian citizens. This was at odds with the pronouncements of government officials, who invariably referred to them as “Russian mercenaries” or “occupiers”. More widely, figures within Poroshenko’s administration had routinely claimed Donbass was wholly populated by Russians and Russia-sympathisers.

One Ukrainian minister was quoted in the report as saying he felt “absolutely no pity” about the extremely harsh conditions suffered by Donbass civilians, due to the “legal, political, economic and ideological barriers isolating Ukrainian citizens in rebel-held territories” constructed by Kiev. This included enforcing a crippling blockade on the region in 2017, which created a “humanitarian crisis”, and left the population unable to claim pensions and welfare payments, among other gruelling hardships.

Several Donbass inhabitants interviewed by ICG expressed nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Most felt “under attack” by Kiev. A pensioner in Lugansk, whose “non-combatant son” was killed by a Ukrainian sniper, asked how Poroshenko could claim the territory was “a crucial part” of Ukraine: “then why did they kill so many of us?”

‘Worst Option’

In conclusion, ICG declared the situation in Donbass “ought not to be narrowly defined as a matter of Russian occupation,” while criticising Kiev’s “tendency to conflate” the Kremlin with the rebels. The organisation expressed optimism newly-elected President Volodymyr Zelensky could “peacefully reunify with the rebel-held territories,” and “[engage] the alienated east.” Given present day events, its report’s conclusions were eerily prescient:

“For Zelensky, the worst option… would be to try to forcibly retake the territories, as an all-out offensive would likely provoke a military response from Moscow and a bloodbath in Donbass. It could even lead Moscow… to recognise the statelets’ independence. The large-scale military option is mainly advocated by nationalists, not members of Ukraine’s political establishment. But some prominent mainstream politicians refuse to rule it out.”

Zelensky did initially try to resolve the Donbass conflict through diplomatic means. In October 2019, he moved to hold a referendum on “special status” for the breakaway republics in a federalized Ukraine, while personally meeting with representatives of Azov Battalion, begging them to lay down their arms and accept the compromise. Mockingly rebuffed and threatened by the Neo-Nazi group’s leaders, while rocked by nationalist protests against the proposed plebiscite in Kiev, the plans were dropped. So then the President picked the “worst option”.

In March 2021, Zelensky issued a decree, outlining a “strategy for the de-occupation and reintegration” of “temporarily occupied territory.” Falsely characterising Crimea and the Donbass as “occupied by the armed forces of the aggressor state,” it sketched a clear blueprint for a hot war to recapture both territories. Immediately, Ukrainian forces began to mass in the south and east of the country in preparation.

This activity inevitably spooked the Kremlin, leading to a huge military buildup on its border with Ukraine, and extensive wargame exercises, plotting scenarios including encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Donbass, and blocking Kiev’s Black Sea access. Suddenly, the Western mainstream became awash with warnings of imminent Russian invasion, and British and US surveillance flights in the region surged. Media reporting either neglected to mention or outright denied this was explicitly triggered by Kiev’s escalation.

Things quietened down thereafter, although the situation on-the-ground remained tense. In October that year, a Ukrainian drone struck rebel positions in Donbass. Moscow, and German officials, charged that the attack violated Minsk, while Zelensky’s then-right hand man Oleksiy Arestovych denied this was the case. He had by this time openly stated on many occasions war with Russia was Kiev’s price for joining the EU and NATO.

Fast forward four months, and at the start of February 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed his commitment to Minsk. He claimed Zelensky provided personal assurances its terms would be fulfilled. Yet, on February 11th, talks between representatives of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine collapsed without tangible results, after nine hours. Kiev rejected demands for “direct dialogue” with the rebels, insisting – yet again – Moscow formally designate itself a party to the conflict.

Then, as documented in multiple contemporary eyewitness reports from OSCE observers, mass Ukrainian artillery shelling of Donbass erupted. On February 15th, unnerved representatives of the Duma, led by the influential Communist Party, formally requested the Kremlin to recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Vladimir Putin initially refused, reiterating his commitment to Minsk. The shelling intensified. A February 19th OSCE report recorded 591 ceasefire violations over the past 24 hours, including 553 explosions in rebel-held areas.

Civilians were harmed in these attacks, and civilian structures, including schools, targeted deliberately. Meanwhile, that same day, Donetsk rebels claimed to have thwarted two planned sabotage attacks by Polish-speaking operatives on ammonia and oil reservoirs on their territory. Perhaps not coincidentally, in January 2022 it was revealed the CIA had since 2015 been training a secret paramilitary army in Ukraine to carry out precisely such strikes, in the event of Russian invasion.

So it was on February 21st, the Kremlin formally accepted the Duma’s request from a week earlier, recognising Donetsk and Lugansk as independent republics. And now here we are.

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

The Corbett Report Hall of Shame

Corbett | July 5, 2024

Today, James begins inducting MSM liars, dodgy politicians and intelligence agency scoundrels into The Corbett Report Hall of Shame. Simultaneously, he begins inducting truth-telling whistleblowers and courageous journalists into The Corbett Report Hall of Fame. Who will make the cut? Who do you think should make the cut in the future? Join James for this week’s edition of The Corbett Report podcast and get your thinking cap on!

WATCH ON: ARCHIVE / BITCHUTE / ODYSEE / RUMBLE / RUMBLE / SUBSTACK or DOWNLOAD THE MP4

DOCUMENTATION

Dan Rather’s account from November 25, 1963
Time Reference: 03:39
Description: Young CBS journalist Dan Rather became one of the first people on the planet  to see the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination in November 1963. He then immediately rushed to the TV studio to lie about what he saw! SHAAAAME!
Link To: YouTube.com

 

The CIA’s Zapruder Film Secrecy
Time Reference: 05:55
Description: Jacob Hornberger uncovers the true story of how the Zapruder film was altered by the CIA before it was deposited in the Life Magazine archives.
Link To: Future of Freedom Foundation

 

Michael Ruppert- CIA involvement in Drug Trafficking
Time Reference: 11:24
Description: Michael Ruppert throws a 1996 CIA PR event into disarray when he tells Director Deutsch to his face that the CIA has dealt drugs in the USA for a long time. FAAAME!
Link To: YouTube

 

The CIA and the Drug Trade
Time Reference: 12:51
Description: A 2011 report on how the CIA helps ship in the drugs.
Link To: The Corbett Report

 

Requiem for the Suicided: Gary Webb
Time Reference: 13:30
Description: A 2010 report on Gary Webb’s reporting and untimely death..
Link To: The Corbett Report

 

A Crack in the Story — NBC Dateline (13 June 1997)
Time Reference: 14:45
Description: An extensive 1997 report on the CIA drug running story that features CIA officer Duane Clarridge denying that there has EVER been a conspiracy in the USA! SHAAAAME!
Link To: YouTube

 

“The CIA and the Media” by Carl Bernstein
Time Reference: 17:22
Description: 1977 report expanding on the Church Committee revelations of CIA involvement in the news media.
Link To: CarlBernstein.com

 

Truth At Last: The Assassination of Martin Luther King
Time Reference: 17:38
Description: 2018 report documenting the US government’s role in the MLK assassination (including the FBI’s attempt to blackmail King into killing himself).
Link To: The Corbett Report

 

Frank Church on The Intelligence Gathering Debate (1975)
Time Reference: 17:59
Description: Senator Frank Church warns about the electronic surveillance capabilities of the US intelligence agencies and the threat that they pose to “democracy” itself.
Link To: YouTube

 

William Colby presents the “heart attack gun” to the Church Committee
Time Reference: 18:43
Description: CIA Director William Colby interrogated by Senator Frank Church at a Senate committee hearing on intelligence operations. Colby exhibits and explains the use of a poison dart firing pistol that fires shellfish toxin and other poisonous ammunition. FAAAAME!
Link To: YouTube

 

The Disturbing Story Of The Heart Attack Gun Invented By The CIA During The Cold War
Time Reference: 21:25
Description: One of the many mainstream articles detailing the history, development, presentation and “retirement” of the CIA’s previously secret heart attack gun.
Link To: All That’s Interesting

 

Congressional Oversight and the Crippling of the CIA
Time Reference: 22:50
Description: Intelligence shills STILL blame the Church Committee for 9/11 and every other bad thing that’s ever happened.
Link To: CorbettReport.com

 

Gerald Ford’s Remarks at the Swearing In of George H.W. Bush as Director of CIA
Time Reference: 23:49
Description: President Gerald Ford spoke in the auditorium at CIA headquarters on the occasion of George H. W. Bush’s appointment as Colby’s replacement as DCIA.
Link To: YouTube

 

David Rockefeller and Dick Cheney joke around at the CFR
Time Reference: 24:59
Description: Dick Cheney admits he never told voters back home in Wyoming that he was once a director of the CFR. SHAAAME!
Link To: YouTube

 

Dick Cheney’s 2003 CNN obituary
Time Reference: 27:48
Description: Snopes “fact checks” the idea that CNN prematurely published their ready-made Cheney obituary in 2003. (SPOILER: THEY SURE DID!)
Link To: Snopes

 

How to Make a Lobbyist Squirm
Time Reference: 29:08
Description: A 2015 report on the infamous Moreira / Moore exchange about drinking glyphosate.
Link To: The Corbett Report

 

Patrick Moore, Man Who Refused to Drink Roundup, is Not a Monsanto Lobbyist
Time Reference: 30:34
Description: Thanks for the clarification, Newsweek!
Link To: NewsWeek

 

Bayer ordered to pay $2.25 billion after jury concludes Roundup weed killer caused a man’s cancer, attorneys say
Time Reference: 31:26
Description: Report on the monumental judgment against Monsanto in the Roundup cancer trial.
Link To: CNN

 

The man who unmasked Patrick Moore
Time Reference: 31:44
Description: Important GMWatch interview with Moreira about how the viral Moore interview moment came about.
Link To: GMWatch

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

“Our” Man in Israel

By Ted O’Keefe | The Occidental Observer | July 7, 2024

The issue of dual loyalty is an ancient one. As noted in a previous TOO article,

[Stephen] Walt points out that [Dennis] Ross has a long involvement with pro-Israel activist organizations, such as being director of WINEP [Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank headquartered in Washington, DC].

But Ross’s ties to Israel are even deeper than that. Until his appointment as Middle East envoy in the Obama Administration, from 2002–2009 Ross was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. This organization has assumed the role of long term planning for the Jewish people, not only in Israel but also the Diaspora. The JPPPI is an independent think tank that reports to the Israeli government and has close ties with other Jewish organizations. Its mission is “to promote the thriving of the Jewish people via professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry. JPPPI’s work is based on deep commitment to the future of the Jewish people with Israel as its core state.”

The JPPPI’s report Facing Tomorrow 2008 is interesting because it focuses on the threat of Iran and but also because it sees people like Stephen Walt as a threat to Israel:

The Jewish people must, as the highest priority, develop an appropriate response to the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and to global stability as a whole. While there is no ambiguity about the need to do so in Israel, it is necessary to mobilize Jewish opinion around the world as well. The American Jewish community cannot be intimidated either by a post Iraq syndrome in the United States, or by the false and pernicious allegations of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, or former President Carter.

In other words, Jews around the world are encouraged to mobilize to combat the threat to Israel represented by Iran. The assumption is that Jews have common interests as Jews no matter what country they happen to live in. Dennis Ross is doing his best to promote exactly this view within the Obama administration.

One might think that such a view would leave Jews in the Diaspora open to the charge of disloyalty, but the problem is easily finessed: Jews in the Diaspora are told to frame Israel’s concerns about Iran as a global threat, not simply as a threat to Israel.

Of course, that’s what we are seeing now. But we needn’t be naïve. Jews like Dennis Ross are clearly far more loyal to Israel than to the US. Speaking as a psychologist, they wouldn’t be able to see a conflict of interest between the US and Israel if it was staring them in the face. Indeed, as Gore Vidal said of Norman Podhoretz, they are unregistered agents of a foreign government.

In a sane society, there would be a huge groundswell of public opposition to Ross’s appointment–as there has been for a number of Obama’s appointments. But that won’t happen.

Since there has been no groundswell of media or public opposition to pro-Israel operatives like Ross at the highest levels of the U.S. government, it’s not surprising that the practice continues. Amos Hochstein is a good contemporary example. Israel and the powerful Lebanon-based Shiite Hezbollah militia are on the brink of open warfare, conflict that could trigger U.S. intervention and escalate to a regional or even a world war. To date these dangers have attracted little notice from the American mass media, ever eager to divert and dissemble from the direr consequences of the Washington regime’s one-sided support for Israel. Small wonder, then, that the media should evince the same reluctance in investigating the shadowy past and dubious allegiance of Hochstein, the emissary the U.S. recently dispatched to “mediate” between Hezbollah and Israel. The following is a brief foray into the workings of the Israel Lobby in the Biden Administration, as well as a primer on the perks of being Jewish in America.

Hochstein’s importance

To be sure, media reports have not slighted Hochstein’s great influence in the Biden White House or his meteoric career. He has been described as “one of President Biden’s closest confidantes [who] has worked with him for many years,” while another Washington insider calls Hochstein “the person who bridges State, Treasury, the White House and Energy”

Fittingly, one of Hochstein’s titles is “Special Presidential Coordinator.”

Yet the media have underplayed, and often ignored, a key fact about Hochstein in his role as an impartial arbiter between Hezbollah and Israel: his birth, youth, and military service in Israel.

Beyond those bare facts about his origins, Hochstein has been remarkably unforthcoming about his life before he arrived in the United States in 1974. While nearly every successful denizen of the D.C. is eager to brandish Ivy League/Seven Sisters (or the equivalent) educational credentials, one may scour the internet (including his page on the usually resume-rich LinkedIn job-hunting site) without finding anything about Hochstein’s education, college or secondary.

Just as murky are the circumstances by which Adam Hochstein, a 21-year-old immigrant with unknown credentials, became a congressional staffer within a year of his arrival in this country, working for Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-CT) who, like Hochstein, is a Jew.

Despite his youth and inexperience, Hochstein carried out important assignments for Gejdenson. Not yet 25, he traveled to North Korea in 1997 to report on its economic and military situation; still in his twenties, he undertook negotiations with the Iraqi government (against the advice of the U.S. State Department) aimed at “resettling” thousands of Palestinians there in exchange for loosening some of the crippling sanctions then in force there.

Well before 9/11, Hochstein advocated acting against Iraq for harboring “weapons of mass destruction” in a press release issued by Congressman Gejdenson, and soon afterward he was serving as senior advisor to a senator and a governor. Like many members of the permanent government, Hochstein has used hiatuses between his party’s dominance to work in lobbying and industries close to government, in his case capitalizing on energy policy expertise that he seems to have acquired with no expertise in the field. He’s evidently done well, at some point becoming a partner in two D.C. restaurants and a movie theater.

Under Obama, Hochstein (without known diplomatic training or experience) rapidly climbed the ladder at the State Department to become America’s chief energy negotiator, deeply involved in efforts to block Russian natural gas from Europe and to facilitate Israeli access to energy.

During the Trump presidency, Hochstein served on the board of Ukraine’s natural gas company, Naftogaz.

Hochstein’s knowledge of the ins and outs of Ukraine’s shady corrupt energy industry is evidently considerable. In his testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives, Hunter Biden stated that Hochstein had advised him merely to be “very careful” in serving on the board of the notoriously corrupt Burisma corporation.

Hochstein also seems to have had a role in the “whistle blowing” that led to Trump’s first impeachment resulting from a phone call interpreted by Democrats as pressuring Zelensky to investigate Biden family corruption in Ukraine, and to have been advising Zelensky before his election.

It’s also interesting that there is a lack of definitive information on Hochstein’s current citizenship:

According to one report, a State Department source has claimed that he is “not a dual national,” but refused to state if he has renounced his Israeli citizenship, and in fact gave no [details as to Hochstein’s American citizenship.] So the question raised, unanswered— Hochstein’s citizenship is evidently a “carefully guarded secret.” Not acknowledging Hochstein’s Israeli citizenship would be useful because, for example, in Lebanon, where Hochstein has been involved as an American negotiator on the Israeli conflict with Hezbollah, “it is normally illegal for an Israeli” to visit Lebanon.

Even Hezbollah at the time did not comment on the mediator’s nationality or military past, with leader Hassan Nasrallah saying they will “not express an opinion or position related to the demarcation of borders”.

Given all this, it’s hard to disagree with this quote originally from Ha’aretz:

… the American brokerage farce, whose players are almost all American Jews, some of them former or future Israelis. If the United States is a side in the conflict, then it should say so and conduct the negotiation as though Israel is its protégé. And if it really wants to be an honest broker, then come on – Amos Hochstein?…

July 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Prince And The Spy

By Whitney Webb | The Last American Vagabond | May 12, 2023 

A TLAV investigation has found that Erik Prince, the man behind the Blackwater mercenary group, recently teamed up with an Israeli spy, creating a front company with her to help Israeli defense technology providers exploit loopholes and sell their products to the American military.

For years, Erik Prince – the founder of mercenary firm Blackwater (now Academi) – has been a major source of controversy. Ever since he left Blackwater over a decade ago, Prince has appeared in the news for pushing to privatize several wars, his ties to former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, his violation of international arms embargoes and his unusually close ties with Project Veritas, among other notable events and connections.

However, some of Prince’s antics in recent years have not yet made it into the news – namely his decision to team up with an Israeli spy to build a very secretive company that has – until now – evaded scrutiny. That company, Comframe Solutions, appears to operate as an intelligence front and explicitly targets parts of the American military involved in highly sensitive combat operations. As this investigation will show, Prince’s partner in Comframe – Lital Leshem – has been tied to a series of apparent, and admitted, Israeli intelligence front companies, several of which have a focus on technology. Yet Prince and his close associate Chris Burgess – Comframe’s supposed president – have done everything they can to hide their association with the incredibly secretive company. Why might that be and what exactly is Comframe up to?

From “Army Brat” to Cyber Spy

Lital Leshem was raised as an “army brat” in Reut, Israel and Pennsylvania, USA. She later enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as she was “truly devoted to safeguarding the State of Israel.” She quickly rose in the ranks, becoming Operations Officer in the IDF of the besieged Gaza Strip and later becoming a Major, a position she continues to hold to this date through her “reserve duty activities.” According to her LinkedIn, she served in Israeli military intelligence from 2005 to 2011 and, more specifically, served in its signals intelligence unit – Unit 8200. She later attended IDC Herzliya, an Israeli university deeply tied to its military and intelligence apparatus. There, she met Amir Elichai and the two would co-create the company Reporty, which later became Carbyne911 – today known only as Carbyne.

Carbyne was originally founded as Reporty in 2014 by Leshem, Elichai and Alex Dizengof. Leshem and Elichai are Unit 8200 veterans, while Dizengof previously worked for Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office. Before it was revealed that Jeffrey Epstein had poured at least 1 million dollars into the company at the behest of his close associate Ehud Barak, Cabryne’s board of directors – which Barak chaired – included the former commander of Unit 8200, Pinchas Buchris, as well as Epstein associate turned venture capitalist Nicole Junkermann. In the wake of the Epstein scandal, Buchris, Barak and Junkerman, among others, were removed from the board and were largely replaced with veterans and former heads of American intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Leshem had left the company in 2017, but has continued to own shares in the company.

Carbyne is a Next-Generation 9-11 (NG911) platform and the explicit goal of NG911 is for all 911 systems nationwide to become interconnected. It is currently active throughout the United States, its main target market. Its software has been criticized due to “serious privacy concerns” about the amount of information it harvests from smartphones that call a 911 call center running Carbyne’s software. For instance, Carbyne’s smartphone app extracts the following information from the phones on which it is installed:

“Device location, video live-streamed from the smartphone to the call center, text messages in a two-way chat window, any data from a user’s phone if they have the Carbyne app and ESInet, and any information that comes over a data link, which Carbyne opens in case the caller’s voice link drops out.”

The potential for Carbyne as a tool for mass surveillance has been extensively reported by Narativ, MintPress News and other outlets. In addition, Carbyne stores all data on past calls and events in order to “enabl[e] decision makers to accurately analyze the past and present behavior of their callers, react accordingly, and in time predict future patterns.” As a result, Carbyne – along with other Israeli intelligence-connected companies seeking to dominate the American “public safety” market – has the potential to facilitate controversial “predictive policing”, i.e. pre-crime, policies.

In addition to Carbyne, Leshem also worked for Black Cube, which has since been removed from her LinkedIn. There, she had been the firms Director of Marketing. Black Cube was specifically outed as an Israeli intelligence front organization in a 2019 article published by Calcalist Tech. That same article also contains the stunning revelation that many Israeli companies, including Black Cube, have been founded as fronts for intelligence operations since 2012. It states that “since 2012, cyber-related and intelligence projects that were previously carried out in-house in the Israeli military and Israel’s main intelligence arms are transferred to companies that in some cases were built for this exact purpose.” The article also adds that:

“In some cases, managers of development projects in the Israeli military and intelligence arms were encouraged to form their own companies which then took over the [military and/or intelligence] project.”

With Leshem having worked for one company already known to be a product of this deliberate policy, it is worth scrutinizing Carbyne as being one such front, especially considering the common tie of Ehud Barak to both companies. In addition, Leshem has also worked for another company tied to Barak that has been described as worse than the NSO Group, which produced the notorious Pegasus software. Called Toka, its top executives – like Carbyne – are largely veterans of Israeli’s Unit 8200, where Leshem also served, or former commanders of Israeli military cyber operations.

Toka, which Ehud Barak founded in 2018, is very, very likely to be one of the front organizations produced as a result of the aforementioned 2012 Israeli intelligence policy. The company is directly partnered with Israel’s Ministry of Defense and other Israeli intelligence and security agencies since its founding and the company only sells its products to countries that are considered allies of Israel. It purports to be able to hack, not just smartphones, but any device with internet connectivity, such as doorbell cameras and other “smart” devices. As will be noted later in this article, Leshem herself has noted that Toka has a relationship with the CIA.

After being involved with a series of Israeli intelligence fronts and her enduring ties to Israeli military intelligence through her “reserve duty activities”, Leshem was courted by a surprising figure – Erik Prince, war profiteer and founder of the controversial mercenary outfit Blackwater.

Partnering with Prince

Leshem says that she met Prince after she “randomly stumbled across his path and joined his team.” There, per her website, she “managed his business portfolio and his global investments.” Her LinkedIn lists her as serving as the executive director of global business development of Frontier Resource Group (FRG) from 2018 to 2021. Frontier Resource Group was founded by Prince and is “an Africa-dedicated investment firm partnered with major Chinese enterprises, including at least one state-owned resource giant that is keen to pour money into the resource-rich continent,” according to the South China Post. It not only operates in Africa, but also other countries due to its contracts to support China’s One Belt One Road initiative, which were signed in 2019.

FRG is a subsidiary of Frontier Services Group (FSG), which Prince also founded. In 2013, he sold a majority share of FSG to the China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC), a state-owned Chinese investment company that is among the largest of the country’s state-run conglomerates. CITIC, during the mid-1990s, was chaired by Wang Jun, who doubled as China’s chief arms dealer and was a key figure in the “Chinagate” scandal of the Clinton White House. As detailed in One Nation Under Blackmail, that scandal involved the illicit transfer of American military technology to China and the illicit transfer of Chinese weapons, whose sale in the US was banned during this time, into the United States. Mark Middleton, a White House aide, and Jeffrey Epstein are some of the names apparently involved with those activities. “Chinagate” appears to have been a joint venture between factions of the CIA and Israeli intelligence and has never been properly investigated by federal authorities. It seems that Prince, who was (and may still be) a CIA asset, and Leshem have engaged in similar activities via FRG/FSG. For example, TRTWorld reported that Leshem is “speculated” to have transferred Carbyne’s technology to China via her role at FRG and her connection to Prince. China launched an app that was nearly analogous to Carbyne, but more explicitly focused on surveillance, at the same time that Carbyne launched its first 911 call system in the United States.

In addition, TRTWorld notes, the company DarkMatter, a UAE surveillance and intelligence group that employs former US intelligence operatives, attracted the attention of Chinese officials at a smart cities conference in 2015. DarkMatter, which was launched to modernize Emirati intelligence and military operations, signed a Global Strategic Memorandum of Understanding with Huawei, the Chinese tech giant. The middle man in this sale was none other than Erik Prince. Leshem and another Prince associate, Dorian Barak, also have business ties to the UAE via their prominent roles at the UAE-Israel Business Council.

As TRTWorld concluded:

“With similar technology being used, and the same mercenary middle-man between Carbyne and China who brought together UAE’s DarkMatter surveillance technology with China, indications point to a likely transfer of surveillance technology from Epstein’s Israeli company [Carbyne] to China.”

Comframe – Secretive Company or Intelligence Front?

Prince’s and Leshem’s joint activities after Leshem left FRG suggest that this pattern of behavior has not only continued, but deepened. According to Leshem’s website, a year and a half after she started working for Prince, she and Prince “joined forces to found Comframe, a company that takes the best of Israeli defense technology providers, and helps them penetrate the American market by bridging prevalent gaps.” Leshem also says Comframe was assisted by her “premier integrator and business development platform for deploying advanced military, special operations, public safety and HLS solutions in the United States, and a wide network of partnership, both government and civilian.”

In discussing Comframe elsewhere, Leshem writes that the company she co-founded with Prince “is led and staffed by Special Operations and defense procurement veterans with billions of dollars of successful sales to USG and foreign government to their names.” She says that Comframe has a “track-record of success implementing complex procurement and integrations programs from intelligence gathering & analysis, to contracting, program sales and personnel deployment, is exceptional.”

What Leshem says of the company clashes with Comframe’s threadbare public presence. For instance, its website, which is notably short on content, lists the following companies as partners – TomCar, BlueBird Aero Systems, General Robotics, SafeStrike, Ops-Core (now part of Gentex Corp) and Axon. On its partners page, Comframe says that this is “a small sampling of our current partners we have chosen to work with.” Most of these companies were created by Israeli military/military intelligence veterans.

Aside from the partners page, there is little other information available on the Comframe site. It describes its mission as “to source cutting-edge, innovative technologies that safely and securely solve articulated U.S. government problems” and touts its “get it done” commitment and how its employees “wake up every morning wanting to find solutions that keep the U.S. government safe and more lethal.” It lists the company’s president as Chris Burgess. Burgess, a former NAVY Seal who trained with Erik Prince, does not list Comframe on his LinkedIn or in any other site discussing his work history. He is currently the CEO of military contractor Regulus Global. Burgess previously ran a mercenary firm he founded, Greystone Ltd., that was previously affiliated with Prince’s Blackwater and was originally intended to be Blackwater’s “sister company.”

Both Blackwater (now Academi) and Greystone have been accused of sending mercenaries to fight in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Both companies deny this. The accusations came after Prince had planned to create a “private army” in Ukraine, something he has attempted to do (and sometimes succeeded) in various conflict zones, such as Afghanistan. Prince has also attempted to offer “lethal services” to Russia’s Wagner group.

Aside from Burgess’ apparent unwillingness to associate himself publicly with Comframe, there is also the fact that the only employee publicly associated with Comframe at all is Lital Leshem. Indeed, even Erik Prince has declined to publicly affiliate himself with the company. Another oddity is the fact that Comframe’s website has an “Industry News” page that contains several blog posts with titles discussing oil markets and geopolitics. However, the content of the posts themselves are all filler generated by WordPress. Was Comframe also intended to work in commodities markets? The odd and sparse nature of the website seems to clash with Leshem’s characterization of the company.

So, what is Comframe exactly and what is it intended to do? Why are the only people associated with the company two professional mercenaries, one of whom is a known CIA asset, and an Israeli spy? A 2020 article published in the Jerusalem Post seems to highlight Comframe’s mysterious inner workings and likely purpose.

That article notes that Comframe acted as a middleman in forging an agreement to create an assembly line in El Paso, TX in order for the Israeli company Tomcar to “offer its latest models to the US Armed Forces.” The agreement was made between Tomcar and Prince Manufacturing, a major contract manufacturing company that works with Ford, General Motors and Tesla, among others. Prince Manufacturing was notably founded and run for many years by Edgar Prince, Erik Prince’s father. Notably Tomcar, its founder – Yoram Zarchi – and his son (works for Tomcar) – Ram Zarchi – appear in the Panama Papers as does the former holding company that owned Tomcar from 2004 to 2011.

The article notes that Comframe “is focused on recognizing needs in the US defense industry and matching them to possible solutions, usually involving innovative Israeli companies.” However, the article notes, “to meet the demands of American security needs, one must have an American entity.” Leshem is then quoted as saying, “Ram [Zarchi of Tomcar] had been living in Phoenix for 15 years, but he can’t do that [sell to the American military because he is not a US citizen]. We can.”

In other words, per Leshem, Comframe utilizes Prince and presumably Burgess to sell Israeli defense technology and products to the American military that would otherwise not happen due to national security concerns around buying foreign-made products for sensitive defense and military operations. Leshem goes on to state Comframe sells “to the US Special Forces and other branches of the service [i.e. US military],” noting that Comframe is specifically targeting Special Ops. She also suggests that, aside from the US military, another intended market for the company is NATO – she told the Jerusalem Post that the US “controls 70% of NATO’s defense industry.”

The article ends by stating that, for Comframe, when sales are related to national security, one still has to have “boots on the ground,” suggesting why Comframe has such a minimal web and online presence. This is similar to another company Leshem has been working for while at Comframe, Ehud Barak’s Toka. Notably, at the end of this very article, Leshem uses Toka as an example regarding Comframe’s “boots on the ground” sales approach. She states:

“Hi-tech companies like Toka with clients like the CIA, can’t discuss what they do using Zoom.”

A New Pattern for Prince

Comframe is a very suspect company – it is highly, highly secretive, targets sensitive American military agencies with foreign technology, and its known employees are apparent spooks and intelligence-linked mercenaries. Not only that, but the history of Israeli espionage in the United States – from Jonathan Pollard and PROMIS to Comverse and beyond – shows a concerted effort to target the American military and security agencies, often with bugged or “backdoored” technology.

In addition to the above, Prince has also recently engaged in efforts to market a very suspect smartphone to MAGA Republicans as being “unhackable” and “unsurveillable.” That phone was “designed in Israel” and the company that produces it is called Unplugged. According to reports, Unplugged’s “day-to-day technology operations are run by Eran Karpen, a former employee of CommuniTake, the Israeli start-up that gave rise to the now infamous hacker-for-hire firm NSO Group.” Karpen, like Leshem, is also a veteran of Unit 8200.

Notably, DarkMatter, the UAE private intelligence company that was mentioned earlier due to its association with Prince, once marketed an “ultrasecure” phone called Katim, only to be later outed for hacking dissidents and journalists. In addition, Prince debuted Unplugged’s phone on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” program. Both Prince and Bannon have controversial relationships with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Guo.

That Prince would help market this phone specifically to MAGA Republicans is disturbing given that his associate Leshem and other Israeli intelligence veterans and operatives have played a major role in developing the infrastructure for the US’ “War on Domestic Terror,” which is mainly targeted at the political right and has already utilized mass surveillance through smartphones and other technologies to justify arrests, including “pre-crime” arrests. Given the content of this investigation, Prince’s ties to foreign governments and intelligence agencies should be heavily scrutinized, especially Comframe – whose secretive activities may be drastically undermining American national security.

July 7, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tale Of Two Weather Stations

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | July 3, 2024

Below are photos of two weather stations in Hull.

One is run by the University of Hull’s Environmental Department, the other is used by the Met Office for climatological purposes and typically runs two degrees hotter.

It does not take a genius to work out which is which!

…

July 6, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Biden: Like the nation, I am indispensable too

The idea that he has been running the world betrays a dangerous arrogance about his importance — and current reality

BY DANIEL LARISON | RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT | JULY 6, 2024

The president insisted that his campaign would continue and that he was the best candidate for the job in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Friday.

Rejecting calls for him to step aside, Biden defended his determination to remain in the race by using one of his favorite foreign policy talking points, the conceit that America is the indispensable or essential nation. Building on the idea expressed by then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright a quarter century ago, the president said, “You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not — and that’s not hy — sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world. Madeleine Albright was right.”

Later in the interview, Biden also maintained that there was no one else who could lead as well as he could. He asked Stephanopoulos, “who’s gonna be able to hold NATO together like me? Who’s gonna be able to be in a position where I’m able to keep the Pacific Basin in a position where we’re — we’re at least checkmating China now? Who’s gonna — who’s gonna do that? Who has that reach?”

The president would have everyone believe that he is an irreplaceable leader of the indispensable nation, but the idea that he has been “running the world” betrays a dangerous arrogance about both the president’s importance and America’s international role. The U.S. didn’t “run” the world even at the height of its power, and it is foolish to think that it could in an increasingly multipolar world.

Biden’s belief helps explain why the president refuses to end his campaign, but it also points to a key flaw in the current strategy of the United States. Washington is overstretched around the world and has more commitments than it can realistically honor. That overstretch is a result of the false belief that the world can’t do without American “leadership.” U.S. leaders refuse to shift burdens to anyone else in any part of the world because they wrongly assume that no other countries can bear them.

Just as Biden clings to his position when there are others able to take his place, the U.S. clings to its current strategy because it doesn’t want to accept a world where it isn’t “essential.”

It is beyond the competence of any state to be the “essential nation.” It is a self-important fantasy to believe that the world depends on any one country to such a great extent. When Washington has acted on this belief in its supposedly essential role, it has done considerable harm to its own interests and to other countries. There have been many crises and conflicts where American involvement was not needed and where that involvement made matters worse than they were before.

Everyone can see that in obvious cases like the Iraq war or the intervention in Libya, but it also applies to the frequent use of broad sanctions from Venezuela to Iran to North Korea. We can see it in the U.S. supporting role in the Saudi coalition war on Yemen, and we see it again today in Biden’s support for the war in Gaza. In those instances when U.S. involvement has not been destructive, it is often not required.

Insisting that we are essential to the rest of the globe is how our leaders excuse constant meddling in things that have little or nothing to do with America’s interests. It is a handy way to shut down the policy debate by claiming that the U.S. really has no choice except to intervene and take sides in disputes and conflicts where we have nothing vital at stake. That is how the list of commitments keeps growing and never gets any smaller.

No matter what one thinks about Biden’s fitness, the limits of American power and the relative decline of that power in recent decades make the indispensable nation belief more absurd than ever. Albright’s original claim wasn’t true when she made it, and it certainly isn’t today. It is a measure of how dated Biden’s worldview is that he still cites a Clinton-era phrase as if it were relevant to current realities.

Our current foreign policy is unsustainable given America’s limitations, and we need to have a much less ambitious one in the years to come if we are to avoid the costs of more unnecessary conflicts.

No president, regardless of age or condition, should imagine that he “runs the world” and none should try. No one can possibly shoulder that much responsibility, and no one is up to the task. Biden isn’t up to “running the world,” but then neither is anyone else.

July 6, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

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