Human rights « Aletho News

ICC: International Federation of Journalists to be lawsuit partner against Israel

MEMO | July 4, 2022

The International Federation of Journalists will be a partner in a lawsuit against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) following the murder of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper, Wafa news agency has reported.

“Palestinian journalists are fighters who face on a daily basis the aggression of the occupation in all fields as well as the main project of the occupation to expel the Palestinians from their land,” Ali Youssef, a member of the federation’s executive board, told Wafa. He added that the IFJ has succeeded in exposing Israel’s acts of aggression against media professionals and the Palestinian people.

Palestinians argue that the Israeli military deliberately targeted and killed Abu Akleh. Israel denies this, claiming that she may have been hit by errant army fire or by a bullet from one of the Palestinian gunmen who were clashing with its forces at the scene. According to eyewitnesses, however, there was no such clash at the time that the journalist was killed.

The ICC recognised in a February 2021 ruling that it has jurisdiction over the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This has paved the way for cases to be brought against Israel over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Last month, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki handed the ICC prosecutor the official outcome of the Palestinian investigation into the murder of Abu Akleh. He noted that it constitutes a turning point in the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

During the meeting with ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, Maliki demanded that the criminals responsible for targeting civilians, children, women, journalists, doctors and other protected groups be brought to international justice.

Moreover, a video message by Nasser Abu Bakr, President of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, urged Prosecutor Khan to hold Israel to account. “Fifty Palestinian journalists have been killed since 2000 alone,” he explained. “Seven thousand crimes against Palestinian journalists have been documented.”

A detailed account of Abu Akleh’s killing was given by her colleague, Walid Al-Omari. “Why would they target Shireen?” asked Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief. He suggested that Israel was seeking to inflict a direct and powerful blow against the network. By killing Abu Akleh, he suggested, the colonial-occupation state hoped to silence one of the most powerful voices in the Arab world.

Al Jazeera described Abu Akleh’s killing as a “blatant murder” that violates “international laws and norms”. In its statement following her murder, the network pointed out that according to Article 8 of the ICC Charter, “Targeting war correspondents, or journalists working in war zones or occupied territories by killing or physically assaulting them, is a war crime.”

July 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Abu Akleh family says it is incredulous at today’s announcement by US State Department on killing of Shireen

WAFA | July 4, 2022

JERUSALEM – The Abu Akleh family said in a statement issued today that they are incredulous at today’s announcement by the State Department that a test of the spent round that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen, was inconclusive as to the origin of the gun that fired it.

Following is the full statement issued by the family of al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh:

With respect to today’s announcement by the State Department – on July 4, no less – that a test of the spent round that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen, was inconclusive as to the origin of the gun that fired it, we are incredulous.

There were numerous eyewitnesses to the killing, and we have now had the benefit of reports from multiple local and international media outlets, human rights organizations, and the United Nations that an Israeli soldier fired the fatal shot, as there were no other armed elements in the area of Jenin where Shireen was murdered. The focus on the bullet has always been misplaced and was an attempt by the Israeli side to spin the narrative in its favor as if this were some kind of police whodunit that could be solved by a CSI-style forensic test.

The notion that the American investigators, whose identity is not disclosed in the statement, believe the bullet “likely came from Israeli positions” is cold comfort. We say this in light of the addition of a conclusory pronouncement that the killing was not intentional but rather the result of a purported Israeli counterterrorism raid gone wrong, which is frankly insulting to Shireen’s memory and ignores the history and context of the brutal and violent nature of what is now the longest military occupation in modern history.

The truth is that the Israeli military killed Shireen according to policies that view all Palestinians – civilian, press or otherwise – as legitimate targets, and we were expecting that an American investigation would focus on finding the responsible parties and holding them accountable, not parsing over barely-relevant details and then assuming good faith on behalf of a recalcitrant and hostile occupying power.

In other words, all available evidence suggests that a US citizen was the subject of an extrajudicial killing by a foreign government that receives billions of dollars in American military aid each year to perpetuate a prolonged and entrenched military occupation of millions of Palestinians. We were hoping that, for example, the FBI or other relevant authorities would open a murder investigation, much like they do in ordinary cases when American citizens are killed abroad.

Further, the United States should take action to clarify the extent to which American funds were involved in Shireen’s killing. To say that this investigation, with its total lack of transparency, undefined goals, and support for Israel’s overall position is a disappointment would be an understatement.

We will continue to advocate for justice for Shireen, and to hold the Israeli military and government accountable, no matter the attempts to obfuscate the reality of what happened on May 11. We continue to call on the American government to conduct an open, transparent, and thorough investigation of all the facts by independent agencies free from any political consideration or influence.

July 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Russia Remains Committed to Ending ‘War Against Journalists’ – Lavrov

Samizdat – 04.07.2022

Moscow is interested in ending the “war against journalists” started by the West, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.

“We did not start this war against journalists, we are interested in ending it, but I do not see how the West can stop its outrages, because it has gone too far, it cannot stop now without losing face,” Lavrov said during a joint press-conference with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Carlos Rafael Faria Tortosa.

According to Lavrov, “persecution” of Russian journalists abroad began long ago and recalled that Moscow had warned that a reciprocal response would follow.
“We honestly warned that we would respond reciprocally to the gross violations of the commitments that the West has undertaken,” Lavrov said.

The situation with Russian media in the West has become increasingly tense in recent years. In November 2016, the European Union adopted a resolution stating the need to counter Russian media, with Sputnik and RT regarded as main threats. Western politicians, including US lawmakers and French President Emmanuel Macron, have accused the two news agencies of interfering in elections in the United States and France, albeit without providing any evidence to substantiate the claims. Russian officials have denied such statements as unfounded.

On March 2, the European Union suspended the broadcasting of several Russian media outlets as part of the sanctions against Russia for its military operation in Ukraine. RT, Sputnik and their subsidiaries came under the ban. The TikTok and Instagram* accounts of these Russian outlets have ceased functioning in the EU.

*Instagram is banned in Russia over extremist activities.

July 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Human rights, Russia | Leave a comment

Israel accused of withholding dead Palestinians in university labs

MEMO | July 4, 2022

Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, has accused Israel of withholding the bodies of dead Palestinians in Israeli university labs, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting on Monday, Shtayyeh termed the Israeli action as “a grave violation of human rights and ethics of science.”

He urged educational institutions worldwide to boycott the Israeli universities involved in withholding Palestinian corpses and called for piling pressure on the Israeli government to release the bodies of dead Palestinians.

According to a local Palestinian committee on the retrieval of dead Palestinians, Israel withholds 104 Palestinian corpses since 2015, in addition to 256 others buried in special graves known as numbered graves.

July 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism | Leave a comment

The Collapse of the Canadian University and the Rise of the Church of Covid

By Maximilian C. Forte | Zero Anthropology | July 3, 2022

February of 2022 was a particularly dark month, both in Quebec and in Canada generally. In Quebec, we had the expansion of the use of “vaccine passports” to large, well-ventilated box stores; a curfew had been imposed in January (and was lifted after nearly three weeks); the demonization of the so-called “unvaccinated” reached a fever pitch, first in regime media, then in government pronouncements—a new tax on the “unvaccinated” was promised, and it was promised to be “significant”. Apparently the solution to the problem of Omicron defeating the non-vaccines, was to blame those who spared themselves the useless and potentially harmful injections. By the end of the month, the Canadian federal government invoked the Emergencies Act to crush a popular, peaceful protest—the Freedom Convoy. Bank accounts of hundreds of protesters and donors were frozen; protest leaders were arrested and jailed on trumped up charges, while other protesters were trampled by horses or arrested at gunpoint by policemen outfitted in a manner almost identical to soldiers; and protesters’ private property was seized and/or vandalized by the police. What the dictatorial Justin Trudeau called a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views,” was accurate only as a description of his own regime, according to multiple surveys (like this one, that one, the other one, and now this). Everyone in Quebec was subjected to a new round of restrictions: the closure of businesses and churches; schools going back online. As mandated by the federal side of the regime, the “unvaccinated” were not allowed to leave the country, and they were banned from travelling by air or rail within Canada—the only country in the world to do that. An Iron Curtain was slammed down on Canada, and parts of that curtain remain intact. And then we all got Covid thanks to Omicron—for everyone I knew at the university, students and myself included, whether injected or not, the sickness was a total non-event and certainly far less severe than the common cold or a seasonal flu, even for those with multiple comorbidities. Some students were forced to quarantine at home with sick family members, and still did not get sick. All of this upheaval was meant to shield us from catching this?

In this dark, miserable month of authoritarian aggression against Canadians’ human rights and civil liberties, universities remained absolutely silent, because they were absolutely complicit. It is to this point that the following is directed.

On February 2^nd, 2022, Reinfo Covid Quebec (a very large organization of health professionals, scientists, professors and citizens, numbering more than 10,000 members), organized and hosted a press conference titled, “The Collateral Damage of Government Measures” (“Dommages collatéraux des mesures gouvernementales”). The entirety of the professors’ panel in which I participated can now only be seen on Rumble (and Part 1 can be seen here). The event was mostly in French.

Before I continue, let me thank everyone in Reinfo Covid Quebec for their amazing organizational skills, their dedication, their professionalism, their courage, their high spirits, and their warmth. I thank them also for creating a momentary liberated zone for us: in contravention of government regulations, we met without masks, sitting shoulder to shoulder, laughing and chatting in large groups, for an extended time—no anti-social distancing, no useless breathing obstructions, no fear. In the darkness of February, they offered a warm and welcoming light.

My presentation (the video below), was in English. What follows beneath the video is the longer version of the remarks I had prepared, which appears only in print.

The Collapse of the Canadian University and the Rise of the Church of Covid from Maximilian Forte on Vimeo.

The Collapse of the Canadian University

When a Canadian university tells a professor in the natural sciences that, “this university does not recognize natural immunity,” then we have arrived at the lowest intellectual point in the history of our universities. Natural immunity is a basic biological fact. For it to be struck from recognition gives you just one indication of the assault on science and on academic knowledge committed in the name of a “public health emergency” that was used to justify irrational, capricious, arbitrary, harmful, and discriminatory impositions.

Self-censorship has prevailed in Canadian universities, encouraged by castigating the few who express doubts, and by university administrations that present unsubstantiated monologues that advocate for restrictions and for dubious pharmaceutical products. We are further hampered in Canada by an inadequate number of public intellectuals, while we instead have a surplus of public relations intellectuals with close ties to pharmaceutical companies and to corporate media.

This is a country which has now purged a wide range of scholars in the natural and social sciences, and the humanities, because they expressed dissenting views and stood by the ethics governing their disciplines. Academic freedom is now, de facto, cancelled. Tenure is also, de facto, nullified. Faced with the first real test to their integrity and their ethics, the vast majority of Canadian scholars failed to stand up and speak out.

Rather than serve as a source of diverse perspectives and challenging questions, universities instead fell in line with encouraging mass panic. This conformity has not only damaged public discourse, by taking leave of our duties as the critical conscience of society, it has damaged universities themselves, and I think the damage is now irreparable. University presidents have repeatedly produced unquestioning endorsements of the so-called “vaccines,” masking, and social distancing. Universities have internalized the “vaccine passport” system. Professors have been enlisted to police their students by enforcing mask mandates. Faculty unions have loudly advocated for tougher restrictions, such as mandatory inoculation. This is an extremely dangerous precedent, where one’s place in a university can be cancelled at any time based on one’s health status. Just as dangerous is the Canadian university being conscripted by the state-corporate alliance.

What will remain as a simply inexcusable and unforgivable reality of this period, is that open scientific debate was blocked during what was called a “pandemic”. Asked to rise up to meet history, Canadian academics mostly preferred to stand down. Consequently, the university itself has fallen as victim of this emergency, with limited prospects for recovery.

The Rise of the Church of Covid

As an anthropologist, I have asked myself: what is happening here? And why is it happening? I think of religion and ritual, the making of community, and the art of secrecy.

The intense pressure to conform is, it seems, an attempt to cement a community of believers. Strict rules of belonging are imposed, and those who disagree are excluded. This community has invented new rituals to mark it as a community with borders, and to elevate certain knowledge beyond the realm of questioning. Rituals include ones such as “masking,” which as dubious as it is in preventing transmission and infection, is much more useful as a political symbol that is masked as a moral virtue. Masking also diminishes personal identity, which is one of the unstated intentions, while (anti-)social distancing means that this paradoxical community (united by separation) is one that coheres but not within itself—instead it coheres through adhesion to an abstract “common good” (which is neither common, nor good).

This community has invented its own rite of passage: a form of baptism, of purification in the name of salvation, with “the vaccine” worshipped as the saviour.

The high priests of this community—the administrators, the approved scientists—have made their knowledge special and magical by raising it above questioning. This is the role of censorship and even secrecy, in creating subjects and propositions that are taboo. Those who are not anointed and do not follow in the path of the saviour, are the damned.

The alleged common good—said to be imperilled by a dangerous, unclean “Other” who has not been ritually purified through “vaccination”—is a common good that expects tribute to be paid, and without reciprocity to members of the community whose rights have now become conditional privileges. In reality, it is not so much an objective community, as it is a method of extracting tribute, service, and submission—not so much a community as it is an exploitation scheme.

It is surprisingly self-reflective of Pfizer to call its new (not distributed) injectable, Comirnaty, in a play on the words for “community” and “mRNA,” for this is a community of devotion and service to mRNA technology. It is an imagined, even imaginary, community that flows from the point of the needle; in reality, actual living communities have been divided if not destroyed with the ritual mandates and restrictions that were ushered in to march the masses into the “vaccine” centres. Whether due to fear or mandates that left no choice, citizens were pressed into service for Pfizer and Moderna—and then they were patronizingly told that “we are all in this together” and condescendingly thanked for “stepping up and doing their duty”. Meanwhile, the massive flow of profits went in only one direction—for example, in the direction of building a massive new 417-foot-long mega-yacht for Jeff Bezos, for when he is not journeying into outer space.

Writing as a political economist, Professor Fabio Vighi provided a complementary explanation:

“Virus, Vaccine and Covid Pass are the Holy Trinity of social engineering. ‘Virus passports’ are meant to train the multitudes in the use of electronic wallets controlling access to public services and personal livelihood. The dispossessed and redundant masses, together with the non-compliant, are the first in line to be disciplined by digitalised poverty management systems directly overseen by monopoly capital. The plan is to tokenise human behaviour and place it on blockchain ledgers run by algorithms. And the spreading of global fear is the perfect ideological stick to herd us toward this outcome”.

In his new book (Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics. London: ERIS., 2021) the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben outlined some more parallels between Covid pandemicism and religious thought and practice. He argues that, “the transformation we are witnessing today operates through the introduction of a sanitation terror and a religion of health. What, in the tradition of bourgeois democracy, used to be the right to health became, seemingly without anyone noticing, a juridical-religious obligation that must be fulfilled at any cost” (p. 10). Reflecting further on the meanings of this highly leveraged if not outright invented crisis, Agamben points out how “science” has acquired the properties of religion:

“It is as if the religious need that the Church is no longer able to satisfy is groping for a new habitat—finding it in what has already become, in effect, the religion of our time: science. Like any other religion, this faith can produce fear and superstition, or it can be at least used to disseminate them. Never before have we witnessed such a spectacle of divergent and contradictory opinions and prescriptions, typical of religions in times of crisis. These opinions range from the minoritarian heretical position (one that is nonetheless represented by distinguished scientists) that denies the seriousness of the phenomenon, to the orthodox dominant discourse that affirms this same seriousness and yet differs within itself, often radically, on the strategies for facing it. And, as always happens in these cases, some experts (or so-called experts) manage to gain the approval of the monarch, who, as in the times of the religious disputes that divided Christianity, sides with one current or the other according to his own interests, before subsequently imposing his measures” (p. 20).

“The analogy with religion must be read to the letter,” Agamben asserts, adding: “Theologians declared that they could not clearly define God, but in his name they dictated rules of behaviour and burned heretics without hesitation; virologists admit that they do not know exactly what a virus is, but in its name they insist on deciding how human beings should live” (p. 33).

Prof. Douglas Farrow, a colleague at McGill University where he teaches theology and ethics, had much more to say on these issues in his article, “Enrolled in the Religion of Fear”.

In this New Church of the Eternal Pandemic, where states of emergency act as the crowning religious festivals on the annual calendar, universities train students in the methods of reproducing the authorized, orthodox theology. Dissidents, in some noteworthy cases, are publicly flogged to send a lesson to others, while boosting the morale of acolytes.

Update: Punishing Resistance to, and Critique of, the Non-Vaccines

Many dozens of professors across Canada have been suspended without pay, or terminated outright for refusing to disclose their private and personal medical status, in addition to those who have been suspended and/or terminated because they openly rejected the new non-vaccines.

Before continuing, a note of clarification may still be necessary for some. Why non-vaccines? First, because the CDC changed its definition of “vaccines” in August of 2021, to accommodate the new products being developed for the market, which did not meet the previous CDC definition of “vaccine”. Second, because these are called gene therapies in the pharmaceutical industry itself; by the FDA they are formally referred to as investigational new drugs; in the legal arena, they are classed as prototypes by Pfizer itself. Note also that “emergency use” investigational new drugs are defined by the FDA itself as “experimental”. We can thus call these products experimental gene therapies to be brief, all complaints notwithstanding.

Personally, I know several dozen of these suspended and fired academics, through my membership in Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics. That is where we have met, corresponded, and co-authored some Op-Eds. Separate from CA4CE, I have received correspondence from at least three dozen more professors across Canada, some of which later joined the CA4CE. I will have much more to say about professors’ non-compliance, and the results, in future follow-ups on this site.

For now, I want to direct your attention to the very latest instance of the New Church of Covid (an ex-university), punishing two professors for publicly criticizing the experimental gene therapies used against Covid, one of whom was injured by taking these products. I am speaking here of Professors Patrick Provost and Nicolas Derome at Laval University. Professor Provost, whom I know, was the more prominent of the two in the media, having authored a recent article critical of Quebec’s disproportionate response, using the Quebec Health Institute’s own data to show just how overblown have been the impacts of Covid. Indeed, a separate study which was not the subject of controversy, provided evidence of the fact that Quebec had 4,033 excess deaths between March 2020 and October 2021, but reported 11,470 Covid-19 fatalities—almost three times as much: “It’s the biggest gap recorded in Canada during the pandemic”. In reporting on the same study, it was admitted that, “Quebec doctors included COVID-19 as a cause of death in medical reports more liberally than doctors in other provinces did”. The alleged impacts of Covid were then used by the government to cause real psychological, physiological, economic, and social harms with lockdowns and various other restrictions and mandates. For having challenged the dominant narrative, Patrick’s article was not only removed from the Web by its publisher, he was suspended for eight weeks without pay by Laval University.

Fortunately—and this has been rare in Canada—the Laval University faculty union has vigorously taken up the cause of both professors. This is plainly a fight about academic freedom. The Quebec Federation of University Professors has also endorsed their fight. Amazingly, in a sharp departure from its complicit silence, if not support for quashing the academic freedom of dissenters, the Canadian Association of University Teachers finally felt compelled to speak out in support of those targeted by Laval.

What makes the matter even more interesting is that the very same Quebec government whose pandemicist narrative has reigned throughout the past two (plus) years, recently passed an Academic Freedom Law (Bill 32). Many individual faculty and their unions in Quebec protested this law when it was first introduced, and seemed to be running interference for politically “woke” university administrations. Even the FQPPU criticized how the law was drafted and promoted. Along with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, I instead supported Bill 32, and I did so in a lengthy email on the subject that I sent the Minister. The same Minister of Higher Education who shepherded the law, Danielle McCann, has been forced to come out and condemn Laval University. Minister McCann then cited the situation at Laval as evidence that Bill 32 was necessary, and on this point she is correct.

We thus have a situation where a law—originally intended to shield professors who used “the N-word” in an academic context and for academic purposes, thus designed to hobble the importation/imitation of US culture wars into Quebec—is instead put to its first test with academic free speech against a narrative pushed by the government itself. Professors Provost and Derome have a straightforward case for grievance, and one which would likely win in the courts if it came to that. Laval University has in the meantime disgraced itself, in prime time, and it has broken the law.

For more on this, see the extensive list of media coverage compiled by Reinfo Covid Quebec on its page dedicated to this case (scroll to the bottom). One can read the page in English here. See also Douglas Farrow’s critique: “A Repressive Political Act—Université Laval rejects academic freedom and does violence to science”. Those who follow Zero Anthropology in Telegram would have received an abundance of coverage of this case over the past week.

For my part, I was hoping that the message in my video above would not be validated so much further, so close to home, in such short order.

“I would like to raise awareness about how our society is evolving, it’s not in a good direction. It is getting to the point where private interests will be directing our country, we will just be servants”—Dr. Patrick Provost

July 3, 2022 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, Laval University, Quebec | Leave a comment

Meryl Nass’ personal tale of how she got here

By Meryl Nass, MD | July 3, 2022

Several people have asked me to discuss my own path to understanding the pandemic psyop. I don’t think describing my path will help others, but because I am a stickler for transparency, I will give a quick take on how I got where I am today.

The short story is that, as someone with a long history in biowarfare and pandemics, I studied this pandemic intensively beginning in early February 2020. By end February I was aware that China was using the chloroquine drugs in multiple clinical trials. I soon became aware of Didier Raoult’s work in France using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for COVID. As I had used these drugs quite a lot in patients, and had treated myself with chloroquine as preventive and treatment for malaria, I knew they were relatively safe and ought to be trialed here. I mentioned chloroquine on my blog on March 2, 2020.

When my son came down with COVID in early March I insisted he use it and he made a rapid recovery. So I aggressively studied the use of chloroquine drugs for COVID, and the evidence of benefit quickly became overwhelming.

But by the end of March the FDA had issued an EUA for the chloroquine drugs, in order to confuse prescribers and place restrictions on its use. This was immediately followed by similar acts by the states, most of which placed a variety of different restrictions on the drugs’ use for COVID.

If you look back at my blog, you will see that by end May I had deduced that something very coordinated and very evil was happening in the developed world to prevent patients receiving early, appropriate treatment. I realized a war was being waged under the guise of public health.

Before all this, I had traveled widely, in Africa and Asia, and had learned that much of what the media tell us is simply untrue. I had been a Democrat and had become astounded at what the party had become. I had seen Obama voice beautiful thoughts but he always made decisions that favored big business.

I had seen various social movements co-opted by the most venal and inhumane politicians. I had recognized that identify politics was a cover for the takeover of society by the richest capitalists.

I had seen many of the basic tenets of medicine brushed aside without a second thought or an informed consent, for example, putting patients’ medical records online, to be sold to Google and other big data companies.

I knew that what the country supposedly stood for was being flushed down the toilet even before the pandemic, so it was perhaps not such a stretch to see that big gov and big business were waging war on the world.

I can believe that they had robbed the piggy bank for so long, things would have crashed had they not imposed the lockdowns as a “time out.” It makes sense to me that the pandemic was a deliberate response to failing financial markets, which had been prepared for decades. I believe climate change is the linchpin by which the fraud has been sold to practically the entire younger generation–its corollary being that there are too many people on the planet. And the well meaning kids are hoodwinked into believing it.

What I cannot tell you is why the people pulling the strings have settled for such a dystopian vision of the future, relying on hopes of AI to manage things, when AI has so far never lived up to its promises.

OTOH, if they all have personalities that mirror Bill Gates, maybe a lack of human warmth and empathy are sufficient to explain it.

I can also tell you that if a universal basic income gets installed, there will be those at the top who consider the beneficiaries of UBI to be ‘useless eaters’– and I guarantee those on UBI won’t be encouraged to play or wax creative all day long. Those who wanted to kill us with COVID are unlikely to nourish and appreciate the talents of the poor.

I can also predict that extending the lives of old bodies will not work out so well for those seeking it. But I guess they need to pretend they can live forever, since it won’t be pleasant when they finally meet their maker.

That is my story in a nutshell.

July 3, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights | Leave a comment

FBI rented Istanbul villa for Daesh suspects before alerting Turkish authorities, report reveals

MEMO | July 3, 2022

The United States’ domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), is revealed to have rented a villa in Istanbul as a safe house for alleged members of the Daesh terror group, in a case that further proves the bureau’s use of entrapment methods.

According to the London-based news outlet Middle East Eye, a veteran undercover FBI operative named Kamran Faridi signed a tenancy agreement and paid the rent for a luxury villa on Istanbul’s seafront suburb of Silivri in 2015.

The property was then used as a safe house by several alleged members of Daesh, including a British man named Aine Davis, who is accused of being part of the terror group’s cell of British militants labelled the ‘Beatles’.

In November that year, Turkish security forces then raided the property arresting the six men hiding inside it. At the time, Turkish authorities hailed the interception of preparations for a major attack in Istanbul.

Almost seven years later, however, the news outlet’s report sheds light on the FBI’s involvement, citing court papers which show that Turkish prosecutors did not find evidence of any plot but rather that the raid was conducted after the bureau itself tipped-off Turkish authorities about a potential attack.

In a note dated April 2016, the prosecutors stated that “Sufficient evidence could not be obtained to file a public lawsuit… other than the intelligence report of a foreign country, which does not have the quality of evidence”.

While it is unknown whether Turkish officials knew of Faridi – the FBI operative – and his work for the bureau, Middle East Eye cited a source familiar with the matter as saying that the FBI approached Turkish officials in February 2016 to offer Turkish intelligence Faridi’s undercover services. According to the outlet, however, the officials rejected the proposal due to the operative already having been exposed.

Faridi – a 58-year-old of Pakistani origin who had worked for the FBI as an informant since the mid-1990s and then abroad numerous countries in the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force during the two decades of the ‘war on terror’ – was reportedly fired from his service in 2020. He was then arrested and jailed the following year after sending death threats to his former superiors.

The former operative’s activities, however, especially in Istanbul as well as his work while being “loaned out” to other western intelligence agencies, is set to further draw light on the FBI and other agencies’ use of “entrapment” methods.

Under such methods, intelligence agencies attract, draw in, and recruit impressionable individuals to criminal or terrorist groups – or so the individuals are led to believe – before being set up, arrested, and prosecuted on charges of joining those groups. It has long been a controversial practice, but has been either denied or justified by agencies on the basis of rooting out potential terrorists.

As a result of that raid in 2015, Davis and two other suspected militants were convicted and jailed two years later on the charge of being part of Daesh – which they denied – while three other men arrested at the villa were released due to lack of evidence. According to the outlet, though, Davis is now scheduled to be deported from Turkey to the UK within days.

July 3, 2022 Posted by aletho | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Da’esh, FBI, Human rights, Turkey, United States | Leave a comment

The Insufferable Arrogance of the Constantly Wrong

BY CLAYTON FOX | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | JUNE 30, 2022

The media, and the people who work in and around it, the Blue Checks™ of Twitter, have upped the ante over the past few years regarding how far they are willing to go to enforce various preferred narratives.

Pick any major story of the past three years—e.g. Lab Leak, Jussie Smollett, Russiagate, Ukrainian Biolabs, Ivermectin, Hospitalizations From COVID v. With Covid, January 6^th, ‘Transitory’ Inflation, and of course Hunter’s Laptop—and you will find absolutely hysterical narrative pushing up front followed by retractions, corrections, and outright denials as reality became undeniable.

In the meanwhile, our civilization was ripped apart, our citizens were gaslit and impoverished, and in countries across the Western world, innocent people were removed from polite society, branded as lepers, and fired from their jobs.

Why? Because there is one story that just won’t die and for which no corrections have been issued—the shibboleth that vaccination can prevent infection, transmission, and help “end” COVID.

While there is never an excuse for hateful rhetoric towards, and intervention in, the personal medical choices of law-abiding Americans, perhaps one could have, kinda sorta, understood the campaign if the new vaccines had provided long-lasting immunity and prevented community transmission. They do not.

Early on we were told: “Nine out of ten [vaccinated] people won’t get sick” (Columbia University feat. Run-DMC, February 12^th, 2021, no this is not a joke); “Vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick” (Dr. Rochelle Walensky, March 29^th, 2021); “When people are vaccinated, they can feel safe that they are not going to get infected” (Dr. Anthony Fauci, May 17^th, 2021).

And by mid-summer, 2021, we were still being told that unequivocally, these vaccines were a resounding success worthy of uncritical support. On July 27^th in Scientific American, Dr. Eric Topol wrote, “Vaccination is the closest thing to a sure thing we have in this pandemic.” Not to be outdone, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIAID told CBS on August 1^st, that the unvaccinated were responsible for “propagating this outbreak.”

But on July 29^th, 2021, the Washington Post reported a scoop that the CDC was privately acknowledging that the vaccinated could spread COVID as easily as the unvaccinated. Occasionally, they are forced to report inconvenient facts. And August 5^th, CDC Director Walensky told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that, “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death — they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”

While there is a mountain of medical literature available demonstrating quite clearly the failure of these vaccines to prevent infection and transmission, the August 5^th declaration from the CDC Director should have made clear that being vaccinated is contributing in no way to the safety of others, nor to the eradication of this virus.

In fact, Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz was even caught on tape in September of last year explaining that the use of the Israeli Green Pass wasn’t intended to make a difference epidemiologically, but because it would help convince people to get vaccinated. And even vaccine poobah Bill Gates admitted in a late 2021 interview, that, “We got vaccines to help you with your health, but they only slightly reduce the transmissions.”

So there should be no question that continuing to suggest in any way that these shots are a panacea, and that those who refused to get them were plague spreaders, should have been thoroughly trashed by Fall 2021.

Nonetheless, on September 24^th President Joe Biden coined his now famous phrase “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” To our north, Prime Minister Trudeau called the unvaccinated science deniers, misogynists, and racists, and asked rhetorically whether Canadians should “tolerate” them.

And during the first week of January 2022, while kicking the unvaccinated out of French daily life and public spaces, French President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted the measures to “piss off” his unvaccinated citizens. With world leaders speaking this way, it’s no wonder so many Blue Check™ elites took up the banner!

Prominent media figures like Amy Siskind, Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten, and more have come out of the woodwork in recent months to share with us their enthusiasm for medical discrimination. Noted neurotic Howard Stern is all in on forced vaccination due to what must be his own debilitating fear of his mortality. Bill Kristol says the unvaccinated have “blood on their hands.”

David Frum, heir to Maimonides, writes, “Let the hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last.” Charles M. Blow was “furious” at the unvaccinated. CNN contributor Dr. Leana Wen suggested that the unvaccinated should not be allowed to leave their homes. The Ragin’ Cajun even wants to punch the unvaccinated in the face!

All of the above links/stories were posted after Dr. Walensky’s unequivocal announcement that the vaccines do not prevent transmission.

And all of the self-satisfied segregationists are supported in their vitriol by the Blue Checks™ of the Medical Establishment, like Dr. Paul Klotman, President and Executive Dean of the Baylor School of Medicine, who said on camera back in January that he isn’t polite to friends and family who aren’t vaccinated. “Keep them away. I don’t do it respectfully, I tell them to stay away, and teach them a lesson.” Less vitriolic but equally problematic, the WHO’s COVID-19 “technical lead” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove continued to push the lie that vaccination can prevent outbreaks as recently as January 26^th, 2022. She is, as well, a Blue Check™. And yes, Dr. Anthony Fauci is still at it, even as of April 14^th, 2022, telling MSNBC that harsh Chinese lockdowns could be used to get the population vaccinated so that “When you open up, you won’t have a surge of infections.”

The examples are legion. Blue Checks, Medical Blue Checks, Times Columnists, Radio Jocks, Presidents, and Prime Ministers have all espoused misinformation and/or hate speech regarding vaccination status. But they are all given intellectual cover by the official reporting of the fourth estate. Even in the face of all the evidence that there is no epidemiological basis for discrimination, our intellectual betters in the legacy media press onward the canard.

On August 26^th, the Toronto Star ran an article entitled, “When it comes to empathy for the unvaccinated, many of us aren’t feeling it.” Then, on December 22^nd, published an explainer which stated that two doses won’t stop you from spreading COVID-19. Comme ci, comme ca.

Back in February, MSNBC political contributor Matthew Dowd shared his insight that the unvaccinated do not believe in the United States Constitution, because if they did, they would get vaccinated for “We The People.” For the common good.

An examination of the New York Times reveals three articles written this year which overtly continue supporting the idea that the vaccines prevent transmission. First, on January 29^th in a piece entitled, “As Covid Shots For Kids Stall, Appeals Are Aimed At Wary Parents,” the author cites “public health officials” who say that to aid in “containing” the pandemic, kids must also be vaccinated. (It is worth mentioning that the current vaccines and boosters being distributed were designed in February 2020 to provide an immune response to a version of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein circulating prior to that, not entirely similar to what is circulating now.)

Then February 23^rd, in a hit piece on the Surgeon General of Florida Dr. Joe Ladapo, the Times writes, “When public health officials across the country were urging vaccines as a way to end the pandemic, Dr. Ladapo was raising warning flags about possible side effects and cautioning that even vaccinated people could spread the virus.”

So, Dr. Ladapo was correct?

Finally, in a piece about Novak Djokovic published March 3^rd, they write, “Djokovic was the only player ranked in the top 100 in Australia who had not received a Covid-19 vaccination, which experts have long said will not eradicate the virus unless most of the population receives one.”

They do not address the question of how a vaccine which does not prevent transmission can eradicate a virus. And they won’t. As Israeli Health Minister Horowitz candidly admitted, none of this is about epidemiology.

And even when mainstream media tacitly acknowledges the failures of the vaccines to prevent transmission, they skillfully elide the significance of this fact in order to allow them to continue to scapegoat the unvaccinated. In a dazzling display of sophistry, Time Magazine moved the Overton window in this January 12^th, 2022 piece, “These Charts Show That COVID-19 Is Still A Pandemic of the Unvaccinated.”

The author states that due to the rapidly narrowing gap between cases in the vaccinated and unvaccinated, some readers might think that the phrase “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is no longer justifiable. But with the grace of a ballerina, Time goes on to tell us that because the vaccines are still showing efficacy against severe illness, the phrase is still kosher. If an unvaccinated person gets sicker than his vaccinated neighbor who contracted COVID at a fully vaccinated wedding, that unvaccinated person is still the problem!

New York Magazine isn’t lacking in similar gymnastics. On February 16^th of this year, Matt Stieb published a piece entitled, “Is Kyrie Irving Going to Get Away With It?” Irving is the Brooklyn Nets player who famously chose not to be vaccinated, and has become a fetish object for the Covidian Left. Stieb acknowledges that Irving’s vaccinated teammates were getting COVID at such high rates that it forced Nets management to allow Irving back to play in away games but still calls the New York City ban on unvaccinated athletes “a rare public health mandate with real teeth.”

Just seven days later on February 23^rd, Will Leitch, in the same publication, sighs, “Unfortunately, It’s Time to Let Kyrie Irving Play in New York.” He outlines all the reasons why epidemiologically it makes no sense to prevent athletes like Irving and Novak Djokovic from participating, but says, “It would feel like they got away with all their bullshit.” And also, they are “annoying.”

And this barely concealed hatred for the unvaccinated from media and government and Big Tech—even in the rare moments when writers such as Leitch acknowledge the failure of the vaccines to prevent transmission—has real consequences. People have lost their jobs. People have been arrested for trying to go to a movie theater.

Families got kicked out of restaurants, and patrons either cheered or remained indifferent, which is worse. A teenage boy at an uber-progressive and expensive Chicago prep school committed suicide after being bullied over an incorrect rumor he was unvaccinated. The stench of bad journalism rots people’s basic decency.

A January Rasmussen poll found that, “Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine…Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine…”

As well as, “Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine.” Unfortunately, these disturbing results are politically lopsided, but it’s no surprise when you consider who the readers of most legacy media platforms are.

The saddest thing is that these media outlets and their flag bearers really think their readers are all morons. The New York Times believes that, in the midst of the Omicron wave as boosted person after boosted person was getting COVID, they could tell you these particular vaccines are still the way to eradicate this thing, and expect you to deny reality and nod your head.

It calls to mind the quote attributed to Solzhenitsyn (or Elena Gorokhova), “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”

We have ceded the better angels of our common cerebrum to people who may not have our best interests at heart, and a sycophantic laptop class who gleefully endorses their diktats and “fact-checks.” Collectively: Sophistry Inc.

Their behavior, endorsed by every single entity which holds power in our society, is destroying us, and has already poisoned us such that there may be no antidote. Yes, first they came for the unvaccinated, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come for you next.

July 2, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, New York Times, United States | Leave a comment

The Dutch Farmers’ Protest and the War on Food

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 2, 2022

This week, tens of thousands of farmers have gathered from all across the Netherlands to protest government policies which will reduce the number of livestock in the country by up to a third.

In a typical example of media weasel-wording, the press reports on this all headline something like “Dutch farmers protest emissions targets”, but this is a massive lie by omission.

The government policy being protested is a 25 BILLION Euro investment in “reducing levels of nitrogen pollution” true, but it plans to achieve this by (among other things) “paying some Dutch livestock farmers to relocate or exit the industry”.

In real terms, this ultimately means reducing the number of pigs, chickens and cows by about thirty per cent.

That’s what is being protested here – a deliberate shrinking of the farming sector, impacting the livelihood of thousands of farmers, and the food supply of literally hundreds of millions of people.

THE BIG PICTURE

While the scheme is allegedly about limiting nitrogen and ammonia emissions from urine and manure it’s hard not to see this in the broader context of the ongoing created food crisis.

The Netherlands produces a massive food surplus and is one of the largest exporters of meat in the world and THE largest in Europe. Reducing its output by a third could have huge implications for the global food supply, especially in Western Europe.

Perhaps more troubling is how this could act as a precedent.

This isn’t the first “pay farmers not to farm” scheme launched in the last year – both the UK and US have put such schemes in place – but a government paying to reduce it’s own meat production? That is a first.

That it is (allegedly) being done to “protect the environment” makes it a big warning sign for the future. Denmark, Belgium and Germany are already considering similar policies.

The Western world seems to be enthusiastically embracing quasi-suicidal policies.

I mean, paying farmers to reduce the amount of food they produce… while (notionally) threatened with war… in the midst of a recession… facing record inflation as the cost of living spirals.

Does that really make any sense?

That’s almost as crazy as refusing new oil and gas leases while the cost of petrol is going up.

Indeed, in a world beset by a shortage of fertiliser due to sanctions against Russia and Belarus, it would seem almost mad to complain about a manure surplus, let alone try to reduce it.

We’re well past the point where any of this could be considered accidental, aren’t we?

Put it this way – if the collective governments of the Western world were trying to impoverish and starve their own citizens, what exactly would they be doing differently?

July 2, 2022 Posted by aletho | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | European Union, Human rights, Netherlands, UK, United States | Leave a comment

Israel’s ‘terrorism’ smear dismissed as EU resumes funding for Palestinian NGO

MEMO | July 1, 2022

The European Union (EU) has resumed funding to two prominent Palestinian human rights groups, more than a year after suspending support for six Palestinian organisations labelled terrorists by Israel.

Indicating that the Israeli claims are baseless, the European Commission – the EU’s executive branch – sent letters to Al-Haq and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). The two organisations were informed that their 13-month-long suspensions were lifted unconditionally and with immediate effect.

The PCHR and Al-Haq collect evidence of alleged Israeli crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and have worked with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in its investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity. All six groups which were banned by Israel believe they were targeted by the Apartheid State for their work with the ICC.

Announcing the resumption of funding, the Commission mentioned the results of a review conducted by the EU’s European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), which it said found “no suspicions of irregularities and/or fraud” and “did not find sufficient ground to open an investigation”.

OLAF’s conclusion is one many had anticipated as several EU member states had previously dismissed Israel’s “terrorism” label. Earlier this month EU diplomats also said that the evidence submitted by the Apartheid State “doesn’t meet the required threshold of proof”.

“The suspension has been lifted unconditionally and with immediate effect,” Al-Haq said in a statement yesterday. “Since its imposition in May 2021, it was clear that the suspension was not prompted by any genuine concerns about the possible misuse of funding,” the rights group continued. Al-Haq claimed that Israel had tried to “defame” the Palestinian groups in a politically motivated campaign to disrupt the work of civil society.

“Due to our human rights work to hold Israel accountable for its grave and systematic violations against the Palestinian people, Al-Haq has been a long-time target of smear campaigns, intimidation and reprisals, including death threats,” the rights group said.

“These tactics have been deployed to distract Al-Haq and to divert its resources from its core mission to promote human rights and accountability – in order to enable Israel to entrench its settler-colonial and apartheid regime in Palestine and against the Palestinian people as a whole.”

Al-Haq warned of Israel’s attempt to shrink civic space for human rights organisations and to silence human rights defenders in Palestine. The culmination of which, said Al-Haq, was Israel’s decision in October 2021 to designate the rights group alongside five other leading Palestinian NGOs, terrorists.

The EU suspended its funding to Al-Haq and PCHR in May 2021. That month, European diplomats had received a classified Israeli intelligence dossier alleging that six prominent Palestine-based NGOs, including Al-Haq, were using EU money to fund the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The Commission suspended its funding for the PCHR at the same time despite it not being one of the six NGOs mentioned. A few months later, in October 2021, Israel outlawed the six organisations.

The EU Commission was the only international actor which froze funds. However, several European countries, including Ireland, the Netherlands and Norway spoke out against the ban. “You have to look at the facts here,” Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said in May.

“There isn’t a single European state — nor the United States — that has arrived at the same conclusions as has Israel. If there is proof, then we should see and we should review it. An accusation in and of itself cannot be sufficient for a country that subscribes to the rule of law,” Hoekstra said.

July 2, 2022 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Ukraine War: 120 Days

A no-nonsense analysis of the ongoing Ukraine war and its global impact

Military situation in Ukraine on June 28 (SouthFront)

Swiss Policy Research | July 2022

Military Situation

The initial Russian offensive (“phase 1”) consisted in a direct advance from Belarus to the northern gates of Kiev and the simultaneous opening of multiple fronts in the north-east, east, and south of Ukraine. There have been various theories as to what the initial Russian strategy was (e.g. conquering Kiev or ‘binding Ukrainian forces’), but most likely, Russia tried to force a collapse or capitulation of the Ukrainian government, in which case Russia would have won the war without really fighting it.

Indeed, just one day after the beginning of the invasion, Russian President Putin proposed a kind of “military coup” in Ukraine to make it easier to “reach an agreement”. There were also several rounds of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev in Belarus and Turkey.

Yet this initial, political-military plan failed and was halted in late March, about one month after the beginning of the invasion.

Nevertheless, already by early March Russia had conquered extensive territories in southern Ukraine connecting the Donbas and Crimea and had been able to restore water supply to the Crimean Peninsula (which had been cut off by Ukraine since 2014; see map above).

By late April, Russia had essentially conquered the important southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol (500k pre-war inhabitants), and by late May, the remaining Ukrainian forces in the Azovstal steel plant of Mariupol had surrendered. In addition, Russia conquered the southern Ukrainian cities of Melitopol (150k inhabitants) and Kherson (300k) without meeting much resistance.

After the failure of the initial political-military strategy, Russia in early April withdrew all of its troops from the north of Kiev and redeployed them to the east in an attempt to encircle and defeat the main positions of the Ukrainian military and conquer the entire Donbas region.

However, the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine was much slower than expected by many observers, and Russian forces advanced only about 25 kilometers in about two months.

Many Western analysts got the impression that the Russian military was weaker than previously assumed, while many Russian and pro-Russian analysts have argued that the Russian military was advancing slow “on purpose”, allegedly to “minimize losses”.

Yet neither of these explanations were convincing. Instead, there are several substantial reasons that explain the steady, but rather slow advance of the Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.

First, in terms of the number of soldiers and tanks, the Ukrainian military is the largest military in Europe, second only to the Russian military (not counting the Turkish military).

Second, while Ukraine has already mobilized large parts of its men of fighting age, Russia has not yet mobilized at all, i.e. Russia is using only active soldiers, no reservists or conscripts. In fact, Russia has essentially deployed its peace-time army, which has resulted in a notable lack of manpower and infantry. A likely explanation for this decision is that the Russian government wants to keep up the impression, at least domestically, that it is just conducting a “special military operation”, not a full-scale war, and that it wants to avoid the political repercussions of having to conscript additional men (i.e. civilians). This is consistent with the fact that Russia has offered high-paid short-term military contracts to volunteers, again avoiding conscription.

Third, Eastern Ukraine is probably the most strongly fortified region in Europe today, having been prepared against a potential Russian invasion for several years. Although some Ukrainian units have surrendered due to a lack of supply or guidance, the overall Ukrainian resistance against Russian forces remains at a very high level.

Fourth, the Ukrainian military has received large amounts of weapons from the US and NATO countries, including powerful artillery and modern anti-tank weapons. Without these supplies, the Ukrainian front would likely have collapsed rather quickly.

Fifth, the Ukrainian military has greatly enhanced the effectiveness of its artillery by using reconnaissance data from its own drones as well as from US satellites. Indeed, the use of commercial and simple military drones appears to have fundamentally transformed modern warfare at the tactical level.

Sixth, and contrary to claims by Western media, the Russian military is still trying to minimize civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, likely because it views Eastern Ukraine as Russian territory anyway. For instance, it has been noted that the Russian military delivered fewer airstrikes and fewer missiles during the entire first month than the United States did during the Iraq war in just one day. However, as the Ukrainian military has been fiercely defending most cities and villages, the end result is still large-scale destruction of urban infrastructure.

Although Russia has had the upper hand in Eastern Ukraine, it remains uncertain if the current Russian military strategy will be viable in the longer run, especially if Russia intends to conquer some of the larger Ukrainian cities, such as Kharkiv, Odessa or Dnipro (1M-1.5M) or even Kiev (3M). If the Ukrainian government or military do not surrender or agree to a negotiated solution, the Russian military may have to call up reservists and conscripts and/or switch to an (even) more destructive mode of warfare against the cities it intends to “liberate”.

Currently, the main Russian military advantage consists in relative (but not absolute) air superiority, more powerful artillery, and cruise missiles that can destroy strategic targets anywhere in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the Ukraine war is currently not an “asymmetric war”.

In terms of military strength, it is estimated that Russia deployed about 160,000 soldiers, the pro-Russian Donbas republics about 40,000 soldiers, and Ukraine about 300,000 military and paramilitary forces, of which about 50,000 in Eastern Ukraine. In terms of military losses, it is estimated that by late June, Ukraine may have lost close to 20,000 soldiers, Russia close to 5,000 soldiers, and the Donbas republics about 10,000 soldiers.

Future Developments

Russia will certainly try to fully conquer (or liberate) the Donbas republics, including the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk (100k-150k pre-war inhabitants). Russia may also try to conquer Mykolaiv (500k) and Odessa (1M) in the south of Ukraine in order to establish a corridor to Moldova/Transnistria, which would cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea and turn the country into a landlocked rump state. After conquering the Donbas republics, Russia may further try to conquer or encircle Kharkov (1.5M) and advance to the Dnipr river.

Cities or districts conquered by Russia will likely hold referendums on becoming part of Russia. These referendums will likely turn out in favor of Russia, as a majority of the people in the east and south-east of Ukraine do indeed identify as Russians (or are leaning towards Russia), and Russia may then annex or absorb these territories. However, such a strategy will not work in Kiev, nor in northern and western Ukraine (see map below).

In terms of potential escalations, a Russian advance towards Moldova may trigger a preemptive Romanian invasion (“by invitation”) of Moldova. A further destabilization of Ukraine may trigger a Polish invasion (“peace mission”) of western Ukraine, which in turn could trigger a war between Poland and Belarus in western Ukraine.

Moreover, NATO countries could decide to deliver more powerful weapons to Ukraine or to establish a “safe zone” in western Ukraine (similar to the situation in eastern Syria). In general, the US will likely try to prolong the Ukraine war as much as possible in order to weaken Russia financially and politically (similar to the Afghanistan war in the 1980s.)

Outside of Ukraine, the situation in the Baltics (Lithuania/Kaliningrad), the Balkans (Bosnia-Serbia-Kosovo) and in the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia-Azerbaijan) could further deteriorate. The situation in Syria, where the US, Israel, Turkey, Iran and Russia are already involved, could also further escalate. In Asia, China could decide to invade and annex Taiwan.

The global economic situation will also likely continue to deteriorate, especially in the fields of energy and food supply, price inflation and financial market stability. This deterioration is driven not just by the war itself, but also by Western sanctions against Russia as well as by two years of misguided pandemic lockdown policies, which have caused serious global supply chain disruptions.

The possibility of a nuclear escalation will be discussed further below.

War Crimes

In terms of war crimes, the current situation is in stark contrast to claims by Western media and Western governments, as most war crimes have been committed not by the Russian side, but by the Ukrainian side. This includes many major war crimes blamed on the Russian side, such as the infamous Bucha massacre, the Mariupol theater bombing, or the Kramatorsk railway station bombing. Other supposed Russian war crimes were simply made up by Ukrainian officials, such as allegations of systematic rape and mass looting.

Yet other events were taken out of context, such as the alleged Russian bombing of Ukrainian schools and hospitals or shopping centers, which in almost all cases had been turned into Ukrainian military bases or ammunition depots. In other cases, civilian buildings supposedly destroyed by Russian missiles were in fact destroyed by Ukrainian air-defense missiles (e.g. in Kiev) or Ukrainian artillery missiles (e.g. in Borodyanka).

In yet other cases, Ukrainian forces, poorly disguised as Russian forces, executed Ukrainian civilians that welcomed the false “Russian liberators”; Western media then presented the execution as a Russian war crime. In even other cases, the Ukrainian bombing of Donbas cities was presented as the Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities.

In the case of Bucha, the bodies seen in the streets were victims of Ukrainian shelling of residential areas during the Russian occupation and retreat, and of subsequent Ukrainian executions of “collaborators” (hence the white armbands, a sign of friendly status during Russian occupation). The bodies were then presented as victims of a supposed “Russian massacre”.

Ironically, the Ukrainian commander who oversaw the Bucha massacre previously was a Russian intelligence asset who had built up “neonazi groups” in Russia and Belarus. The international “marketing” of the Bucha massacre as a supposed Russian war crime may have been coordinated by British intelligence, similar to numerous chemical false-flag attacks in Syria.

In the case of the Mariupol maternity clinic, Western media claimed it was a Russian airstrike, but they could not provide any evidence for this hypothesis, and witnesses at the clinic said there was no airstrike. Yet the incident remains unresolved, and both a Russian attack (possibly targeting a nearby Ukrainian base) or a Ukrainian operation remain possible.

In the case of the recent Kremenchuk shopping center incident, the Ukrainian government claimed a Russian missile hit the shopping center with 1,000 people inside; in reality, the Russian missiles hit an adjacent military plant and the shopping center was either closed (non-operational) or almost empty. However, one of the Russian missiles did hit very close to the shopping center, which then caught fire and burnt down.

Documented, confirmed or potential Russian war crimes currently consist mainly in the shooting and killing of civilians that approached Russian checkpoints or military columns, on foot or by car, although the context of these events is sometimes unclear (e.g. if there were any warning shots). There are also allegations of several other crimes against individual Russian soldiers that are currently difficult to verify independently.

On the Ukrainian side, documented war crimes encompass mass torture and mass executions, both against prisoners of war and their own people (if deemed pro-Russian collaborators or sympathizers), including several cases of decapitation; the military use of civilian infrastructure (including schools) and “human shields”; and large-scale shelling of residential areas behind front lines, especially against the city of Donetsk (in one case even hitting a maternity clinic).

Moreover, several Western journalists, whose death was blamed on the Russian side, were in fact killed by the Ukrainian side (in friendly fire incidents).

False claims of major Russian war crimes (i.e. atrocity propaganda) have been used by Western governments to justify weapons supplies to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. The heavy use of such atrocity propaganda is not a new phenomenon, of course. Important recent examples include the US/NATO wars against Yugoslavia and against Syria.

The topic of war crimes will be covered in a separate, detailed event-by-event analysis.

Propaganda and Censorship

On the Russian side, propaganda efforts depict the Ukraine war as a kind of continuation of the Second World War or Great Patriotic War against National Socialist Germany, focusing on the supposed “denazification” of Ukraine. At the same time, Russian President Putin has criticized Soviet leaders for having made Ukraine a quasi-independent political entity in the first place. Thus, Russian propaganda combines elements of both the former Soviet Union and the earlier Russian Tsarist empire.

Overall, the “Nazi narrative” appears to be quite effective, both in Russia and in the West, in part because many key aspects of the Second World War and NS Germany still cannot be questioned, neither in Russia nor in the sphere of Anglo-American countries, which during the Second World War were allied with Stalin’s Soviet Union against Hitler’s Germany.

On the NATO side, propaganda efforts mainly focus on Russian aggression, supposed Russian war crimes and supposed Ukrainian successes. NATO propaganda is produced by multiple PR agencies, coordinated by intelligence services, and distributed to Western media outlets by the three global news agencies AP (American), AFP (French) and Reuters (British-Canadian). The total number of NATO propaganda messages in Western media is likely approaching about one thousand.

In addition, both sides have introduced significant media censorship. In NATO countries, this includes the removal of Russian and pro-Russian media outlets from major Internet search engines Google, Microsoft Bing and even DuckDuckGo. Furthermore, British security state operatives were caught trying to suppress independent media coverage of the Ukraine war.

Nevertheless, independent media outlets and uncensored Telegram channels have continued to provide important real-time footage and analysis of the situation in Ukraine.

NATO Expansion or Russian Expansion?

Is the Ukraine war about NATO expansion or rather about Russian expansion? In truth, it is likely about both NATO and Russian expansion, although one may argue that the Russian expansion is a response to NATO expansion. It is clear that the current Russian government sees large parts of Ukraine as “historically Russian territory”, or indeed Ukraine as part of Russia. Only by seeking a neutral status and by accepting the loss of Crimea and the autonomy of the Donbas republics might Ukraine have avoided a Russian invasion.

It has been argued that NATO expansion into Ukraine wouldn’t be a threat to nuclear Russia, but this is hardly true. NATO expansion into Ukraine would pose a geostrategic threat (control over pipelines, ports etc.), a direct military threat (planned recapture of Crimea and the Donbas republics), and a strategic military threat (NATO military infrastructure and missile bases). For similar reasons, the US did not and would not accept Russian bases in Cuba, Mexico or Venezuela.

It has been noted that Russia is unlikely to invade Finland or Sweden, despite their intention to join NATO (in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine). In fact, Russia already has a (small) land border with NATO founding member Norway and with Baltic states. Yet Finland and Sweden do not currently threaten Russian territory or Russian interests. Otherwise, a Russian military response may in fact be conceivable (see below).

Is the Russian military operation in Ukraine legal or illegal? From a Western perspective, the Russian operation is clearly illegal, not unlike previous US invasions (e.g. of Grenada, Panama and Iraq) and most US/NATO wars (e.g. against Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria). From a Russian perspective, the military operation is a legitimate intervention into an ongoing, illegal eight-year war against the Donbas republics. Russia will likely annex large parts of Ukraine, but it will try to “legitimize” these annexations by prior referendums.

Energy War: By Whom?

It has also been argued that Russia is waging an energy war by restricting oil and gas exports in order to destabilize NATO countries and especially Europe. Yet upon closer inspection, it is clear that the energy war is in fact waged via sanctions by NATO countries in order to financially destabilize Russia, although so far this seems to have failed and indeed backfired, with energy security in Europe becoming rather uncertain.

For instance, a reduction in gas flow through the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to Germany was (and is) due to a broken turbine sent by Germany to Canada for repair, but then retained by Canada due to sanctions against Russia. Similarly, the Russian decision to accept energy payments only after conversion into rubles was simply in response to the prior freezing of billions of Russian Euro and dollar reserves by Western countries.

Indeed, neither during nor after the Cold War has Russia (or the USSR) ever used the “energy weapon” against (Western) Europe, as Russia is very much interested in both being seen as a reliable supplier and in foreign currency export revenue.

However, one can argue that Russia is relying on a kind of “indirect energy weapon”: by being a reliable energy supplier, Russia may hope that Europe and NATO will not turn hostile, regardless of Russian military actions. Moreover, if relations should further deteriorate, Russia could of course use the “energy weapon” and stop energy exports to Europe altogether.

The Russian government likes to emphasize that the impact of Western sanctions is rather minor and that the Russian ruble has remained strong. But Russia had to impose capital controls (i.e. the ruble is no longer free floating), and the economic impact is substantial, with tens of thousands of IT specialists having already left the country, for instance.

Nuclear War?

How likely is a nuclear war as a potential escalation of the Ukraine war?

A direct nuclear war targeting the mainland of nuclear states remains very unlikely, as this would lead to the destruction of all states involved. However, from a purely military and geostrategic perspective, there are two rational offensive uses of nuclear weapons, in addition to their defensive use as a deterrent: against hostile non-nuclear states and against overseas military infrastructure of nuclear states.

In this regard, there is a major geostrategic asymmetry between Russia and China on the one hand and the US on the other hand: whereas the US has several hundred overseas military bases and several dozen non-nuclear allies or client states (both in Europe and in Asia), Russia and China have almost no overseas military bases and very few non-nuclear allies.

Thus, Russia and China could consider coordinated nuclear strikes against all US overseas military bases in Eurasia (i.e. in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and East Asia). In addition, Russia and China could consider nuclear strikes against hostile non-nuclear countries, both in Europe and in Asia, targeting military/industrial centers or even population centers.

Theoretically, such a coordinated nuclear operation might remove the US military from the Eurasian continent (and by extension from Africa), limiting US military influence to North and South America. Thereafter, a new geo-economic Cold War between Eurasia/Africa, led by China and Russia, and the Americas would likely ensue.

Nuclear allies of the US in Eurasia, most notably Britain, France and Israel, would have to ensure robust sea- and air-based second strike capability even against modern hypersonic missiles with multiple nuclear warheads, in order to avoid being targeted themselves.

A nuclear attack against non-nuclear NATO states would be seen as an attack against NATO, and a nuclear attack against US overseas military bases would be seen as an attack against the United States, but because of the above-mentioned asymmetry, the US could not respond in a meaningful way without forcing its own destruction.

While such a scenario seems militarily conceivable and even rational (given the breakdown of the post-WWII security architecture), both China and Russia currently seem to follow a different economic, diplomatic and military strategy, using novel alliances such as BRICS, RCEP, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

In contrast, the US may attempt to contain Russia and China via economic and political sanctions and to ultimately overturn regimes in both countries, thus paving the way for global US predominance, which was almost achieved after the end of the Cold War.

Figures

1) Results of 2010 Ukrainian presidential election.

Janukovych was the pro-Russian candidate, Tymoshenko was the pro-Western candidate.

Results of 2010 Ukrainian presidential election (Wikimedia)

2) Mariupol: Before and after Russian conquest

Mariupol: Before and after Russian conquest (Telegram)

3) Western propaganda vs. Russian propaganda

Western propaganda vs. Russian propaganda (Lynn PR)

June 30, 2022 Posted by aletho | Economics, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Human rights, NATO, Russia, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Trudeau government extends ban on unvaccinated foreigners

By Thomas Lambert | The Counter Signal | June 29, 2022

The Trudeau government just announced they would be extending the ban on unvaccinated foreigners until September 30 (the start of flu season).

“Today, the Government of Canada announced it is extending current border measures for travellers entering Canada. Requirements for travellers arriving to Canada are expected to remain in effect until at least September 30, 2022,” a Public Health Agency of Canada news release reads.

It should be noted that while unvaccinated Canadians can (at least in the short term) board a plane to travel abroad, the ban on the unvaccinated remains on both sides of the Canada-US border, an apparent unspoken agreement by both countries to not budge on the unvaccinated travel ban until the other does.

Moreover, the latest announcement states that unvaccinated Canadians will still be forced to quarantine for 14 days upon their return to Canada.

Additionally, the government says that the ArriveCan app — which has led to delays so bad it has become an international embarrassment — will remain in place.

As for good news, mandatory random COVID tests at airports are now paused — but only for the vaccinated. This is Transport Minister Omar Alghabra’s half-hearted attempt to keep Canada’s airports “strong, efficient, and resilient” after being disgraced by former NHL player Ryan Whitney.

“In addition, the pause of mandatory random testing will continue at all airports until mid-July for travellers who qualify as fully vaccinated… Mandatory random testing continues at land border points of entry, with no changes. Travellers who do not qualify as fully vaccinated, unless exempt, will continue to test on Day 1 and Day 8 of their 14-day quarantine,” the news release reads.

June 30, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

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“Democratic Institutions?” – 10 Lessons from history that will destroy your trust in the CIA

By Kit | OffGuardian | July 20, 2018

… At every corner, we are urged to simply believe what we are told. Whether it is about believing Porton Down and MI6 about “novichok”, or believing the White Helmets about Sarin, or believing the FBI about “collusion”, we are presented with no facts, just assertions from authority. Those who question those assertions are deemed “bots” at best or “traitors” at worst.

Well here, fellow traitors, are the Top Ten reasons to question anything and everything the CIA – or any intelligence agency – has ever told you. … Read full article

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Samizdat – 04.07.2022

Military situation in Ukraine on June 28 (SouthFront)

Results of 2010 Ukrainian presidential election (Wikimedia)

Mariupol: Before and after Russian conquest (Telegram)

Western propaganda vs. Russian propaganda (Lynn PR)

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