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Ex-minister charged for revealing state secrets

RT | February 22, 2023

Denmark’s former Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen has been charged with divulging state secrets, after claiming Danish military intelligence worked with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on a number of foreign officials, among them ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Frederiksen confirmed the charges in a Facebook post on Tuesday, saying he had been indicted for the “disclosure or passing on of state secrets.” He insisted on his innocence, however, claiming the allegations are motivated by politics

“I deny having exceeded the limits of my far-reaching freedom of speech as a politician, and I have not revealed alleged state secrets. Period,” he said, adding “I will demand a jury trial, as this is a political case.”

Danish officials declined to cite Frederiksen by name in discussing the charges, with prosecutor Jakob Berger Nielsen saying the case “includes highly classified information that cannot be presented openly.”

While the details of the state secrets indictment remain under wraps, after facing preliminary charges last year Frederiksen suggested the case was linked to public comments he made regarding joint surveillance missions involving Denmark’s Defense Intelligence Service and the NSA. In multiple media interviews in 2020 and 2021, Frederiksen said the Danish agency helped the NSA eavesdrop on high-level officials in France, Germany, Norway and Sweden – including Germany’s then-Chancellor Angela Merkel and several of her political rivals.

Though the NSA’s part in the spying was revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden – who leaked a massive trove of classified documents while working as a private contractor in 2013 – Denmark’s role only came to light in subsequent media reports, which cited a confidential Danish intelligence review carried out following the Snowden revelations.

Frederiksen served as defense minister between 2016 and 2019 and later entered politics under Denmark’s Liberal Party. He retired from public life last year, however, meaning his parliamentary immunity has lapsed and he can now be prosecuted.

No trial date has been set for the former official, who faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted.

February 22, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Nord Stream Sabotage Backfires With Historic Demolition of U.S. Image and Lies Over Ukraine War

Strategic Culture Foundation | February 17, 2023

The Hersh report is a devastating revelation of U.S. and NATO international terrorism as well as Western media complicity. It exposes the lawlessness of U.S. government, the total disregard by Washington for its so-called European allies, the supine nature of European governments, Germany in particular, and the real geopolitical reasons behind the war in Ukraine, and subsequently the shocking servility of Western media in refusing to cover what is an astounding act of criminality.

This is an explosive story in more ways than one and indeed in more ways than we can perhaps even calculate at this stage. Only one week after its publication, the fallout and reverberations continue to amplify. Such is the parlous and pathetic state of Western journalism, Hersh was obliged to publish his account on his resources, knowing that mainstream outlets would not touch it. That systematic media censorship and exposure of propaganda functioning is itself a huge scandal that will grow further. This is while the European Union sanctions and bans Russian media, even though Russian media have been vindicated by Hersh’s revelations while Western media is shown to be an utter disgrace.

On September 26, 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up. European states have since acknowledged that, albeit with muted reports. For its part, Russia has from the outset blamed Western powers for an act of terrorism. Washington initially made the preposterous claims that Russia had carried out the attacks in revenge against Europe. And Western media went along with the ridiculous ride.

There is no disputing that the damage was deliberate sabotage. The 1,222-kilometer undersea civilian infrastructure was the biggest of its kind in the world, involving a consortium of companies from Russia, Germany, France and the Netherlands. It took more than a decade to construct at an estimated cost of over €12 billion. The enormous loss of natural gas volumes from the explosion could also be monetized in billions of euros.

State-Sponsored Terrorism

So, without even attributing specific culpability, this sabotage constitutes an egregious act of state-sponsored terrorism that violates international law on numerous counts. And yet Western media have acted like the proverbial monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.

At the time of the spectacular event, many critical observers immediately suspected foul play. In our Strategic Culture Foundation weekly editorial of September 30, the headline stated: “Blatantly Obvious Who Gains From Nord Stream Sabotage”.

We postulated back then only days after the incident that a plausible cause was “deliberate sabotage” by the United States and its NATO allies.

“If that’s the case, then it is an act of terrorism against civilian infrastructure and a grievous blow to Russia’s national interests. It could be construed as a criminal act of war,” we wrote.

Our editorial cited U.S. President Joe Biden’s own words of warning issued at a White House press conference when he spoke on February 7, 2022. Biden appeared to stray off script and cryptically asserted to reporters that the Nord Stream would be “brought to an end” if Russia were to intervene militarily in Ukraine, as Russia did two weeks later on February 24 (as a result of deadly NATO provocations, we should add).

“His [Biden’s] cryptic assertion, over-riding European governments, suggests that a contingency plan had already been authorized to take out the Nord Stream. And, it seems, the nefarious action duly went ahead this week,” we wrote.

(We modestly take pride in the objective perspicacity of our assessment. And yet this online journal is smeared and banned by the United States and European governments as a Russian propaganda tool.)

Seymour Hersh’s investigative report published last week corroborates what many observers had suspected at an early stage. The irrefutable fact is the Nord Stream gas pipelines were blown up by U.S. military forces. Not only that, but the Americans were aided and abetted by NATO member Norway, and quite possibly by other NATO members including Poland, Denmark and Britain.

This is an earth-shattering scandal. The repercussions are going to keep cascading and cascading. Hersh has followed up with promises of more indicting details in forthcoming articles. Other journalists are now corroborating his details about U.S. navy divers planting explosives under the cover of NATO war games in the Baltic Sea last June. Hersh claims that some of the C4 bombs did not detonate as planned. That means there could still be evidence to be found on the seabed conclusively implicating the United States.

Then there was the earlier report by Swedish divers who had inspected the site in the aftermath of the explosions. Did they try to clean up the crime scene? The Swedish authorities have refused to disclose the contents of their report. They have a case to answer, as do the Danes, the Norwegians, the Brits and most of all the Americans.

Russia has called for a United Nations Security Council meeting to convene next week on the subject, based on the latest investigative report by Seymour Hersh. China has also called for an independent international commission to study the matter.

Questions are also urgently required from the German government on what it knew about the sabotage. As our columnist Martin Jay pointed out this week, Chancellor Olaf Scholz was in the White House on February 7 last year when Biden made his clumsy threat to take out the Nord Stream. The implication is that Scholz knew in advance of the demolition plan.

Western Media’s Damning Silence

We are talking here about multiple malfeasance and cardinal crimes. Terrorism, destruction of sovereign property, aggression and incitement of war, treason and an orchestrated media cover-up involving supposed bastions of Western journalism. The New York Times and Washington Post have so far ignored the Hersh report. Western media have stubbornly refused to investigate this urgent story. How damning is that?

Internationally renowned legal expert Professor Francis Boyle has assessed (in email correspondence with SCF) that a prosecution case can be brought against the United States over the Nord Stream incident under the auspices of the International Criminal Court. The U.S. is not a signatory to the foundational Rome Statute but the incident occurred in territory belonging to European states that are. Whether such a prosecution proceeds and whether the UN Security Council takes action later this week are moot points. But at the very least, the whole scandal is blowing up in the court of international public opinion.

Seymour Hersh (now aged 85) is to be commended for his journalistic service. We may quibble about some details in his report. Has he covered the full picture of all the actors involved? Perhaps not. His report is not a geopolitical analysis and some of his premises suggest he is not critical of the U.S. or NATO involvement in the war in Ukraine. These reservations are relatively minor to his main point of understanding what actually took place.

Those caveats aside, however, one can say that Hersh’s report is a blockbuster. His lifetime work is impeccable. He uncovered the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968 when hundreds of men, women and children were murdered gratuitously by American troops. Hersh also exposed in 2004 the torture practices by the US military in Iraq at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

Historic Impact

Hersh’s reporting in the past has had a historic impact. It mobilized public understanding and opinion about the nefarious nature of U.S. wars in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

As many analysts and our own weekly editorials at SCF have repeatedly pointed out, the war in Ukraine is a bigger geopolitical cause than the absurd narrative put out by Western governments and news media about “defending Ukraine and Western freedom from Russia aggression”. We have consistently analyzed that the expansion of NATO, the weaponization of Ukraine, and the current conflict are all about the American imperialist ambition for hegemonic control. Destroying normal relations between Europe and Russia and most especially destruction of the strategically important energy trade are all part of the objective. Pursuing that objective has created a most dangerous war that could escalate into a nuclear conflagration.

As eminent American commentator Jeffrey Sachs has noted, the criminal conduct of Washington regarding the blowing up of the Nord Stream is totally characteristic of U.S. criminal behavior that has been practiced over many decades since World War Two. The difference now is that this criminality directly impinges on many more people’s lives – from the danger of catastrophic war to the economic misery caused by wanton American aggression.

The Hersh article – despite the Western media shamefully ignoring it thereby exposing their own criminal complicity in U.S. terrorism – has made the world more aware than ever of the rogue state that is the United States and its capitalist, imperialist dynamics.

Inciting war in Europe, antagonizing a nuclear Russia with unprecedented aggression, inflicting mass poverty and hardship on European civilians, and lying about it all the time through its propaganda media. Washington is a war-criminal state par excellence along with its European Quislings.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked several weeks ago, the historic situation is revolutionary.

February 17, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Germany was not just humiliated, but was put in its place: Lavrov

Moscow Slams Nordics for Sweeping Nord Stream Blast Under Carpet as Hersh Warns of Dire Costs for US

Sputnik – 15.02.2023

Last week, bombshell reporting by veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that the Biden administration was directly responsible for September’s attacks against the Nord Stream network, which cut off a major Russian route for energy deliveries to Germany, and undermined Europe’s energy security.

Denmark and Sweden have failed to respond to Russian overtures to discuss the Nord Stream blasts for nearly six months now, with their behavior constituting nothing short of a “boorish” attempt to hide Washington’s responsibility for the sabotage attack, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

“For half a year now they’ve been as silent as a fish on ice, and since September neither the Swedes nor the Danish have responded to official letters of our prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, who very politely offered to appoint some kind of contact person with whom it would be possible to hold talks, since [the attack] took place in the territorial waters of their exclusive zones, and the pipelines are the property of a Russian company,” Lavrov said, speaking to reporters on Wednesday.

“If since September the head of the Russian government is waiting for a reply from the absolutely independent sovereign states in question, if our ambassadors remind the prime ministers of these countries about once a month that they’ve been contacted, at least tell him ‘yes mister prime minister, we have received your appeal but we’re busy at the moment’. But we haven’t got even that. I think this is boorishness. But this boorishness masks the total failure of attempts to obscure the responsibility of the collective West, led by the United States, for this sabotage, for organizing this terrorist act,” the Russian top diplomat added.

Lavrov characterized the sabotage of Nord Stream a “final solution to the German gas issue” by its overseas partners. “Just as they are now trying to resolve the ‘Russian question,’ so did they want to resolve the ‘German question,’ so that Berlin would never try to play any kind of independent role in the foreseeable historical perspective,” Lavrov said, recalling how competitively-priced and dependable Russian energy had enabled Germany to become Europe’s leading economy.

“Germany was not just humiliated, but was put in its place – the place of a satellite of the United States, with Washington deciding whether the country can ensure its economic development, meet the social needs of its citizens through the use of gas coming through a pipeline which Berlin partially paid for itself.” The Biden administration doesn’t seem to “give a damn about what hardship will befall many countries, including their close allies,” Lavrov emphasized.

Lavrov suggested that the modern history of Europe has shown that whenever Russia and Germany enjoy good relations and are able to cooperate economically, in logistics and even militarily, Europe enjoys calmer, more peaceful times, to the irritation of forces across the ocean or across the English Channel, who seek to command Europe’s destiny.

1984-Style Blackout on Hersh Revelations

Commenting on Hersh’s bombshell reporting on the Nord Stream blasts, and the media blackout in coverage of the story except to attack or smear the veteran investigative reporter, Lavrov compared Western governments’ behavior to a “trend” straight out of a George Orwell novel in which the state keeps media firmly under control.

“Look at the reaction in the West to Hersh’s precise, fact-based revelations in connection with the explosions of Nord Stream 1 and 2,” Lavrov said. The Russian diplomat pointed out that if Moscow was to be blamed, for instance, for the disruption of an oil pipeline between Canada and the US, the media would be forced to write about it non-stop. But with Hersh’s story – grounded in facts, the reaction has been zilch.

Lavrov urged the foreign press to conduct fact-based investigations into the costs being borne by European economies after the rejection of Russian energy, and to dig more closely into the details of the revelations uncovered by Hersh.

Consequences

As the potential implications of his reporting for international politics continue to reverberate, Hersh said Wednesday that he expects the “enormous” political consequences of the US attack on Nord Stream to last for many years, “looking even at the potential of countries walking out of NATO.”

The investigative journalist, who has an unimpeachable reputation for accuracy and over 60 years of journalistic experience under his belt, has also blasted his detractors for their cowardice, pointing out that despite his long careers with both the New York Times and the Washington Post, “neither paper has run a word this point about the pipeline story, not even to quote the White House’s denial of my reporting.”

The Russian mission to the United Nations plans to organize a Security Council meeting on the attack on Nord Stream on February 22, citing “new information” about the attack unveiled in Hersh’s reporting.

February 15, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

In lengthy interview with the Berliner Zeitung, Seymour Hersh offers more intriguing details about Nordstream attack

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | February 15, 2023

It’s been a week since Seymour Hersh released his Substack exclusive about How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline. The mainstream German press have responded with uniform scepticism. Most reports followed the example of the wire services, in leading with the blanket denials of American officials and noting that the story was well-received in Moscow. A few operations, like the state media outlet Tagesschau, attempted a more comprehensive debunking, in this case by asking experts to pick holes in the details of Hersh’s story – with less than impressive results. The other major tactic has been to attack Hersh’s credibility, along similar lines as the American press. The latest headline here is that Bob Woodward thinks Hersh’s story is bunk, and because Woodward is also a famous American journalist, that means checkmate for Hersh, or something.

The biggest development is an interview that Hersh gave to the Berliner Zeitung. It was published yesterday and contains many new details. For example, Hersh tells his interviewer that the plan was to detonate “eight bombs … near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic sea,” of which only “six…went off.” This is the first confirmation we’ve had anywhere of an obvious point, namely that the operation wasn’t fully successful, and that this is the only reason that Pipe B of Nord Stream 2 escaped intact. He’s also more explicit on the involvement of Denmark and Sweden, saying “I was told that they did what they did [to facilitate the planting of explosives] and they knew what they were doing and they understood what was going on, but maybe nobody ever said ‘yes.’”

Hersh also provides more operational detail:

[T]there was a decompression chamber, and we used a Norwegian submarine hunter. Only two divers were used for the four pipelines. One problem was how to deal with Baltic Sea surveillance. The Baltic is monitored very thoroughly, there’s a lot of freely available data, so we took care of that, there were three or four different people for that. And what was done then is very simple. For 21 years, our Sixth Fleet … has been conducting [BALTOPS] … [F]or the first time in history, the NATO exercise in the Baltic had a new programme. It was to be a twelve-day exercise to drop and detect mines. A number of nations sent out mine teams, one group dropped a mine and another mine team went out to find it and blow it up.

So there was this period of time when things were exploding, and during that time the deep-sea divers could operate and attach the mines to the pipelines. The two pipelines run about a mile apart, they’re a little buried under the silt on the seabed, but they’re not difficult to get to, and the divers had practised it. It only took a couple of hours to place the bombs …

[T]hey did it towards the end of the exercise. But at the last minute, the White House got nervous. The president said he was afraid to go ahead. He changed his mind and gave new orders, so they had the ability to detonate the bombs remotely at any time. You do it with normal sonar, a Raytheon product by the way, you fly over the spot and drop a cylinder. It sends a low-frequency signal, you could say it sounds like a flute, you can set different frequencies.

The fear, however, was that the bombs wouldn’t work if they stayed in the water too long. This is actually what happened with two of the bombs. So there was concern within the group about finding the right way, and we actually had to turn to other intelligence agencies, which I’ve deliberately not written about.

There were still active explosives on the sea bed as the pipes were leaking their gas, which explains why partially complicit Denmark and Sweden closed the whole area and denied all access, until they themselves had removed everything.

Hersh also clarifies further the chronology of Biden’s order, and appears to suggest that at least some of those involved believed they were planting explosives only as part of a negotiating tactic, and that they’d never be used. (How this is to be harmonised with Hersh’s insistence that the sonar trigger was a last-minute plan, I can’t imagine):

Joe Biden decided not to blow them up back in June, it was five months into the war. But in September he ordered it done. The operational staff, the people who do “kinetic” things for the United States, they do what the president says, and they initially thought this was a useful weapon he could use in negotiations. But at some point, after the Russians invaded and then when the operation was completed, the whole thing became increasingly repugnant to the people who were doing it. These were people who worked in top positions in the intelligence services and were well trained. They turned against the project, they thought it was crazy.

Shortly after the attack, after they had done what they were ordered to do, there was a lot of anger about the operation and repudiation among those involved. That’s one of the reasons I learned so much. And I’ll tell you something else. The people in America and Europe who build pipelines know what happened. I’ll tell you something important. The people who own companies that build pipelines all know the story. I didn’t get the story from them, but I quickly learned that they know.

Elsewhere, Hersh says that the discontent with Biden’s attack is specifically within the CIA, where participants in the operation are “appalled that Biden decided to expose Europe to the cold in order to further a war he will not win.”

As I said before, it seems obvious that what happened to Nord Stream is an open secret in security and government circles, and that the truth simply can’t be acknowledged, because nobody in the German government wants to live with the political consequences. The only really interesting detail that all the debunkings have in common, is their refusal to address what I see as the central problem with Hersh’s story. As I said before, he says divers planted explosives at a point where the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines run just one mile apart from each other. This only describes the location of the second cluster of explosions on 26 September. The first explosion hit Pipe A of Nord Stream 2 well to the south, at a point where the two pipelines are perhaps 15 km apart.

This detail appears particularly important, in light of flight data which seems to confirm Hersh’s account that a Norwegian P8 dropped a sonar buoy into the Baltic northeast of Bornholm sometime around 4am on the morning of 26 September. Crucially, this data has the P8 arriving too late to trigger the first Nord Stream 2 explosion, which happened at 2:03 am local time. It looks for all the world like somebody organised two totally separate operations, involving two separately triggered pipeline attacks, and that Hersh’s source only knows about one of them.

February 15, 2023 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Sweden explains rejection of joint Nord Stream probe

Samizdat | October 14, 2022

Stockholm has rejected a plan to set up an official joint investigation team together with Germany and Denmark to look into the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in late September, Reuters reported, citing a Swedish investigator. Sweden reportedly argued that its own findings are too sensitive to share even with other EU nations.

The EU’s agency for criminal justice cooperation, Eurojust, recently came up with a proposal to establish a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to launch a probe into the Nord Stream explosions, Reuters said, adding that Sweden blocked the initiative. On Friday, Mats Ljungqvist, a Swedish prosecutor involved in the nation’s probe into the incident, told the news agency that this development would impose unwanted obligations on his nation.

“This is because there is information in our investigation that is subject to confidentiality directly linked to national security,” Ljungqvist said, adding that his nation is already cooperating with Germany and Denmark on the matter anyway.

According to the prosecutor, establishing a JIT would involve signing a legally binding information-sharing agreement. Eurojust says on its website that a JIT mechanism indeed includes a legal agreement between the involved parties for the purposes of conducting criminal investigations.

Earlier, citing “security circles,” Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine said that Sweden considered the sensitivity level of its own probe’s findings to be “too high to share them with other countries.” News portal Tagesschau, owned by the German ARD broadcaster, also reported on Friday that Germany, Sweden, and Denmark initially wanted to investigate the incident together but “that’s not the case now.”

According to Tagesschau, Denmark also eventually opposed the idea of a joint probe. Now, all three nations will conduct their own separate investigations, it added. Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson denied the reports, however, adding that “we are working together with Germany and Denmark on this issue.”

Earlier, all three nations refused to grant Russia access to the probe, prompting Moscow to summon their ambassadors. Russia also said it would not recognize the results of any probe unless its specialists were allowed to participate. Andersson said on Monday that Stockholm would not share its investigation results with Moscow.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were damaged and rendered inoperable following a series of powerful underwater explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm. No nation conducting a probe into the incident has officially named any suspects that could have been involved in the alleged attacks on the pipelines.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously hinted at a potential “beneficiary.”

“One can now force the liquefied natural gas from the US on to European countries on a much larger scale,” he said earlier this week. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the incidents a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe “to once and for all remove dependence on Russian energy.”

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Moscow demands answers on Nord Stream blasts

Samizdat | October 13, 2022

Russia will not recognize the results of the ongoing investigation into the explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in late September unless its experts are allowed to take part in the probe, Moscow has said. Russia’s foreign ministry revealed on Thursday it had summoned the representatives of Germany, Denmark and Sweden to convey its “bewilderment” over a lack of official reaction to a request for cooperation sent earlier this month by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

In its press statement, the ministry noted that while Russian authorities and the country’s energy giant, Gazprom, have still not been granted access to the investigation, reports have been appearing which suggest that Berlin, Copenhagen and Stockholm have been far more accommodating to similar requests made by other nations, including the US.

Russian diplomats emphasized that if its calls for cooperation are ignored, Moscow will assume that the three European countries “have something to hide or [that] they are covering up the perpetrators of these terrorist attacks.”

“Russia will, of course, not recognize any ‘pseudo-results’ of such an investigation, unless Russian experts take part in it,” the statement read.

The warning comes after Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson announced on Monday that Stockholm would not share with Moscow the results of its investigation into the explosions that severely damaged the two conduits created to pump gas from Russia to Europe.

“In Sweden, our preliminary investigations are confidential, and that, of course, also applies in this case,” she explained.

The premier added, however, that Russia may conduct its own probe at the site if it so wishes.

Meanwhile, Swedish authorities have said they’d found evidence that points to sabotage.

Also on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted that despite the denial of access to the probe, “we all know well who the ultimate beneficiary of this crime is.” Earlier, he had publicly laid the blame for the attack at the doorstep of the “Anglo-Saxons,” a Russian colloquialism for the US-UK bond.

Commenting on the blasts, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had described them as a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe “to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy.”

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were rendered inoperable on September 26 following a series of powerful underwater explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm.

October 13, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU Ban on RT, Sputnik Breaches Swedish, Danish Constitutions – Danish Journalists

Samizdat – 07.10.2022

The EU ban on Russian news outlets is in breach of Swedish and Danish constitutions, which explicitly prohibit all forms of censorship, Danish journalists and media educators said Friday.

The EU Council of Ministers banned the dissemination of RT and Sputnik content in March and added three other Russian outlets to the blacklist in June. The European Court of Justice defended the controversial measure, saying the rights of journalists were protected as long as they acted “in good faith.”

This is despite that legal safeguards in the Swedish Constitution’s freedom of the press act protect “the right of everyone to publish without prior interference by a public authority,” whereas the Danish constitution states that “Censorship and other preventive measures shall never again be introduced.”

Media experts argued in an article in the EUobserver that the EU intervention effectively overrode the basic laws of Sweden and Denmark, raising doubts about the EU leadership’s commitment to democratic values and the rule of law.

The journalists said the EU executive set aside constitutional defenses of freedom of expression with the silent approval of media and the public. The only exception was Norway, which is not a member state but is closely associated with the union.

They said the EU’s court in Luxembourg had granted itself the right to decide what journalism was acceptable while denying European citizens the ability to deal themselves with “unfiltered statements from questionable sources.”

“There is no confidence in our ability to deal with contradictory views of events. The EU institutions decide what we can cope with. Freedom of expression is not absolute, and never was,” they said.

October 7, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Denmark ends COVID jab for people under 50

By Rachel Emmanuel | The Counter Signal | September 14, 2022

Denmark has ended the COVID-19 vaccine for most people under 50, the Danish Health Authority said yesterday.

Denmark had already discontinued COVID-19 shots for nearly everyone under 18.

According to health officials, the purpose of vaccines is to prevent severe illness, hospitalization and death.

“Therefore, people at the highest risk of of becoming severely ill will be offered booster vaccination,” the Danish Health Authority says.

“The purpose of vaccination is not to prevent infection with covid-19, and people under 50 are therefore currently not being offered booster vaccination.”

The statement goes on to say that people under 50 are generally not at high risk of becoming severely ill from COVID.

“In addition, younger people aged under 50 are well protected against becoming severely ill from covid-19, as a very large number of them have already been vaccinated and have previously been infected with covid-19, and there is consequently good immunity among this

Under the new regulations, Danes under 50 will only be inoculated if they at high risk of becoming severely ill from COVID-19. This includes those with an impaired immune system, people working in healthcare and those working with seniors.

The ban comes even while Denmark expects “a large wave of [Covid] infection” in the next few months, according to independent journalist Alex Berenson.

Berenson reports that Denmark did not explicitly say the risks of mRNA jabs now outweigh their benefits for healthy people under 50, but that view “is implicit in the announcement.”

“In other words, the health authority is not stopping shots because Covid has ended. It now believes most people are better off getting the coronavirus than taking more mRNA,” he wrote.

The announcement comes as other countries make similar steps to limit COVID-19 vaccine access.

The UK has banned doctors from giving the COVID-19 vaccine to children under 12, saying kids don’t need it and they likely already have natural immunity.

The UK government also released a report stating that pregnant and breastfeeding women should under no circumstance get the Pfizer COVID vaccine due to a lack of trial data on the vaccine’s effect on reproductive health.

In Canada, health authorities continue to encourage parents to vaccinate their babies and kids, even while the former Chair of National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) admitted last month that COVID is less deadly to kids than the flu.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently said he might impose more COVID restrictions this winter unless 80-90% of the population gets “up-to-date” vaccinations.

To be fully vaccinated in Canada previously meant having two doses of a Health Canada-approved vaccine. The Canadian federal government is now applying pressure for citizens to get regular COVID-19 boosters.

In September, NACI announced that Canadians might consider getting a vaccine every 90 days.

September 14, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Occupation raids, attacks Palestinian organizations: EU, US and Canada are complicit!

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | August 21, 2022

In the early morning hours of Thursday, 18 August, armed Israeli occupation forces invaded the offices of seven prominent Palestinian NGOs, civil society organizations and human rights defenders: the Health Work Committees, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Bisan Centre, Defence for Children International – Palestine, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. These organizations have all been designated by the Israeli occupation as “terrorist” in retaliation for their advocacy and community organizing work for Palestine, and then labeled “illegal organizations” in a military order covering the occupied West Bank of Palestine.

The invading forces ransacked the offices, confiscating computers, legal client files, documentation, printers and monitors and leaving clutter behind — as documented by the organizations’ surveillance cameras, recording the occupation forces’ invasion. The doors of the organizations were welded shut and a paper military order affixed to the door declaring their operation “illegal” under the occupation’s (illegal) military orders.

The organizations declared that they would not be silenced by these attacks, holding press conferences and returning to the offices to reopen them and continue their work. The attacks received widespread condemnation not only from Palestinian and pro-Palestinian forces but even from European governments whose policies and practices consistently target the Palestinian people and their fundamental rights.

Now, on Sunday, 21 August, occupation intelligence authorities — the Shin Bet — phoned Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin to threaten him with interrogation and arrest if the organization’s work continues, while Defence for Children International – Palestine director Khaled Quzmar was summoned to and held under interrogation.

“Terror” Designations and Political Control

The invasions, interrogations, ransacking and attacks on these organizations reflect the failure of the occupation’s regime of “terror” designations to undermine their work. In 2021, not only did the regime designate Al-Haq, Addameer, DCI, Bisan, the UPWC and the UAWC as “terrorist” organizations — quickly followed by the military orders banning their work in the occupied West Bank of Palestine — it earlier in the year designated Samidoun (on 21 February 2021), followed by three more organizations. Previously and in a similar pretext, the occupation had issued a similar designation against the Health Work Committees along with designations of groups including the Arab Organization for Human Rights UK, the Palestinian Return Centre and Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

As we noted at the time, this

“indicates just how meaningless the term ‘terrorist’ is in the hands of the Israeli regime. It means precisely any organization, activist, or freedom fighter that challenges Zionist colonialism through any method or means of resistance at all. The flurry of ‘terrorist’ designations for organizations working to expose Israel’s crimes and organize Palestinians underlines this reality….These designations are not attacks on individual organizations but against Palestinian human rights defenders and those around the world who stand up for Palestinian liberation — and, fundamentally, the Palestinian people as a whole, especially the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons. They attempt to repress growing support for the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people and confrontation of imperialism and Zionism.”

Further, it is clear that the use of such designations is intended to further political control over Palestinian society. These designations hinge on the allegation that organizations are close to one or another Palestinian resistance organizations, most commonly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or Hamas. Israeli officials have shopped around “evidence” to various governments that is so weak so as to be ludicrous, consisting almost entirely of unsubstantiated statements or on the idea that employing a person who supports a political organization (or, in some cases, relatives of people in political organizations “designated” by the occupation) is “funding” that organization by paying employees a salary for doing their job.

While it is obvious that these are false claims, the objective of this type of attack goes beyond simply lobbing allegations. Indeed, the European governments that have criticized the attacks and designations have also repeatedly affirmed their willingness to “examine evidence” and “act” if the Israeli regime “proves” that popular organizations, civil society groups and human rights advocates are in some way “tied” to Palestinian resistance movements. Not only are the organizations “innocent” of the Israeli claims, the claims themselves are fundamentally repugnant. The Palestinian people have the right to resist occupation and to be a part of political, social and armed movements in that resistance; this is not “terrorism” but an essential right of people under occupation and colonization.

Rather than affirming the right of Palestinians to resist and to organize themselves to achieve those goals, these European governments instead use these attacks to impose even greater political scrutiny and conditions. In many cases (such as the Netherlands), these governments recommend or require that all employees of these organizations must not be associated with any “banned” Palestinian political organization. If Palestinians are part of a political party or movement, they must be unemployable and impoverished: this is both the argument of the occupation and of the European states providing a meager “defense” of Palestinian civil society.

For the European funding agencies and many large foundations, supporting Palestinian NGOs has never been primarily about empowering or supporting the Palestinian people to achieve their liberation but rather about redirecting Palestinian energies into “state-building” and/or “reform” projects that exist within the confines of Oslo. Time and time again, these forces have introduced new conditional funding mechanisms and restrictions on everything from the political affiliation of individual employees to the names of buildings and schools.

European Union: Partners in Colonialism and Apartheid

This is borne out once again by the statement of nine European states — Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden — which invokes the promotion of “democratic values and the two-state solution,” a fundamental contradiction as the so-called “two-state solution” itself is the legitimization of the colonization and occupation of 78% of Palestine and no solution at all for the Palestinian people. This brief comment lays bare the real political motivation for European involvement in funding Palestinian organizations, which is to limit rather than to achieve rights, justice and liberation. Further, the statement notes that “should convincing evidence be made available to the contrary, we would act accordingly.”

Here, the “evidence” being referred to would be any “links” between these NGOs and the Palestinian resistance. By including this statement in their alleged defense of the organizations, these European states actually encourage the occupation to continue its raids and ransacking, confiscation of files, arrests and interrogations, in an attempt to manufacture such “evidence”.

Of course, the position of these states themselves — members of the aggressive NATO alliance, defenders of the Israeli occupation in international arenas — is all too clear. The European Union, while rejecting the designation of advocacy and civil society organizations, continues to designate Palestinian resistance organizations as “terrorists.”

France continues to imprison Georges Ibrahim Abdallah while doing almost nothing to advocate for its citizen Salah Hamouri, jailed without charge or trial under Israeli administrative detention, as the government attempts to criminalize Palestinian activism, such as the Collectif Palestine Vaincra. Germany not only engages in weapons deals with the occupation, it also engages in severely repressive practices against Palestine organizing, particularly Palestinian communities in exile and diaspora, from the expulsion of Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat and Palestinian torture survivor and feminist Rasmea Odeh to the ban on 15 May Nakba demonstrations in Berlin. This is not to mention the links between Zionism and European colonialism from the very beginning of the Zionist project.

Now, Israeli prime minister and war criminal Yair Lapid is scheduled to come to Brussels on 6 October to convene the “Association Council” with all EU member states’ foreign ministers, for the first time in 10 years. This is the council under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the agreement that provides for free trade for occupation products inside the EU and allows for occupation institutions to receive European grants for research and development.

Ending the EU-Israel Association Agreement is a long-time demand of the Palestine solidarity movement, but despite their expressed “concerns” about the violent repression imposed on Palestinians, these European states are planning to welcome Lapid and convene the Association Council after a long hiatus, celebrating their complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Canadian government has refused to make any meaningful statement about these attacks, despite posing as a defender of “human rights.” U.S. officials stated their “concern,” while continuing to provide $3.8 billion in military support to the occupier.

**

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network affirms that these attacks are part and parcel of the ongoing war on Palestinian existence and organization, carried out by the Zionist state and supported by the imperialist powers that ally with the Israeli occupation, as well as Arab reactionary regimes engaged in “normalization” and the Palestinian Authority. While PA officials declare their public support for the targeted organizations, the PA continues to engage in security coordination with the occupation, declined the use of its security forces to defend the organizations, and has even previously detained leaders, directors and staff of these organizations challenging its repression at the behest of the occupier.

We reaffirm that the primary way that we can confront these designations is by intensifying our organizing, action, mobilization and resistance to bring down the structures of colonialism, implement the right to return for Palestinian refugees, and support the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners and of Palestine, from the river to the sea. This includes campaigning to bring an end to the so-called “terrorist lists” used to terrify Palestinian communities and Palestine solidarity organizers, which only provide a weapon in the hands of the occupation and encourages it to engage in further specious designations.

We also urge all to take action to confront Lapid’s visit on 6 October in Brussels and to bring down the “EU-Israel Association Agreement,” an agreement built on the colonization of Palestine and the massacres targeting the Palestinian people. It is incumbent upon all institutions and organizations concerned about these raids and about the Palestinian people to adopt and implement the boycott and international isolation of Israel, including at the United Nations and its bodies.

Further, we urge all to join us in organizing to march in Brussels on 29 October for the March for Return and Liberation to the European Parliament, to demand an end to European complicity, involvement in and support for the colonization of Palestine, the siege on Gaza, the imprisonment of Palestinians and the denial of millions of Palestinians’ right to return home.

samidoun@samidoun.net

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Denmark bans vaccine for youth under 18

By Mike Campbell | The Counter Signal | August 9, 2022

Denmark has announced that people under the age of 18 are no longer allowed to get the COVID vaccine.

Those wanting their first shot were cut off after July 1, and no one in the age group — aside from those who are considered “high risk” and have a doctor’s note — will be allowed to get a second shot after September 1.

“Children and adolescents only very rarely become seriously ill from COVID-19 with the omicron variant. Therefore, from July 1, 2022, it will no longer be possible for children and adolescents under the age of 18 to get the 1st [shot], and from September 1, 2022, it will no longer be possible to get the 2nd [shot],” reads a government statement. [translated from Danish]

While many are likely relieved because it means that vaccine mandates won’t be coming back to school, few have followed Denmark’s lead, and if the science is universal, it’s a wonder why they haven’t.

For example, despite this decision from Denmark, babies are now eligible to receive three rounds of Moderna’s Covid vaccine in Canada, even though COVID poses no greater threat to babies than the flu does, and Health Canada admits they lack long-term safety data.

Moreover, various health authorities have recently highlighted the risks of adverse effects that exist from the COVID vaccines.

Germany’s ministry of health recently tweeted there’s a 1 in 5000 chance people receive a “serious adverse effect” from the vaccines.

This came just days after Ontario’s CMHO refused to say healthy people “should” get boosted with what he referred to as a “therapeutic” due to the risk of myocarditis being 1 in 5000.

While it seems that more and more authorities are warning of the risks of vaccines — which, according to Denmark, are greater than the risk of COVID for the young and healthy — few countries are willing to say outright that the risks outweigh the benefits.

August 9, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Denmark’s Own Gas Production Won’t Be Relaunched Until Next Winter

By Igor Kuznetsov – Samizdat – 04.08.2022

The delay on the Tyra gas field, which before closure amid the so-called “Green switch” provided 90 percent of Denmark’s gas output, has appeared to cloud the Nordic country’s ambitions to help alleviate the current energy crisis.

Amid the dire situation on Europe’s energy market, record-high prices and uncertainty associated with future deliveries of Russian gas due to sanctions, Denmark has been pinning its hopes on the Tyra gas field in the North Sea to assure regular deliveries and relieve some of the economic pain.

However, TotalEnergies, which operates the Tyra field on behalf of the Danish Underground Consortium (DUC), said in a press release that the work on rebuilding the field will be delayed.

The delay means that gas from the Tyra field will only be delivered during the winter season 2023-24 at the earliest. So far, the expectation has been that the Tyra field could reopen in June next year.

COVID-19 has been blamed for the delay, as the pandemic made it more difficult to obtain manpower and materials for the shipyard in Batam in Indonesia, where the platform for the field is being built. Therefore, it won’t be completed in time.

“We take the current energy crisis in Denmark and Europe seriously. Therefore, we are mobilizing significant additional resources offshore so that we can whenever possible compensate for the delays that have occurred at the shipyard and get Tyra into operation”, Martin Rune Pedersen, director of TotalEnergies Denmark, told TV2.

Pedersen described the Tyra field as a “cornerstone of future Danish gas production”. Overall, oil and gas has been produced in the Danish part of the North Sea since 1972, creating workplaces both onshore and offshore. Before its closure in September 2019 for environmental reasons as part of the much-touted “Green switch”, the Tyra field accounted for 90 percent of the natural gas produced in Denmark.

When fully ready, Tyra II is expected to produce 2.8 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

Denmark’s total gas consumption in 2021 was 2.15 billion cubic meters, which corresponds to 0.4 percent of the EU’s total gas consumption.

Today, wholly 800,000 Danes in the country of 5.8 million live in homes powered by gas, which has cast doubt over the feasibility of the government’s plans to go fully green in a matter of years.

In June, the Danish Energy Agency issued an early warning due to uncertainty about the Nordic country’s gas supplies, calling on fellow Danes to save energy. In order to achieve energy self-sufficiency, Denmark plans a drastic expansion of wind and solar energy production. At the same time, it will also boost domestic production of gas, despite previous plans to halt it entirely.

Faced with the prospect of power outages and rationing in the coming winter, EU leaders have adopted a “voluntary” target to reduce gas usage by 15 percent through March 2023 in order to evade the looming crisis.

August 4, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Arctic Council Decisions Made Without Russia to Be Illegitimate – Ambassador to US Antonov

Samizdat – 09.06.2022

WASHINGTON – Russia is concerned about plans to resume the work of the Arctic Council without its participation and warns that decisions made in this format will be illegitimate, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said.

Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the United States earlier announced their intention to resume work in the Council on a limited basis – within the framework of projects that do not involve Russia.

“Such a step cannot but cause concern not only for Russia as the current chairman of the Council, but also for the entire international community interested in the further sustainable development of this region. We state that this unique format of interstate interaction continues to be politicized,” Antonov said.

“Decisions on behalf of the Arctic Council, made without our country, will be illegitimate and violate the principle of consensus stipulated by its governing documents,” he warned.

The work of the Council was suspended on March 3 in light of the events in Ukraine.

June 9, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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