Russia responds to Western asset seizure
RT | April 26, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a decree establishing a mechanism for temporarily taking over foreign assets. In its first practical application, the Federal Property Management Agency was put in control of Russian subsidiaries of Fortum and Uniper, energy companies based in Finland and Germany, respectively.
The decree allows for temporary state takeover of assets deemed to be “of paramount importance for the stable functioning of the Russian energy sector,” the agency said in a statement. Germany’s Uniper SE held a 83% stake in Russian energy generation and distribution company Unipro, while a Finnish state-owned company Fortum Oyj controlled over 98% of its local subsidiary, with a total power generation capacity of 11,2 and 4.7 gigawatts respectively.
The move will “ensure the uninterrupted operation of companies significant for the national economy and eliminate the risks of the political position of a number of unfriendly countries influencing” the security of Russia.
Original owners are considered to have temporarily lost control of the property, but not forfeited it outright. The measure “helps preserve the investment climate in Russia and reduce the outflow of capital from the country,” the agency added.
The decree also establishes a legal framework that enables the Kremlin to take over more foreign assets should other countries seize Russian private or government property in their jurisdictions, or threaten national, energy, or economic security of Russia.
Germany and Poland have so far seized an estimated $22 billion in assets belonging just to two Russian companies, Gazprom and Rosneft, according to media estimates. In June 2022, Berlin took over Gazprom Germania GmbH. In November, Warsaw confiscated Gazprom’s 48% stake in the EuRoPol GAZ joint venture, owners of the Polish portion of the Yamal-Europe pipeline.
The Polish subsidiary of Novatek, which dealt in liquefied natural gas and other hydrocarbons, was also seized. Its assets were put up for sale earlier this month.
In September last year, Germany seized Rosneft’s stake in three major oil refineries, accounting for 12% of the country’s total refining capacity. Rosneft’s complaints against the move were dismissed by German courts. A law enacted by the Bundestag on April 20 may allow outright expropriation of Russian assets by Germany.
The US government has sought to seize Russian state and private assets frozen under the Ukraine-related sanctions and turn them over to the government in Kiev, a move that critics have said would change the very nature of sanctions from an instrument of pressure to purely punitive.
Nürnberg Health Dept. issues novel outdoor mask recommendation to combat … climate change-enhanced hay fever
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | April 17, 2023
Now that everyone has returned to his ordinary state of not caring what public health mandarins think about anything, the Nürnberg Health Department has decided to make a desperate pitch for continued relevancy and grab some headlines by asking the weary German public to dust off their masks once again:
It’s hay fever season, and one in five Germans suffers from a pollen allergy. To alleviate the symptoms, the Nürnberg Health Office is now advising people to wear masks outdoors. This is because FFP2 masks, as well as homemade ones, are good at blocking the small particles that cause allergies, which prevents the pollen from being absorbed via the airways.
Hay fever is the most common chronic disease in all industrialised nations and is associated with the blossoming of trees and woody plants … Many people are allergic to pollen and react with runny nose, scratchy throat, fatigue, shortness of breath and other allergy-related complaints. Climate change is extending the pollen season for some trees, grasses and other plants. This increases the length of time that people are exposed. Climate change also causes significant increases to the concentration of pollen earlier in the year.
You should think about masking to combat allergies now, even though you never did before, because of climate change, or something. That’s how stupid this is. It’s all based on the ravings of an allergist at Berlin Charité named Karl-Christian Bergmann, who is probably not smart enough to be a deep-cover mask sceptic secretly committed to depriving community masking of all credibility, and is in all likelihood issuing his obnoxious opinions on the continued use of public face coverings in all sincerity.
The recommendation comes just six weeks after the publication of a literature review in Heliyon, which surveys the existing experimental evidence to find that wearing a face mask for more than five minutes can increase the carbon dioxide concentration of inhaled air to as much as 3.2% – fully 80 times the concentration in fresh air, and perhaps ten times the toxicity threshold for chronic exposure. But, Bergmann and the Nürnberg public health lunitards think it might save you some sneezing, so really it’s all upside.
Russian envoy slams Die Welt over ‘kill Putin’ quote
RT | April 18, 2023
Germany’s Die Welt daily “hit rock bottom” in its anti-Russian zeal last week, the Russian ambassador to Berlin, Sergey Nechaev, said on Monday, in response to an interview with American columnist Fred Kaplan in which he said the “easiest way” to end the Ukraine conflict is for someone to “kill Putin.”
Die Welt has left “this de facto call for murder” unredacted and uncommented on and even used it as a headline, Nechaev wrote in a damning post published on the embassy’s Telegram account. The envoy was apparently referring to Die Welt’s Twitter account, which used the “killing” quote to draw attention to the interview with Kaplan on its social media.
“It is unfortunate that some German media keep crossing all the lines and hitting rock bottom,” the ambassador said, adding that “although this is outrageous, it is no longer surprising.”
Kaplan made the statement in response to Die Welt’s question about the “most plausible scenarios” of ending the military conflict between Moscow and Kiev, which has now been ongoing for morethan a year.
“The easiest way for this to end is for someone to kill Putin,” Kaplan stated, adding that a “new leader” could then come to power, who would declare Russia’s military operation in Ukraine “a folly” and gain the support of the Russian elites to end the conflict. The American journalist and political scientist said he does not believe that Moscow will prevail, adding that otherwise the conflict could last “for years” and potentially end with an agreement that would involve the US and China as “guarantors.”
The US columnist also admitted that Kiev is fully dependent on US aid and that a halt to this assistance might force the Ukrainian government to “strike a deal” with Moscow. “Without the US assistance, it [Ukraine] would not last long,” he said.
Die Welt’s choice of a quote has also been met with criticism on social media. One person accused the outlet of being “no longer above … an incitement to murder.” “Is it a call for murder?” another person asked, warning that killing the Russian president could also bring “hardliners” to power in Russia, potentially putting the world on the brink of a nuclear war.
The German media outlet has not commented on the criticism so far. Neither the text of the interview nor the Twitter post has been altered in any way as of the time of this writing.
Inter-EU relations plummeting over Macron’s apparent China tilt
By Drago Bosnic | April 17, 2023
It’s hardly breaking news that the European Union is essentially a giant collection of vassals of the United States. Ironically enough, as the bloc effectively doubled in size since the (First) Cold War, its sovereignty has proportionately gone down. Washington DC largely accomplished this by propping up staunchly pro-US EU members. One such country is certainly Poland, as Warsaw consistently supports American interests in the EU. And while it could be argued that this is largely thanks to Poland’s virtually endemic Russophobia, the most recent episode with French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to China clearly indicates that Warsaw’s foreign policy framework is as American as it could possibly be.
Late last week, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki slammed Macron’s “controversial” comments on Beijing, made just after he met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Morawiecki openly mocked the French President’s call for “strategic autonomy”, which also included follow-up comments about the EU “not being a direct US vassal”. Such rhetoric isn’t unheard of, particularly from France, but the question remains how exactly honest and straightforward it is. However, even a semblance of anything that could remotely be seen as “anti-American” is virtual “heresy” in Warsaw, which explains its harsh reaction to this. Morawiecki equated even just cordial EU-China ties with “cutting off relations with the US”. His exact words were:
“European autonomy sounds fancy, doesn’t it? But it means shifting the center of European gravity towards China and severing the ties with the US. Short-sightedly they look to China to be able to sell more EU products there at huge geopolitical costs, making us more dependent on China and not less. Some European countries are trying to make with China the same mistake which was made with Russia – this dramatic mistake.”
According to AFP’s reporting, Morawiecki also (implicitly) slammed both France and Germany for their allegedly “lukewarm” support for the Kiev regime and “warned” about China’s breakaway island province of Taiwan:
“You cannot protect Ukraine today and tomorrow by saying Taiwan is not your business. I think that, God forbid, if Ukraine falls, if Ukraine gets conquered, the next day China may attack – can attack – Taiwan… … I do not quite understand the concept of strategic autonomy if it means de facto shooting into our own knee. Western European nations have grown accustomed to a model based on cheap energy from Russia, high-margin trade with China, low-cost labor from Eastern Europe and security for free from the United States. Now their modus vivendi collapsed in ruins so what do they do? They want a quick ceasefire, armistice, in Ukraine, almost at any price. Some politicians in Western Europe are thinking, ‘Ukraine, why are you fighting so bravely?'”
Somewhat surprisingly, despite increased NATO pressure, Macron has not only refused to take back his statements, but has even reiterated them, openly declaring that “being an ally does not mean being a vassal … [or] mean that we don’t have the right to think for ourselves.” Macron’s recent “controversial” statements have sent shockwaves across the political West. And while they’re hardly a clear indicator of a major strategic shift in French foreign policy, as the country still supports the Kiev regime through weapons shipments that are killing the people of Donbass, they are quite an unpleasant surprise for Washington DC planners hopeful of sustaining their strategic siege of China in the Asia-Pacific, an effort that requires pan-Western support.
“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers. The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese overreaction… … If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up … we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,” Macron said at the time.
This and the fact that the French President said “the great risk facing Europe right now is that it gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy” is quite indicative of so-called “old” Europe’s desire to maintain at least some degree of strategic relevance. However, it’s quite difficult to take the “old” EU seriously in the matter of Taiwan when it’s been so religiously following Washington DC’s diktat on Ukraine for well over a decade. Despite clear and open frustrations with the US profiteering that has been “bleeding dry” the increasingly cash-strapped EU for over a year now, the bloc still continues its self-defeating subservience. As long as the EU participates in Washington DC’s crawling aggression against Russia, the desire to stop being US vassals will be nothing but that.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Iran slams world’s inaction on deteriorating rights situation in West
Press TV – April 15 2023
Iran’s vice-president of the judiciary for international affairs has criticized international mechanisms for failing to take a position regarding the deteriorating human rights situation in Western countries, saying international rights bodies are duty-bound to support and promote the key issue across the world.
In a Saturday letter to Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kazem Gharibabadi said the world suffers from fundamental challenges and dilemmas regarding human rights which are mainly caused by those countries that “claim to be defending human rights and see themselves in the position of making demands from others and being immune from any criticism and responsibility.”
“The responsibility of the international human rights mechanisms in such conditions is fundamental to support and promote human rights, which must be fulfilled by respecting independence, impartiality, professionalism, and non-selectivity,” said Gharibabadi, who also served as the Secretary General of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights.
He warned of adopting “politically-motivated and selective” approaches that does a great disservice and is detrimental to human rights, and erodes public trust in human rights mechanisms.
He drew the commissioner’s attention to situations in several countries, including France, Britain and Germany, over the last six months regarding the “right to freedom of assembly and of association.”
Pointing to massive public demonstrations in France in protest against the government’s policies, the Iranian rights official said, “Instead of listening to the protesters’ demands and trying to improve the situation, the French government resorts to large-scale violence to deal with the gatherings.”
Gharibabadi censured the French government for using anti-riot equipment, assaulting people, and arresting thousands of protesters as only part of the countermeasures.
Referring to Britain’s introduction of amendments to the Public Order Bill to increase police powers to deal with protesters at rallies, he said the “repression bill” leads to a “significant and unprecedented increase in the powers of the police force to impose undue restrictions on peaceful protests and … it criminalizes assemblies under the pretext of deprivation of public comfort and provides a sentence of up to 10 years of imprisonment.”
Gharibabdi pointed to a sit-in protest in Germany. He said over 3,000 German police and security forces arrested hundreds of political opponents under the pretext of plotting to stage a coup d’état.
“In yet another move, the German government seeks to pass a law that will expel its opponents from all government jobs under the pretext of extremism.” The top Iranian rights official said most European countries have been the scene of peaceful protests over the past months which were “suppressed and dispersed with the most severe attacks by law enforcement forces.”
Referring to the recent riots in Iran, Gharibabadi said,” Egged on by incitement and backing of particular states, media outlets and terrorist groups, the recent gatherings in the Islamic Republic of Iran deviated from their peaceful nature and morphed into riots, causing violations of the fundamental rights of citizens.”
On the contrary, he said, Iran took a responsible policy, and established an investigative committee to launch inquiries into the possible physical and financial damages and the violations of the rights of all parties.
The Iranian vice-president slammed the West and the United States for pursuing a politically-motivated approach and exploiting the Human Rights Council by establishing a so-called mechanism to investigate the riots in the country.
“The same countries that consider themselves supporters of the rioters in Iran are – both in law and in practice – committing the most heinous crimes to systematically violate the right to peaceful assembly.”
Expert Warns: Cars Soon Unaffordable To 50% Of Germans! “Huge Social Conflict”… Idiotic, Singular Policy”
Ideological green policies are tearing Germany’s economy apart
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | April 12, 2023
In an interview, Prof. Kurt Lauk, former economic council head and automobile manager, warns half of Germans “will no longer be able to afford a car.” Socially explosive…”a disgrace”.
He also warns of a rapid demolition of Germany’s economic backbone: the automotive industry.
“It is a disgrace what is sitting in the chair of Ludwig Erhard or Graf Lambsdorff. The hostility to technology coming from the Ministry of Economics is unbearable. Everywhere where we are or were world market leaders, we have gone about abolishing it,” Lauk said in an interview . It is the “worst thing that could happen” for German industry.
“For several years now, we have been working hard to destroy this competitive advantage of German industry or to hand it over to other nations. We now have ‘economic heads’ sitting in the Ministry of Economics who have no other professional qualifications,” Lauk added.
Lauk says Germany’s technological advantages are now in jeopardy because the backbone of Germany’s economy and driver of innovation is the country’s automotive industry. “This is where most of the jobs are.”
150 years of technological experience “thrown away”
“The technological advantage of German carmakers through 150 years of experience with the combustion engine, transmissions etc. is being recklessly abandoned, Lauk said. “We are throwing away our competitive advantage and adopting the ‘Chinese drive’. Because 80 per cent of the battery drives come from China. That means China has driven us up against the wall in a strategic situation. And with our naivety, we didn’t realize what was happening.”
Unaffordable for the bottom 50%
Lauk warns that because of e-cars being considerably more expensive than conventional combustion engine vehicles: “The bottom fifty percent of the income pyramid will no longer be able to find a vehicle for less than 40,000 euros.” and thus this group will see significantly restricted mobility.
Tinder dry social powder keg of the haves and have nots
“Today you can get a cheap, suitable vehicle for 15,000, 18,000 or 20,000 euros. That will no longer be the case. We are running into a huge social conflict with this idiotic, singular policy to drive with electric batteries.”
China reiterates Ukraine stance
RT | April 14, 2023
Beijing will continue promoting peace talks to settle the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said during a joint press conference with his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock on Friday.
“One point I want to emphasize is that China’s role in the Ukraine issue, our proposition, boils down to one point, that is, to persuade and promote talks,” Qin told journalists in Beijing on Friday.
All sides involved in the conflict should remain “objective and calm” in order to find a solution to the crisis, he added. According to the minister, the Chinese authorities “won’t do anything to add fuel to the fire” in Ukraine.
Qin also rejected Western claims that Beijing is supplying or planning to supply arms to Russia amid the fighting.
“Regarding the export of military items, China adopts a prudent and responsible attitude,” he insisted, adding that the country “will not provide weapons to relevant parties of the conflict, and manage and control the exports of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations.”
Baerbock, for her part, stuck to the Western line that Beijing should put pressure on Moscow to bring the fighting in Ukraine to an end.
“It’s good that China has signaled its commitment to a solution, but I have to say frankly that I wonder why the Chinese position so far does not include a call on the aggressor Russia to stop the war,” she said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “would have the opportunity to do so at any time, and the people in Ukraine would like nothing more than to finally be able to live in peace again,” the German foreign minister said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin also said on Friday that Qin made it clear to Baerbock during their talks “that the only way to resolve the Ukrainian crisis is to promote the peace process and negotiations.”
Since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine last February, Beijing has been reluctant to give in to Western pressure to condemn Russia or join the international sanctions against it. Instead, the neighbors have boosted political and economic cooperation, which they both now describe as “strategic.” Moscow and Beijing signed dozens of deals in various areas when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Russia last month.
The war, the separation of the world, or the end of an Empire?
By Thierry Meyssan | Voltaire Network | April 11, 2023
Many are those who predict a World War. Indeed, some groups are preparing for it. But the States are reasonable and, in fact, consider rather an amicable separation, a division of the world into two different worlds, one unipolar and the other multipolar. Perhaps we are actually witnessing a third scenario: the “American Empire” is not struggling in the trap of Thucydides; it is collapsing like its former Soviet rival died.
The American “Straussians,” the Ukrainian “integral nationalists,” the Israeli “revisionist Zionists” and the Japanese “militarists” are calling for a generalized war. They are alone and they are not mass movements. No state has yet committed itself to this course.
Germany with 100 billion euros and Poland with much less money are rearming massively. But neither of them seems eager to take on Russia.
Australia and Japan are also investing in armaments, but neither of them has an autonomous army.
The United States is no longer able to replenish its military and is no longer able to create new weapons. They are content to reproduce the weapons of the 1980s in an assembly line fashion. However, they maintain their nuclear weapons.
Russia has already modernized its armies and is organizing itself to renew the ammunition it uses in Ukraine and to mass produce its new weapons, which no one can compete with. China, for its part, is rearming to control the Far East and, in the long term, to protect its trade routes. India thinks of itself as a maritime power.
It is therefore difficult to see who would and could start a World War.
Contrary to their speeches, French leaders are not at all preparing for a high-intensity war [1]. The military programming law, established for ten years, plans to build a nuclear aircraft carrier, but reduces the size of the army. It is a question of giving ourselves the means of projection, but not of defending our territory. Paris continues to reason as a colonial power while the world is becoming multipolar. It is a classic: the generals prepare for the previous war and ignore the reality of tomorrow.
The European Union is implementing its “Strategic Compass”. The Commission coordinates the military investments of its member states. In practice, they all play the game, but pursue different goals. The Commission, on the other hand, is trying to take control of decisions on the financing of armies, which until now have depended on their national parliaments. This would make it possible to build an empire, but not to declare a generalized war.
Clearly everyone is playing a game, but apart from Russia and China, none is preparing for a high-intensity war. Rather, we are witnessing a redistribution of the cards. This month, Washington is sending Liz Rosenberg and Brian Nelson, two specialists in unilateral coercive measures [2], to Europe with the mission of forcing the Allies to comply. In the words of former President George Bush Jr. during the war “against terrorism”: “Whoever is not with us is against us”.
Liz Rosenberg is efficient and unscrupulous. She is the one who brought the Syrian economy to its knees, condemning millions of people to poverty because they dared to resist and defeat the Empire’s surrogates.
The Hollywood western discourse a la George Bush Jr. of good guys and bad guys has failed with Türkiye, which has already experienced the 2016 coup attempt and the 2023 earthquake. Ankara knows that it has nothing good to expect from Washington and is already looking to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Yet the same discourse should succeed with the Europeans, who remain fascinated by the power of the United States. Of course this power is in decline, but so are the Europeans. No one has learned any lessons from the sabotage of the Russian-German-French-Dutch gas pipelines, North Stream. Not only did the victims take the blame without saying anything, but they are about to receive further punishment for crimes they did not commit.
The world should therefore be divided into two blocs, on the one hand the US hyperpower and its vassals, on the other the multipolar world. In terms of the number of states, this should be half and half, but in terms of population, only 13% for the Western bloc against 87% for the multipolar world.
The international institutions can no longer function. They should either fall into lethargy or be dissolved. The first examples that come to mind are the effective exit of Russia from the Council of Europe and the empty seats of Western Europeans in the Arctic Council during the year of the Russian presidency. Other institutions are no longer relevant, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which was supposed to organize East-West dialogue. Only the attachment of Russia and China to the United Nations should preserve them in the short term, as the United States is already thinking of transforming the Organization into a structure reserved exclusively for the Allied Nations.
The Western bloc should also reorganize itself. Until now, the European continent was dominated economically by Germany. In order to be certain that Germany would never get closer to Russia, the United States wanted Berlin to be content with the western part of the continent and leave the center in the hands of Warsaw. So Germany and Poland armed themselves to impose themselves in their respective zones of influence, but when the American star faded, they would fight against each other.
When the Soviet Empire fell, it abandoned its allies and vassals. Having seen its inability to solve the problems, the USSR first stopped supporting Cuba economically, then dropped its vassals of the Warsaw Pact, and finally collapsed on itself. The same process is beginning today.
The first U.S. Gulf War, the 9/11 attacks and their host of wars in the broader Middle East, the expansion of Nato and the Ukrainian conflict will have offered only three decades of survival to the American Empire. It was backed by its former Soviet rival. It has lost its raison d’être with its dissolution. It is time for it to disappear too.
Translation: Roger Lagassé
Russia didn’t blow up Nord Stream – Trump
RT | April 12, 2023
Former US President Donald Trump has dismissed claims that Russia was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, but said that speculating on the true perpetrator might “get our country in trouble.”
Speaking to Fox’s Tucker Carlson in an interview set to air in full this week, Trump was asked for his thoughts about “who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline,” which was hit by multiple blasts under mysterious circumstances last September.
“I don’t want to get our country in trouble so I won’t answer it. But I can tell you who it wasn’t, was Russia. How about when they blamed Russia. They said ‘Russia blew up their own pipeline.’ You got a kick out of that one, too. It wasn’t Russia,” he told the Fox News pundit.
While the US and other Western governments have so far offered few details about ongoing investigations into the sabotage, a February report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh stated that US President Joe Biden had personally ordered the bombing as a way to persuade Germany to ramp up support for Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia.
Washington has vocally denied the report, which relied on anonymous sources, and insisted it had no role in the bombings. “It’s a completely false story. There’s no truth to it. Not a shred of it,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told Fox in February.
Ukrainian officials have similarly denied any involvement in the Nord Stream sabotage, and subsequent reporting by the New York Times has claimed that an unnamed “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind the attack. It is unclear how the group could have accomplished the bombing from a small pleasure yacht as reported, however, as the operation would have required military-grade explosives and experienced divers, among other things.
Hersh has rejected the Times’ account as part of a “cover-up” staged by US intelligence agencies, as the outlet has largely cited unnamed intelligence officials to support its story.
Moscow has also voiced skepticism about the “pro-Ukrainian group,” with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov arguing the story was deliberately circulated by Western media outlets to distract from the revelations purportedly uncovered by Hersh.
READ MORE:
Samidoun statement on smear campaign in Germany
A statement by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network:
On Saturday, 8 April, nearly 1,000 people marched through the streets of Berlin in solidarity with Palestine. The reality of this demonstration was that it was strong and organized, an expression of outrage and internationalism against the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed against the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation regime.
Despite the presence of an excessively large number of police as well as Arabic translators specifically brought by the police to surveil the crowd, there were no incidents reported by anyone while the demonstration took place. Instead, images of the demonstration spread around the world, a sign that Palestinians, Arabs, and internationalists in Germany have not forgotten the ongoing injustice in Palestine.
As always, when there is a large demonstration for Palestine, and particularly when the Palestinian and Arab community in Berlin speaks out for justice and against racism and repression, the attacks and attempts to criminalize the demonstration soon follow. We have seen this same rhetoric play out time and time again, and every time a new pretext is used to incite the suppression of the Palestinian voice in Berlin — as well as the suppression of all voices for justice.
This time, the pretext is a sensationalized video that is widely circulated by German media. The video in question contains deliberate translation errors, open demonization of Palestinians in general and Samidoun Network in particular, and openly vilifies political prisoners on hunger strike fighting blatantly political charges as civilians before occupation military courts, elderly political prisoners being murdered in Israeli prisons due to medical neglect, and child prisoners. The video attempts to highlight a single voice allegedly shouting an anti-Semitic slogan during the demonstration. The individual that allegedly shouted this statement is never shown in the video, they were not joined by any other person, the chant did not come from the front of the demonstration nor over the microphone, and this individual voice in a mass demonstration of a thousand people just happened to be close enough to these “journalists” for them to pick up his chant and use it to launch an extensive smear campaign against organizing for Palestine in Germany.
The identity of this person is entirely unclear, as is their reason for shouting this or even whether they were a participant in the demonstration at all. One thing is clear: they had nothing to do with the organization, direction, leadership or political framework of the mobilization and this statement does not reflect our clear anti-racist, anti-colonial vision for a liberated Palestine. Every single Palestinian demonstration in Germany is routinely and falsely targeted and smeared as anti-Jewish, when it is in fact anti-racist and pro-liberation. This is also being used to try to criminalize Samidoun, our member organizations and our initiatives in other countries thousands of kilometers away, which shows the true intentions of this campaign.
This smear tactic aims at putting in question our clear stance against anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, and by extent, our natural stance against the statement allegedly shouted by a single individual in the vicinity of the demonstration. Principled organization for Palestine is by definition anti-Zionist, against this racist and colonial system that oppresses and attempts at eliminating the Palestinian people. And we are joined in this struggle with our anti-zionist Jewish comrades, because our struggle is not in the context of a religious conflict, but is a liberation movement against colonialism, occupation, and oppression.
Two very important points about the weaponization of such incidents that are impossible to account for in a mass demonstration:
- We view such statements as a tool in the hands of reactionary and repressive forces, including pro-apartheid organizations that seek to criminalize support for Palestine.
- Zionism and its ongoing drive to designate this fascist ideology as “Jewish” has long played a nefarious role in confusing Zionism, a racist political ideology, with Judaism and Jewishness. The same is true of Western powers that repeatedly refer to the Israeli occupation as the “Jewish state”, attempting to tar all Jews with the brush of Zionist crimes. It is the Palestinian liberation movement that rejects the equation of Jews with Zionists and the Zionist movement that seeks to institutionalize that same equation.
Further, we are also clear that these coordinated attacks do not reflect any desire to act against racism, including anti-Semitism, in Berlin or in Germany. Instead, they exist to achieve three main objectives:
- Attempt to manufacture a pretext to prohibit organizations working for justice and liberation in Palestine, like the Samidoun Network, or to ban demonstrations, like the upcoming marches to commemorate the 75th anniversary of al-Nakba, the catastrophic occupation of Palestine, as we experienced in May 2022.
- Attempt to manufacture anti-Palestinian racism and repression on the streets of Berlin and to intimidate our community from participating in actions and demonstrations.
- Attempt to draw attention away from the topic of the demonstration itself — that is, the ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine, justified by the German government and its political parties, up to and including the extreme settler movement that marched through the West Bank of occupied Palestine today, the calls to occupy all of Jordan as well as all of Palestine by Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich and the attacks on Palestinians at prayer in Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan.
We will not be silenced or suppressed, and we will not stand by as our community is targeted for repression and criminalization. We urge all to join us on Sunday, 16 April for the March to Free Palestinian Prisoners. With our collective clarity and voice, we once again affirm, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
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From the Archives
Jack Ruby: Israel’s Smoking Gun
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 13, 2021
By a strange paradox, most Kennedy researchers who believe that Oswald was “just a patsy” spend an awful lot of time exploring his biography. This is about as useful as investigating Osama bin Laden for solving 9/11. Any serious quest for the real assassins of JFK should start by investigating the man who shot Oswald at pointblank in the stomach at 11:21 a.m. on September 24, 1963 in the Dallas Police station, thereby sealing the possibility that a judicial inquiry would draw attention to the inconsistencies of the charge against him, and perhaps expose the real perpetrators. One would normally expect the Dallas strip-club owner Jack Ruby to be the most investigated character by Kennedy truthers. But that is not the case. … continue
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- No Tricks Zone
- Unfudging The Data: Dutch Meteorological Institute Reinstates Early 20th Centruy Heat Waves It Had Erased Earlier
- German Gas Crisis…Chancellor Merz Allegedly Bans Gas Debate Ahead of Elections!
- Pollen Reconstructions Show The Last Glacial’s Warming Events Were Global, 10x Greater Than Modern
- Germany’s Natural Gas Storage Level Dwindles To Just 28%… Increasingly Critical
- New Study Rebuts The Assumption That Anthropogenic CO2 Molecules Have ‘Special’ Properties
- Climate Scientist Who Predicted End Of “Heavy Frost And Snow” Now Refuses Media Inquiries
- Polar Bear Numbers Rising And Health Improving In Areas With The Most Rapid Sea Ice Decline
- One Reason Only For Germany’s Heating Gas Crisis: Its Hardcore-Dumbass Energy Policy
- 130 Years Later: The CO2 Greenhouse Effect Is Still Only An Imaginary-World Thought Experiment
- New Study Affirms Rising CO2’s Greening Impact Across India – A Region With No Net Warming In 75 Years
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