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Request submitted to ICC against EU’s Von der Leyen for Gaza genocide

Al Mayadeen | May 27, 2024

The Geneva International Peace Research Institute, GIPRI, submitted a communication to the International Criminal Court (ICC), signed by two Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF) Associates, Professor Richard Falk and TFF director Jan Oberg, urging the Court to investigate the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen for complicity in war crimes in the occupied Palestine territories including Gaza.

On May 22, GIPRI sent a communication to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC saying that reasonable grounds exist to believe that “the unconditional support of the President of the European Commission to Israel – military, economic, diplomatic and political – has enabled war crimes” and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

They said that the various human rights and prominent academics and experts in international criminal law endorsed the communication and urged the prosecutor to launch investigations based on the information they provided against Von der Leyen.

GIPRI added that Von der Leyen “personally is criminally responsible and liable for punishment for some of the war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide,” which have been committed and are still being committed by the IOF in the occupied Palestine territories, emphasizing that she has “aided, abetted and otherwise assisted in the in the commission or attempted commission of such crimes” which includes giving the means for this commission under Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute of the Court.

May 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

French PM reveals how countries like Poland will be flooded with migrants his country doesn’t want

‘They either accept migrants or pay’

BY GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK | REMIX NEWS | MAY 27, 2024

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s claim that the EU migration pact will mean illegal migrants will be transferred to Central Europe and will not go to France, has caused uproar on the Polish right.

“The migration pact introduces solidarity. We managed to force eastern countries to sign a document according to which they either accept migrants or pay,” said Attal during a television debate.

The leader of the Polish conservative Law and Justice (PiS), Jarosław Kaczyński, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) over the weekend that his party would be calling for an emergency meeting of the Polish parliament to consider the remarks made by France’s Attal during a television debate.

Attal claimed that the French provinces are safe from being allocated migrants covered by the EU migration pact, as the migrants will in the first instance be sent to Central and Eastern Europe. Kaczyński contrasted Attal’s statement with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s claim that the migration pact will not affect Poland because it has taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.

“It seems that Tusk once again is saying one thing in the EU and another in Poland,” said Kaczyński.

Conservatives in countries like Hungary and Poland have long warned that the EU’s recently passed migration pact was a ploy to transfer unwanted migrants to countries like Poland and Hungary, despite the West claiming that more migration and diversity was always a good thing and a source of “strength.”

Kaczyński said the parliamentary session on the EU migration pact should receive detailed information from PM Tusk with regard to the circumstances in which his government had failed to block the EU migration pact on the reallocation of migrants entering EU states.

Senior PiS MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski told independent television channel TV Republika that the migration pact will act as “a pump for migrants from Africa” and the Middle East who will see the pact as an invitation to come to Europe.

Saryusz-Wolski reminded that EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson has admitted that Europe needs to have 4.5 million migrants coming every single year “to bridge the demographic gap, change society and provide the left with future voters.”

The Polish government did vote against the EU migration pact at a session of the Council of the European Union, the body in which decisions are made by qualified majority. Kaczyński and PiS have consistently argued that the decision on the pact should be made by the European Council, at which all decisions must be unanimous. In the Council of the European Union, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia voted against the migration pact, which will introduce migrant quotas, but the new law carried the day as most EU states backed it.

The most controversial aspect of the EU migration pact is the provision that should member states refuse to take their share of the reallocated migrants, they will have to pay up to €23,000 for every migrant refused.

May 27, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

Orban Foresees Dire Consequences If EU Militarism Continues Unchecked

Sputnik – 26.05.2024

BUDAPEST – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Sunday that he had never seen greater irresponsibility than Europe getting involved in the conflict in Ukraine without calculating what it would cost.

“Europe is becoming so involved in the war that it does not even have an estimate of the scale of the costs and means necessary to achieve its military objective. I have never seen anything more irresponsible in my life,” Orban said in an interview with the Patriota YouTube channel.

He added that, in his opinion, NATO wanted to become a party to the conflict in Ukraine and “the chances that the alliance can be kept from doing so are limited.”
Budapest is against having decisions on the service of Hungarian citizens made “in Brussels or Germany,” Orban emphasized.

“We don’t want anyone else to be able to make decisions about conscription and sending our young men of draft age anywhere. We have to forget about a European army with compulsory conscription, this is a crazy idea,” the prime minister stressed.

Earlier in May, Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s Party, the largest one in the European Parliament, suggested reinstating compulsory military service across the entire European Union.

If Weber’s idea was implemented, “Hungarian families would be told from Brussels or Germany that their children would be compulsorily conscripted into the European army and told where they would go,” Orban added.

In the years to come, current events may be seen as a prelude to World War III or even its first episode if Brussels’ militarism is not countered, the Hungarian prime minister warned.

“Perhaps in 10 years the current processes will be called a prelude to World War III. It cannot be ruled out that if things go badly and we fail to control the military psychosis developed in Brussels, the history of these years will also be an episode of the first years of the big world war,” Orban said in an interview with the YouTube channel Patrióta.

Although European politicians see nuclear weapons as a deterrent, unforeseen worst-case scenarios could come to life, the Hungarian prime minister emphasized.

“In my opinion, European politicians think of the nuclear bomb as a tactical deterrence tool and not as something that should really be used, but what they don’t consider at the beginning of a war can still happen at the end, thus worst-case scenarios can come to life,” Orban explained.

Previously, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper that the United States threatened Moscow with the “destruction” of Russian forces in the special military operation zone if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitriy Medvedev said Poland should understand that an American strike on Russian troops would mean the beginning of a world war.

May 26, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Record numbers of ‘external and internal enemies’ threaten EU – Macron

RT | May 26, 2024

The EU is facing a record number of “external and internal enemies,” who pose an existential threat to the bloc, French President Emmanuel Macron has said, doubling down on a warning he’d given earlier, that “our Europe” could end up dying.

Macron made the remarks while speaking alongside Germany’s head of state, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on the first of his three-day state visit. The two attended the Festival of Democracy, held in Berlin’s government quarter, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the country’s constitution.

“I think that we are experiencing a moment in our Europe which is existential because I really believe that our Europe can die,” Macron stated, referring to a keynote speech he’d delivered in April.

The French president urged a vote for pro-EU forces in the upcoming European elections, warning the bloc has “never had so many enemies inside and outside” as it has now. The purported internal enemies are apparently European nationalists, with their rise raising questions about democracy itself, Macron asserted.

“There is a form of fascination with authoritarianism which is born in our own democracies … which also feeds nationalism and other extremes on our continent,” he claimed.

Macron painted a grim picture of “nationalists” entering government, alleging that they would have failed to tackle Covid-19 and shown “no capacity to respond to migration challenges,” climate change issues, and so on.

“We would have abandoned backing Ukraine against Russia, which all the nationalists in our countries support. And, therefore, history would have not been the same,” the president alleged.

“For all these reasons, it is important to vote in the Europeans,” he concluded.

The call was backed by Steinmeier, who said that the mere fact that Macron had shown up at the Festival of Democracy was somehow “a signal that we need an alliance of democrats in Europe.”

May 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Inter-EU Spat Over Air Defenses Scratches the Surface of Deep Divisions in Europe

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 24.05.2024

Poland and Greece on one side and EU behemoth Germany on the other have presented competing visions of a common European air defense system. Sputnik asked respected Polish political observer Mateusz Piskorski about the hidden tectonic political, economic and geostrategic tensions that the rival plans have laid bare.

Warsaw and Athens on Thursday urged the European Union to join forces to create a common “air defense shield” for the bloc.

“Europe will be safe as long as the skies over it are safe,” Polish and Greek prime ministers Donald Tusk and Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote in a joint letter to European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen. “That is why the EU needs a new flagship program – a European air defense shield – a comprehensive air defense system to protect our common EU airspace against all incoming threats.”

The ‘shield’ “must be a program which addresses [the] major vulnerability in our security” resulting from an array of global crises, and one “which strengthens the EU’s overall defense capabilities and incentivizes European defense companies to develop cutting-edge technologies,” the letter stressed.

Von der Leyen, up for reelection in the quickly approaching elections to the European Parliament in June, quickly endorsed the Polish-Greek proposal at a debate Thursday night.

The new air defense proposals comes after –and apparently as a direct challenge to, a German-led initiative floated in 2022 to create a ‘European Sky Shield’, involving the joint European purchase of pricey air defense equipment. That project fell into obscurity after other major EU partners, including France, expressed opposition to purchasing weapons made outside the bloc.

France and Italy have been pushing their own sophisticated rival to the American Patriot missile system known as the SAMP/T – priced at roughly $500 million per battery and $2 million per interceptor missile (compared to about $1 billion per battery and $4 million per missile in the Patriot’s case). Both systems have been thrashed by Russian forces after being sent to Ukraine.

The competing EU air defense proposals and inability to agree on a bloc-wide policy to date is logical outcome of a union divided by internal political divisions, economic and strategic considerations, and the overbearing influence of Europe’s partners in Washington, says Mateusz Piskorski, a former Sjem lawmaker, independent political observer and columnist for the Mysl Polska (‘Polish Thought’) newspaper.

Piskorski reminded Sputnik that the second of the competing air defense proposals have been unveiled on the eve of elections to the European Parliament, and recalled that both the Polish and Greek prime ministers are members of the same European-level party – the center-right, pro-Europeanist European People’s Party.

“As representatives of this pan-European party, the ranks of which incidentally include Ursula von der Leyen, they are likely trying to demonstrate in the framework of pre-election activities that they have their own version and vision of a European air defense system. In other words, this is an election campaign issue,” Piskorski explained.

From that perspective, the observer stressed that there’s no question that the Polish-Greek ‘European Air Defense Shield’ is an alternative to the German European Sky Shield proposal, recalling that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats are direct competitors to the European People’s Party at the EU level.

“Secondly, of course, there are certain political subtleties,” Piskorski said, pointing to lingering Greek animosities to Germany’s treatment of Athens a decade-and-a-half ago when Greece suffered economic collapse, and the strict austerity programs enforced on it at Berlin’s direction.

Poland too has “historical and political grounds” of its own to express skepticism of German initiatives, Piskorski said.

“Everyone understands that the creation of such a system – the development of this program would require the effort of all EU members,” and that a major European power – Germany or France, would have to take the lead, the observer noted.

One of the prime reasons Europe already doesn’t have its own common air defense system comes down to the influence of its “Anglo-Saxon friends, and, naturally, first and foremost the USA, who are protecting their own interests and see continental Europe as their protectorate,” Piskorski said.

The UK plays second fiddle in this arrangement, having left the EU through Brexit, closing the door to any pan-European integration projects, including defense policy.

With Central European countries like Poland owing their allegiance to the US, Piskorski rules out the creation a genuinely European mutual air defense arrangement at the current stage. “No one will say so directly, but such an initiative would not be received kindly by Washington and American authorities, just like attempts to create a common European defense policy,” he said.

“Attempts to create large, powerful structures in the military-industrial complex of continental Europe are projects which contradict the main economic and geopolitical interests of the United States,” Piskorski stressed.

That said, the observer doesn’t rule out a European move toward “strategic autonomy,” to quote President Macron of France, including as far as questions related to defense are concerned, after the presidential elections in the US, and in the event that Washington scales back its participation in and financing for various defense-related projects in Europe.

“This would make these projects more concrete and substantive. But this is a question for the future. It’s a slow process. I think that the process of gaining autonomy in this area may take at least several years, perhaps several decades,” Piskorski stressed.

Discord in Europe

Besides US intransigence, up to and including the possible use of agents of influence to resist EU air defense initiatives, there are issues of financing, as well as “technological barriers,” the observer believes.

“There are many factors here, but first and foremost of all is the question of financing. We know that, unfortunately, the European Commission’s sanctions policy and the so-called ‘green agenda’ on environmental issues, among other things, has resulted in European industry being curtailed. Europe is in a fairly deep economic crisis, at least for now,” Piskorski said.

As for technological barriers, “they are connected, first of all, with the fact that Europe has relied exclusively on the United States in this regard in the past, and did not have time to develop its own technologies to the same level… And of course, within Europe there is competition between the defense-industrial complexes of different nations. Naturally, any EU country will seek to support the interests of its own manufacturers, developers of technology, and so on,” the political observer summed up.

May 25, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Hungary blocking EU plan to give Russian money to Ukraine – FT

RT | May 25, 2024

Hungary has blocked legislation that would allow the EU hand over profits earned on frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing sources.

The West froze around $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets when the Ukraine conflict escalated, trapping around $280 billion in the EU. While the bloc stopped short of confiscating the assets outright due to legal concerns, earlier this week it approved the use of interest generated from the assets to provide military aid to Kiev. The annual revenue is estimated to be around $3 billion.

However, according to five FT sources familiar with internal discussions among EU ambassadors, Hungary’s envoy has opposed expedited payments to Ukraine using Russian interest income. “For the time being they are blocking everything connected to the military support to Ukraine,” one source said, adding the situation would not change until next month’s elections for the European Parliament, at the earliest.

To placate Hungary, the EU reportedly proposed a deal under which its share of the bloc’s funds would not be used to purchase weapons for Ukraine. According to FT, this had limited success, as Budapest agreed not to veto the transfer of revenue to Ukraine. However, it is holding up the implementation of the decision by failing to support the necessary legislation, the article says.

The outlet also said that while Hungary is not opposed to sending the Russian money to Ukraine per se, it has concerns about making the payments automatic.

Meanwhile, Moscow has denounced the decision to transfer profits from its assets to Ukraine as blatant and illegal “expropriation.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called the move “potentially dangerous,” and warned of possible repercussions, including lawsuits.

Hungary has been a consistent critic of the West’s approach to the Ukraine conflict, particularly its arms shipments to Kiev. Officials in Budapest have repeatedly called for a ceasefire, insisting that EU sanctions against Russia have failed to undermine its economy and have boomeranged against the bloc.

At the end of last year, Hungary delayed the EU’s €50 billion ($54 billion) aid package to Ukraine for several weeks, but eventually backed down under Western pressure.

May 25, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

US pressing EU to curb Chinese exports

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. © Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images
RT | May 23, 2024

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has urged the EU curb cheap imports of Chinese green technology in what could push the bloc toward a trade war with the Asian country.

During a visit to Frankfurt on Tuesday, Yellen reiterated recent claims that China’s excess production capacity threatened both American and EU companies.

“China’s industrial policy may seem remote as we sit here in this room, but if we do not respond strategically and in a united way, the viability of businesses in both our countries and around the world could be at risk,” Yellen told reporters at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.

Yellen argued in favor of 100% tariffs, which are seen by many economists as protectionist and a potential trigger for wider trade wars with China. Last week, US President Joe Biden announced the quadrupling of import duties on Chinese electric vehicles to over 100% and a doubling of semiconductor duties to 50%.

In her remarks in Frankfurt, the Yellen told EU leaders it would be “more forceful to communicate to China as a group.”

The comments come a week after the Biden administration hiked tariffs on $18 billion in Chinese goods including electric vehicles, batteries, semiconductors, steel, aluminum, critical minerals, solar cells, ship-to-shore cranes, and medical products, while retaining tariffs on over $300 billion in goods imposed by the previous administration of Donald Trump.

The EU, which sells a greater share of exports to China than the US, has been pursuing a policy of “de-risking” rather than decoupling. However, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hinted on Tuesday that the EU would join the US in imposing tariffs on Chinese goods.

“Should [it] be confirmed what I suspect, that such [Chinese] subsidies exist, then I can guarantee that the level of the duties we would impose is correspondent to the level of damage,” she said referring to an EU investigation into alleged state subsidies into the automotive industry in China.

Beijing has said it will retaliate against any tariffs with potential duties on products including French brandy, EU wine and dairy products.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, during his recent two-day trip to China, suggested that the US had imposed tariffs on Chinese-made EVs because they had improved in quality.

He suggested that Washington wanted to prevent strong competitors from entering the American market, and described the US approach as “unfair competition.”

Chinese officials have repeatedly denounced US trade and tech policy, describing it as “economic bullying.”

May 23, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Half of Moldovans Say Gov’t Policy on Gagauzia Wrong, Over 50% Distrust NATO – Poll

Sputnik – 23.05.2024

CHISINAU – Half of Modova’s residents consider the government’s policy toward the autonomous region of Gagauzia wrong, while more than half do not trust NATO, Moldovan social research company IMAS found in a fresh survey published on Wednesday.

Asked what they thought of the policy of the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) toward Gagauzia, 50% or respondents said it was wrong, 29% said it was right and 21% said they could not answer the question.

Respondents were also asked to evaluate their level of trust in various international institutions, including the World Health Organization, NATO, the European Parliament, the European Union, World Bank, the UN and others. Speaking of NATO, 18% said they had “little” trust, 42% said they had “no to very little” trust, 21% said they trusted the military alliance and only 9% said they trusted it a lot. Additionally, 2% of Moldovans said they they’d never heard of NATO and 8% said they could not give an answer.

The poll was conducted among 1,088 people from May 2-19 with a maximum margin of error of 3%. Its results were broadcast live on the Realitatea website.

Gagauzia, where most people speak Russian as well as Gagauz, a Turkic language, declared independence from Soviet Moldova in 1990 but was integrated into the newly-established Republic of Moldova in 1994. The Gagauz people are Orthodox Christians of Turkic origin. Gagauzia has traditionally favored rapprochement with Russia, while Chisinau has set a course toward European integration.

According to the country’s constitution, Moldova has neutral status, but from 1994 it has been cooperating with NATO, and with the accession to power of PAS, which is informally led by President Maia Sandu, military exercises involving the US, the UK, German and Romanian military have become more frequent. Sandu has told local media that Moldova should continue discussing rapprochement with NATO, as this allegedly helps strengthen the country’s defense capabilities.

May 23, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Georgian PM accuses EU of ‘blackmailing’ him with assassination threat

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze. © Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP
RT | May 23, 2024

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has claimed that a European commissioner told him he could end up suffering the same fate as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt last week.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, Kobakhidze said that the unnamed commissioner warned him during a recent phone call that the West would take “a number of measures” against him if his government pressed ahead with a law requiring foreign NGOs in Georgia to disclose their funding.

“While listing these measures, he mentioned: ‘you see what happened to Fico, and you should be very careful’,” he wrote.

Fico was shot multiple times as he met with supporters outside a government meeting in the town of Handlova on May 15. He was rushed to hospital, underwent emergency surgery, and is currently recuperating from his injuries. His would-be assassin – a 71-year-old poet who allegedly disagreed with Fico’s suspension of military aid to Ukraine – has been charged with attempted murder.

Georgia’s parliament passed the ‘Transparency of Foreign Influence Act’ last week. The law requires NGOs, media outlets, and individuals receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as entities “promoting the interests of a foreign power” and disclose their donors.

While the act has been vetoed by Georgia’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, parliament is expected to override the veto.

May 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Some EU States Mulling Sanctions Against Georgia Over Foreign Agents Bill – Reports

Sputnik – 22.05.2024

Some EU member states are considering imposing sanctions on Georgia, including the suspension of visa-free travel regime, over the foreign agents bill, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the situation.

On Saturday, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili vetoed the controversial foreign agents bill that had been adopted by the country’s parliament last Tuesday. The parliament needs a simple majority to override the veto.

A number of EU countries, led by Estonia, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Sweden, aim to discuss restrictive measures towards Georgia at the EU Foreign Affairs meeting next week, the Financial Times reported.

The potential sanctions include suspending visa-free travel to the European Union by Georgians, freezing of EU funds for the country and some targeted sanctions, the newspaper cited the officials as saying.

If the foreign agents bill is enacted, Georgia’s EU accession progress will face a major setback, an EU official said.

The draft law “On the Transparency of Foreign Influence” was initially submitted to the Georgian parliament in February 2023 but was withdrawn the following month amid a wave of protests and pressure from Western countries. After revision, the term “foreign influence agent” was replaced with “organization promoting the interests of a foreign power,” while the rest of the content remained the same.

The latest iteration of the bill has sparked weeks of mass protests in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi amid concerns that it could block the South Caucasus nation’s path to EU membership. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell criticized the bill in March, saying its adoption could have serious repercussions for EU-Georgian relations.

The West is acting as harshly and “crazily” as possible with regard to Georgia because it failed to destabilize the situation in the country earlier, as it did with Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

The EU’s call on the Georgian authorities to ensure the right of citizens to protest can be interpreted as interference in internal affairs for the purpose of regime change, Maria Zakharova said. According to her, otherwise the EU’s call “can be interpreted as interference in the internal affairs of the state with the aim of regime change.

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Corruption | | Leave a comment

A Global Censorship Prison Built by the Women of the CIA

Is building a slave state for Big Daddy the apex achievement of feminism?

By Elizabeth Nickson | Welcome to Absurdistan | May 18, 2024

The polite world was fascinated last month when long-time NPR editor Uri Berliner confessed to the Stalinist suicide pact the public broadcaster, like all public broadcasters, seems to be on. Formerly it was a place of differing views, he claimed, but now it has sold as truth some genuine falsehoods like, for instance, the Russia hoax, after which it covered up the Hunter Biden laptop. And let’s not forget our censor-like behaviour regarding Covid and the vaccine. NPR bleated that they were still diverse in political opinion, but researchers found that all 87 reporters at NPR were Democrats. Berliner was immediately put on leave and a few days later resigned, no doubt under pressure.

Even more interesting was the reveal of the genesis of NPR’s new CEO, Katherine Maher, a 41-year-old with a distinctly odd CV. Maher had put in stints at a CIA cutout, the National Democratic Institute, and trotted onto the World Bank, UNICEF, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Technology and Democracy, the Digital Public Library of America, and finally the famous disinfo site Wikipedia. That same week, Tunisia accused her of working for the CIA during the so-called Arab Spring. And, of course, she is a WEF young global leader.

She was marched out for a talk at the Carnegie Endowment where she was prayerfully interviewed and spouted mediatized language so anodyne, so meaningless, yet so filled with nods to her base the AWFULS (affluent white female urban liberals) one was amazed that she was able to get away with it. There was no acknowledgement that the criticism by this award-winning reporter/editor/producer, who had spent his life at NPR had any merit whatsoever, and in fact that he was wrong on every count. That this was a flagrant lie didn’t even ruffle her artfully disarranged short blonde hair.

Christopher Rufo did an intensive investigation of her career in City Journal. It is an instructive read and illustrative of a lot of peculiar yet stellar careers of American women. Working for Big Daddy is apparently something these ghastly creatures value. I strongly suggest reading Rufo’s piece linked here. It’s a riot of spooky confluences.

Intelligence has been embedded in media forever and a day. During my time at Time Magazine in London, the bureau chief, deputy bureau chief and no doubt the “war and diplomacy” correspondent all filed to Langley and each of them cruised social London ceaselessly for information. Tucker Carlson asserted on his interview with Aaron Rogers this week that intelligence operatives were laced through DC media and in fact, Mr. Watergate, Bob Woodward himself, had been naval intelligence a scant year before he cropped up at the Washington Post as ‘an intrepid fighter for the truth and freedom no matter where it led.’  Watergate, of course, was yet another operation to bring down another inconvenient President; at this juncture, unless you are being puppeted by the CIA, you don’t get to stay in power. Refuse and bang bang or end up in court on insultingly stupid charges. As Carlson pointed out, all congressmen and senators are terrified by the security state, even and especially the ones on the intelligence committee who are supposed to be controlling them. They can install child porn on your laptop and you don’t even know it’s there until you are raided, said Carlson. The security state is that unethical, that power mad.

Now, it’s global. And feminine. Where is Norman Mailer when you need him?

At the same time, at the same time, Freddie Sayers, the editor-in-chief of Unherd, testified in Parliament on the Global Disinformation Index which had choked Unherd’s ability to grow. Unherd had hired three advertising firms who were, one after the other, unable to place ads. The third sourced the problem to the Index, which had deemed his interviews with journalist Katherine Stock about the problems faced by young people transitioning their sex, had made him persona non grata for all advertising agencies across the world. Eerily, that same week, Katherine Stock was awarded a high honorable mention in the National Press Awards for her work.

Here is Clare Melford, the fetching chief of the Global Disinformation Index, a woman seemingly bent on sterilizing confused children, Yet another non-profit authoritarian working for a mysterious Big Daddy. Who the hell trained her?

On Tuesday this week, out pops Europe’s headmistress, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Politico.eu, complaining about “Russia” and “right-wingers” sowing distrust of Europe’s election processes. She is, she says, launching a new war on Disinformation. Most importantly, no more reporting on migrant assaults. This seems to be their new crusade. Please note the halo over her Christed head. Honestly, they are shameless, vain, silly creatures with limited bandwidth. Other than obedience to some grim reaper.

Said Politico :

“She promised to set up “a European Democracy Shield,” if reelected for a second term, to fight back against foreign meddling.

EU cybersecurity and disinformation officials expect a surge in online falsehoods in the 20 days prior to the European Parliament election June 6-9, when millions of Europeans elect new representatives. Officials fear that Russia is ramping up its influence operations to sow doubt about the integrity of elections in the West and to manipulate public opinion in its favor.”

By the way, madam, western election integrity has been thoroughly compromised by the men who tell you what to do. More than half of us think elections are stolen. More than half. That’s not disinformation, it’s math.

This week Michael Shellenberger, who is the acknowledged lead in the take-down of the global censorship complex, had a look at Julie Inman Grant, another American Barbie, now Australia’s “e-safety commissioner,” with ties to the WEF. Grant had demanded that X censor a migrant stabbing, and X refused. Grant, as Shellenberger describes, is the Zelig of internet history tinkering in the bowels of said internet until she burst onto the public stage as Australia’s chief censor, bent on building a global online safety network.

Working for Big Daddy is apparently something these ghastly creatures value.

At a recent government hearing, she announced, “We have powerful tools to regulate platforms with ISP blocking power, and can collect basic device information, account information, phone numbers and email addresses, so that our investigators can at least find a place to issue a warning.” Grant went on to say they could compel take-downs, fine perpetrators and fine content hosts.

The Daily Mail had a ball with Inman Grant, mocking her and pointing out that she was wasting taxpayer money on a game of whack-a-mole.

Nevertheless, Grant takes herself very very seriously and since she is accreting power at a massive clip, so must we.

Grant’s network of independent regulators is called the Global Online Safety Regulators Network. “We have Australia, France, Ireland, South Africa, Korea, the UK and Fiji so far, with others observing. Canada is coming along,” she preens, “and is about to create a National Safety Regulator.” Canada’s proposed censorship program is so draconian you can be jailed for something you posted online years ago. And the government proposing it is so unpopular, it will be lucky to hang onto 20 seats in the next election.

There are literally hundreds of these women. Why? Why?

At a meeting this year of the World Economic Forum, Věra Jourová, from the European Commission, outlined just how exciting she and her team found the tools she is being given. “We can,” she said, “influence in such a way the real life and the behavior of people!” She sighed with excitement after this sentence. Jourova was caught last September trying to spread yet another Russia hoax. You have only to hear censorship plans uttered in a central-European accent to really understand what is happening here.

As terrifying as this all seems, and it is terrifying, it is instructive to look at the ruination of the career of America’s chief censor, Renée DiResta. DiResta, as research head of the Stanford Internet Observatory, is now being sued for abuse of power and unethical behavior that violates the constitution. Spookily, DiResta soared from “new mom” to providing the intellectual under-pinnning for censorship, until she headed up the Stanford Internet Observatory during Covid, where she was instrumental in censoring vaccine and Covid “disinformation.” People thought her backstory contrived and in fact, Shellenberger found that she was, unmistakably another CIA trained censor of inconvenient information under the guise of “safety.”

At this point, every time you hear the word ‘safety”, it’s best to check your ammunition supply. Said Shellenberger:

As research director of Stanford Internet Observatory, DiResta was the key leader and spokesperson of both the 2021 “Virality Project,” against Covid vaccine “misinformation” and the 2020 “Election Integrity Project.”

Shellenberger goes on to look into DiResta’s work history and finds a lot of congruence with CIA operations.

But then I learned that DiResta had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The journalist Matt Taibbi pointed me to the investigative research into the censorship industry by Mike Benz, a former State Department official in charge of cybersecurity. Benz had discovered a little-viewed video of her supervisor at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos, mentioning in an off-hand way that DiResta had previously “worked for the CIA.”

In her response to my criticism of her on Joe Rogan, DiResta acknowledged but then waved away her CIA connection. “My purported secret-agent double life was an undergraduate student fellowship at CIA, ending in 2004 — years prior to Twitter’s founding,” she wrote. “I’ve had no affiliation since.”

But DiResta’s acknowledgment of her connection to the CIA is significant, if only because she hid it for so long. DiResta’s LinkedIn includes her undergraduate education at Stony Brook University, graduating in 2004, and her job as a trader at Jane Street from October 2004 to May 2011, but does not mention her time at the CIA.

And, notably, the CIA describes its fellowships as covering precisely the issues in which DiResta is an expert. “As an Intelligence Analyst Intern for CIA, you will work on teams alongside full-time analysts, studying and evaluating information from all available sources—classified and unclassified—and then analyzing it to provide timely and objective assessments to customers such as the President, National Security Council, and other U.S. policymakers.”

At this juncture it is a race, as the intelligence community moves to shut down the revelations of its manipulations and machinations, and people injured by the vaccine and the flagrant abuse of election integrity move to fight them. It is instructive to note that DiResta, while apparently soaring to the heights of journalism at Wired, the New York Times, the Atlantic, selling her safety/censorhip program, cannot seem to get actual people to read or subscribe to her Substack. DiResta, like so many women in power now, are in reality, talentless cutouts for a hidden and malignant agenda.

An agenda that the people of the world roundly hate. I have just one final thing to saw to these truly dreadful human beings. My God is stronger than whatever demon or predator you obey. And as a woman, I am ashamed of each and every one of you. To use one of your awful phrases: Do Better.

May 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Samidoun statement on the International Criminal Court, the Resistance, and justice for Palestine

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | May 20, 2024

For years, the Palestinian people, at all levels of organization and struggle, have been demanding that the leaders of the Zionist regime are held accountable in international courts, including and especially the International Criminal Court, for their ongoing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestine. Today, on 20 May 2024, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced his intention to seek arrest warrants against not only the Zionist war criminals Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, but also against the Palestinian resistance leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh.

Let us be clear: There is no equation to be made between the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people and its leadership, including Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, and the illegitimate Zionist colonizer. The attempt to equate victim and perpetrator is a fundamental injustice, not the pursuit of long-denied justice.

It is certainly true that the Palestinian resistance recognized this risk, especially given the powerful political interests involved and the track record of the ICC in prosecuting Africans and now, enemies of the imperialist West. In 2014, when the Palestinian Authority acceded to the Rome Statute, and again in 2024, the Palestinian resistance leadership, particularly Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, has stated its openness to international investigations and its willingness to face the ICC if there is an attempt to meaningfully pursue justice against the occupiers and genocidaires of Palestine and their imperialist backers and accomplices.

However, the fact that the resistance is, as always, willing to sacrifice for Palestine, to be subjected to injustice so that their people may see freedom, does not make Khan’s actions any more just, acceptable or fair, nor does it make them legally valid.

Khan’s repeated references to the “rights” of Zionist colonizers, while failing to address Palestinian rights, as well as his legally invalid reference to the so-called “right of ‘Israel’ to defend itself,” when an occupier and colonizer has no right to defend itself against the people it is occupying and colonizing, highlight the ongoing bias of the ICC Prosecutor and his embrace of an imperialist framework for the operations of the Court. He made no mention of the right of the Palestinian people to resist and to liberate themselves through armed struggle, despite its broad support in international law.

It is, in fact, only because of the Resistance, because of the willingness of the resistance fighters, surrounded and nurtured by its popular cradle, that these arrest warrants for the Zionist war criminals are even being proposed and considered. It is the bravery, creativity and revolutionary steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their Resistance, including and particularly through the armed struggle, that has reset the balance of power to the extent that the crimes of the occupier can no longer be greeted with pure impunity.

Every legal achievement has been brought about not by the objective power or application of law, but by the shifting of reality brought about by the Palestinian armed struggle, accompanied by the regional and global forces of Resistance, especially the Lebanese resistance, the Yemeni armed forces, people, government and AnsarAllah movement, stretching through Iraq, Syria and Iran. It also speaks to the growing international popular cradle of the resistance, from student encampments to mass demonstrations to direct actions at arms manufacturers, that are making it clear that business as usual inside the imperial core is impossible so long as the genocide continues.

It is clear that 7 October changed the world. While Khan seeks to pretend that history began on 7 October and ignore the lengthy history of colonialism, ongoing Nakba and ongoing genocide since 1948, the Palestinian resistance made clear on 7 October that the horizon of true decolonization was opened in Palestine, that it was possible not only to imagine but to achieve a Palestine liberated from Zionism and a region liberated from imperialism.

The choice to seek warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, while not against Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Isaac Herzog, Herzi Halevi and other war criminals, also indicates its bias toward appeasing the political leadership of imperialist powers. Of course, Netanyahu and Gallant are genocidal war criminals whose direction of the current genocide in Palestine cannot be overstated. They have the blood of over 40,000 Palestinians on their hands in just the past seven months alone.

However, the omissions seem to seek to clear the road for a Gantz (or other similarly affiliated) prime ministership of the Zionist regime. The fact that various imperialist powers, and even a significant sector of the Zionist security establishment, think that Netanyahu is not good for the future of the Zionist and imperialist project is not a secret; they believe that other figures are far more trustworthy to secure their prime colonial project in the region. They believe that Netanyahu is securing his own political future and protection from prosecution at the expense of the future of the Zionist project in the region, and this has been one of the major causes of the growing unrest and internal disarray within the “Israeli” regime.

The application for arrest warrants indicates that imperialist powers, including the United States and the European Union, are very worried about the future of the Zionist colony in the region and recognize that it is on the road to its defeat, removal and dissolution.

It must be noted that these imperialist powers, especially the United States, which has threatened a war if its leaders are indicted, refuse to be held accountable before the ICC, a fate they have traditionally deemed acceptable only for the targets of imperialism, especially Africans. The Zionist colonial project in Palestine has always been genocidal. Its existence is a war crime and a crime against humanity. The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants do not even begin to touch the magnitude of its crimes in Palestine.

These omissions are particularly egregious given that the ICC’s limited mandate in Palestine extends back to 2014, yet no crimes before 7 October 2023 are considered in Khan’s decision to seek these arrest warrants. This comes alongside the decision to charge three Palestinian leaders (of the legitimate resistance) as opposed to two Zionist officials (of the illegitimate settler colony and imperialist outpost), and to proffer eight charges against Palestinians, vs. seven against Zionists; and to fail to seek any charges under Article 6 of the Rome Statute, which covers genocide, against the Zionist war criminals.

It is particularly outrageous that while Khan seeks to charge Palestinian resistance leaders with “torture,” he has failed to seek any such charges against the Zionist regime, which is currently imprisoning and torturing over 9,400 Palestinian prisoners. Sixteen Palestinian prisoners’ martyrdom has been documented since 7 October 2023, while at least 27 Palestinians have been martyred in the concentration and torture camps for Palestinian civilians kidnapped from Gaza at Sde Teiman. Palestinian and international sources – and even Zionist whistleblowers – have repeatedly documented and exposed the horrific conditions, medical abuse, brutal torture, forced amputations and starvation being used against Palestinian detainees in both these concentration camps and the Zionist prison system. The photos of Palestinian detainees released after months in prison – such as those of Omar Assaf and Imad Barghouti – underline the level of mistreatment and torture that has become standard in the Zionist jails.

As a counter to the failure to seek to indict Gantz, his fellow members of the “war cabinet” and IOF chief Halevi – let alone all of the Zionist officials responsible for the crimes against humanity and genocide in Palestine since 2014, let alone 1948 — we see the indictment of Ismail Haniyeh, as a political leader of the Palestinian resistance. The pursuit of an indictment against Haniyeh appears to be an attempt to undermine Palestinian presence in current ceasefire negotiations and to add another level of pressure to the Palestinian resistance to accept permanent Zionist and imperialist occupation in Gaza.

It also makes clear that the indictments of Zionist war criminals are selective, while Palestinian resistance leadership is to be targeted in total. We have all confidence in the resistance’s willingness to sacrifice, ability to defend itself brilliantly in court and to win decisively in any fair trial.

The choice of charges against the resistance leaders (exceeding by one those against the Zionists in all cases), invoking numerous debunked and propagandistic Zionist claims, including “rape” and “extermination,” while failing to pursue charges of genocide and apartheid against the Zionist war criminals, further underlines this bias.

We all look forward to seeing Netanyahu and Gallant in the dock and appreciate this clear crack in the armor of impunity for the Zionist regime. We know that it is they who constantly travel around the world to receive billions of dollars in support from their imperial sponsors. At the same time, it is also clear that the ICC Prosecutor is not acting as a truly neutral party and is instead carrying out the directives of imperialist powers who would not accept any charges against the Zionist leadership without a “both sides” clause targeting the already criminalized and repressed Palestinian resistance. The equation of the indigenous resistance with the illegitimate colonizer is part of the minimization of genocide rather than its prosecution.

It is further clear that the ICC is not an institution into which we can place trust, as evidenced by its own history and failures to hold accountable any of those responsible for the horrific attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya and Syria; the starving of Venezuela through sanctions and blockades, the extraction of wealth in Africa, the attempted mass starvation and genocide in Yemen, the ongoing destabilization and destruction of Haiti.

The ICC has served for too long as a weapon of colonialism rather than a tribunal of justice. We trust the revolutionary justice of the victorious Palestinian people. There can be no equation of colonizer and colonized, of the executioner and the victim.

Glory and victory to the Palestinian resistance, to the Lebanese and Yemeni resistance, to all of the forces of resistance in the region and the world.

Imperialism and Zionism will be defeated, and from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

May 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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