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Irish Govt Pushes “Disinfo” Plan Despite Public Backlash

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 15, 2025

Despite an avalanche of opposition from the public, the Irish government has pushed ahead with its controversial National Counter Disinformation Strategy, without conducting any evaluation of how such policies might restrict freedom of expression.

The plan, quietly released in April, follows a government-run consultation in late 2023 that revealed widespread rejection of the proposed measures. An independent review by Gript of all 470 responses submitted during that consultation found that 83 percent of participants were against the plan entirely. A similar majority raised concerns about threats to civil liberties, and four out of five said the entire scheme should be dropped.

None of that stopped the government from proceeding. Instead of reckoning with the criticism, officials simply published the strategy and presented it as a positive step in the fight against “disinformation,” a term that remains undefined and highly malleable.

When asked by Gript whether any internal analysis had been conducted to measure the potential impact on speech rights, the Department of Communications confirmed there had been none.

The strategy outlines plans to increase state-supported fact-checking, introduce “pre-bunking” campaigns to shape narratives before information spreads, and use online advertising tools to suppress content flagged as misleading. These efforts are to be coordinated through partnerships with NGOs, private tech platforms, media organizations, and state agencies, along with new laws to support enforcement.

At the time of the consultation’s launch in September 2023, then-Media Minister Catherine Martin said public input was important. “It is important to seek the views of the public… I would encourage people to… submit their views,” she stated.

People responded in large numbers, and they were overwhelmingly opposed.

Gript’s full breakdown found that only 11 percent of responses supported the government’s direction. Four percent were neutral or mixed, and another two percent were unclear or duplicate entries. Most of the support came from state-linked entities, including government departments, local authorities, publicly funded NGOs like the Hope & Courage Collective, and several universities.

Meanwhile, ordinary members of the public made up the vast majority of submissions. Many expressed frustration, distrust, and a belief that the government was attempting to control speech under the guise of protecting the public:

“Very dystopian.”

“The government should stay out of people’s lives, and stop pushing legislation no one wants or voted on.”

“Regulation of the media is already practiced in communist countries.”

“This principle is disgraceful. It’s an excuse for government censorship. It should be scrapped.”

“Disinformation is one of those contrived words which is at best ambiguous and can be molded to favour any argument.”

Some of those who supported efforts to combat “false” information still called for caution, warning that government-led messaging campaigns can easily cross the line into censorship.

August 15, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Western media silence on anti-conscription, anti-war protests in Ukraine

By Dmitri Kovalevich | Al Mayadeen | August 15, 2025

In early August, the most discussed topic in Ukrainian society concerns protests against the governing regime in Kiev, including their future prospects. Beginning July 23, two different forms of public demonstrations erupted in Ukraine, quite opposite in their aims. One-sided reporting of them by Western media agencies has revealed to the Ukrainian population this media’s hypocrisy and double standards.

Protests in Kiev by pro-Western NGOs erupted late on July 22, quickly earning the moniker ‘Cardboard Maidan’. This refers to the cardboard signs being carried by protesters (bearing demands similar to those of the ‘Euromaidan’ protests, which began on Maidan Square in central Kiev in late 2013 and led to the violent, paramilitary coup of February 2014). Protesters gathered in their thousands in Kiev beginning on the evening of July 23 and during the days following to condemn the decision of the regime of the unelected ‘president’ Volodomyr Zelensky to severely weaken the work and the powers of the two leading anti-corruption agencies of the Ukrainian state.

The sham role of anti-corruption agencies

The agencies were created at the insistence of Western embassies following the 2014 coup but have never actually fought corruption. They have served, instead, to warn or chastise certain thieving officials in the governing regime and economy of the country. The record shows that even if a government or police official is caught taking a bribe, he or she is rarely convicted of anything or sentenced to prison. Instead, ‘anti-corruption’ agencies usually oblige the accused to ‘make a deal’ with investigators, after which the accused typically find employment at Western embassies or non-governmental organizations.

In reality, these agencies have served as tools for external control of Ukraine and the Zelensky-led governing regime.

Zelensky and his legislature (both of whose electoral terms expired in April 2024) approved a bill on July 22 that would henceforth subordinate the work of anti-corruption agencies to the presidential office of Zelensky. The bill was approved within a couple of hours of the meeting, and following the vote, legislators were quickly sent on vacation.

“Corruption has eaten away at the office of the Ukraine president. As anti-corruption agencies get closer to Zelensky’s closest thieves, NABU detectives are being arrested and NABU itself is being disbanded,” writes Ukrainian blogger Anatoly Shariy, who previously fled Ukraine to Spain.

In July, the work of anti-corruption agents and their two leading agencies began to get uncomfortably close to Zelensky’s own entourage and relatives. In response, agents of the SBU (national secret police agency), who are entirely controlled by Zelensky and his regime, began searching and arresting investigators of the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU), as well as those of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor (SAPO). SBU officers accused the agents of ‘working for Russia’.

Zelensky’s team hoped that since the anti-corruption agencies being targeted had been created during the previous US presidential administration of Joseph Biden, the administration now led by Donald Trump would be unlikely to defend them.

The reaction of Western media and embassies to the turn of the Zelensky regime against the agencies was immediate. The British and American media began accusing Zelensky of authoritarianism. Representatives of Western NGOs took to the streets of Kiev carrying their cardboard protest signs. Formally, any and all protest rallies are prohibited in Ukraine under martial law, but this was a case of protest by several thousand people who happen to work for Western embassies or for NGOs whose salaries are paid directly or indirectly by the embassies.

A further reason for the ‘courage’ of these protesters in taking to the streets is that all employees of Western NGOs in Ukraine are exempt from conscription and cannot, therefore, be punished by the threat of immediate conscription. Those who work directly for a Western government or Western-financed NGO are considered to be an ‘elite’ in wartime Ukraine, unlike the workers in Ukrainian enterprises who keep the country and its war running, so to speak. The recent protesters in Kiev have covered their actions in nationalist slogans reminiscent of the 2014 Euromaidan coup, demanding Zelensky’s resignation and accusing him of betraying the ‘ideals of Europe’.

Zelensky was soon forced to repeal the law, having lost face and being subject to public humiliation. Legislators were hastily called back from vacation on July 30. Within a day, they solemnly adopted a bill, unanimously no less, repealing the bill they had passed one week earlier.

This case showed Ukrainians who is the real boss in the country. Legislator Alexander Dubinsky writes that starting from August 1 (the day after the repeal of the presidential order and legislation to weaken anti-corruption agencies), “The president will begin a new and interesting life — a phase of explanatory diplomacy in 24/7 mode.” In other words, Zelensky will have to steadily twist and turn as he continues to tell Western sponsors that there is no corruption in Ukraine, and adds that Russia is trying to frame him. Ukrainians and Russians have a saying ‘to wriggle like an eel’; many are now using this to describe Zelensky’s behavior.

Marat Basharov, a professor at the Russian Higher School of Economics, believes that anti-corruption agencies were created by the Western powers in Ukraine in order to gather information on who is stealing in Ukraine, by how much, and then bring such individuals and groups of individuals under the supervision of the Ukrainian elite as a whole through their state institutions. He writes that “the anti-corruption agencies work not for justice but for the CIA: everything that agents of NABU collect, including documents, wiretaps and other products of surveillance, have gone to the U.S. embassy and from there to Washington. NABU has also created a whole network of informants to snitch and betray; the amount of compromising material so collected is enormous.”

Ukraine as mercenary state

Ukrainian media outlets are citing threats by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to cut off funding as being the main reason for Zelensky’s retreat. Currently, Ukraine’s entire budget–including government spending and social payments, building and maintenance of infrastructure, and provision of military supplies–depends entirely on the continued ‘generosity’ of the Western powers.

In early August, the head of the financial committee of Ukraine’s national legislature, Danil Getmantsev, stated that everything in Ukraine that is not related to the war is being paid for by the West, but most of this is in the form of loans. According to him, Ukraine does not use its own budget revenues for non-military needs; all tax revenues are directed exclusively to the country’s military.

According to Bloomberg News on July 25, the Zelensky-led regime is preparing to demand that countries of the European Union undertake the financing of the salaries of Ukrainian military personnel. Should the EU concur, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will formally become what it already acts like: a mercenary army. So far, news outlets in Europe are silent on the matter. The Estonian vice-president of the EU, Kaja Kallas, issued a statement on August 6 stating, “The EU and its member states remain committed to provide Ukraine and its people with all the necessary political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military, and diplomatic support, for as long as it takes and as intensely as needed.”

Ukrainian economist Alexei Kushch cautions that Ukraine is approaching complete and irreversible bankruptcy. He told a podcast on July 30, “Soon, our creditors may start lining up to divide up strategic assets. The Americans will shout that they have an investment fund and will show off papers to this effect, the Brits will wave a century-old agreement with Ukraine (giving them privileged consultation on government decisions), and the EU will talk about a Ukraine ‘association’ (integration). Someone in charge will shout ‘Get in line, you sons of bitches, get in line!”

In financial terms, Zelensky is like a swindler who has managed to mortgage the same property to multiple banks all at once. But this is impossible to pull off if the Western officials who allocate loans to Kiev from their state public budgets are not themselves involved.

Suppression of protests against conscription

Alongside the protests opposing any restrictions on Western financial control over Ukraine, spontaneous protests against forced conscription are also rising in the country daily. The largest of recent protests took place on August 1 in the city of Vinnytsia in south-central Ukraine (app. 200 km southwest of Kiev, pre-war population of 350,000). A crowd of women and youths stormed a stadium where more than 100 forcibly conscripted men were being held. Zelensky threw all available police and SBU forces against the protesters, including the use of tear gas.

Western media stubbornly ignore reporting on anti-conscription protests. Instead, they pay close attention to rallies by handfuls of nationalists employed at Western-funded NGOs in a regional center, while there is total silence when it comes to protests against conscription. Banning of rallies during martial law does not apply to rallies held in the name of protesting corruption, while Ukraine’s entire policing apparatus is unleashed against anti-conscription protests. These examples are serving as living proof to ordinary Ukrainian citizens of the hypocrisy and double standards of the Western media and Ukrainian authorities.

One exception to Western media silence over conscription is a recent report in the Financial Times (paywalled) entitled ‘Shoved into vans, slashing tyres, Ukrainians balk at conscription’. The report notes that resistance to the recruiters is growing in Ukrainian society but concludes, oddly, that this is being stoked by Zelensky’s refusal to respond to calls from the West to begin conscription of young people under the age of 25.

The Ukrainian online publication Strana wrote on August 5 that intolerance toward military recruiters and the law enforcement officers assisting them is growing in Ukrainian society, and this could lead to even more clashes between civilians and recruiters. The confrontations will only intensify, Strana believes, if rumors of an upcoming reduction in the conscription age from 25 to 18, long demanded by Western governments, are confirmed.

An anarchist writing from Odessa, Vyacheslav Azarov, sees the protest at the stadium in Vinnytsia as the beginning of a new phase of resistance to conscription. “The stunning nighttime storming by protesters of the Lokomotiv stadium in Vinnytsia, where forcibly mobilized recruits were being detained, marks a new phase in the tensions in the Ukrainian rear. Ukrainians are tired of the war. Not only the relatives and friends of the victims of the recruiters but also representatives of certain public organizations tried to rescue the prisoners from the stadium, so much so that the police had to use tear gas and batons in order to disperse them.”

Legislator Alexander Dubinsky, who has been detained for the past 21 months under criminal accusations of treason, has written an appeal to Donald Trump, seeking to draw his attention to the arbitrariness of the recruiters and police in Vinnytsia. “The situation in Ukraine is escalating,” he writes. “There are fierce clashes between civilians, the TCC [military recruiters], and the police. People are rising up against the violent mobilization of their sons, husbands, and brothers. Men are being grabbed off the streets like cattle, beaten, forced to sign consent forms to participate in the war, and then are sent straight to the front lines.”

Dubinsky emphasizes in his open letter to Trump that Ukraine’s Western allies are closely following and publicizing the protests in Kiev defending the anti-corruption agencies being targeted, but are failing to report the news of “pregnant women being tear-gassed for simply demanding to know whether their son, husband or brother is alive”. He believes that without a reaction from the US government to Zelensky’s terror, he will continue to denigrate and destroy the Ukrainian people and nation.

In another post to social media about the protests against conscription, this one dated August 4, Dubinsky admits that the West is keen to see continued ‘busification’ (forced conscription) of Ukrainians, so help and sympathy should not be expected from there. “Since war is the approved policy of the EU and the U.S. towards Ukraine, it is impossible to expect them to protest against the actions of the military recruiters and the police who enforce the conscription policy. But if the Ukrainian authorities decide to push back and protest against external control over their actions, then protesting is allowed. Understand this, serfs,” writes the imprisoned Ukrainian legislator.

The Ukrainian underground organization ‘Workers’ Front of Ukraine’ (WFU) is asking why the spontaneous protest in Vinnytsia was not supported by thousands more city residents. “What about the rest of the city; couldn’t more concerned people have protested in Vinnytsia? Yes, they could have. After all, the protesters launched an online broadcast, and its broadcast information instantly spread across social media networks. But more people did not rally”, the WFU laments. Activists of the organization call this a disgrace for Ukrainian society, which they accuse of “meekly going to the slaughter, its members acting like sheep being set upon by wolves”.

The Ukrainian magazine Liberal notes that Zelensky’s administration is preparing for an increase in spontaneous protests and intends to suppress them with particular force. “Volodymyr Zelensky has long since established himself as a full-fledged dictator. He may show his true colors in the challenging times ahead”, Liberal writes. According to the magazine’s sources, prisoners convicted of criminal offenses are being transferred out of prisons in the Kiev region. The publication concludes that this is happening in order to make room for a coming wave of detentions of political prisoners.

The liberal-left publication Assembly in the city of Kharkiv (the second largest city in Ukraine) notes that the civil conflict unfolding on the streets of Ukraine between the people and the repressive forces of the state is continuing unabated, although it does not attract as much media headlines as do the rallies protesting the curtailment of the powers of anticorruption agencies. (Many Ukrainians call these particular allies a ‘competition among parasites’.) Assembly acknowledges, nevertheless, that in Kharkov, “rebelling while on one’s knees remains the lot of protesting civilians”. It says that “Soldiers voting with their feet by conducting mass desertions have a much better chance of stopping the ‘conveyor belt of death’ taking place on Ukrainian soil compared to protesting on one’s knees.”

In early August, legislator Anna Skorokhod stated that the total number of desertions in the Ukrainian army had reached almost 400,000. That amounts to a rate of desertion of some 40 per cent of Ukrainian army recruits (voluntary or conscripted, with some deserters being recaptured or returning of their own accord).

In this situation, the tactics of the advancing Russian army have changed somewhat, as reported by the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Alexander Syrsky, in early August. According to him, there is now a “total penetration” of Russian army groups into the rear of the Armed Forces of Ukraine along the front lines. The Ukrainian army does not have enough personnel to cover the entire front line, so Russian soldiers often bypass its sparse positions, creating panic and chaos in its operations.

There appears to be no way out of the morass for the Kiev regime. That includes the upcoming meeting in Alaska between the Russian and US presidents. The meeting was supposed to offer some hope for the Trump regime in Washington that a ceasefire could be agreed on that would halt the accelerating Russian military advances. But Russia says the original goals of its military intervention in Ukraine—demilitarization and ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine–remain in place, while US media is reporting on August 12 that the White House now expects the meeting in Alaska to be limited to ‘exchanges of information’.

August 15, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Who enabled the process of “Greater Israel”?

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | August 14, 2025

In a recent interview with i24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated he is “on a mission of generations” for “Greater Israel”. Meanwhile, the international community is still bleating about the two-state paradigm. The Arab League spoke out against Israel’s “aggressive and expansionist tendencies”. But in the midst of all this, who is listening to the Palestinian people?

The concept of “Greater Israel” is not a novelty. Early Zionist ideology, even before the atrocities of the 1948 Nakba, already envisaged a complete colonial process. Netanyahu is just availing himself of the opportune moment to remind the entire world what Zionist colonisation is all about, but this statement cannot be treated as a surprise.

It was the international community that decided upon the 1947 Partition Plan, despite the concept of “Greater Israel”. The same international community legitimised the Nakba’s colonial atrocities by recognising Israel – a settler-colonial enterprise on ethnically cleansed Palestinian land. It ensured the Palestinian right of return would be flawed to give priority to Israel’s expansion plans, and coerced Palestinians into the humanitarian paradigm – recipients of aid with no rights.

Israel may have carefully crafted its narrative, but it also exposed its intentions along the way. The international community has no excuse. During the same time the two-state paradigm was deemed obsolete, Netanyahu was boasting about how Palestine was no longer a priority in diplomatic relations and no longer a precondition that would jeopardise normalising relations with Israel. This is relatively recent history. Had the international community really wanted to eradicate colonialism, it could have taken action before 1947. But former colonial powers invested in a new colonial power that has now been committing genocide for almost two years, under the pretext of eliminating Hamas. And while Netanyahu feels he can unveil the entire truth about Israel and its genocide, the international community is still focused only on humanitarian aid and the two-state compromise – none of which ultimately give Palestinians political rights.

Can the international community admit all its complicity with Israeli settler-colonialism, expansion and genocide since the time it started to indulge the Zionist colonial ideology? How about admitting that the humanitarian paradigm has aided Israel more than it helped Palestinians? Or that the two-state compromise was a stepping stone for Israel to unleash genocide in Gaza and eventually declare “Greater Israel”?

The international community only ever took on board what aided its diplomatic engagement with Israel; hence the focus on Hamas, humanitarian aid, the two-state paradigm and forced displacement. Keeping all these slivers isolated enabled Israel to gradually prepare for prominent announcements of its ultimate colonisation plans. “Greater Israel” requires ethnic cleansing on a larger scale. Genocide fulfils that prerequisite. The international community is concerned about Palestinians starving to death but not Palestinians torn to shreds and blasted apart by bombs. The international community chooses which part of genocide to weakly condemn, just as it chose which parts of settler-colonialism to speak out against without any repercussions. Feigning ignorance now is just adding to the hypocrisy.

READ: Netanyahu says he is on historic mission for greater Israel

August 14, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Preconditions, symbolic recognition and the ongoing erasure of Palestine

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | August 12, 2025

September seems to be the month several Western countries have chosen to symbolically recognise the State of Palestine. The countdown to the hypothetical recognition, if it happens, will likely generate more attention than recognition itself. This is what Western diplomacy is all about, after all, when it comes to Palestine. The illusion of action.

Australia is one recent example. Almost two years since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese surmised that “the war” has dragged on for far too long, and that it is time to recognise the State of Palestine, based upon “the commitments Australia has received from the Palestinian Authority.”

According to Australian media, the PA guaranteed that it would “recognise Israel’s right to exist, demilitarise and hold general elections,” as well as exclude Hamas from future governance. While Australia would not be the only country seeking such guarantees, the fact is that the PA is guaranteeing that recognising the State of Palestine will not move beyond symbolic recognition.

Not only is Israel fast encroaching upon what remains of Palestinian territory – the latest being the plans to occupy Gaza. The PA is giving guarantees that do not allow a state to emerge from symbolic recognition. Democratic elections do not ban electoral rivals, as the PA plans to do with Hamas. Neither should democratic elections include the elimination of opponents as happened with Nizar Banat in 2021. Recognising Israel is validating, normalising and accepting colonial plunder and the entire colonial enterprise, including genocide. Demilitarisation leaves a colonised population with no options for defence.

For Albanese, however, “This is an opportunity to deliver self-determination to the people of Palestine in a way that isolates Hamas, disarms it and drives it out of the region once and for all.” He added, “The international community is moving to establish a Palestinian state, and it is opposing actions which undermine the two-state solution.”

Albanese’s statements do not even sugarcoat the surface of the international community’s complicity in Israeli colonisation of Palestine and genocide in Gaza. Recognising the state of Palestine without a real emergence of a Palestinian state does not help to establish a Palestinian state. The international community has, for decades, approved of Israeli international law violations that undermined the two-state compromise, which has been declared obsolete several years back.  What the move does is merely extend a life line to the defunct diplomacy which the international community adopted to force Palestinians into subjugation to colonisation, giving Israel time to plan its next steps and normalise the outcome. Nothing can save international diplomacy after the role it played in maintaining Israel’s genocide in Gaza, especially pathetic demonstrations of symbolic recognition of a state that cannot function as a state due to Israel’s colonial enterprise and the diplomatic support colonialism received from former colonial powers.

When Western countries discuss their reasons for their symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state at a time when Palestinians are experiencing genocide and further territorial loss, what is “recognition” a euphemism for?

August 13, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu Says Palestinians Will Be ‘Allowed to Exit’ Gaza

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | August 13, 2025

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to spin the ethnic cleansing of Gaza as an act of humanitarianism. The Israeli leader said he was working with countries to take in the Palestinians.

In an interview with i24 News, Netanyahu was asked, “Do you believe we will eventually see emigration from Gaza?” “I don’t understand this question at all. Why does Gaza have to be a closed place?” he replied. “In other war zones, millions left. Suddenly, they are determining that here in Gaza, the civilians should be imprisoned.”

He continued, “First of all, inside Gaza, we are not pushing them out either, but we are allowing them to leave.”

Israel currently has Gaza under a complete siege, and even prevents Palestinians from entering the Mediterranean Sea. Palestinians who attempt to enter the sea or the Israeli buffer zone that surrounds Gaza are killed by the IDF.

While Netanyahu presents Israel as a passive actor, many humanitarian aid agencies have blamed Israel for intentionally creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Additionally, the Israeli Prime Minister recently ordered the IDF to expand military operations in Gaza, with a goal of occupying the entire Strip.

When asked why Palestinians are not exiting Gaza at a faster rate, Netanyahu explained, “You need receiving countries. We are talking with several countries. I can’t detail that here.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Netanyahu’s government was in talks with South Sudan about moving the Palestinians to the impoverished nation.

August 13, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Media Office: Israel blocks 430 food items from entering Gaza

Press TV – August 12, 2025

Gaza Government Media Office says Israel is still blocking the entry of more than 430 food items into the territory, despite allowing some aid trucks through last month under international pressure.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Office said banned items include “frozen meat of all kinds, frozen fish, cheese, dairy products, frozen vegetables, and fruits”, along with “hundreds of other items needed by the starving and sick.”

The statement claimed the partial easing announced on July 27, 2025, has not lifted broad restrictions on food and other essential goods.

It added that Israel has targeted food sources in the Gaza Strip, not only by preventing aid but also by deliberately bombing 44 food banks, resulting in the deaths of dozens of workers, and attacking 57 food distribution centers.

Media Office has accused COGAT, the Israeli military body reporting on aid deliveries into the enclave, of “a pathetic attempt to cover up an internationally documented crime, the systematic starvation of the population of the Gaza Strip.”

According to a report published by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) on July 29, 2025, “the worst-case scenario” of Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip. War and displacement have intensified, and access to food and other essential items and services has plummeted to unprecedented levels.

“Between May and July 2025, the proportion of households experiencing extreme hunger has doubled. The food consumption threshold for Famine (IPC Phase 5) has already been passed for most areas of the Gaza Strip,” the report said.

At the same time, food consumption has sharply deteriorated, the report stressed, adding that one in three individuals is going without food for days at a time.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces and foreign military contractors continue to open indiscriminate fire on people seeking aid at so-called “distribution centers” operated by the Israel-US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Nearly 1,500 people have been killed and more than 4000 injured while seeking food. At least 900 people have been killed near or inside GHF centers since the beginning of GHF’s operations in late May 2025.

GHF centers are especially difficult to access for the most vulnerable members of the population, such as children, women, older persons, and persons with disabilities.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 5 more Palestinians, including 2 children, have starved to death in the enclave, raising the total number of hunger-related deaths to 227, including 103 children.

Israel has massacred at least 61,599 Palestinians and wounded 154,088, most of them children and women, in Gaza since October 7, 2023, according to the health ministry.

August 12, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s army formed special intel unit to ‘justify killing’ of hundreds of Gaza journalists

The Cradle | August 12, 2025

Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham said on 11 August that Israel’s military intelligence created a special unit aimed specifically at justifying attacks in Gaza, including the killing of journalists.

His comments came after an Israeli strike assassinated Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and the outlet’s entire Gaza City crew.

“After 7 October, a team called the ‘Legitimization Cell’ was established in AMAN,” Abraham said, referring to the Israeli military intelligence directorate, which includes Unit 8200.

“Intelligence personnel searched for information to provide ‘legitimization’ for the army’s actions in Gaza, failed Hamas launches, use of human shields, exploitation of the civilian population. A primary mission … was to find Gazan journalists who could be portrayed in the media as Hamas operatives in disguise,” the journalist added.

Abraham confirmed that the goal was to “whitewash the killing of all other journalists” by creating doubt, adding that “entire days were invested in this matter, and they found nothing.”

“I think Israel killed Anas al-Sharif simply because he was a journalist. And for the same reason, international media is prevented from entering Gaza: So that the crimes are seen less,” he went on to say.

Sharif and five other journalists in Al Jazeera’s Gaza City crew were killed on 10 August in an Israeli airstrike on their media tent at Al-Shifa Hospital.

The assassinations brought the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel since the start of the war up to 238.

Sharif had been covering Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza since it started in October 2023. Israel accused him of being a Hamas operative responsible for rocket attacks.

In October last year, Israel published documents which it claimed were proof of Sharif’s affiliation with Hamas’s Qassam Brigades and its East Jabalia battalion.

The documents also listed Hossam Shabat, an Al Jazeera reporter accused of Hamas ties, who was killed in an Israeli strike in March.

Last month, Sharif warned that the Israeli army “has launched a campaign of threats and incitement against me because of my work as a journalist with Al Jazeera,” adding, “I, Anas al-Sharif, am a journalist with no political affiliations. My only mission is to report the truth from the ground – as it is, without bias. At a time when a deadly famine is ravaging Gaza, speaking the truth has become, in the eyes of the occupation, a threat.”

August 12, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

New EU Media “Freedom Law” Allows for Journalist Arrests if Justified by “Public Interest”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 11, 2025

The European Union’s “European Media Freedom Act” became binding law across all member states on August 8, but behind its name lies a set of provisions that could restrict the very freedoms it claims to safeguard.

We obtained a copy of the act for you here.

Alongside language about protecting reporters, the regulation authorizes arrests, sanctions, and surveillance of journalists whenever authorities say it serves an “overriding reason in the general interest.”

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, hailed the legislation’s arrival on social media, saying, “A free and independent press is an essential pillar of our democracy. With our European Media Freedom Act, we want to improve their protection. This allows journalists to continue their important work safely and without disruption or intimidation.”

Although the law outlines protections such as prohibiting spyware or coercion to expose sources, those assurances are undercut by built-in loopholes.

Governments can bypass them if their actions are allowed under national or EU law and deemed proportionate to a vaguely defined “general interest.”

That permission extends to intrusive surveillance technologies in cases tied to crimes carrying a maximum prison term of three years or more, a list that ranges from terrorism and human trafficking to offenses labeled as “racism and xenophobia.”

The legislation also orders each country to maintain registers of media owners and addresses. It targets so-called “disinformation,” accusing some media outlets of manipulating the single market to spread falsehoods.

Large online platforms are portrayed as choke points for access to news, blamed for fueling polarization.

To confront this, the EU wants tighter cooperation between national regulators, overseen by a European Media Services Board made up of member state regulators and a Commission representative. Although labeled independent, the board’s secretariat is run by the Commission, giving it an inside track on the decision-making process.

Another element of the act involves pushing “trustworthy media” and reinforcing state broadcasters through transparent appointment processes and stable public funding.

Annual gatherings between EU officials, internet companies, media representatives, and NGOs are encouraged to assess how disinformation initiatives are being carried out.

Despite being sold as a shield for press freedom, the structure of the act gives Brussels and national authorities the ability to decide which voices remain active and which can be silenced. By allowing arrests, surveillance, and tighter state involvement in the media landscape, it risks turning from a safeguard into a tool for control.

August 11, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Palestinian Activist Recorded His Own Murder, Israel Still Released His Killer

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | August 10, 2025

A Palestinian activist featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” recorded his murder by an Israeli settler. The killer was freed by an Israeli court, arguing there was a lack of evidence.

On Sunday, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released a video record by Awda Hadalin of the moment he was shot and killed by Yinon Levi. There are two additional videos that show Levi point his gun and shoot Hadalin before he falls to the ground.

Director of “No Other Land,” Yuval Abraham, said the three videos leave no doubt that Levi murdered Hadalin. “There is no room for doubt. Yinon Levi killed Uda Hadalin in front of the cameras, and an entire system of Jewish superiority turned him from a perpetrator into a victim and punished the village residents instead of punishing him,” he wrote on X.

The day after the killing, an Israeli court accepted Levi’s assertion he was acting in “self-defense” and granted him house arrest. There is no evidence in the video that Levi was in danger.

He was then released from house arrest after a judge ruled the evidence backed his self-defense claim.

Israel refused to give Hadalin’s body to his family to allow for a funeral for over a week. Tel Aviv attempted to force the family to agree to limit his funeral to 15 people before giving his body to relatives. After ten days, the Israeli High Court ordered the release of Hadalin’s body.

Several members of Hadalin’s family and mourners were arrested by Israeli occupation forces. Additionally, the American-Italian nurse who attempted to provide life-saving care to Hadalin was arrested and then deported. “They don’t want people to feel comfortable helping Palestinians,” they told The Intercept.

August 10, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Heartbreaking’: UK paramedic recounts horrors inside Gaza hospitals

Press TV – August 10, 2025

A British paramedic has described “heartbreaking” scenes inside Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals, where children arrive with life-threatening injuries and entire families are wiped out by Israel’s genocidal war.

Sam Sears, who spent three weeks in Gaza with the UK-based medical charity UK-Med, said the field hospitals were a “conveyor belt of carnage,” packed with patients suffering blast, shrapnel, and gunshot wounds.

Just a few days into his deployment, Sears was sent into a mass casualty incident where two children, aged nine and 11, were killed from blast injuries.

“It was particularly heartbreaking putting a child in a body bag, seeing their face for the last time, then moving them out [of] the way so we could treat more people,” said Sears.

The veteran medic — who has served in Ukraine, Rwanda, Turkey, and Sierra Leone — said Gaza was far worse than anything he had experienced before.

He treated children who had lost entire families, teenagers with life-changing wounds, and newborns suffering severe malnutrition.

He recalled one boy, about eight years old, who was “lifeless behind the eyes” after an explosion killed his whole family.

Sears returned to the UK on July 31 but said the images of Gaza’s children will haunt him forever.

“The people of Gaza don’t get to leave,” he said. “They have no escape from the hunger, the fear, the trauma. They need more than our sympathy — they need our action.”

He called for a sustained ceasefire, not a fragile truce, to end Israel’s hostilities permanently, protect civilians and health workers, and allow unrestricted delivery of food, fuel, and medical supplies into the besieged territory.

August 10, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

UN rapporteur calls on European football body to expel Israel from competitions

Press TV – August 10, 2025

The UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories has called on the European football governing body (UEFA) to expel Israel from competitions over its war crimes and crimes against humanity in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Francesca Albanese’s call came following UEFA’s farewell to a former Palestinian player, Suleiman al-Obeid, whom it called the “Palestinian Pelé.”

“Let’s make sport apartheid and genocide free. One ball, one kick at a time,” Francesca Albanese said on her X account on Sunday.

“Time to expel its killers from competitions, @UEFA,” the UN rapporteur said.

Al-Obaid, a former Palestine national team player, was killed earlier this month in an Israeli strike targeting civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in southern Gaza.

Suleiman Ahmed Zaid al-Obaid, the former captain of the Palestinian national football team (Photo via social media)

He left behind his wife and five children.

Obaid is seen as one of the brightest stars in Palestinian football history. He played 24 official matches for the national team.

He also represented the national team during the 2012 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Challenge Cup qualification and 2014 World Cup qualifying games.

Obeid’s death has sparked widespread outrage across the world, with people urging the international community and the football fraternity in particular to break their silence over the ongoing genocide.

Palestinian footballers have been directly targeted in Israel’s assault on Gaza.

In a statement released on July 29, 2025, the Palestinian Olympic Committee (POC) reported that in July alone, the Israeli regime killed 40 Palestinian athletes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

More than 800 athletes have been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Oct. 7, 2023, as the sports community continues to suffer under bombardment, famine, and the collapse of infrastructure.

Last month, the International Federation of Muaythai Associations (IFMA) announced an urgent policy change regarding Israeli representation at its events.

This came following the killing of a young Palestinian teenager athlete and peace ambassador, Ammar Hamayel, by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.

Hamayel, 13 years old, was a Thai boxing champion, dreaming of representing Palestine on the world stage. But like many other Palestinian children, his dream was silenced by Israeli bullets.

The IFMA back then said in a statement that the decision represents a peaceful yet firm protest against actions that “endanger children and violate the core values of global sport”.

In May, Spain was reportedly spearheading a coordinated initiative aimed at persuading the European Union to eliminate Israel from all continental sports competitions over its genocidal war on Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Calls to exclude Israel from international sports events have indeed increased recently due to its relentless aggression against Gaza.

August 10, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Moral Cost of Modern Transplant Medicine

By Joseph Varon | Brownstone Institute | August 9, 2025

In a time when trust in public health is already hanging by a thread, recent revelations from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have delivered another blow—one that strikes at the very heart of medical ethics.

“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Secretary Kennedy said. “The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable. The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”

Hidden beneath the surface and quietly ignored by corporate media is a story that should horrify every physician, patient, and policymaker: the commodification of human life in the American transplant system.

The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a coalition of physicians dedicated to restoring transparency and patient-centered care, has publicly denounced the findings of a recent HHS report. As President of IMA, I can tell you this: what we’ve uncovered is not a case of benign negligence. It is a deliberate erosion of the most sacred values in medicine—consent, dignity, and the inviolability of the human body.

A System That No Longer Sees the Patient

Organ transplantation is, in theory, one of the great achievements of modern medicine. When practiced ethically and transparently, it has saved countless lives. But like so many institutions corrupted by profit and policy, it has drifted far from its original mission.

In 2024 alone, over 45,000 organ transplants were performed in the United States. That number should inspire hope—but instead, it invites scrutiny. A substantial portion of those organs were harvested under ethically ambiguous conditions, including donation after circulatory death (DCD) and questionable determinations of brain death. The line between patient and donor is blurring—and not in a way that honors either.

Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) are incentivized not by patient outcomes, but by volume. The more organs they harvest, the more funding they receive. Hospitals, too, receive significant reimbursement for transplant procedures, creating a perverse system where terminal patients are seen less as individuals with complex medical stories and more as reservoirs of reusable parts. The New York Times has published a piece that urges standards of death to be liberalized even further. “We need to figure out how to obtain more healthy organs from donors… We need to broaden the definition of death.”

Where Are These Organs Coming From?

The public assumes, understandably, that most organ donors are willing participants—cadaveric donors who’ve signed cards or checked boxes. But the data doesn’t support that rosy picture. A growing percentage of organ procurement comes from patients who are not dead in the traditional sense but are declared brain dead or transitioned to DCD protocols under murky guidelines.

Let’s talk plainly: Who decides when a person is truly dead? And how confident are we, as physicians, that our criteria are airtight?

The Trouble with Brain Death

Brain death is defined as the irreversible cessation of all brain activity, including the brainstem. On paper, that sounds final. In practice, it’s anything but. There is no universal standard for determining brain death in the United States. Each state, and often each hospital, may have its own protocol.

Here’s how it’s supposed to be done:

  1. Prerequisites:
    • Establish cause of coma (e.g., trauma, hemorrhage, anoxic injury)
    • Rule out confounding factors: intoxication, metabolic disturbances, hypothermia
    • Ensure normothermia, normal electrolytes, and absence of sedatives or paralytics
  2. Neurological Exam:
    • No responsiveness to verbal or noxious stimuli
    • Absent brainstem reflexes:
      • Pupillary response to light
      • Corneal reflex
      • Oculocephalic reflex (“doll’s eyes”)
      • Oculovestibular reflex (cold calorics)
      • Gag and cough reflex
      • No spontaneous breathing on apnea testing (typically ≥8 minutes off ventilator with rising PaCO₂)
  3. Confirmatory Testing (if clinical exam incomplete or legally required):
    • Cerebral blood flow studies
    • EEG (flatline)
    • Nuclear medicine perfusion scans

It’s a thorough process—when done correctly. But that’s precisely the issue: it’s not always done correctly. There are documented cases where brain death was declared prematurely or without full testing. Hospitals under pressure to free up ICU beds or meet organ quotas may streamline protocols, sometimes performing incomplete assessments or skipping confirmatory imaging altogether.

In one documented case from a major metropolitan hospital, a patient declared brain dead still had spontaneous movements and reactive pupils—until a more experienced intensivist reversed the call and the patient recovered. That is not “rare.” That is underreported.

Even the apnea test, long considered a gold standard, is increasingly controversial. It requires removing the patient from mechanical ventilation long enough to provoke a rise in CO₂. But this test, by definition, stresses the brain and may worsen injury. In borderline cases, it can tip a patient from injured to truly nonviable. And it assumes that the absence of any spontaneous respiration equals death, a standard that conflates clinical irreversibility with absolute neurologic death.

The Rise of DCD and the Ethical Quagmire

Donation after circulatory death (DCD) is another increasingly common method of procurement. In DCD, life support is withdrawn, and after the heart stops—typically for just 2 to 5 minutes—organ harvesting begins. The ethical argument here is that the patient has died a “natural” death. But how natural is it when withdrawal of care is timed and orchestrated to maximize organ viability?

Imagine this scenario: a family is told their loved one is not brain dead but has “no chance” of recovery. They agree to withdraw support. Moments after the heart stops, a surgical team—already scrubbed and waiting—enters the room. The skin is still warm. The body is still perfused. And the scalpel goes in.

That’s not hypothetical. That’s protocol in many transplant centers today.

And it’s not only adults. Pediatric DCD cases are growing, too, with parental consent forms often filled out under stress, confusion, or duress.

This is not medicine. It’s logistics.

Incentives, Pressure, and Profit

The transplantation field has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. The average kidney transplant is reimbursed at over $300,000. Liver and heart transplants exceed $1 million. OPOs operate as pseudo-nonprofit organizations but are rewarded financially based on volume.

HHS oversight of these organizations is minimal. Even after several critical reports by the Office of Inspector General, no sweeping reforms have followed. In 2022, a Senate committee hearing revealed that one-third of OPOs had failed basic performance metrics—but not one was shut down.

Meanwhile, transplant candidates who refuse certain medical mandates—like Covid-19 vaccination—have been removed from waitlists, despite being otherwise viable recipients. So we will reject a healthy, unvaccinated patient but harvest a heart from someone whose family didn’t understand what “circulatory death” really meant?

That’s not health care. That’s institutionalized hypocrisy.

What Must Be Done

This is not a call to end transplantation. It is a call to reclaim the ethical foundation of organ donation before it’s too late. We can—and must—do better.

Policy Recommendations:

  • Standardized, federally mandated brain death protocols across all 50 states
  • Mandatory confirmatory testing (4-vessel cerebral angiogram or cerebral perfusion nuclear scan) for all brain death declarations
  • Real-time video documentation of brain death exams and DCD processes
  • Mandatory waiting period before DCD procurement to ensure true irreversibility
  • Full, informed consent recorded on video, with independent patient advocates present
  • Transparent audit logs from every OPO, published annually
  • Publicly searchable transplant registry, including donor status and procurement pathway
  • These are not radical ideas. These are the bare minimum requirements for a system that claims to respect life

Final Thoughts: Medicine Must Be Moral or It Is Nothing

There is no dignity in a system that cuts corners to save organs. There is no science in a system that calls someone dead based on arbitrary timelines and vague reflex testing. There is no trust in a system that silences physicians who speak up.

The medical profession is not a manufacturing line. Our job is not to optimize supply chains—it is to protect life, and when necessary, honor death. We must stop pretending that efficiency is equivalent to morality.

For years, I have trained residents and students to perform brain death exams. I’ve overseen transplants. I’ve supported grieving families and celebrated recipients. But I’ve also seen the shift—the slow erosion of principle under pressure. It’s time to draw a line.

Let us be the generation that doesn’t look away.

Joseph Varon, MD, is a critical care physician, professor, and President of the Independent Medical Alliance. He has authored over 980 peer-reviewed publications and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Independent Medicine.

August 9, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

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