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Israel-Palestine head of HRW resigns over blocked report on Palestinians right of return

Press TV – February 4, 2026

The Israel-Palestine director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) has resigned in protest, saying the organization’s new Executive Director prevented the publication of a report exposing Israel for committing “crimes against humanity” by denying Palestinian refugees their right of return.

In separate resignations published on Tuesday, Omar Shakir, who led HRW’s Israel-Palestine team for nearly a decade, and assistant researcher Milena Ansari condemned the leadership’s decision as a break from standard approval procedures.

“I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law … As such, I am no longer able to represent or work for Human Rights Watch,” Shakir wrote in his resignation letter.

The resignations have shaken one of the world’s most prominent human rights organizations.

The 33-page report, never published, documented the experiences of Palestinians displaced from Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and refugee communities in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

It linked decades of denied return to clear violations of international law, including crimes that could be prosecuted.

HRW leadership claimed the report involved “complex and consequential issues” requiring further analysis before release.

In response, Shakir countered on the social media platform X, saying “the report was finalized after 7 months in review & signed off on by the MENA division, five different specialists, the Program Office & the Law & Policy Office.”

Shakir said the refusal to publish showed a disturbing unwillingness to confront Israel’s ongoing crimes.

While terms like “apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing” are increasingly recognized internationally, the right of return remains off-limits even within Human Rights Watch, he warned.

“The one topic … even at Human Rights Watch, for which there remains an unwillingness to apply the law and the facts in a principled way, is the plight of refugees and their right to return to the homes that they were forced to flee,” he said.

Shakir and Ansari said attempts to narrow the report’s scope to recent displacements in Gaza and the occupied West Bank weakened its legal case and silenced the voices of generations of refugees.

Over 200 HRW staff protested the report’s suppression, warning that the decision could seriously damage the organization’s credibility.

At least 7 million Palestinians live as refugees across Gaza, the occupied territories, and neighboring countries, driven from their homes during the Nakba.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe,” refers to the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist militias and the newly established Israeli regime in 1948. Thousands were killed during this genocidal campaign.

Since Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza on October 7, 2023, the number of displaced Palestinians has risen by at least 1.5 million, intensifying a decades-long injustice.

February 4, 2026 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | HRW, Zionism | Leave a comment

How Human Rights Watch Shattered Yugoslavia

By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | January 31, 2026

On August 25th 2025, this journalist documented how the 1975 Helsinki Accords transformed “human rights” into a highly destructive weapon in the West’s imperial arsenal. At the forefront of this shift were organisations such as Amnesty International, and Helsinki Watch – the forerunner of Human Rights Watch. Supposedly independent reports published by these organisations became devastatingly effective tools for justifying sanctions, destabilisation campaigns, coups, and outright military intervention against purported overseas “rights” abusers. A palpable example of HRW’s utility in this regard is provided by Yugoslavia’s disintegration.

In December 2017, HRW published a self-laudatory essay boasting how its publication of “real-time field reporting of war crimes” during the Bosnian civil war’s early stages in 1992, and the organisation’s independent lobbying for a legal mechanism “to punish military and political leaders responsible for atrocities” committed in the conflict, contributed to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia’s establishment. Documents held by Columbia University “reveal the fundamental role of HRW” in the ICTY’s May 1993 founding.

These files moreover detail HRW’s “cooperation in various criminal investigations” against former Yugoslav officials by the ICTY, “through mutual exchange of information.” The organisation is keen to promote its intimate, historic ties with the Tribunal, and how the ICTY’s work spurred the International Criminal Court’s creation. Yet, absent from these hagiographic accounts is any reference to HRW’s pivotal contribution to manufacturing public and political consent for Yugoslavia’s breakup, which produced the very atrocities the organisation helped document and prosecute.

In November 1990, HRW founding member Jeri Laber authored a tendentiously-titled op-ed for The New York Times, “Why Keep Yugoslavia One Country?”. Inspired by a recent trip to Kosovo, Laber described how her team’s experience on-the-ground in the Serbian province had led HRW to harbour “serious doubts about whether the US government should continue to bolster the national unity of Yugoslavia.” Instead, she proposed actively facilitating the country’s destruction, and laid out a precise roadmap by which Washington could achieve this goal.

Namely, by offering financial aid exclusively to Yugoslavia’s constituent republics, “to help them in a peaceful evolution to democracy,” while sidelining “weak” federal authorities from any and all “economic support”. She forcefully concluded, “there is no moral law that commits us to honor the national unity of Yugoslavia.” Coincidentally, mere days earlier, US lawmakers began voting on the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, which codified Laber’s prescriptions as formal government policy.

Under the legislation’s auspices, Washington would provide no “direct assistance” to Yugoslavia’s federal government whatsoever. Moreover, financial aid would be withheld from the country’s constituent republics unless they all convened elections under US State Department supervision within six months. In a stroke, Belgrade’s central authority was neutralised, and the seeds of bitter, bloody wars of independence throughout the multiethnic, multifaith federation were sown. Shockingly, Human Rights Watch was well-aware this was an “inevitable” consequence of terminating Yugoslav “national unity”.

‘Multinational Experiment’

In January 1991, HRW published an investigation, Human Rights in a Dissolving Yugoslavia. Laber was lead author, and its findings relied heavily on her visit to Kosovo the previous year. The report claimed the Serbian province was home to “one of the most severe situations of human rights abuse in Europe today,” due to the Yugoslav army’s mass-deployment. Kosovo resultantly teemed with soldiers and roadblocks. Numerous anonymous local Albanians told HRW lurid tales of atrocities, supposedly committed by the military and security forces against civilians.

The report briefly acknowledged Serbs, and Kosovo’s other ethnic and religious minorities, had previously “suffered abuse” from elements of the province’s Albanian population, and local governments “composed predominantly of ethnic Albanians.” It also noted prior HRW missions to Kosovo concluded the Yugoslav military’s mission was “to protect the Serb minority.” However, the report asserted there was now “no justification” for the army’s presence, and its true purpose was to “subjugate ethnic Albanian identity” locally on the Serbian government’s behalf.

That non-Albanians “suffered abuse” in Kosovo before the Yugoslav army’s arrival is quite an understatement. As The New York Times reported in November 1982, Albanian ultranationalists had in recent years embarked on a savage “war of terror” to create a Kosovo “cleansed of all Slavs.” That year alone, 20,000 terrified Serbs fled the province. In 1987, the outlet recorded how this barbarous crusade had intensified to such a degree, Yugoslav officials and citizens across the federation feared the outbreak of civil war.

“There is no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,” Slovenian Communist chief Milan Kucan, who three years later led his republic’s independence from Yugoslavia, was quoted as saying. “Officials in Belgrade” of every ethnic and religious extraction viewed the “challenge” of Kosovo Albanian secessionists as “imperiling the foundations” of the country’s “multinational experiment”. They cautioned of the “Lebanonizing” of their state, comparing the situation to the “Troubles” in British-occupied Ireland:

“As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years… an ‘ethnically pure’ Albanian region… Last summer, [Kosovo] authorities… documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months… Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.”

Earlier that year, Belgrade’s nine-strong Presidency, led by Sinan Hasani – himself a Kosovo Albanian – formally condemned the actions of ultranationalists in the province as “counter-revolutionary”. In the parlance of socialist Yugoslavia, this was the gravest qualification that could be bestowed by the country’s leadership. Hasani remained part of the Presidency in February 1989, when its members unanimously declared a state of emergency in Kosovo, leading to the military’s deployment.

HRW singularly failed to probe this complex, essential context in its report. There was also no recognition whatsoever the situation in Kosovo for non-Albanians remained fraught at this time, to the extent Serbs escaping brewing ethnic tensions elsewhere in Yugoslavia were explicitly warned not to seek refuge in the province by authorities. These omissions are all the more unpardonable given HRW’s distorted view of events in Kosovo was central to the report’s conclusion – the US should sanction the Yugoslav federal government for human rights violations.

This finding was reached despite HRW conceding it was widely believed punitive action against Belgrade would “inevitably” lead to the federation’s disintegration, with “human rights virtually guaranteed to suffer” as a result. The organisation however did “not endorse this position”, believing it of far greater urgency Washington “express its disapproval” over purported abuses in Kosovo via destructive sanctions. Meanwhile, HRW unbelievably stressed it took “no position on whether Yugoslavia should or should not stay together as a country.”

‘Communal Violence’

Fast forward to December 2002, and Jeri Laber testified as an “expert” witness during Slobodan Milosevic’s ICTY prosecution. Under cross-examination by the indicted former Serbian and Yugoslav President, she exhibited an absolutely staggering ignorance of socialist Yugoslavia’s culture, history, legal and political systems, and much more besides. For example, Laber was unaware Tito, the federation’s founder and longtime leader, was – famously – a Croat. Her pronounced lack of local comprehension proved particularly problematic when Milosevic dissected an August 1991 HRW report, on the Croatian civil war.

The probe made a number of bold claims regarding that conflict, describing “the resurrection of Croatian nationalism” producing the deadly standoff “as a reaction to 45 years of Communist repression and Serbian hegemony,” leaving Croats “bitter” over how Zagreb was, in Yugoslavia, “a vassal” of Belgrade. HRW strongly suggested – without evidence – Milosevic was personally responsible for fomenting local tensions and violence. Western sponsorship of Nazi-venerating Croat leaders, who openly advocated total erasure of their republic’s Serb population, was unmentioned.

Milosevic asked Laber how HRW could’ve possibly concluded Croatia’s membership of socialist Yugoslavia amounted to almost half a century of “Serbian hegemony”, given a Serb occupied the office of Prime Minister just once throughout the federation’s history, for a four-year-long period. He further questioned her cognisance of Belgrade’s three federal premiers 1982 – 1992 all being Croats, that Croats led and dominated Yugoslavia’s defence apparatus during the Croatian conflict itself, and how “all ethnicities were represented proportionally” in the country’s government and military by law.

Laber confessed to not knowing a single one of these inconvenient truths, fatally undermining the claims of every HRW report published on Yugoslavia under her watch – which inspired the ICTY’s formation, and prosecutions. Flailing on the witness stand, she resorted to arguing the countless flagrantly bogus assertions in HRW’s assorted Yugoslav investigations weren’t intended to be taken as her organisation’s own independent findings, or in any way rooted in reality, but merely reflected what some people locally had voiced to HRW researchers:

“We were not saying that was factually the case, we were trying to explain the attitudes we heard, what people told us when we were there… There was no intent or implication… this is what we thought. We were just saying Croats talked about many years of Serb hegemony. That was the way they seemed to see it, not the way we were saying it was… We were trying… to explain a very complicated situation to people who were not living in [Yugoslavia]… in our own simplest way.”

Such crucial, self-nullifying caveats were of course not included in any of HRW’s reports on Yugoslavia’s collapse and the numerous internecine conflicts that resulted, which the organisation actively encouraged and facilitated. That Laber’s witless pronouncements informed and justified US policy, despite her ignorance of the most basic facts about Yugoslavia, is a disquieting testament to the woeful quality of ‘expertise’ routinely exploited in pursuit of Washington’s imperial goals. What the federation’s breakup would produce was entirely predictable, and indeed contemporaneously predicted by scholar Robert Hayden.

In a December 1990 New York Times op-ed, Hayden – an actual expert on Yugoslavia – harshly condemned Laber’s strident call for the US to shatter the federation in the newspaper the previous month as “remarkable for its lack of comprehension.” He rightly warned, “those who would break up the country are strong nationalists, not likely to treat minorities within their own borders well,” while recording how the federal military’s interventions helped “forestall armed conflict” in Croatia that August, which could’ve easily spread across the country.

Comparing Belgrade’s present situation to the US civil war’s leadup, Hayden charged it was “truly bizarre… ‘human rights’ activists so cavalierly advocate policies that are likely to turn Yugoslavia into the Lebanon of Europe.” With eerily precise foresight, he warned if Belgrade’s federal authority collapsed, “the republics are almost certain to fight one another because of the large minority populations that are scattered through the country.” His dire premonitions today reverberate as a prophet’s curse wretchedly validated:

“At best, we could expect strict repression, perhaps massive expulsions, the sundering of mixed towns and families, followed by permanent hostility and… communal violence as to make present human rights abuses in Kosovo seem absolutely civilized… The nations of Yugoslavia, despite their hostilities, are tightly bound to one another. These bonds cannot be broken, at least not without atrocities. ‘Human rights’ advocates should thus consider policies that will lead these nations to put down their arms, rather than policies that will induce fratricide.”

January 31, 2026 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | HRW, United States, Yugoslavia | Leave a comment

Human Rights Watch Report on October 7 accused of bias, Here’s why

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | July 23, 2024

On July 17^th, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a 236-page report that accused Hamas and other Palestinian Resistance groups of committing war crimes on October 7^th. However, the report has significant shortcomings, including a heavy reliance on Israeli sources and forensic evidence based on analogies of information provided by the infamous ZAKA rescue service, known for fabricating crime scenes and disseminating various propaganda hoaxes.

Despite its length and the new details it brings to light on the events of October 7 during the Hamas-led Al-Aqsa Flood offensive, the new HRW report is perhaps the most biased international investigation so far, and does not make mention of the ‘Hannibal Directive’ and “Israel’s” role in killing its own non-combatants on that day.

Given the report’s extensive nature, with over 800 footnotes, it’s impossible to cover every aspect in a single article. However, it’s important to examine some areas where it falls short.

Dealing with claims that HRW was biased

To begin with, Sari Bashi, the Israeli Program Director for the report and co-founder of the “Gisha- Legal Center for Freedom of Movement,” which is funded by Zionist sources such as the “New Israel Fund“, stated the following on X:

“This is the most comprehensive account of October 7 by an independent international organization and concludes that Hamas-led attacks against civilians in Israel rise to the level of crimes against humanity. We need accountability and civilian protection. Now.”

The methodology of the report is perhaps the most telling part, from which we can decipher how HRW reached its conclusions. Many of these conclusions do not hold up to scrutiny or, at the very least, demand further answers.

In their methodology section, HRW notes that it interviewed “94 survivors and witnesses from the October 7 assault”, which suggests a comprehensive picture of what occurred across “19 kibbutzim and five moshavim (cooperative communities), the cities of Sderot and Ofakim, two music festivals, and a beach party” that they noted in their overview. However, they admit that they were only able to actually interview survivors from the Moshav Pri Gan, Moshav Yachini, and the Psyduck music festival sites – just three out of 24 locations mentioned in their summary of events.

The report goes on to state that for its actual forensic information, HRW “spoke to two medical experts hired by the Israeli government to examine the remains collected by ZAKA (see below) and provide forensic advice.” They further note that “following October 7, some ZAKA members provided information to the media that proved unfounded”, which is a major understatement. The head of the “Search and Rescue” service has repeatedly peddled debunked lies, as ZAKA produced false claim after false claim, ranging from grotesque stories of rape, sexualized torture, babies strewn on clothing lines, to the infamous “40 beheaded babies” lie.

Despite this, HRW interviewed 10 ZAKA members who were all first responders on October 7 and claimed that it only used independently verifiable information. However, it admits that the two experts they spoke to that were tasked with examining the forensic evidence provided by ZAKA, were both hired by the Israeli regime directly.

Without going through every detail in their methodology, it consists of interviews with Israeli journalists, ZAKA members, an Israeli soldier, a range of experts without specifying who they were exactly, in addition to some interviews with Palestinian citizens of “Israel” and Palestinians in Gaza. “Most of those interviewed were Jewish Israelis, but we also interviewed Palestinians from Gaza, Palestinian citizens of “Israel”, and foreign workers from Nepal, Thailand, and the Philippines. Interviews were primarily conducted in Hebrew with the assistance of interpreters, and in Arabic, English, Spanish, and Thai”, the report states.

Then there is the fact that the HRW was prevented by the Israeli authorities from entering any other site than Kibbutz Be’eri, where they were not given unrestricted access, meaning that their ability to actually inspect would have been restricted. In the segment of the HRW report on Kibbutz Be’eri, they cite survivor testimonies and build a narrative about what occurred there, without bothering to mention the fact that the Hannibal Directive was triggered there.

In one case, at Yossi Cohen’s home in Kibbutz Be’eri, where the Israeli military opened fire with light arms and then tank fire, killing 13 Israelis, the account is completely one-sided and omits key information that is readily available online. It mentions a key witness, Yasmin Porat, who survived the battle between Hamas fighters and the Israeli military. While the report says that Porat “briefly spoke to Human Rights Watch and confirmed these events, albeit in less detail“, this comes off as an attempt at providing a linguistic loophole in order to provide cover to the fact that Porat did not actually confirm the precise characterisation of events presented by HRW.

In reality, Yasmin Porat was lambasted after a number of appearances she made on Israeli television, where she said that during hours of being kept under Hamas captivity “they did not abuse us. They treated us very humanely,” adding that “they give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous they calm us down. It was very frightening but no one treated us violently. Luckily nothing happened to me like what I heard in the media.” Porat also said that a Palestinian fighter spoke to her in Hebrew in order to calm her down and said “‘Look at me well, we’re not going to kill you. We want to take you to Gaza. We are not going to kill you. So be calm, you’re not going to die.’ That’s what he told me, in those words.” Porat lost her husband on October 7 and undoubtedly endured significant trauma, which is why her testimony was so powerful at the time.

Porat did not attempt to justify the actions of Hamas, but she presented a completely different picture to the one depicted in the HRW report, which is not at all acknowledged. If anything, the way the report deals with this specific incident is evidently omitting important details.

Then we have the allegations of a premeditated mass rape campaign, which the Israeli regime claims was carried out on the orders of Hamas that day. The report, in its section titled “Crimes Involving Acts of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence”, admitted the following:

“Human Rights Watch was not able to gather verifiable information through interviews with survivors of or witnesses to rape during the assault on October 7. Human Rights Watch requested access to information on sexual and gender-based violence in the possession of the Israeli government, but this request was not granted.”

Although this is a massive blow to the Israeli narrative about a mass rape campaign, they did claim that “forced nudity, and the posting without consent of sexualized images on social media”, but provided no in-depth information and simply stated that it came to these conclusions after “interviewing first responders, and experts on sexual violence who provided information about the context, and reviewing images captured during the assault”. It did not name who these experts and first responders were, however, we can reasonably assume from the information presented on methodology that ZAKA and Israelis were the bulk of those sources. The photographic evidence aspect is also not clearly explained or detailed, which does not enable us to further inspect such claims.

This segment seems, however, to rely heavily on a report by the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, which concluded that there is “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery” despite admitting no conclusive evidence. This report was made at the request of the Israeli regime and did not claim to be investigative in nature, however, it did reveal the below-mentioned issues:

“At least two of the allegations of sexual violence previously reported were determined by the mission team to be unfounded, due to either new superseding information or inconsistency in the information gathered, including first responder testimonies, photographic evidence, and other information. These included the allegation of a pregnant woman whose womb had reportedly been ripped open before she was killed, with her fetus stabbed while still inside her. Another such account was the interpretation initially made of the body of a girl found separated from the rest of her family, naked from the waist down. It was determined by the mission team that the crime scene had been altered by a bomb squad and the bodies moved, explaining the separation of the body of the girl from the rest of her family. Allegations of objects found inserted in female genital organs also could not be verified by the mission team due in large part to the limited availability and low quality of imagery.”

In addition to this, the HRW report notes that they viewed and analyzed hundreds of videos and photos from that day, most of which were from Telegram channels and have long been available to the public. These only provide snapshots of what went on and are no way conclusive.

On top of this, there was no analysis, investigation, or even mention of “Israel’s” triggering of the Hannibal Directive at numerous sites that day, which has now been confirmed as per sources cited by the Israeli daily Haaretz. Right here, this is the biggest red flag that indicates bias and debunks the idea that this report was in any way comprehensive, as it completely left out the role of Israeli forces in killing non-combatants that day. The most recent UN report which focused heavily on October 7, released on June 12 under a Human Rights Council resolution, mentions the Hannibal Directive and reports of Israeli forces killing their own people, making it a lot more balanced than the HRW report.

Overall, if we look at the examples noted above, the claim that this report is unbiased and presents a comprehensive view of the situation is false.

July 23, 2024 Posted by aletho | Deception | HRW, Israel, Palestine | Leave a comment

Palestinian surgeon slams HRW as unreliable source, says al-Ahli Hospital report ‘baseless’

Press TV – December 6, 2023

A British-Palestinian surgeon has denounced as “unfounded” a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the deadly strike on Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital, saying it was published without a genuine investigation or conclusive evidence, and that HRW is not a reliable source “as it serves the enemy.”

Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta made the remarks during a lecture titled “The destruction of Gaza’s health sector: confronting devastation and forced displacement” in the Qatari capital Doha on Tuesday.

Sitta highlighted that HRW neither communicated with the director of the hospital nor contacted the doctor who received Israeli orders for evacuation in its report.

He went on to say that HRW did not bother to talk to any of the witnesses of the crime as it unfolded, adding, “I always told you never use HRW as a reliable source because it served the enemy.”

On Sunday, HRW reported that evidence suggested a misfired Gaza rocket was the likely cause of an explosion that resulted in heavy casualties at al-Ahli Hospital on October 17, which left at least 417 people dead.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, As’ad Abdukhalil, a professor at California State University, Stanislaus, said Sitta’s verdict against HRW was “very damning.”

Sitta, traveled with Doctors Without Borders via Egypt to Gaza on 9 October to work in the besieged territory’s hospitals as a surgeon. He worked in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza.

He has already recounted harrowing healthcare-related ordeals the Palestinian civilians have gone through during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip.

HRW said in its report that, “The explosion that killed and injured many civilians at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17, 2023, resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition,” such as those commonly used by Palestinian resistance groups.

It claimed that the findings of its investigation into the explosion were based on a review of photos and videos, satellite imagery, and interviews with witnesses and experts.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said all indications pointed to Israel’s responsibility, adding that the HRW report was biased towards Israel and was not “decisive”.

“HRW hasn’t come up with any evidence to support their findings nor eyewitness testimonies nor opinion of independent military exports,” he said, adding that Hamas received questions from HRW two weeks ago but asked it to delay its report until after the war had ended.

The explosion at the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital triggered outrage across the Arab world. Palestinians blamed an Israeli air strike, while Israel claimed it was caused by a misfiring Palestinian rocket launch.

Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Israel has pounded hospitals across the besieged enclave where thousands of displaced people and patients were sheltering.

The regime has falsely accused the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of using hospitals as bases, which Hamas has dismissed.

December 6, 2023 Posted by aletho | Deception, War Crimes | HRW, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Why China’s ‘repressed’ Muslims suddenly got dragged back into the light

By Timur Fomenko | RT | November 24, 2023

At the beginning of this week, foreign ministers from a group of Muslim-majority countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian National Authority, and Indonesia travelled to China in order to seek support for a ceasefire in the ongoing Gaza war.

The unconditional backing of Israel by the United States and its allies has tanked their credibility across the Islamic world, and Beijing has positioned itself as an advocate of peace when others are not willing to take up that role.

It is curious that within the following few days, a report was released by Human Rights Watch, accusing China of expanding its alleged campaign of closing down and repurposing mosques into regions other than Xinjiang – which had so far been the focus of accusations that Beijing is cracking down on the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority. Even those allegations had been somewhat on the backburner in the establishment media lately, but the HRW report was quickly picked up and amplified.

Although relations between the US and China have somewhat calmed down, it is obvious that Washington does not want to see Beijing increase its influence in the Muslim world, as that would inevitably come at the expense of American clout. The attempt to draw attention back to China’s alleged repression of its Muslim population, while underreporting Israel’s devastating attack on the (also Muslim) population of Gaza, is an exercise in deflection and part of the ongoing narrative war between China and the US. Be it about Muslims or not, the Xinjiang issue has long been a key component of that struggle for influence.

The Uyghur minority has, since 2018, been a tool of “atrocity propaganda” used to wage public relations offensives against China. It is a means to an end, which often disappears and resurfaces in the media, coinciding with the ebb and flow of anti-Beijing rhetoric coming from the US administration or the State Department. This includes using it to turn public opinion against Beijing in selected countries, including allies, or to manufacture consent for policies aimed at supply chain shifts or “decoupling,” through the accusation of forced labor, especially in the fields of key agricultural goods, polysilicon and solar panels, or to attempt to embarrass China diplomatically at the UN, or to push for boycotting events such as the Winter Olympics.

This is an incredibly opportunistic attitude to something Beijing’s detractors claim is a “genocide.” Since late 2021, the Biden administration has largely ignored the issue and it has fallen off the international agenda, precisely because Washington had gotten the sanctions they wanted from it at the time. However, the Israel-Gaza conflict introduces a new dynamic whereby the US and its allies are dramatically losing face and credibility among Muslim nations because they are backing Israel unconditionally in the wholesale slaughter of Palestinians. From a geopolitical point of view, such a policy pathway is actually strategically disastrous because it alienates the entire Global South, serves as a beacon in projecting US hypocrisy and worse still, directly empowers China as a competitor.

So when you are faced with a situation whereby Beijing is gaining diplomatic capital over your own failures, what do you do? You desperately aim to deflect by trying to draw attention to another issue in the attempt to smear Beijing: Xinjiang and the Uyghurs. Now as it happens, Muslim countries mostly ignore US-led propaganda over the Xinjiang issue, because they see it for what it is and also share a common norm of respect for national sovereignty with Beijing, which is politically beneficial for them. The only Muslim nation who has ever made public comment about it is Türkiye, because Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group and the issues is viewed through the lens of Ankara’s Pan-Turk ideology. However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is still likely to ignore the issue, or only involve himself in it based on what he can gain.

On the other hand, the Gulf States, the key US allies in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, support China’s position, and the Gaza issue is putting them under pressure regarding their relations with the US and the decision to normalize relations with Israel. So suddenly we are seeing a resurgence of Xinjiang material because the US, even if it cannot sway their governments, wants to kindle the anger of Muslim populations about another issue instead and diminish China’s credibility. Although this is less likely in Arab States, it could cause public opinion ruptures in key Asian Islamic countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, where significant resources were placed by organizations such as the BBC in relaying Xinjiang-related content in their respective languages.

But the question is, will this campaign succeed? It might be worth remembering that Xinjiang is an artificially imposed issue pushed “top-down” by governments and the media, whereas Palestine is a grassroots issue pushing from the bottom up, aspects of which media and politicians endeavor to selectively ignore. China’s heavy-handed management of Uyghurs in Xinjiang is not really a genocide, and it will never rank on the same level of severity as the outright bombardment and mass killing of Palestinians, no matter how hard you try.

November 24, 2023 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | China, HRW, Middle East, United States | Leave a comment

Here’s why HRW deliberately only scratched the surface in exploring Ukraine’s use of banned ‘petal’ mines

PFM-1 anti-personnel land mine found in a field, near the town of Artyomovsk, Donetsk People’s Republic © Viktor Antonyuk / Sputnik

By Eva Bartlett | RT | March 28, 2023

Since Ukraine dropped hundreds of mines on the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in July, 104 people have fallen victim to the internationally-banned PFM-1 ‘petal’ (otherwise known as ‘butterfly’) devices. Nine of them are children. Of which three died.

Among the most recent civilians to be injured, on March 19, were two 60-year-old men. On February 26, a woman in her sixties was wounded in her neighborhood. On February 14, a teenager stepped on a petal mine near a school. These are just a few documented examples from recent weeks.

The first wave of over 40 victims came within the first few weeks after Ukrainian forces deployed the mines over Donetsk en masse in July 2022, and the number has more than doubled since. Since then I, along with other reporters on the ground, have documented their lingering presence and the civilian victims.

NGO reports… selectively

After signing the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty in 1999, Kiev was obligated to destroy its stockpile of 6 million PFM-1s. It denies using them, but abundant evidence incriminates Kiev in this particular war crime. While the West has yet to turn its attention to the victims of the petal mines in the Donbass, reports of Ukraine using them elsewhere have emerged.

In its January 2023 report on banned landmines, the Human Rights Watch NGO notes, “In 2021, Ukraine reported to the UN secretary-general that 3.3 million stockpiled PFM mines still need to be destroyed.” HRW then advised Ukraine to investigate itself for its use of the prohibited mines.

The report is titled “Ukraine: Banned Landmines Harm Civilians. Ukraine Should Investigate Forces’ Apparent Use; Russian Use Continues,” implying that not only is Russia also deploying the petal mines, but that Russia’s use of them is beyond question, while Kiev’s use is open to debate.

Yet, much like in 2020, when the UN accused Russia of war crimes in Syria based on “we say so” and unnamed sources, you won’t find proof of Russia’s use of petal mines in the HRW report. In fact, buried there is a HRW admission that it “has not verified claims of Russian forces using PFM mines in the armed conflict.” This is a standard media tactic: boldly state one thing in a headline and quietly clarify the opposite in the body of the article, which most people won’t bother reading.

On the other hand, HRW claims it interviewed over 100 people, “including witnesses to landmine use, victims of landmines, first responders, doctors, and Ukrainian de-miners,” regarding Ukraine’s use of the objects in Izium (a city in the Kharkov region, north of Donetsk) while it was briefly under Moscow’s control. The HRW team entered the city after Russian forces withdrew in September. Everyone interviewed, the report noted, “said they had seen mines on the ground, knew someone who was injured by one, or had been warned about their presence during Russia’s occupation of Izium.”

The testimony records that the areas were all, “close to where Russian military forces were positioned at the time, suggesting they were the target,” and that residents in Izium said that rocket attacks, “happened frequently during the Russian occupation.”

The report cited 11 civilian mine-casualties, and noted that HRW had seen “physical evidence of PFM antipersonnel mine use,” including, “unexploded mines, remnants of mines, and the metal cassettes that carry the mines in rockets.”

It has to be noted that HRW has been banned in Russia since April 2022, making it impossible for the organization to gather evidence on the ground in areas controlled by Russian forces. However, lack of access to evidence has not stopped it from using its report to carry accusations against Russia, citing Ukraine’s former prosecutor general Irina Venediktova’s claim that “Russian forces used PFM mines in the Kharkivska region as early as February 26”. In contrast, the numerous credible reports of Kiev’s use of petal mines in Donetsk, available through open sources, are absent from the report.

HRW’s history of targeted condemnations

Human Rights Watch is one of many Western-funded NGOs with a history of whitewashing NATO and its allies’ crimes while pretending to be a neutral observer. Over the years, I’ve pointed out the hypocrisy of Ken Roth, who was the George Soros-funded NGO’s executive director from 1993-2022. In March 2021 he pushed Washington’s propaganda about Russia starving Syria. More glaringly, in 2015, Roth used footage from an eastern Gaza neighbourhood (Shuja’iyya) that had been flattened by Israel, to claim the footage depicted Syria’s Aleppo. He went on to likewise push the 2013 Ghouta “chemical” narrative, which had long been widely-discredited by journalists and by the so-called “rebels” themselves.

If dubious claims from HRW or its representatives aren’t indication enough of their allegiances to Western narratives, then their links to the US government should be. The vice chair of its board of directors, Susan Manilow, according to this 2014 article, describes herself as “a longtime friend to Bill Clinton,” who helped manage his campaign finances. Bruce Rabb, also on the board, lists in his biography that he “served as staff assistant to President Richard Nixon” from 1969-70 – the period in which his administration secretly and illegally carpet-bombed Cambodia and Laos.

The article further notes that the advisory committee for HRW’s Americas Division has even boasted the presence of a former Central Intelligence Agency official, Miguel Díaz. According to his State Department biography, Díaz served as a CIA analyst and also provided “oversight of US intelligence activities in Latin America” for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

So, when HRW recently decided to finally discuss Ukraine’s deployment of the insidious petal mines (tens of thousands of which have been fired into the Donbass by Ukraine over the course of the past year), it is not because the body has suddenly become neutral and impartial, but it is rather a grasp at credibility: reporting what is widely known – that, in violation of international law, Ukraine has been deploying Petal mines – but avoid providing the whole story.

By downplaying and ignoring Kiev’s widespread use of petal mines throughout the DPR, HRW is deliberately downplaying war crimes, much like the entirety of Western corporate media.

Kiev’s Western supporters may even have to deal with its use of the petal mines at their own expense down the line – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has recently announced his country would invest $2.2 million into de-mining Ukraine. Of course, no mention was made of the Ottawa Treaty-banned munitions which will have to be cleared.

Kiev’s deadly delivery

In one incident I witnessed first hand, an attack took place just after 9 pm on July 30, 2022. Ukraine fired rockets, each packed with over 300 mines, onto Donetsk, its suburbs, and other cities, including Yasinovataya, Makeevka and Gorlovka. The rockets exploded in the air to ensure greater distribution of devices on the ground. The attack mirrored previous ‘deliveries’ to the hard-hit Donetsk districts of Kievskiy, Kirovsky and Kuibyshevkiy.

The morning after, I walked the central Donetsk streets extremely carefully, wary of every leaf or piece of cardboard which could be obscuring or covering a Petal mine, so difficult are they to pick out from their surroundings. They cannot seriously damage military vehicles, which means that scattering them over Donetsk only has one purpose – to target and maim civilians. Some models of the petal mines have a self-destruct timer. Others, including those used by Kiev, can stay on the ground for years.

The innocent victims of Donbass

Since reporting the initial bombardment in late July, I have been following up on the methodical destruction of these mines by Russian sappers, as well as on civilians harmed by the illegal munitions. One of the more recent victims was 14 year old Nikita. His foot was blown off when in early November, 2022, he stepped on a mine in a playground while on his way to visit his grandmother.

RT journalist Roman Kosarev recently spoke with another recent teenage victim, who stepped on a petal mine when getting into a car.

Kosarev also spoke to the Director of the Donetsk Republic’s Trauma Center, Andrey Boryak, who said: “The injury from such a mine is very severe, and immediately leads to a handicap. It’s almost impossible to save the foot and the lower part of the leg.”

This is what I've been reporting since late July when Ukraine fired rockets containing petal mines (300+/rocket) all over Donetsk & other cities: they're often impossible to see, even if you've been warned of their presence. https://t.co/DMab8myVnd

— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) January 24, 2023

HRW has had over 6 months to investigate Ukraine littering the DPR with Petal/PFM-1 mines… but it has not, and will not. It’s once again the case that the lives of Donbass civilians don’t matter when it comes not only to Western media reporting but also to supposedly-neutral human rights bodies. Even worse still is the knowledge that in spite of the valiant efforts of sappers in the DPR, the mines will inevitably claim more innocent civilians as their victims.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

March 28, 2023 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | HRW, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Shutting Down Russia Bashing, Western Financed NGOs in Moscow

By Stephen Lendman | April 9, 2022

On Friday, Russia’s Justice Ministry ordered the closure of hostile Western NGOs in the country.

To date, 15 organizations were removed from its registry of international groups for “violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation” — with no further elaboration.

They include offices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Institute for International Education, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation, and the Wspolnota Polska Association.

On Friday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) were added to Russia’s persona non grata list.

Both organizations publish defamatory reports on invented US/Western enemies.

They operate as mouthpieces for their interests.

They’re imperial tools.

HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth is a former US federal prosecutor.

His predecessor Aryeh Neier left to become president of George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Other past and present HRW staffers are former US officials or have ties to sources and groups representing Washington’s geopolitical interests — including the infamous undemocratic National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Like HRW, AI fronts for powerful US/Western interests.

Both organizations are more concerned about serving their funding sources and publicity to attract more of the same than human rights.

Russia shut down HRW for fake news rubbish like the following, saying:

“Today, Russia is more repressive than it has ever been in the post-Soviet era (sic).”

“(A)uthorities crack down on critical media, harass peaceful protesters, engage in smear campaigns against independent groups, and stifle them with fines (sic).”

In early April, HRW defied reality by falsely accusing Russian forces in Ukraine of “rape… summary execution(s), (along with) committing laws-of-war violations against civilians (sic), (and) looting civilian property (sic).”

HRW provided no verifiable evidence to support what it falsely claimed to document — because none exists.

It falsely claimed that Russian forces “rounded up” men in Ukraine and “executed them (sic).”

Ignoring generous humanitarian aid provided by Russian forces to Ukrainians, HRW falsely accused them of forcibly “taking food, firewood, clothing, and other items” in areas of the country where they’ve operated.

In response to shutting down its office and de-registering the group, HRW’s Roth said the following:

“This new iron curtain (sic) will not stop our ongoing efforts to defend the rights of all Russians and to protect civilians in Ukraine (sic).”

He lied accusing Moscow of “criminalizing” independent war reporting.

There’s nothing remotely “independent” about US/Western NGOs, notably not imperial tools like HRW, AI and other groups that are bribed with big bucks to serve their interests.

Ignoring democracy as it should be in Russia compared to US/Western fantasy versions, Roth falsely accused the country of “turn(ing) toward authoritarianism (sic).”

The above Big Lies were followed by an appeal for donations to continue its bashing of invented US/Western enemies.

Russia shut down AI for falsely accusing its authorities of “violat(ing) the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly…torture…disappearances…deportation of refugees and asylum seekers (along with) failure to address domestic violence (sic).”

It lied accusing Russia of “aggression in Ukraine (sic).”

It lied claiming that Russian forces “extrajudicially executed civilians in” the country (sic).

It lied saying that they’re responsible for “horrifying violence (and) widespread intimidation (sic).”

AI’s head Agnes Callamard turned truth on its head, falsely claiming that Russian forces are “kill(ing) unarmed civilians…in their homes and streets in acts of unspeakable cruelty and shocking brutality (sic),” adding:

“We gathered (so-called) evidence that Russian forces have committed extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings (sic).”

“People in Ukraine are facing a catastrophic human rights crisis.”

“People are dying, including children, and many thousands of lives are at risk.”

“Take action to demand that the Russian authorities stop this act of aggression and protect civilians now (sic).”

All of the above and lots more of the same apply to Nazified Ukrainian forces — clearly not Russia.

Yet HRW and AI falsely accused Moscow of their war crimes and related atrocities — in deference to their US/Western donors.

AI lied accusing Russian authorities of “an unprecedented, nationwide crackdown on independent journalism, anti-war protests and dissenting voices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (sic).”

“The Kremlin remains hellbent on hiding the human cost of its war and has blocked independent news sites and social media (sic).”

The above applies to how US/Western regimes operate, not Russia.

In response to Russia’s shutdown of its office, AI’s Callamard falsely said the following:

“Amnesty’s closing down in Russia is only the latest in a long list of organizations that have been punished for defending human rights (sic) and speaking the truth to the Russian authorities (sic).”

“In a country where scores of activists and dissidents have been imprisoned, killed or exiled (sic), where independent media has been smeared, blocked or forced to self-censor (sic), and where civil society organizations have been outlawed or liquidated (sic), you must be doing something right if the Kremlin tries to shut you up (sic).”

Russia should have shut down imperial tools HRW and AI long ago.

Pretending support for human rights belies how they, in fact, operate.

The rights and interests of US/Western donors alone are served — at the expense of what both organizations falsely claim to stand for.

April 9, 2022 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | Amnesty International, HRW | Leave a comment

To Western Media, Prosecuting Bolivian Coup Leaders Is Worse Than Leading a Coup

BY JOE EMERSBERGER | FAIR | MARCH 23, 2021

One can imagine an editor of the London-based Guardian (3/17/21) shaking her head sadly as she typed the headline: “Cycle of Retribution Takes Bolivia’s Ex-President From Palace to Prison Cell.” The subhead told readers, “Jeanine Áñez’s government once sought to jail the country’s former leader Evo Morales for terrorism and sedition—now she faces the same charges.”

The Guardian article by Tom Phillips wants us to lament an alleged incapacity of Bolivian governments to stop persecuting opponents once they take office. We are told that Áñez’s government did it, and that now the government of President Luis Arce (elected in a landslide win on October 18, 2020) is also doing it.

The article’s premise is a lie, and the liberal Guardian has hardly been the only outlet spreading it, with help from Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), whom Philips quoted. A team effort between Western media and NGOs like HRW often reinforces the views of the US government (FAIR.org, 8/23/18, 8/31/18, 5/31/2o, 11/3/18).

Áñez was a US-backed dictator installed after a military coup sent democratically elected President Evo Morales fleeing Bolivia for his life on November 10, 2019. Once in power, Áñez immediately promised security forces legal immunity as they massacred dozens of protesters. She is now charged with terrorism (in addition to sedition and criminal conspiracy) over her attempt to keep power by terrorizing the public. Her arrest is good news to people who support democracy and human rights.

But now, as when the coup took place in 2019, the most obvious conclusions are evaded when they are incompatible with US foreign policy (FAIR.org, 11/11/19). It should surprise nobody that US officials have made statements depicting her arrest as political persecution.

Fighting to spring an ex-dictator

In downgrading the coup that installed Áñez to a mere allegation made against Áñez, Reuters (3/13/21), the Financial Times (3/13/21), the Washington Post (3/13/21), CNN (3/15/21) and Canada’s National Post (3/13/21) have all run articles quoting HRW’s Vivanco criticizing her arrest. CNN quoted him:

The arrest warrants against Añez and her ministers do not contain any evidence that they have committed the crime of “terrorism.” For this reason, they generate well-founded doubts that it is a process based on political motives.

The Washington Post article, whose headline alleged a “crackdown on opposition,” used a shorter version of the same quote from Vivanco.

While all the articles described the coup as an allegation, CNN stands out for getting the most ridiculous with its denialism:

Then-head of the Bolivian Armed Forces, Cmdr. Williams Kaliman, asked Morales to step down to restore stability and peace; Morales acquiesced on November 10 “for the good of Bolivia.”

But political allies maintain he was removed from power as part of a coup orchestrated by conservatives, including Áñez.

Did Kaliman need to be filmed putting a gun directly to Morales’ head for CNN to admit it was a coup?

Adding to the disinformation loop from his own platform on Twitter, Vivanco spread an Americas Quarterly op-ed by Raul Peñaranda (3/16/21) that denounced the arrest of Áñez. Peñaranda once said that Bolivia’s democracy was “saved” the day Morales was overthrown, and his recent op-ed depicts the November 2019 coup as a legal transfer of power.

In 2019, the military publicly “urged” Morales to resign, as both the military and police made clear they would not protect him from violent right-wing protesters, some of whom ransacked his house. Áñez, a right-wing senator whose party received only 4% of the national vote in the 2019 legislative elections, had the presidential sash placed on her by military men, while lawmakers from Evo Morales’ party (Movimineto al Socialismo, or MAS), the majority in the legislature, were absent: some in hiding, others refusing to attend without guarantees of their safety and their families’.

Ignoring all that, the Guardian article by Tom Philips refers to “claims the former senator [Áñez] was involved in plotting the right-wing coup that Bolivia’s current government claims brought her to power.” (My emphasis.) Editors are usually big fans of concision. The highlighted words should have been deleted. An added benefit would have been accuracy.

Of course, it’s easier to deny that Áñez was involved in plotting the coup that put her in power (hardly a stretch) if you do not even accept that a coup took place. Reuters placed scare quotes around the word “coup” in headlines about Áñez’s arrest: “Bolivian Ex-President Áñez Begins Four-Month Detention Over ‘Coup’ Allegations” (3/16/21); “ Bolivian Ex-President Áñez Begins Jail Term as Rights Groups Slam ‘Coup’ Probe” (3/14/21).

Reuters (3/14/21) and CNN (3/15/21) also uncritically reported the thoroughly debunked pretext for the coup. CNN reported, “Though an international audit would later find the results the 2019 election could not be validated because of ‘serious irregularities,’ [Morales] declared himself the winner, prompting massive protests around the country.” (The “international audit” is the OAS’s widely debunked report.) Reuters simply stated that the Organization of America States (OAS) “was an official monitor of the 2019 election and had found it fraudulent.”

Cycle of dishonesty

The coup was incited by transparently dishonest claims repeatedly made by OAS monitors about the presidential election won by Morales on October 20, 2019. Three days after the election, they claimed there was a “drastic,” “inexplicable” and “hard to explain” increase in Morales’ lead in the vote count (FAIR.org, 12/17/19).

The Washington, DC–based Center for Economic and Policy Research immediately pointed out that this was utter nonsense. But in the crucial months following Morales’ ouster, outlets like Reuters constantly shielded the OAS from devastating criticism. Eventually, expert criticism of the OAS continually mounted and disrupted the media silence. Details from the election results in 2020, in which Evo Morales’ party triumphed by an even greater margin than in 2019, further exposed OAS dishonesty.

Like Reuters, the widely quoted Jose Miguel Vivanco of HRW spread fraud claims when it mattered most in 2019. The day after the election won by Morales, Vivanco tweeted in Spanish that “everything indicates that [Evo Morales] intends to steal the election.” As late as December 2019, HRW executive director Ken Roth was also promoting OAS claims without the slightest trace of scepticism. Months into the murderous illegitimate rule of Áñez, Vivanco explicitly referred to Bolivia as a “democracy.” He did so in a Spanish-language interview with BrujulaDigital (5/15/20), an outlet edited by Raul Peñaranda, the coup supporter whose Americas Quarterly op-ed Vivanco recently promoted on Twitter. Meanwhile, on Twitter, Vivanco constantly refers to the governments of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua–two democratically elected presidents the US government wants overthrown–as “dictaduras” (dictatorships).

The New York Times editorial board openly supported the coup that ousted Morales in 2019:

The forced ouster of an elected leader is by definition a setback to democracy, and so a moment of risk. But when a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option. That is what the Bolivians have done, and what remains is to hope that Mr. Morales goes peacefully into exile in Mexico and to help Bolivia restore its wounded democracy.

So predictably enough, a Times article (3/12/21) about the recent Áñez arrest referred vaguely to the utterly debunked OAS fraud claims (“a contested vote count”) and took the same kind of dishonest stance as HRW and other Western media by equating a US-backed dictatorship to a democratically elected government whose ouster the US supported: “Both Mr. Morales and Ms. Añez used the judiciary to go after their critics.”

The Washington Post editorial board (3/18/21) came out with a wild defense of Añez, headlined: “The Bolivian Government Is on a Lawless Course. Its Democracy Must Be Preserved.” Most ominously, the editorial said, “The Biden administration should lead a regional effort to preserve democratic stability in this long-suffering country, lest crisis turn into catastrophe.” Informed people may laugh at this for a few seconds–until they remember that Bolivia’s people could eventually face lethal US sanctions for daring to hold murderers to account. Left unchallenged, that’s the catastrophe that propaganda like this could bring about.

Brutal dictators supported by Washington have no reason to doubt that establishment journalists and big NGOs will try very hard to keep them out of jail. Removing the threat of US -backed coups from the world will involve a constant struggle against Western media and the sources they present to us as reliable.

March 26, 2021 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Bolivia, HRW, Latin America, New York Times | Leave a comment

Human Rights Watch – Watching What Suits Their Agenda

By Gary Jordan | Wake the F… Up | March 11, 2021

Is there a more egregious attack on human rights than being forced to accept an injection of experimental, toxic junk into your body with the threat of social benefit sanctions, hefty fines and/or imprisonment should you refuse?

Apparently, President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo of Indonesia doesn’t see it that way. Nor do the folks at the George Soros-funded Human Rights Watch.

On Monday, February 15th 2021 a Jakarta Post headline screamed out ‘Get vaccinated or lose your social aid’, sending a message to the poorest of the poor in the archipelago nation that they would suffer the consequences dearly, should they refuse to be administered the Chinese Sinovac Biotech COVID-19 vaccine. Anyone who has ever visited Indonesia knows that ‘social aid’ is in very short supply and that the Indonesian government dole it out sparingly. But if you’re going to coerce and threaten a segment of the population why not start with the most destitute and poverty-stricken, right? At least that’s the idea Jokowi and his gaggle of drug pushers have. As a friend of mine remarked, Indonesia went from being a nation that severely punishes those who do drugs to one that severely punishes those who don’t. Another example of the inverted, upside-down state of our existence in the 2020s to date.

Further into the Jakarta Post article, it’s explained that measures would be put in place to ensure steady vaccine uptake and that those who were not willing to be compliant participants in the ongoing trials would be deemed a hindrance to the campaign and therefore could potentially be hit with heavy fines and possible jail time. Does it matter that even the Food and Drug Administration has expressed efficacy and safety concerns and have gone as far as stating that it would NOT be recommending frontline workers are vaccinated with the Sinovac product? Or does it matter that clinical trials in Indonesia have shown a mere 65% efficacy rate? Of course not. Did you think you were living in 2019 and had the freedom to choose what goes into your body? Have the jab or go to jail! Jokowi’s orders.

Of course, as shocking as it is to think that such freedom is a thing of the past in the thriving and modern predominantly Muslim nation of Indonesia, when you scratch the surface and delve into the previous actions of their Globalist agenda-pushers called politicians, you’ll soon find that they are on the same road to techno-Fascism as the remaining 192 United Nations members states are. As we speak, for example, a well-known artist from the island of Bali sits in a prison cell for supposed ‘hate speech’ after he publicly declared on social media that the COVID-19 tests are inaccurate (something since acknowledged by authoritative sources) and that the Indonesian Doctor’s Association (IDI) were ‘flunkeys’ to the World Health Organization (WHO). Meeting a similar fate was a 19-year-old girl from the island of Kupang who was arrested after she appeared on video setting fire to a face mask and calling the pandemic out as a hoax. Both are victims of one of the world’s most Orwellian laws, known as the Information and Electronics Transaction Act (UU ITE), which has created a modern-day Stasi-like system in Indonesia where neighbours report neighbours for the sins of speaking their minds. This is the wet dream of Indonesia’s notorious CIA-backed ex-Dictator, Suharto. Had he lived to experience his mata-mata (eyes everywhere) police state be so enabled and enhanced by the current technological advancements in his country he would have thought he’d died and gone to heaven. And now, with the introduction of ‘virtual police’ who will directly contact you on your mobile device to warn you that what you are about to post may break the law, it appears the people of Indonesia can do no wrongthink.

I wonder if they agree that the idea of a vaccine mandated, centrally controlled, hive mind, AI driven, Fascist police and military-run Brave New World for the future is just the rant of a crazy conspiracy theorist? Maybe they could ask the Fact-Checkers. After all, when a nation deploys the military to engage in contact tracing and to enforce travel restrictions, as Indonesia has recently done, it’s nothing to be worried about. It’s all for the greater good, right? Best to ignore the fact that the same military which is about to be let loose amongst the public and given unprecedented power over it are the same that have, in relatively recent times, committed human rights abuses that include, but are not limited to, the shooting dead of four young students, the public stripping and hog-tying of dozens of indigenous men for the horrific act of raising a flag, the assassination of two men and the subsequent burning and disposal of their corpses and the rape and torture of sex slaves. What could go wrong?

Sarcasm aside, as someone who has spent over a decade living in Indonesia, I find the state of affairs there extremely worrying. A government that demands an emergency authorized, non approved, low efficacy, potentially harmful, experimental vaccine be administered into the veins of every man, woman and child against their wishes, is a government of occupation – working against its very own people. That same worry is felt by many in the nation with some even resorting to hiding in the woods for fear of being injected. Of course, mainstream media in the country presents these same people as being outsiders and lunatics who have watched too many YouTube videos and ridicules them as subjects of disinformation. We should trace our minds back to recent history, which is littered with stories of demonized persons hiding in the woods for fear of government policy. Perhaps Jokowi and his Big Pharma cartel should be reminded of that.

Perhaps Human Rights agencies should be too.

On receiving the disturbing news of coercion and injection by force in Indonesia, I reached out to several of them, starting with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. To date, I have not had a reply from Amnesty. Human Rights Watch, however, did send me a note from their office in Amsterdam stating that they did not have the capacity to handle individual requests. This I accept as I can imagine an organization of their notoriety receives vast amounts of correspondence from people all over the world who are victims of human rights violations. Nevertheless, I have to ask again; is there a more egregious attack on human rights than being forced to accept an injection of experimental, toxic junk into your body with the threat of social benefit sanctions, hefty fines and/or imprisonment should you refuse?

And if indeed the organization is too busy to investigate this very serious issue in Indonesia, what exactly is keeping them busy? What could be more threatening to the rights of a human being than the accelerated pauperization of social aid recipients or the imprisonment of conscientious objectors? I soon found out the answer to this question was…

Britney Spears.

The state of well being of the multi-millionaire pop princess takes priority over a nation of 275 million people who are about to be turned into guinea pigs. As many people will have heard, Britney Spears was thrust into the spotlight again as a result of a recent documentary that highlighted her plight in regards to her father’s standing as her legal guardian and the implications of this on her career and finances. Poor Britney. Human Rights Watch used this opportunity to jump on the #FreeBritney bandwagon. In their defence, the coverage they had given to the movement did shed light on the issue of guardianship over the many people worldwide who are under the control of others due to mental health or psycho-social issues. Still, it made me take a more in-depth look at Human Rights Watch in specific. As far as I’m concerned, they did not need a random email from myself or anyone else to highlight the horrendous laws which have been passed in Indonesia, threatening the freedom and finances of those who object to being vaccinated. For that reason, they cannot consider themselves serious challengers of Fascist, authoritarian rights-abusing governments who medically terrorize their population. They certainly can’t consider themselves purveyors of human rights when they are turning a blind eye to the arbitrary whims of pharmaceutical cartel-driven establishment policy. So what is the main reason for their ignorance of the current status quo – not just in Indonesia, but in regards to what has been happening worldwide since the COVID-19 cult hijacked our planet?

Have Human Rights Watch stepped forward to voice their disdain when employees of a corporation in the UK called Metropolitan Police were arresting peaceful protestors en masse in London? Were they loudly condemning the presence of 20 agents of the state in Dublin, Ireland when they turned up in cars and riot vans in front of a beauty salon to arrest the owner, who had opened her business during lockdown because she had no other way of earning a living? Were they up in arms over the callous Big Pharma-owned politicians who spat on the faith and beliefs of the people of New York City by eliminating religious exemption to vaccine requirements? Were they vocal when vicious thugs within the Victoria Police Department in Australia were abducting journalists who were reporting on the anti-lockdown street protests? Did they kick up a fuss when perverts, hired by Justin Trudeau’s government in Canada as security guards in mandatory quarantine centers, sexually assaulted detainees? Or how about when a Canadian citizen was forced to skip a potentially life-saving cancer treatment appointment at the demands of malevolent public health officials who insisted he checked into a government detention center? Were they even heard objecting to mandatory quarantine, to begin with?

Have they been heard crying out their disapproval of the apartheid conditions imminent in society as a result of proposed phoney vaccine passports and immunity certificates? Have they condemned the neglect of the unvaccinated in Israel who presently will not be allowed to enter establishments without proof of vaccination via their ‘Green Passport?’ Are they sounding the alarm bells in recognition of the tsunami of discrimination about to be unleashed on unvaccinated people?

No. Tumbleweed. Deafening silence.

These topics matter as much to Human Rights Watch as the penalization of poor Indonesians who are too terrified to come out of the jungle, for fear of being damaged by an ineffective and dangerous vaccine amid credible and very real reports of adverse reactions worldwide.

Where you will be sure to hear the voice of the Human Rights Watch team though is anywhere that the agendas of the Globalists are threatened. Belarus for example. When the dark suits of the IMF and World Bank showed up in mid-2020 and attempted to bribe the nation’s leader, Aleksander Lukashenko, with almost a billion dollars in exchange for permission to destroy the country with lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions, thus creating absolute dependence on the ubiquitous parasites, Lukashenko refused. What would result was the demonization of the President worldwide in the left-wing bought-and-paid-for mainstream media. At the very forefront of this campaign was Human Rights Watch. As police and security personnel in the nation clashed with protestors, this was suddenly viewed by Human Rights Watch as an act of abuse on civil liberties on behalf of the Belarussian law enforcement personnel. The same, and sometimes even worse, behaviour, when committed by police on anti-lockdown protestors in London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Toronto, or Dublin is ignored though. Why is that? Simply because the demonization of the Belarussian President and his security force is part of the Globalist banking agenda, which serves the interest of Human Rights Watch major donor, George Soros. Why bother with trivial matters such as the greatest attack on civil liberties this century, as is occurring worldwide with tyrannical practices that are being put in place in the name of keeping us safe from a virus with a 99.97% recovery rate? This is of no significance to Human Rights Watch, who are more interested in the agendas of the Open Society Foundation – for example, Black Lives Matter, Transgender rights and anything anti-Russian. Poor Indonesian families be damned. They’ve got more important people to serve, such as the IMF and World Bank billionaires… and Britney Spears of course.

For certain, the last people on the planet that would object to President Jokowi of Indonesia’s forced medical experimentation on his people are the Human Rights Watch crew. 2020 proved to be a year that would see them run off their feet, waging war week after week with Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, who refused to allow undocumented immigrants to swarm his country as and when they pleased – much to the detriment of the radical leftist extremist Soros, who was as hell-bent as ever on transforming the tradition and culture of all European nations. An issue of this importance would never allow Human Rights Watch the time to concern themselves with menial points such as bodily autonomy and freedom to choose. In fact, they seemed to develop a case of amnesia on the ‘my body, my choice’ argument that they’ve spouted for decades.

Nuremberg Code-evading practices in Indonesia were no where near as important to Human Rights Watch as the trial of Alexey Navalny, a man who mainstream media dubiously reported had been poisoned on the orders of Vladimir Putin – amidst no evidence of such an incident occurring. The anti-Putin tool of the Globalists would be given massive amounts of attention by them as they ignored the health violations of the pre-dominantly Muslim citizens of Indonesia. It was imperative that a man who once compared Muslims to cockroaches was given higher priority than Muslims that were been subjected to Big Pharma crime and corruption,

The organization’s bias can only be matched by its hypocrisy. When they are not pushing the Globalist anti-Putin agenda then it’s the anti-China rhetoric. In their 2020 end of year report on China they complained;

“In April, authorities in Guangzhou, home to China’s largest African community, forcibly tested Africans for the Coronavirus, and ordered them to self isolate or to quarantine in designated hotels.”

It’s wrong when China does this to Africans, you see, but when Canadian authorities do exactly the same thing to their own citizens and to tourists today, there isn’t a peep to be heard out of Human Rights Watch.

They continue;

“To combat COVID-19, Chinese tech giants developed an app known as the Health Code. Using unknown algorithms, the app generates one of three colours (green, yellow or red), depending on a range of factors such as whether people have been to virus-hit areas. That colour has a wide-ranging impact on people’s lives, including their freedom of movement, as local authorities throughout the country require people to show the app when they move around.”

Once again, if China does this, it’s wrong. However, no mention has ever been made by them concerning, for example, the UK’s NHS Test and Trace app which supposedly serves the same purpose and undoubtedly creates the same restrictions on freedom of movement as the app in China. Nor is there a mention of the ‘Green Passport’ of Israel or the proposed vaccine passports that have been planned in the UK, Ireland and Australia among other nations. The closest we have come to Human Rights Watch addressing the worldwide Fascist takeover of the past twelve months is a special report entitled ‘COVID Free Speech Abuses’, in which the usual suspects, e.g, China, Russia, Egypt, Brazil, Hungary and Belarus are admonished, with no mention of the severe abuses of the pro-Davos leaders on their people, such as Trudeau, Johnson and Merkel.

But all roads lead to Gates. The likelihood of Human Rights Watch questioning vaccine mandates is slim when we delve into their financial records and see that Bill Gates and his ever-present bribes are at work. In my book, The Covid-19 Illusion; A Cacophony of Lies, I cover the inner workings of Gates and show how far his tentacles stretch. It appears he’s found his way into the grubby little paws of Human Rights Watch’s Board of Directors too. In December 2018, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the NGO a US$200,000 grant for ‘general operating support’. The philanthro-capitalist vaccine vendors have wriggled their way in alongside Soros to keep Human Rights Watch on the straight and narrow, focusing on the goals of the techno-fascist agendas and neglecting the populations of nations that are bound for a vaccine mandated Orwellian dystopia. The only saving grace now is with the people themselves and their desire to reject the Great Reset and all its horrors. For, surely, it will be a cold day in hell before groups like Human Rights Watch concern themselves with anything that remotely resembles human rights if it means disrupting the plans of their wealthy, cash-wielding overlords.

Indeed it may be that Human Rights Watch will fit in just fine with the upcoming techno-Fascist New World Order. Perhaps they will feel right at home with Klaus Schwab, the son of a man who was at one time owned a company referred to as a National Socialist Model Company by the Nazis. They themselves have a history with individuals who greatly admired the Third Reich. Their former senior military analyst, Marc Garlasco, was in possession of a rather large collection of Nazi memorabilia. Perhaps Human Rights Watch don’t consider President Jokowi’s ‘injection by force’ method so abhorrent at all – considering the company they’ve kept in the past.

One thing that’s for certain, it is highly unlikely that their European Media Director, Andrew Stroehlein, will be moved to action by this article – considering he only reads what he agrees with and avoids everything contrary to his narrative. Stroehlein, an active Twitter user, advises his followers, in a pinned Tweet to ‘block early and often’ and singles out ‘fact deniers’ and ‘propagandists for abusive governments’ among those that should be blocked. Firmly entrenched in his echo chamber he tells his followers not to share anything from ‘powerless fools looking for attention’ or to ‘hateful headlines and clickbait’.

I guess when you work for a Human Rights organization that avoids investigating serious human rights violations, you may as well be a Media Director that shuns opinions you disagree with.

Human Rights Watch have fumbled and fidgeted in the face of monstrous crimes against humanity, scoffing at those who called out their Globalist masters for what they are. They are an extension of the cult of COVID-19 that is toying with the world today for evil intentions.

Without a doubt, 2020 was the year the cult that runs the world stepped out of the closet and showed their faces. It was also the year that organizations like Human Rights Watch proved to the world that they have no interest in human rights and are merely a front for political agendas. Going forward we should embrace the fact that once these groups opened the door to the closet, it was firmly latched behind them and the masks slipped off. They now have to be confronted for their atrocities and held accountable for their failure to act on their duties.

thecovid19illusion@protonmail.com

March 11, 2021 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | Amnesty International, Belarus, COVID-19 Vaccine, Gates Foundation, HRW, Human rights, Indonesia | Leave a comment

‘Agenda Item 7’ highlights UN inaction over Israeli colonisation

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 25, 2021

The US has asked to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council in another move that, superficially at least, spells a departure from the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the institution. However, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated, the reasons for the earlier departure from the Council still stand: alleged excessive focus on Israel, as well as the inclusion of nations which the US considers hostile, remain prominent issues for Washington and its rhetoric about “human rights”.

“We need to eliminate Agenda Item 7 and treat the human rights situation in Israel and the Palestinian Territories the same way as this body handles any other country,” declared Blinken.

Agenda Item 7 has long antagonised Israel and the US. It makes discussion of Israel a permanent agenda item at the UNHRC and has elicited calls of anti-Israel bias which divert attention from other human rights violations around the world.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has endorsed Blinken’s criticism of human rights abuses by countries – mentioning China and Russia – that “seem to have joined the council only to undermine its work and to deflect criticism of themselves.” However, doesn’t the UN promote a safe space where various dynamics protect human rights abusers under various schemes, while allowing powers such as the US to determine which countries should be defined as violators of such rights? It is precisely the special status awarded to the US and Israel that needs to be challenged, in order to start altering the narrative on human rights and to make the UN and its institutions truly answerable and accomplished in holding rights abusers to account.

Israel has maintained its self-declared exceptionalism to prolong its military occupation of Palestine, a derivative of the colonial process that accelerated during the Trump era and which will most probably also benefit under US President Joe Biden. It is the exceptionalism which Israel created for its own purpose that has set it apart in the international arena. As far as criticism goes, Israel also benefits from the duplicity that comes with the settler-colonial state being a permanent item at the UNHRC, as well as receiving close to unanimous endorsement for its security and “self-defence” narrative. There is, in fact, no anti-Israel bias, but there is intentional ambiguity, in much the same way that Israel is considered as a normal country rather than a settler-colonial enterprise with its origins rooted deep within the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population.

HRW’s recommendations for the US to alter the scrutiny on Israel has more to do with the dynamics of voting on resolutions than encouraging the Biden administration to take a tough stance on Israel’s colonial expansion. The US and Israel know full well that resolutions are non-binding, hold no political value, and are just a veneer for the international community’s contempt when it comes to the Palestinian people’s political and human rights. A far more pressing discussion would centre on how the UN is ignoring its own principles and priorities. Had it acted against Israel’s colonisation of Palestine and its accompanying brutality and cruelty, as it is bound to do in order not to be in violation of international law, there would be no need for “Agenda Item 7” at the UNHRC or anywhere else.

February 27, 2021 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | HRW, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Human Rights Watch denounces Cuba for human rights violations

By Lucas Leiroz | February 9, 2021

Denunciations of human rights violations against Cuba have become routine in the West. For decades, governments, NGOs and activists have denounced the Cuban government for various attitudes of abuse of universal rights, but the sources of such reports and evidence of crimes remain weak and vague. Once again, the NGO Human Rights Watch issued a report warning of an alleged “abusive” situation with regard to human rights on the island – and again the evidence is weak and reveals an ideologized action.

Every year, Human Rights Watch releases its global reports, covering all regions of the planet and warning against alleged human rights violations worldwide. In its 2021 edition, published on January 13, in the topic dedicated to Cuba, several crimes were reported, including alleged arbitrary arrests on the island, lack of freedom of expression, presence of political prisoners in Cuban penitentiaries, travel restrictions and several others acts that are presented to international society as frequent and structural in Cuba.

There are explanations for Human Rights Watch’s frontal opposition to Cuba, which are little publicized in the international media. In the past, the Cuban government has accused the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) of funding more than 20 organizations to promote complaints and defamations against the Latin country, including HRW. NED’s ties to the CIA prompted the Cuban government to veto agents from organizations linked to the NED into the country. In fact, regardless of whether or not there is a plot against the island organized by the NED and the CIA, it is clear that HRW’s annual reports are focused on denouncing and criticizing emerging countries, especially non-aligned nations, anticipating coercive measures taken by the US and other Western powers. This led Havana to endorse the narrative that HRW creates justifications for subsequent coercive measures with its allegations of human rights violations.

The central problem for the credibility of HRW reports is the authenticity of the organization’s sources. The reports are based on data provided by anti-government activists who are ideologically committed to the end of communism and the triumph of American interests on the island. To this end, such activists, who work inside and outside Cuba, adulterate, exaggerate or even create data that does not correspond to the reality of the country, as has been reported several times by Havana. The speech of anonymous activists follows a model predefined by American agencies interested in the fall of the Cuban government. This speech is disseminated by human rights NGOs and finally justifies coercive measures by the American government. For this reason, Havana sees HRW as a threat to its national security and this will not change, even if Washington strengthens its sanctions further, as there is a central ideological incompatibility between these countries that cannot be overcome with mere coercive maneuvers.

Exaggeration is certainly the greatest weapon of these agents. Surely, there are human rights violations in Cuba – just as there are in any nation. There is no country that has been successful in completely abolishing acts contrary to human rights. Many nations may have officially abolished such practices, but they certainly still exist unofficially and, equally, deserve investigation and criticisms. However, this persecution against “human rights violators” is generally applied when the charged state is an emerging nation geopolitically opposed to Washington, like Cuba. In this way, NGOs like HRW observe cases of violation and exaggerate them, claiming that there is a state policy to confront universal rights, when, in fact, they are only marginal practices that exist in any country.

Just as mistakes are exaggerated, merits are ignored. Cuba has some of the best social indicators on the American continent, being a global reference in education and with some of the most qualified medical professionals in the world. Havana is responsible for several humanitarian missions sending doctors and equipment to nations in need of medical care, including not only poor countries, but developed states in emergencies, such as Italy during the pandemic. Furthermore, Cuba seems to be advanced in many agendas exalted in the West. For example, women occupy 51% of the deputies in the National Assembly and are 62% of the country’s scientists – which are remarkably high numbers by Western standards. These indices show that, with or without structural disrespect, there is undeniable progress in terms of human rights, and this cannot be ignored.

However, Havana is right to think that HRW’s reports are not by chance. What we should expect for the future is the resurgence of a focus of tensions between Washington and Havana. Trump, in his last days in government, reversed a process of rapprochement between the countries when he considered Cuba again as a terrorist financing nation – a totally unreasonable accusation and without any material evidence, which Trump certainly did not believe, but made this decision as a strategic maneuver to harm Biden and transfer power to his successor with more international tensions. Biden promised to review Trump’s policy against Cuba but gave no details of exactly what points he will reform. However, a peaceful policy for Havana was never expected from the new American president. Biden’s reforms are likely to occur, more likely, to facilitate the flow of migration and to include “humanitarian” issues in relations, shifting the focus of tensions from a security and defense perspective to one of respect for human rights and democracy.

In practice, this means that Biden must try to harm Cubans even more by imposing international sanctions in order to force Havana to comply with humanitarian standards that are already respected but whose compliance will never be recognized by NGOs committed to the American government.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

February 9, 2021 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Cuba, HRW, Human rights, Latin America, NED, United States | Leave a comment

Moscow slams HRW chief for touting story on Russia’s rich grabbing life-saving ventilators

‘We need joint action, not fake news’

RT | March 24, 2020

Russia’s top diplomat in the US has demanded the Human Rights Watch chief stops spreading misinformation about Russia’s readiness to fight Covid-19, after he touted an article claiming it’s letting the wealthy buy up ventilators.

Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s envoy in Washington, has penned a scathing rebuke to the group’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, who tweeted that the Kremlin was “doing nothing to stop wealthy Russians from buying up ventilators,” all that while “leaving ordinary Russians with a likely shortage of this life-saving equipment.”

Roth’s tweet was based on a report by the Moscow Times citing interviews with medical experts and anonymous “wealthy individuals,” said to be on the hunt for the coveted ventilators that help coronavirus-stricken patients breathe.

Although the article itself states that “Russia appears to be in a better starting position than other countries when it comes to ventilators,” with 5,000 devices ready to treat Covid-19 patients in state-run Moscow hospitals alone and “an average of about 29 ventilators per 100,000 residents” available nationwide (as opposed to Italy’s 8 per 100,000), the piece mentions that the majority of life-saving medical equipment is concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

While that might prompt some concern, in reality, more than half of Russia’s 438 Covid-19 cases (262) have been reported in the capital, which is at the center of the country’s fight against the disease.

Firing back, Antonov said that Russia, which has so far been successful in containing the spread of the virus, has put “well-timed measures” in place that allowed it “to confront this new global threat far more effectively than in the countries that HRW generally avoids criticizing.”

“We urge the executive director of Human Rights Watch not to misinform his readers in New York and around the world about the activities of the Russian government in the fight against coronavirus infection.”

Antonov suggested that, instead of promoting “fake news” and inciting xenophobia and Russophobia, politicians and public figures in the US focus on pooling efforts with the rest of the international community to fend off the pandemic. “Today, more than ever, the combined efforts of the international community are important… Saving lives is the top priority now.”

March 24, 2020 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Russophobia | HRW, Kenneth Roth | Leave a comment

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Neocon Max Boot: Legal and illegal aliens need to enlist in the US army and die for Israel

By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | October 16, 2107

In 1973 Irving Kristol, the godfather of the Neoconservative movement, made a stunning statement which is still relevant to understanding the Israeli influence in US foreign policy. Kristol said:

“Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States…

“American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”

Read the statement again very carefully. A big military budget, said Kristol, is only good for Israel, not America or much of the Western World. In other words, precious American soldiers who go to the Middle East to fight so-called terrorism are just working for Israel, not for America.

So, whenever the Neocons use words such as “democracy” or “freedom,” they are essentially conning decent Americans to support Israel’s perpetual wars. … continue

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PFM-1 anti-personnel land mine found in a field, near the town of Artyomovsk, Donetsk People’s Republic © Viktor Antonyuk / Sputnik

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