Netherlands Land Grab: MP is being prosecuted for two counts of sedition for encouraging civil disobedience
By Rhoda Wilson • The Exposé • October 6, 2023
Dutch Member of Parliament Gideon van Meijeren is being prosecuted for encouraging farmers to rebel against a tyrannical government that is attempting to steal their land.
It is almost universally agreed that democracy must allow for civil disobedience. Citizens also have the right to use violence to defend themselves against a tyrannical government that is using unlawful force against the citizens it is supposed to serve. Professor Mattias Desmet explains this in more detail.
In July 2021, Mr. van Meijeren made his first speech in the Dutch Parliament during which he confronted Prime Minister Mark Rutte about his connections with the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab.
A year later, on 2 July 2022, Mr. van Meijeren spoke at a farmers’ protest in Tuil when farmers were demonstrating en masse against government plans to cut nitrogen emissions. According to NL Times, in his speech, Mr. van Meijeren “pointed out that it is permissible to violently resist the government if it were to expropriate farmers.” Van Meijeren told the gathered farmers that they’d never move the government to action with peaceful protests and by waving flags in the meadows, among other things.
NL Times goes on to say that on 13 November 2022 Mr. van Meijeren “speculated about overthrowing the government during an online interview.” The MP said he hoped for a revolutionary movement that would occupy parliament. Van Meijeren said he hoped this “velvet revolution” would be peaceful, although, according to him, past examples show that there are often casualties. “That is terrible, and let’s hope that we can prevent that and that everything remains peaceful. That is what I hope for in the end,” he said.
Last month, the Public Prosecution Service confirmed it would prosecute Mr. van Meijeren for two counts of sedition. “The suspect suggested that violence against the government was permitted and perhaps even necessary,” the Public Prosecution Service said about the two incidents last year.
The Dutch Farmers’ Protests and Incitement to Violence – Gideon van Meijeren
By Prof. Dr. Mattias Desmet
Dutch politician Gideon van Meijeren recently encouraged Dutch farmers who were protesting their government’s agricultural policies, which threaten to destroy their professions. The Public Prosecution Service has now announced that it will prosecute van Meijeren for sedition. There are quite a few people who won’t lose sleep over this. To them, van Meijeren is an extreme right-wing anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist with a history of making racist statements. Since I myself am regularly tarred and feathered, I’m inclined to take a closer look at such matters. And I would ask everyone to do the same, even if you feel you have nothing in common with van Meijeren. After all, it could be your turn sooner than you think.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, the charges against Van Meijeren have arisen from two statements. The first came as van Meijeren was addressing the protesting farmers. He spoke of Article 41 of the penal code, which states that the use of violence is not punishable by law if it is necessary to protect your own or someone else’s body, honour, or property from an unlawful assault. He made the second statement during an interview, in which he stated that tyrannical regimes can be overthrown in a revolutionary uprising if the population addresses Parliament to demand the resignation of the government. Not insignificantly: Van Meijeren proceeded both times to explain that he was not calling for violence, but for peaceful, non-violent protest.
According to the prosecution, van Meijeren’s words could “give people ideas.” Well. There are hardly any words that cannot “give people ideas.” If you start banning words on that basis, soon no one will be allowed to speak at all. So, before we go down such a path, let’s ask a few questions and raise a few concerns.
First of all, I wonder: Is van Meijeren correct when he states that people are allowed to (violently) resist the government under certain circumstances? I suppose everyone agrees that the answer to that question is “yes.” Or not? A government that demands strict nonviolence from its citizens should at least be strictly nonviolent itself. I myself have always emphasised that any resistance to the government must be non-violent, but I do so primarily for pragmatic reasons. I know that any form of violence will inevitably turn against the person who uses it. From a purely ethical standpoint, however, I believe it is a citizen’s right to use violence against a government that is itself using unlawful force against its people. This is also correct from a legal perspective.
Second, do those in favour of van Meijeren’s prosecution believe that there is a right to civil disobedience? Since Henry Thoreau introduced this concept in 1849, it has been almost universally agreed upon that democracy must allow for it. Has this changed?
Third, for those who think that Gideon is wrong, and therefore that farmers have no right to resist, what about social phenomena such as Extinction Rebellion? These climate activists deface monuments and paintings in museums, block highways, storm airports, and so on. If you think that these “climate warriors” and other “social justice warriors” should not be criminally prosecuted and yet that Gideon van Meijeren should, is that not the same as saying that those who adhere to a politically correct ideology are allowed to do just about anything whereas those who adhere to an incorrect ideology may not?
Fourth, and related: what do the people who support the prosecution of van Meijeren think of, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron’s statements that: “We are going to make life hell for the unvaccinated”? We could list any number of statements by politicians that have been undoubtedly more seditious than van Meijeren’s and yet for which no public prosecutor ever saw fit to prosecute.
So, let’s be honest: The prosecution’s charge makes no sense. If Gideon van Meijeren is prosecuted for sedition, then anyone can be prosecuted for sedition. I hereby appeal to everyone who disagrees with Gideon van Meijeren and possibly sees him as a political opponent: Don’t let this happen. Speak out. Say that you do not want people to be treated this way, including those with whom you disagree.
That is the best thing that can come out of these chaotic times: A group of people united, not by having the same opinion, but by honouring each person’s right to his own voice. The mother lode of the Enlightenment tradition was not so much idealising rationality but valuing openness of mind and this fundamental right to one’s own opinion. I propose that we remain faithful to the Enlightenment in this respect, also with regard to people whose opinions we experience as contrary to ours, including those we even consider completely irrational.
Mattias Desmet is recognised as the world’s leading expert on the theory of mass formation as it applies to the covid-19 pandemic. He is a professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium, and a practising psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He is well-known in academic circles for his research on fraud within academia.
He is the author of over one hundred peer-reviewed academic papers and is the author of the books ‘The Psychology of Totalitarianism’, ‘The Pursuit of Objectivity in Psychology’ and ‘Lacan’s Logic of Subjectivity: A Walk on the Graph of Desire’.
He publishes articles on a Substack page which you can subscribe to and follow HERE.
Palestine: The Resistance Rises toward Revolution, Return and Liberation
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | October 7, 2023
As the morning dawns on 7 October 2023, the resistance is rising throughout occupied Palestine, smashing the siege on Gaza with a comprehensive offensive confronting the occupier by land and air, taking control of Palestinian land, seizing occupation settlers and soldiers and launching thousands of missiles as Palestinian resistance forces fight to advance return and the liberation of Palestine.
The new resistance operation, titled the Al-Aqsa Flood by Mohammed Deif, commander in chief of the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, comes on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war in which Egypt reclaimed the occupied Sinai from Zionist occupation, and is set to alter the direction of the struggle in occupied Palestine, moving from resistance toward revolution and liberation.
The resistance operation comes in response to the ongoing stream of crimes against the Palestinian people, the daily murder of Palestinians on the streets of the West Bank of occupied Palestine, the siege on Gaza, the theft of land for settlements, the denial of refugees’ right to return, imposing exile for over 75 years, the torture and attacks on the Palestinian prisoners, the ongoing invasions of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the 75 years of Zionist occupation and over 100 years of imperialist domination and colonialism throughout occupied Palestine.
It also comes to bring about the liberation of Palestinian prisoners, as part and parcel of the Palestinian people and land. The occupation has repeatedly dragged its feet in conducting a prisoner exchange with the resistance, and now the resistance has announced that it has taken a significant number of prisoners from among the occupation soldiers and settlers in order to liberate the 5,250 Palestinian prisoners in occupation prions, including the 1350 jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention, 39 women and 170 children. The resistance is taking new steps to liberate Palestinian land, to confront the settlement project and to liberate the prisoners from a position of power.
News is developing rapidly; however it is clear that the Palestinian resistance is determined to reset the status quo in the region and uncover the reality that the Zionist regime can no longer rely on its technological strength and imperialist weaponry to impose its domination on the Palestinian people. In particular, coming as it does on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war, it is a decisive rebuke to the entire path of Oslo and normalization imposed upon the Palestinian and Arab people for the past 50 years, indicating a new path forward with a clear goal: liberation, and nothing less. It builds upon the liberation of south Lebanon from occupation by the Lebanese resistance, led by Hezbollah, in 2000, and the defeat of the Zionist invasion of Lebanon in 2006, as well as the successive heroic battles waged by the Palestinian resistance throughout occupied Palestine and especially from its base area of resistance land in Gaza.
In his statement announcing the operation, Deif said: “Starting from today, security coordination ends. Today, the people reclaim their revolution, correct their path, and return to the march of return.” He called upon all to participate in the resistance, and specifically to all the forces of resistance in the region, in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen, and all of the Arab peoples from the Gulf to the ocean, to join in this battle, which is their battle for freedom, dignity and liberation, declaring, “it is time for the forces of Arab resistance to unite.”
Samidoun joins the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, in calling “the masses of our Palestinian people, supporters of the resistance in exile and diaspora, allies from the liberation forces and movements, and solidarity committees with the Palestinian people everywhere, to express their support for the heroic Palestinian resistance, raise the flag of Palestine and the banners of resistance, and organize popular, political and media demonstrations and events to expose the Zionist crimes against our people in occupied Palestine…. The heroic Palestinian resistance has opened a chapter of battles of dignity and pride at the dawn of October 7, 2023, and it is now responding to decades of continuous and repeated Zionist, American and European aggression against the masses of our Arab and Islamic nation from the ocean to the Gulf, and in the face of the wars of starvation and siege that the United States and its agents have engineered against our peoples in the region, especially in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.”
As the Palestinian resistance confronts occupation forces, it is critical that internationalists everywhere speak out, mobilize and act to confront the U.S.-led imperialist system, including the EU states, Britain and all complicit powers to end their ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people, and to defend the resistance. These crimes are reflected not only in the Balfour Declaration and the $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid to the occupation regime annually, but in the racist assaults on the Palestinian people in exile and diaspora throughout Europe, and especially in Germany, for speaking out and organizing to take up their role in the cause, for their return to Palestine and the liberation of their land.
Imperialism is the primary enemy of the Palestinian cause, creating the Zionist project and arming it to the teeth as a mechanism of attack against the Arab and Iranian peoples, alongside Zionism, the “Israeli” occupation regime and reactionary, complicit Arab forces.
Today, the resistance is making clear that despite the weaponry and brutality of the occupier, the promise of liberation is closer than ever before.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
The High Stakes in the Legal Battle for Free Speech
Brownstone Institute | October 6, 2023
The ongoing war between the US Security State and the First Amendment is perhaps the most underreported development of the 21st century. Now, Missouri v. Biden may bring it to the Supreme Court.
Just two decades ago, the internet promised liberation as dictatorships would cave to the emerging swell of information. That was the hope, at least.
“There’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet,” President Clinton said in 2000. “Good luck. That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”
That optimism did not come to fruition. Instead of Westernizing the Orient, technology laid the foundation for the US Security State to pursue unprecedented social control.
At first, the conflict appeared to be between rank-and-file military members and transgressive cyber actors. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden seemed like mere hackers, not harbingers for the impending suspension of American liberty.
The battle suddenly became a civilizational struggle in 2020. A highly efficient technocracy declared war against the Bill of Rights. The US Security State shut down American society, eradicated due process, and captured the public health apparatus. The CIA bribed scientists to cover up the origins of Covid, and the Department of Homeland Security dictated what Americans could and could not see in their newsfeeds. The FBI helped banish the country’s oldest newspaper from Twitter for reporting on its preferred candidate’s son.
When Clinton made his “Jell-O” comment, few of us could imagine that we’d live in such a country. We trusted our courts and our elected government to protect us. We thought the rule of law was sacrosanct. We were wrong.
Now, however, the judiciary has the opportunity to reclaim the First Amendment from the tyranny of the Security State in Missouri v. Biden.
Missouri v. Biden and the CISA Injunction
Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit reinstated an injunction against CISA, an agency in the Department of Homeland Security, that prohibits its agents from colluding with social media companies to promote censorship of any kind.
The case demonstrates how far the United States has strayed from its former free speech ethos. CISA held ongoing meetings with social media platforms to “push them to adopt more restrictive policies on censoring election-related speech,” according to the Fifth Circuit. This included criticism of lockdowns, vaccines, and the Hunter Biden laptop. Through a process known as “switchboarding,” CISA officials dictated to Big Tech platforms what content was “true” or “false,” which became Orwellian euphemisms for acceptable and prohibited speech.
CISA’s leaders reveled in their usurpation of the First Amendment. They overturned hundreds of years of free speech protections, appointing themselves the arbiters of truth. Without freedom of “election-related speech,” we no longer live in a democracy. They pursued a faceless dictatorship.
They sought to eradicate dissent surrounding the policies that they imposed. CISA had been responsible for dividing the workforce into categories of “essential” and “nonessential” in March 2020. Hours later, the order became the basis for the country’s first “stay-at-home” order, a process that quickly spiraled into a previously unimaginable assault on Americans’ civil liberties.
CISA betrayed the country’s founding principle. A group of unelected bureaucrats hijacked American society without ever having a vote cast in their names. They disregarded the First Amendment, due process, and elected government in their pursuit of power.
The Framers understood that liberty relied on the free flow of information. They were well aware of the dangers of widespread lies and an incendiary press corps, but tyranny presented a far greater risk to society. Government could not be trusted to wield power over the minds of men, so they enshrined freedom of press, worship, and speech in our Constitution.
The Security State unwound those liberties. White House officials used the power of the federal government to suppress dissent. The Biden Administration launched an interagency attack on free speech. The Covid regime’s coup d’etat continued unimpeded until Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 injunction.
Now, the Fifth Circuit has remedied its previous error by reinstating the injunction against CISA. The case may now head to the Supreme Court, where the Justices would have the opportunity to dismantle the technocratic censorship operation at the heart of the Covid response.
The war is far from won. Julian Assange remains in jail alongside terrorists for publishing news reports that undermined the Security State’s deceit surrounding the War on Terror. Edward Snowden is banished from his homeland for exposing the lies of James Clapper.
President Biden’s “misinformation” crusade shows no signs of retreat entering the 2024 election cycle. Social media is still censored. Your Google results are still gamed at the behest of powerful state actors. YouTube has proudly announced that it will censor content based on the diktats of the World Health Organization. Say the wrong thing on LinkedIn and you are toast.
Among the large players, only X, formerly known as Twitter, is eschewing routine takedowns of speech deemed oppositional to regime priorities. That is truly only because one man had the means to buy and the drive to liberate it from the Censorship Industrial Complex, for now.
Tuesday’s decision reaffirmed what the Supreme Court called the “bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment” in 1989: “that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
Rebuilding from the wreckage of Covid will require reclaiming those fundamental pillars of American society. The freedom to speak was not the first right earned by a people in revolt against ancient-world forms of statism but it might be the most essential. That’s why it is instantiated in the very first amendment to the Bill of Rights.
If the regime can control the public mind, they can control everything else too. A loss here is a loss everywhere.
No Jab, No Education? Big Pharma’s influence on Irish and British schools
By Gavin O’Reilly | OffGuardian | October 5, 2023
Last Thursday it was announced that the southern Irish state would roll out Flu jabs to all schoolchildren under its jurisdiction, despite the fact that children are an age group at absolute minute risk of becoming seriously ill from seasonal illnesses such as Flu and colds.
This comes less than three months after an effectively identical announcement was made by the British government, regarding the rollout of the Flu jab to upwards of three million children in English schools.
A similar announcement was made by the British government in October 2019, however that plan was scrapped due to lack of supplies.
AstraZeneca, the manufacturer of the nasal-spray that was to be given to schoolchildren in England, blamed this on a hold-up of an analysis of that year’s Flu season by the WHO, which was to be then given to pharmaceutical firms in order to determine how many products were to be developed.
The timing of this announcement in 2019, and the new announcements that Flu jabs would be rolled out to schoolchildren in Ireland and Britain, arouses suspicion.
On the 18th of October 2019, the same day it was announced that plans had been scrapped to provide schoolchildren in England with Flu jabs, Event 201 was held in New York. Organised by John Hopkins University, in conjunction with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum, Event 201 was a simulation exercise which envisaged a coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe, the effects of which could only be mitigated by even greater integration between the public and private sector worldwide, including giving social media outlets sweeping powers to deal with what the exercise termed ‘disinformation’ amidst the hypothetical pandemic .
In what can only be described as an outstanding coincidence, less than a month later, the world’s first case of the alleged ‘COVID-19’ virus was discovered in Wuhan, the capital city of China’s central Hubei province. In even further coincidence, Wuhan was home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based NGO with links to the Gates Foundation, was conducting research on the transmission of coronaviruses from bats to humans, using funds granted by Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Several months later in March 2020, the WHO, an organisation with a history of corruption and undisclosed ties to pharmaceutical giants, announced the official beginning of the ‘COVID-19 Pandemic’. What followed next was unprecedented.
Vast swathes of society were closed down across the world, ostensibly to protect the sick and vulnerable from an alleged virus, the mortality rate of which made it no more dangerous than the seasonal illnesses which coincidentally disappeared for two years in all countries following WHO procedures, only to be ‘replaced’ by a ‘virus’ with the exact same symptoms.
In reality, lockdowns would do far more to flatten small businesses than to save lives, with the dependency on corporate outlets created as a result of these measures leading to the upwards transfer of more than $1tn in wealth.
In yet another coincidence, this example of governments and the private sector working in lockstep bore a striking similarity to what was outlined in Event 201, and also aligned perfectly with the WEF’s Great Reset initiative, launched in June 2020, which again reiterated that the only way to mitigate the effects of the ‘Covid Pandemic’ was to give the corporate class even greater sway over public life worldwide.
One of the key facets of the Great Reset is the introduction of a Digital ID, one which would give the government-corporate alliance an authoritarian level of control over its citizens should it be made mandatory, which during the ‘Covid Pandemic’, is effectively what happened.
Following the announcement of the ‘Covid Vaccine’ on the first business day after the 2020 US Presidential election (again, more coincidental timing), 2021 would see multiple countries around the world introduce legislation requiring their citizens to have been jabbed before they could participate in everyday life. To implement this, the standard practice was to place a QR code on their smartphone once they had been jabbed, one which would grant them access to restaurants, bars, gyms and other amenities prohibited to those who had chosen to not take part in a global medical experiment.
Essentially, this was a dry-run for the rollout of a mandatory digital ID, using an alleged ‘Pandemic’ as the pretext.
The introduction of jab passports however, would lead to a worldwide protest movement in defence of human rights. In response, the corporate media would begin a demonization campaign against these protesters, labelling them as ‘far-right’, and WEF-aligned governments would launch a brutal crackdown; perhaps most notably in Canada, where the government of WEF ‘Young Global Leader’ Justin Trudeau would attack demonstrators with teargas and mounted Horses, and freeze their bank accounts using emergency legislation.
The impact of this global protest movement likely played a part in the sudden collapse of the ‘Pandemic’ media narrative in early 2022, shortly after the WEF’s Davos Agenda virtual event. The Russian operation that began in Ukraine shortly after, following almost nine years of western provocations, would serve as a convenient cover story by the mainstream media for the global inflation caused by lockdown measures.
However, with lockstep announcements that Britain, under the rule of WEF member Rishi Sunak, and the southern Irish state, overseen by WEF ‘Young Global Leader’ Leo Varadkar, will be rolling out a product to schoolchildren, for an illness that poses an absolute miniscule risk to their age group, it may only be a matter of time until the ‘Pandemic’ narrative is repeated for schoolchildren in both countries, with it being made mandatory for them to have a Flu jab before they are granted an education.
Gavin O’Reilly is an Irish Republican activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism; he was a writer for the American Herald Tribune from January 2018 up until their seizure by the FBI in 2021, with his work also appearing on The Duran, Al-Masdar, MintPress News, Global Research and SouthFront. He can be reached through Twitter and Facebook and supported on Patreon.
Fifth Circuit Expands Injunction Against Government Online Censorship To Include CISA
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | October 4, 2023
A ruling on Tuesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit marks a leap for the safeguarding of free speech within the social media arena. This decision sees the addition of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to a preliminary injunction in the ongoing legal contest of Missouri v. Biden.
Initially, a host of prominent agencies, including the White House, US Surgeon General’s office, CDC, and the FBI were barred from manipulating social media platforms in a manner that obstructs constitutional freedoms of speech.
The fight against censorship is far from novel, with the tale of Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, and Ms. Jill Hines circulating in the public domain for several years. Their experiences of being censored and throttled on social media platforms form an integral part of a broader governmental agenda to curb free speech for independent thinkers and intellectuals.
This latest ruling by the Fifth Circuit punctuates a series of preceding actions, including its September 8 ruling upholding an earlier order by District Judge Terry Doughty. Doughty’s order on Independence Day caused shockwaves by banning government officials from using their offices to manipulate social media companies into surrendering the First Amendment rights of citizens.
This persistent governmental interference has been described by Judge Doughty as perhaps “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Indeed, it beautifully mirrors a dystopian reality, where a government body, akin to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, suppresses intellectual discourse and emulation.
The suppression campaign under the Biden administration is far from prejudiced; it has methodically targeted any view conflicting with government narratives. Subjects like natural immunity to Covid-19, vaccine efficacy, origins of the virus, and the effectiveness of mask mandates have become taboo, leading to a wilful silence of experts and common citizens alike.
Such tactics have seen CISA act as a bridge between third parties, flagging potentially problematic content. Having regular interactions with social media platform representatives, they have exploited their authoritative position by pushing them to adopt practices aligned with their censorship agenda.
This has led the Fifth Circuit Court to reassess their previous position. Contrary to their September ruling which stated that communication between CISA and social media companies was constitutional, they now acknowledge that CISA had crossed the line of mere information sharing and actively influenced content moderation policies, leading to the demotion and removal of posts.
While the court order stands, a 10-day stay allows the government to seek permission for a review of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
UK Police arrest British journalist for posting ‘malinformation’ about Ukraine, Justin Trudeau under Online Safety Act
By David Krayden – Human Events – 10/02/2023
In a story that has virtually been ignored by the global media, UK police arrested an independent journalist for posting “malinformation” and misinformation about Ukraine.
Under the new UK censorship law called the Online Safety Act, the government can order the arrest or detention of anyone said to be “hateful” or judged by fact checkers to be posting “misinformation.”
Warren Thornton was literally in the midst of streaming an edition of his podcast The Real Truth on Sept. 24 when Bristol police officers came to his front door and demanded he speak with them.
The Liberal government of Canada is preparing its own version of this legislation that will target “disinformation” on the internet without even defining what disinformation is.
Thornton is a critic of NATO’s escalation of the war in Ukraine and has posted several videos about Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians and the secret existence of biolabs in Ukraine. He was also quick to report how a former Waffen-SS Nazi soldier was allowed to sit in the Canadian House of Commons Gallery during a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Yaroslav Hunka acknowledged plaudits from former House Speaker Anthony Rota and waved as all Members of Parliament rose from their seats and gave the 98-year-old SS veteran a standing ovation.
Thornton had just broadcast news of Canada’s international embarrassment when the police arrived.
Thornton was interviewing guest Fiona Ryan when the host just “vanished” about 20 minutes before the program was expected to end, she told The People’s Voice. Ryan was conversing with Johnee, who hosts the Café Revolution, a YouTube channel that reports from the front of the Russia-Ukraine War in Donetsk.
Ryan discovered in a WhatsApp exchange that Thornton had been arrested by the police.
At the police station, Thornton said the officers became “flustered” during his interrogation because they were unable to say exactly what video posts led to his arrest, according to The People’s Voice. Thornton soon had his lawyer on-scene who ‘ripped them to bits’. He added that his lawyer told them to “charge him or release him.”
Thornton, after spending a night in jail, was released Monday. The police decided not to charge him.
In a post on Rumble, Thornton described his ordeal with police as “jolly interesting” and said he asked if he was being charged with anything except spreading “malinformation.” The police said he was not.
What is ‘Firing Zone 918’ and how Israel uses it to grab more Palestinian land
By Dr Mustafa Fetouri | MEMO | October 5, 2023
Israeli forces target vehicle of two Palestinian youths, kill them near West Bank city of Tulkarm
Press TV – October 5, 2023
Israeli forces have opened fire on a vehicle near the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm, killing two Palestinian youths.
The victims, identified as Hudhayfah Fares and Abd al-Rahman Atta, were shot dead after Israeli troops targeted their car near the village of Shufah, south of Tulkarm in the northwestern part of West Bank, on Thursday.
The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the death of Atta, 23, and Fares, 27, saying they were killed during confrontations with the occupying regime’s forces, Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported.
The two slain Palestinians were from the Tulkarm camp and lived in the suburb of Dhanaba, east of the city.
Violent clashes erupted in the Tulkarm refugee camp after Israeli forces invaded it, and fired live rounds, stun grenades and teargas canisters towards Palestinians.
Medical sources also reported that two people were wounded by Israeli bullets, one in the shoulder and the other in the abdomen, adding that their condition is stable.
Over the past months, Israel has ramped up attacks on Palestinian towns and cities throughout the occupied territories. As a result of these attacks, dozens of Palestinians have lost their lives and many others have been arrested.
More than 200 Palestinians have been killed this year in the occupied Palestinian territories and Gaza. The majority of these fatalities have been recorded in the West Bank.
Those figures indicate that 2023 is already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the United Nations began keeping track of fatalities in 2005.
Previously, 2022 had been the deadliest year with 150 Palestinians killed, of whom 33 were minors, according to the United Nations.
A New Era Of Mass Armies Approaches
BY IAN WELSH | SEPTEMBER 29, 2023
The army, or a part of it at the war college, has perked up and noticed some of the lessons of the Ukraine war, and that it’s a war that the US military could not fight. They’ve missed a lot of things, or felt they couldn’t/shouldn’t write about them, but they’ve figured some stuff out and written about them in a new report, “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force” by Lieutenant Colonel Katie Crombe, and Professor John A. Nagle.
The entire thing is worth reading, but I’m going to pull out three of the main points. The first is that a volunteer US military can’t fight a real war.
The Russia-Ukraine War is exposing significant vulnerabilities in the Army’s strategic personnel depth and ability to withstand and replace casualties.11 Army theater medical planners may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3,600 casualties per day, ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action or suffering disease or other non-battle injuries. With a 25 percent predicted replacement rate, the personnel system will require 800 new personnel each day. For context, the United States sustained about 50,000 casualties in two decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In large-scale combat operations, the United States could experience that same number of casualties in two weeks. (emphasis mine)
Huh. Yeah, that seems bad. And it comes just as the US military is having trouble with volunteer recruitment, though even if wasn’t volunteer recruitment couldn’t keep up with the meat grinder of a real war.
The US Army is facing a dire combination of a recruiting shortfall and a shrinking Individual Ready Reserve. This recruiting shortfall, nearly 50 percent in the combat arms career management fields, is a longitudinal problem. Every infantry and armor soldier we do not recruit today is a strategic mobilization asset we will not have in 2031. The Individual Ready Reserve, which stood at 700,000 in 1973 and 450,000 in 1994, now stands at 76,000. These numbers cannot fill the existing gaps in the active force, let alone any casualty replacement or expansion during a large-scale combat operation. The implication is that the 1970s concept of an all-volunteer force has outlived its shelf life and does not align with the current operating environment. The technological revolution described below suggests this force has reached obsolescence. Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and a move toward partial conscription. (emphasis mine).
If the US expects to fight Russia, China, or even Iran, they’re going to face a real war.
The US has spent 20 years fighting with air, artillery and surveillance supremacy, with clear communications. American veterans who went to Ukraine were unprepared for a war where the other side has, if not supremacy, air and artillery superiority, and the Ukraine war has been a meatgrinder. Plus, the current command methods the army use don’t work in an environment like the Ukraine:
Twenty years of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operationsin the Middle East, largely enabled by air, signals, and electromagnetic dominance, generated chains of command reliant on perfect, uncontested communication lines and an extraordinary and accurate common operating picture of the battlefield broadcast in real time to co-located staff in large Joint Operations Centers. The Russia-Ukraine War makes it clear that the electromagnetic signature emitted from the command posts of the past 20 years cannot survive against the pace and precision of an adversary who possesses sensor-based technologies, electronic warfare, and unmanned aerial systems or has access to satellite imagery; this includes nearly every state or nonstate actor the United States might find itself fighting in the near future
Back in 2012 I wrote an article titled “Drones are not weapons of the powerful.” I posited that they’re cheap, easy to make and everyone would eventually get them. We’re pretty much there, in terms of large group actors (the step after that is individuals, leading to an era where even a single person or small group can launch significant attacks.).
The authors of the article agree:
These systems, coupled with emerging artificial intelligence platforms, dramatically accelerate the pace of modern war. Tools and tactics that were viewed as niche capabilities in previous conflicts are becoming primary weapons systems that require education and training to understand, exploit, and counter. Nonstate actors and less capable nation-states can now acquire and capitalize on technologies that bring David’s powers closer to Goliath’s.
There are issues the authors don’t deal with, the main one is “designed in California, built in China.” The US’s weapon building capacity is massively degraded. As one example, the Chinese can build 3 ships per one the US builds, and the ships are probably better.
Since WWII, in every war the US has fought, they’ve had air superiority or supremacy and more advanced weapons than the enemy. They’ve also had more “stuff”. But the WWII “arsenal of democracy” is dead, it doesn’t exist any more.
Another issue is that the US military has outsourced too much of its capabilities. The corporate mantra of “outsource everything except your core competency” doesn’t work in a real war. All support functions should be run by the military and soldiers. (I may write an article on that in the future.) Contractors are too expensive and unwilling to really risk their necks, and outsourcing maintainance to non-army technicians is a disaster.
The US retains one huge advantage, however, its continental position makes it hard to attack the mainland. But this is also a disadvantage if the US loses air and naval supremacy. America’s enemies can only be reached by air and sea, after all.
Anyway, one takeaway is that conscription is likely to come back. I assume they’ll first make a huge push to recruit immigrants, undocumented or not, but that isn’t going to be enough. Get ready and remember, Empires rarely fade, they go down in huge conflagarations. The British Empire’s end involved two world wars.
Care homes – The evidence of harms
If you have a weak stomach don’t read this
By Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson | Trust the Evidence | September 30, 2023
We’ve written a lot about the systemic failings in government policy regarding care homes (see here, here and here).
However, a recent study on the transitions between hospitals and care homes caught our eye. The sort of study that bypasses the media: Two care home providers with 20 to 40 care homes each in the South West and the North East of England participated, and 70 participants were interviewed.
The study exemplifies the impact hospital discharge policies had: “… hospitals just wanted patients out, regardless of COVID status. To be brutally honest, they weren’t interested; they just wanted people out. In those early days, you know, it was very traumatic.”
And how hospitals desperately enacted a policy to clear the decks: “… we had a phone call from a nurse from the hospital to say that … this lady was lying beside somebody, less than two meters, who was COVID-positive.”
These instances highlight how thoughtless and reckless the government policies were. Driven by error-strewn modelling along with a chronic lack of capacity in the NHS, panic set in: hospitals would be quickly overwhelmed. Something had to be done to free up capacity – an easy target was found: the elderly and the most vulnerable and brutally the least able to stand up for themselves.
Hospital discharge service requirements were first published on 19 March,. On 2 April, the guidance said, “Some of these patients [admitted from a hospital or a home setting] may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed.
This policy, which saw discharges to care homes without testing, has been ruled unlawful by the High Court. In Gardner & Anor, R, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham found that government policy was “irrational” because it failed to consider the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from asymptomatic transmission.
It took until 15 April to recommend testing and 14 days of isolation for admissions to care homes. Before this, negative tests were not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home.
The study interviews show that care homes became no-go zones: “GPs or other healthcare professionals or multidisciplinary, like, podiatrists, everyone has difficulty coming to see the residents as of high demand or they can’t come for whatever reason, so COVID-19. They used to come, now they are no longer able to.”
The study also emphasises the inhumane practice of isolating vulnerable people ‘Strong feeling that isolating care home residents went against usual practice and, for some, was very hard to endure, especially when they needed human contact and emotional support from family and friends following a period of hospitalisation.’
We’ve written about “Confinement Disease”, which is likely more harmful than covid in care homes. ‘Among long-term care residents in the Southern Ile-de-France region, more than 24 covid deaths among 140 residents occurred in 5 days. None were due to acute respiratory distress syndrome, and death was mainly due to hypovolemic shock as residents were confined to their rooms for several days without assistance with eating and drinking.’
Confinement leads to feelings of being in prison: “… rather than keeping them in hospital we would send them [to the COVID-19 unit], and then once they’re 14 days clear, I know it’s 10 now, but it was 14, then they would go back to their original care home. But it’s just been carnage, to say the least.”
The study interviews also showed how degrading and impersonal confinement practices were “… so they couldn’t have their belongings until it had been left in a certain place and washed at a certain heat and 72 hours before you can have them back. You go in your room, and you can’t see anybody, and when you do, they’ve got masks and visors, and you cannot hear them, and you’ve got all of that.”
Socially distancing and isolating the most vulnerable comes with costs. The practice of rapidly discharging patients is unlawful, yet is anyone interested at a government level in how to better look after those in care?
Patients were discharged from high-resourced hospital settings – where some had time to do Tik-Tok dances – to low-resourced care homes, which worsened as staff went off in their droves—the opposite of what you need, as less care equates to more deaths. Then you isolate vulnerable people who can’t care for themselves – again, the polar opposite of what these people need, preventing much-needed personal care that can be life-saving. Even worse, at the end of life, were the restrictions on who could share that moment, hold a person’s hand as they drew their last breath, and prevent compassionate care at one of the most important times.
The potential for harm is exceptionally high in care homes; with quarantining, physical and mental deterioration occurs rapidly, and renal failure occurs swiftly in the face of dehydration – the ultimate price to be paid is a lonely death.
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From the Archives
A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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