Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

EU in crisis: Eurosceptism persists in Italy, Greece, France, and Poland

By Ahmed Adel | April 17, 2023

Although Euroscepticism has existed since the inception of the European Union, the UK’s departure from the bloc in 2020, the only sovereign country to have left, demonstrated to other member states that it is possible to leave. Many member states are frustrated by forced immigration quotas, scandals such as Qatargate, and a lack of strategic depth by the bloc as it prioritises the interests of the US instead of Europe. Seemingly, it appears that Italy, Greece, Poland, and France are the most Eurosceptic countries.

This lack of strategic depth led to the decline of European economies because sanctions against Russia have been self-sabotaging. When paired with the aforementioned scandals and migration issues, as well as the loss of legislative control, it is understandable why Eurosceptism persists across the bloc.

According to OddsChecker, an online bookie comparison site, Italy was ranked as the country which is most likely to leave the EU,” specifically with odds of 3/1 or 33 percent. It is recalled that in the September 2022 election, the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, was ousted from power by the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy party. In the same manner, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had previously condemned the hostility by Brussels against the UK’s decision to leave the EU, describing its actions as an effort to “humiliate the British people who have freely chosen Brexit.”

The next likely country after Italy is Greece, with odds of 6/1 or 16.67 percent. Although Eurosceptism has always been prominent in Greece, it especially accelerated during the sovereign debt crisis, with discussions of a possible “Grexit” entering the mainstream.

Eurosceptic party SYRIZA lost power to the liberal-conservative New Democracy party in 2019, but Greeks are returning to the polls this May. Although it is expected the ruling party will maintain power, the gap between the two parties has now narrowed from ten to five percent over the past year as Greeks are angered by having to pay the most expensive energy bills in Europe and in their majority are against weapon transfers to the Ukrainian military.

Poland comes in third place, with odds of 7/1 or 14.3 percent. President Andrzej Duda, of the ring-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, has been continuously criticised for limiting freedom of expression and LGBTQ+ rights. However, since Poland positioned itself as a regional player in the context of the war in Ukraine, much of the criticism from Brussels has alleviated.

None-the-less, although Brussels might have quietened its criticisms of Poland, there is still a high degree of eurosceptism within Polish society, something which will grow as the negative effects of the war in Ukraine are crippling the country, resulting in war weariness.

War weariness has set in so much so that Poland, and neighbouring Hungary, took unilateral action to ban grain and other food imports from Ukraine. This is to protect their local agricultural sector, something which still received the wrath of the EU.

“In this context, it is important to underline that trade policy is of EU exclusive competence and, therefore, unilateral actions are not acceptable. In such challenging times, it is crucial to coordinate and align all decisions within the EU,” said a spokesperson of the European Commission.

Poland’s ruling nationalist PiS party are seeking re-election in the 2023 parliamentary election, and people in rural areas, where support for PiS is usually high, are angered about large quantities of Ukrainian grain, which is cheaper than that produced in the European Union, staying in Central Europe due to logistical problems, thus making prices and sales for local farmer’s plummet.

Meanwhile, the fourth most likely country to leave the EU is France, with a 12.5% chance. French President Emmanuel Macron, another liberal like his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has been facing endless largescale protests against pension reform. Protestors have sworn to not stop until Macron backtracks on his plans.

At the same time, the French President was branded a “madman” and accused of insisting on a “political coup de force” by Boris Vallaud, leader of the PS deputies in the National Assembly.

When speaking about Macron, Vallaud told LCI and Le Figaro : “When you discredit social dialogue, when you step on the social partners (…), when you do not respect the parliamentary institution, when you brutalise it (…), when in the street you have people demonstrating by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, yes, it is a democratic coup because you are diminishing democracy.”

What makes eurosceptism all the more interesting is that it spans across different political ideologies, with only liberals in support of the failed European project. In the case of France, it is mostly comprised by anti-Macron elements, whilst in Greece it is represented mostly by SYRIZA, a radical Left party. This is contrasted by Italy and Poland, where right-wing politics prevails.

With Brussels failing to deal with migration issues in Italy, Greeks having a general tendency to be Russophile, Poland being lambasted for not implementing liberal policies, and the French having a desire to be an independent country in the vision of Charles de Gaulle, Eurosceptism is not only a persistent issue, but one that will continue to deepen.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

The mad rush for ventilators in the Covid killing fields, Part 1

By Niall McCrae and Roger Watson | TCW Defending Freedom | April 17, 2023

‘You’ll end up on a ventilator’. That threat was frequently aimed at dissidents in the early months of Covid-19. ‘End’ is the operative word, as most patients who were put on to the mechanical breathing apparatus lost their lives. Many may have died anyway, but undoubtedly ventilators did more harm than good.

As Registered Nurses, we are concerned by needless iatrogenic deaths in the Covid-19 regime, whether by excessive use of midazolam, cardiovascular harm from vaccines, curtailed access to cancer screening and surgery, or the impact of fear-inducing  propaganda. What was the role played by ventilators in the pandemic phenomenon?

We have divided this review into ‘how’ and ‘why’. In Part One we  consider the dubious clinical rationale and adverse outcomes of such widespread treatment, and in Part Two we explore its psychological purposing. It’s not a pretty picture.

THE CLINICAL CARNAGE

IMAGINE being admitted to hospital for any reason and after testing positive for a respiratory virus, being moved to another ward, sedated into semi-consciousness and hooked up to a mechanical breathing machine. How on earth did you get here? Yet this was a common fate of hospital patients admitted in the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020. For too many, it was a silent spring, as their last breaths were taken before the tube was passed into their lungs.

A ventilator operates by a tube inserted through the mouth reaching down the windpipe into the lungs, blowing oxygen in and enabling exhalation of carbon dioxide out. The ventilated patient is normally sedated, partly to reduce distress caused by losing the ability to breathe naturally.

In an exchange with TCW editor Kathy Gyngell, former Pfizer chief scientist Mike Yeadon asserted: ‘I believe they were sedating, intubating and ventilating people admitted for non-respiratory reasons if they tested positive for Covid. My bottom line is that close to zero people should ever have been ventilated. Did you know that once sedated/unconscious and ventilated, everyone will die in due course? It’s a horribly dangerous procedure. When lifesaving like deep surgery or after trauma in a road accident, or perhaps a chest wall injury or stabbing and pneumothorax, or if you’ve an obstructive lung disease and are physically exhausted by the work of breathing, and finally a 50 per cent burn victim in agony, mechanical ventilation may be justified.’

The equipment is not standard treatment for influenza and pneumonia, a leading cause of death in older people, for whom such intervention would normally be regarded as unnecessarily invasive (and costly). Indeed, Yeadon doubts whether any patients testing positively for Covid-19 should have been ventilated.

The mad rush for ventilators began after the virus reached Italy and then spread across Europe and North America. On March 25 2020 the analytics company GlobalData estimated that about 10 per cent of the Covid-19 cases worldwide needed ventilators and that 888,000 ventilators would be needed. The company’s medical devices analyst Tina Deng said: ‘Ventilator shortages are a crucial reality as the Covid-19 outbreak continues to worsen globally. All ventilator manufacturers have full order books and hold little in stock – receiving orders not only from regular customers such as hospitals, but also directly from governments.’

Italy became the benchmark for the rest of Europe, but account was not taken of the uniqueness of the Italian health service. Before Covid-19, Italy had considerably higher bed occupancy than in the UK. With similar populations (60million for Italy; 68.5million for UK), the former has 25,000 more beds than the latter (187,000 for Italy; 162,000 for UK). In 2019 Italians were admitted to hospital a staggering 58.6million times compared with approximately 6million in the UK. Patients in Italy are much more likely to be admitted, with high use of intensive care units (ICU), where Italy has 3.1 beds per 1,000 people compared with 2.4 in the UK.

At the time of the Covid-19 outbreak the NHS had 5,000 adult and 900 child ventilators, but at least 30,000 were deemed necessary for the surge in pandemic patients. The government called on major British manufacturers such as Rolls-Royce and Dyson to build ventilators instead of engines and vacuum cleaners (see Part Two).

But ventilators were clearly no panacea. In April 2020 the Daily Mail reported data from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre on the first 777 Covid-19 patients treated in 285 ICUs, showing that only 34 of 98 ventilated patients lived to tell the tale. According to the newspaper, volunteers at the hurriedly erected Nightingale Hospital in London were told that 80 per cent of patients on ventilators would die.

On April 9 the Independent reported that ‘some working on the front lines of the coronavirus epidemic are now wondering whether (ventilators) might do more harm than expected’. On the same day the Daily Mail went almost as far as saying that doctors knew that this intervention was killing people. On April 26 an NIH pre-print reported that ‘mortality rates range from 50-97 per cent in those requiring mechanical ventilation’. Meanwhile the US publications STAT (twice) and Time both reported warnings by physicians that use of ventilators for Covid-19 patients was misguided.

As Kit Knightly remarked in OffGuardian (May 4 2020),  ‘over-use of ventilators may actually be killing people who could otherwise have survived’. Knightly’s detailed article explained why so many patients were dying, including this quote from German pulmonologist Thomas Voshaar: ‘Invasive ventilation is fundamentally bad for patients. Even if the ventilator is optimally adjusted and the care is perfect, the treatment brings with it many complications. The lungs are sensitive to two things: excess pressure and excessive oxygen concentration in the air supplied . . . The terminal failure of the lungs is often caused by too high pressure and too much oxygen.’

Rather than ameliorating pulmonary infection, ventilators increase the risk. Under sedation, the intubated, ventilated patient’s cough reflex is disabled, often leading to fluid accumulating in the lungs. These stagnant pools are prone to bacterial infection (particularly in the microbial culture of a general hospital). Survivors of ventilation are often left with lasting damage. A study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene found that mechanical ventilation seriously damages the lungs of Covid-19 patients.

After the frenzied quest, ventilators were quietly dropped. According to the BMJ, 60 to 75 per cent of Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital in the UK in April 2020 were subjected to this apparatus. However, according to recent UK Government figures for the seven days leading up to April 6 2023, only 4 per cent of the same type of patient were ventilated. As Ingrid Torjesen said in the BMJ in January 2021: ‘The pace of the move away from invasive ventilation varies among hospitals and has been driven by greater clinical experience of treating covid patients, by data associating invasive ventilation with higher mortality.’ Yet as we have shown, there was never a good medical rationale for intubating and ventilating patients as a front-line treatment.

One ICU nurse we interviewed about the early days of Covid-19 described policy and practice on ventilation as ‘a farce’, with no consistency between physicians. But policies must have existed, whether on paper or not. Unsubstantiated anecdotes proliferated on social media of ambulant patients being intubated and ventilated to immobilise them to reduce transmission. A YouTube video by nurse Erin Marie Olszewski, featuring covertly recorded conversations in the intensive care unit of a New York hospital, tells of the tragic death of a 37-year-old man. Admitted with shortness of breath but otherwise healthy, this case illustrated how patients were regarded by hospital management as throughput, placed on ventilators simply because they had low oxygen level. In the killing fields of New York more than 80 per cent of ventilator cases died, and according to Olszewski one person who did not perish saved himself by pulling the tube out. She attributed this radical practice to orders ‘from above’ and financial incentives from the government; it was literally cash for corpses.

Most doctors and nurses who worked through the great pandemic scare of 2020 would be aghast at any implication that they were knowingly terminating lives. As with most aspects of Covid-19, the pandemic response was orchestrated at a higher level, but this does not excuse any clinician who departed from the Hippocratic Oath to first do no harm. Ventilators killed, but as we shall discuss in Part 2, they also had a much wider, malign impact on society.

April 16, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

No More Double Standards and Impunity. West Provokes Russia. Result: Nukes in Belarus on NATO’s Borders

Strategic Culture Foundation | March 31, 2023

The historic – and unacceptable – deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in several European NATO states as well as the recent announcement by Britain of supplying depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine is the prologue to Russia’s decision to place tactical nukes in Belarus. The Western outcry following Russia’s decision is absurd and hypocritical.

The pattern is familiar and speaks of incorrigible arrogance. The United States and its NATO allies make reckless escalatory moves that are unprecedented in their aggression toward Russia; then Moscow makes a reciprocal move, and yet the Western governments and their dutiful news media become apoplectic with rage over Russia’s “threatening conduct” and nuclear blackmail.

Maybe one day, Western leaders will eventually choke on their own illogical apoplexy.

This week there was frothing and fuming in the West about Moscow’s decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, despite the move being fully in accord with the Minsk government, a longtime ally of Russia and fellow member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The CSTO is organically comparable with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), having a shared defense commitment between allied states that were formerly members of the Soviet Union.

In ratifying the deployment, Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused by Western powers of jeopardizing international security, threatening European neighbors and violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Belarus borders three NATO members: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

But the decision by Russia to install tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus (which Moscow would reportedly retain control over) was in response to the NATO move to supply its anti-Russian Kiev proxy with depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Britain announced last week that Challenger 2 battlefield tanks sent to Ukraine would be equipped with DU shells. It is understood that the United States is also ready to supply depleted uranium armor-piercing munitions to Ukraine with its Abrams tanks. Video footage from London’s Ministry of Defence shows Ukrainian troops being trained by British and American officers in handling DU shells.

Depleted uranium is a high-density metal – much denser than lead – which can penetrate modern armor. It ignites after penetration and turns into vapor at extreme temperature. While DU shells are not explosively fissile and do not cause nuclear blasts, they do release harmful radioactive contamination into the environment. Arguably, the munitions are therefore a form of nuclear weapon in the same manner as a low-yield “dirty bomb”.

The United States and Britain fired tonnes of depleted uranium shells during their decade-long illegal war in Iraq. NATO forces also used DU weapons in their war of aggression against former Yugoslavia. In both cases, the resultant radioactive contamination was correlated with high rates of cancer and birth defects in the civilian populations.

The Americans and British have never been held to account for their war crimes. That impunity partly explains their arrogance in regard to pumping weapons into Ukraine against Russia and in particular the latest iteration of radioactive uranium shells.

For the British regime to claim that DU weapons are “normal” munitions and acceptable to deploy potentially for hitting Russian territory is a demonstration of its depraved deception and utter lawlessness. It also shows that London and its NATO partners are willing to recklessly escalate the conflict in Ukraine against Russia by breaching a dangerous threshold regarding nuclear weapons.

Under Russia’s defense doctrine, it may use nuclear weapons if its national security is threatened by either nuclear forces or conventional forces. The U.S.-led NATO alliance is pushing the envelope in a way that is seemingly incorrigible, or tantamount to psychopathic behavior.

Perversely, this abysmal situation is distorted as somehow Russia taking a provocative step in placing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

What Moscow is demonstrating is that the Anglo-American-led NATO alliance has no longer the presumption of impunity. The decades of unchecked aggression from NATO expansionism and criminal Anglo-American subterfuges in foreign countries are over. Moscow offered a diplomatic channel to create a security treaty in Europe, but that was haughtily dismissed by the arrogant imperialist powers. The result was the military-technical measures that Russia undertook with its intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Arguably, Russia could take additional reciprocal measures that go further. The involvement of NATO members in massively arming the NeoNazi Kiev regime should, it could be contended, be met with military defensive action to destroy supply chains entering Ukraine.

This is the perspective for a proper understanding of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. It is not Russia upping the ante to jeopardize security and peace. It is NATO powers that are erasing the boundaries in a way that they are accustomed to doing for several decades.

Let’s recall that it is the United States that has rescinded several arms-control treaties including the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, and the Open Skies treaty, and it is Washington that has chronically undermined the last-existing one, the New START governing strategic weapons.

There is also the existing anomaly of the United States storing nuclear weapons on the territory of five NATO members. They are Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey. These countries are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, so arguably the basing of nuclear weapons in these states is a gross violation of the NPT, which is what the West is accusing Russia of in regard to Belarus.

Last year, too, Poland offered to house American nuclear weapons on its soil. That offer was not taken up but is presumably still on the table. Why is there not an outcry over that egregious destabilizing of arms control?

As usual there is a surfeit of Western double-think to go along with rank hypocrisy. The illogical mentality is a product of arrogance and hubris.

Furthermore, two NATO members Britain and France have their own national nuclear arsenals supposedly separate from Washington’s command. These two powers are actively hostile toward Russia through their arming of the Kiev regime.

Additionally, all 30 members of the NATO alliance are committed to assisting the United States in deploying nuclear forces with their conventional militaries under the alliance’s provision called Support of Nuclear Operations With Conventional Air Tactics (SNOWCAT).

In sum, clearly, the issue of arms control and security is badly out of balance, but it is the conduct of the United States and its NATO partners that has led to the imbalance. The arrogant presumption of impunity held by Washington and London in particular is a destabilizing factor that creates double standards that are completely unacceptable in a world supposedly under the rule of international law and the United Nations Charter.

The conflict in Ukraine can be solved if Western powers were to abide by international law and halt the weaponizing of the Kiev regime. Going forward, Ukraine must be a neutral state and NATO must halt its aggressive expansion. A serious policy of nuclear arms control must involve the withdrawal of such weapons from European NATO member states and the inclusion of British and French arsenals as part of a wider detente framework. Note, however, that the conditionalities for peace are in large part an onus on Washington and its Western allies to do the right and reasonable things. The disturbing question is though, can Washington and its imperialist lackeys be reasonable?

Until enlightened conduct prevails, Russia is quite correct to be intolerant of any double standards that the Americans, British and their NATO minions presume. Every aggressive move must be boldly and smartly reciprocated. Without that countervailing action, there is impunity, which is even more dangerous.

Holding Western powers to account is a powerful weapon of attrition because it exposes their corruption and fraud, their duplicity, and their fatal arrogance. Increasingly, the Western public is seeing the endemic bankruptcy of their supposed rulers.

March 31, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus – escalation or legitimate response?

By Drago Bosnic | March 27, 2023

On March 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will start deploying its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Construction of designated storage facilities for the weapons is planned to be completed by July 1. The decision to transfer nuclear weapons to Belarus was made after Minsk issued a formal request, essentially mirroring Washington DC’s nuclear sharing agreements with several NATO member states. And while the decision was officially made after the United Kingdom announced it would supply depleted uranium munitions to the Kiev regime, the actual reasoning might have to do with much more sinister plans by the United States.

Namely, Warsaw and Washington DC have been floating the idea of transferring some of the US nuclear weapons stockpiled in Europe to Poland. The move has been mentioned several times in recent years, including in early October last year, when Polish President Andrzej Duda mentioned it in an interview with Gazeta Polska. The US has nuclear sharing agreements with the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Turkey, with approximately 100 (mainly air-launched) tactical nuclear weapons deployed in all five countries. Greece also took part in the program, but discontinued its participation in 2001, although it’s widely believed Athens still keeps the necessary storage facilities functional.

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko advised against UK plans to deliver depleted uranium munitions to the Kiev regime and warned that Russia would soon supply Belarus with “munitions with real uranium”. However, Putin himself stated that “even outside the context of these events”, Belarus still has legitimate security concerns and that “Alexander Grigoryevich [Lukashenko] has long raised the question of deploying Russian tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus”. This clearly implies that threats to Minsk transcend the immediate danger of depleted uranium munitions deliveries to the Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev.

“There is nothing unusual in such a decision, as the United States has been doing this for decades. They have long placed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territories of their allies, NATO countries, and in Europe. In six states – the Federal Republic of Germany, Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Greece – well, not in Greece now, but there is still a storage facility,” Putin stressed, further adding: “[Russia and Belarus] will do the same, without violating our international obligations on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons”.

He added that Russia is indeed mirroring the United States in this regard and that it’s not transferring the ownership of its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, but that it’s simply deploying them to the country and training the Belarussian military to operate and use them in the case of a wider escalation by the US and NATO. The Russian military has already provided Belarus with the necessary upgrades to be able to deliver tactical nuclear warheads. At least 10 (presumably Belarussian Air Force) jets have been assigned and equipped to carry such weapons, although neither side specified what type of aircraft received the said upgrades.

Belarus operates several types of nuclear-capable fighter jets, including the recently acquired Su-30SM and the Soviet-era MiG-29. In addition to air-launched nuclear weapons, Russia already deploys ground-based assets in Belarus, including the “Iskander” systems capable of launching nuclear-tipped hypersonic and regular cruise missiles. Minsk also operates its own “Iskander” units, meaning that those too could be equipped with tactical nuclear warheads, further bolstering the country’s deterrence capabilities. This is particularly important as Belarus has also been targeted by US/NATO covert/black operations in recent years, including an attempted Maidan-style color revolution in 2020.

“We have handed over to Belarus our well-known and very effective ‘Iskander’ system that can carry [nuclear weapons],” Putin stated, adding: “On April 3, we will start training the crews and on July 1 we will complete the construction of a special storage [facility] for tactical nuclear weapons on the Belarussian territory.”

In addition to the “Iskander”, Belarus still maintains a number of Soviet-era nuclear-capable assets, including a substantial arsenal of “Tochka-U” tactical ballistic missiles. These could serve as a secondary delivery option given their shorter range and inferior accuracy when compared to the “Iskander” which boasts a 500 km range, high precision, extreme maneuverability at every stage of flight, as well as a hypersonic speed estimated to be at least Mach 5.9, although military sources indicate that it can go up to Mach 8.7. This makes the “Iskander” virtually impossible to intercept, as evidenced by its performance during the SMO (special military operation). The system also provides a significant advantage over NATO forces in Eastern Europe.

President Lukashenko strongly indicated that Minsk could host Russian nuclear weapons as soon as NATO implied it could deploy US B61 nuclear bombs to Poland, highlighting that his country’s Soviet-era infrastructure for such weapons remains intact despite US pressure to destroy it during the 1990s. Belarus is home to a growing arsenal of state-of-the-art Russian military units and equipment, including strategic assets such as the S-400 SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, as well as the advanced Su-35S air superiority fighter jets and MiG-31 interceptors, including the K/I variants capable of deploying the already legendary “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles, which are also nuclear-capable.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

March 27, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russian governor’s son flees house arrest in Italy

RT | March 23, 2023

Artyom Uss, son of the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Region, Aleksandr Uss, has fled house arrest near the Italian city of Milan, the ANSA news agency has reported.

The Carabinieri – an Italian law enforcement agency that also acts as the military police – is searching for the alleged fugitive, the agency added.

According to ANSA, Uss is believed to have broken his electronic tag before fleeing his home on Wednesday afternoon.

The developments come just days after a court of appeals in Milan approved the 40-year-old’s extradition to America. Uss was detained last October at Milan’s Malpensa Airport on allegations of sanctions evasion and money laundering. The New York district attorney had earlier issued an international arrest warrant for him.

Uss, who had been held under house arrest since his initial detention, denied the allegations and his lawyer had told TASS that they intended to appeal the extradition decision. According to ANSA, Uss was preparing to contest the court’s decision when he disappeared.

The US has claimed that the governor’s son allegedly purchased American military technology before selling it to sanctioned Russian entities. He is also accused of smuggling oil from Venezuela to customers in China and Russia.

In October, a Russian court ordered Uss’s arrest on money laundering charges. Moscow has since demanded that he be extradited to his homeland.

Governor Aleksandr Uss has claimed that the charges against his son are politically motivated. Lawyers for Artyom Uss have also suggested that Washington may want to use him in potential prisoner exchanges with Moscow.

March 23, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Medical clinic treating people injured by COVID shot opens in Italy

By Ken Hall | LifeSiteNews | November 28, 2022

LUCCA, Italy — A private medical clinic has opened in Lucca, Italy that is devoted to caring for patients who have been injured by the experimental COVID-19 vaccines.

The clinic was opened by a group of doctors and health workers who were recently reinstated to their positions after newly-elected Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government removed discriminatory legislation that barred vaccine-free Italians from working in healthcare.

An Italian medical rights group celebrated the clinic as “helpful” and “welcoming,” but a left-wing political party from Tuscany has attempted to pressure the mayor of Lucca to publicly disavow the clinic seeking to help heal those suffering from COVID vaccine injuries.

The local Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) released a statement saying “we believe the mayor needs to take a position, and distance himself from what is happening on this front in our city.”

The statement was made even after the party admitted that the group who started the clinic did so with the intention of helping the vaccine-injured, and that the group also wanted doctors to have freedom of conscience protections when practicing medicine.

Italy has flipped the script on COVID restrictions since the election of Meloni, who has admitted that Italy had the “most restrictive anti-COVID measures in the entire Western world,” but was still “among the countries with the highest numbers of deaths and infections.”

She vowed that her government “will not replicate that pattern in any way,” promising to never “limit fundamental freedoms.”

Under previous Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the then left-wing government had enacted severe measures against Italians who chose not to take the COVID jab, restricting them from many aspects of public life under the guise of the “Super Green Pass.”

Under the restrictions, all Italians were required to be jabbed or provide proof that they had previously recovered from COVID in order to work, and all those over 50 years old had to be vaccinated or they would be fined by the government on a monthly basis.

In response, Italians protested in massive numbers, and it is believed that support swelled for the populist Meloni as a result of her opposition to such measures.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Milan Prosecutor Approves Extradition of Russian Governor’s Son to US

Samizdat – 26.11.2022

ROME – Milan prosecutor’s office submitted to the court a positive decision on the extradition of the son of Russian Krasnoyarsk Territory’s governor, Artem Uss, to the United States, the Il Giorno newspaper reported on Friday.

Artem Uss was arrested in Italy on a US warrant on October 17. Alongside four other Russian citizens, he was accused of money laundering and evasion of sanctions. The 40-year-old has denied any wrongdoings and rejected voluntary extradition to the United States.

According to the media, Uss during Friday’s hearing stated that he had never been to New York and his last visit to the US had occurred 25 years ago, when he was 14 years old, adding that information provided by the US Department of Justice was false.

The prosecutor’s office also reportedly rejected appeal of Uss’s lawyers to put him under house arrest in Milan.
Uss’s lawyer Vinicio Nardo refused to give Sputnik his comments on the case.

On October 28, Moscow court issued a warrant in absentia for the arrest of Uss for money laundering and put him on the Russian interior ministry’s register of wanted persons.

November 25, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

They denounce Meloni, but the despots of the Covid State are the real fascists

By Paul Collits | TCW Defending Freedom | October 5, 2022

ACCORDING to the dictionary, fascism is: ‘A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc, and emphasising an aggressive nationalism and often racism.’

That’s all right as far as it goes. But I would add two other elements – the reach of fascism (and totalitarianism more generally) into people’s private lives, and the corporatist state model as fascism’s operating system.

The election in Italy – technically the home of fascism – of a Right-wing politician, Giorgia Meloni, was all too much for the dreary Left. Here in Australia, the Guardian’s Van Badham has given us the headline: The election of Italy’s fascist-adjacent Giorgia Meloni is a public reminder that women can be just as awful as men 

I have previously noted Badham in the context of women in politics. Here our interest is in Meloni’s other defining characteristic, her alleged fascism. Comparing perceived Right-wingers to Hitler is, of course, an old trick. But fascism is again all the rage with Meloni’s election.

Two of fascism reporting’s traditional attributes are the frequent misuse of the term (do most journalists even know what it means?), and the clueless irony of accusations of fascism by those who exhibit all the signs of being, well, fascists themselves.

I was not familiar with Badham’s Covid writing, and a quick internet search suggests I would not find it rewarding. More broadly, the Guardian has been at the forefront of Covidmania, what with all the death reporting (which it still runs) and the modern Left’s endless appetite for lockdowns and all the rest.

It is becoming tedious to report that (of course) the Guardian is funded by Bill Gates. So, no prizes for guessing the rag’s line on anti-vaxxers, and on all matters Covid.

Only this week, it reported on the vaccine review conducted by ‘respected’ public servant Jane Halton, aka Bill Gates’s girl in Canberra. Her conclusions? Keep the vaccines coming!  We aren’t out of the woods yet. A ‘twindemic’ is coming this British winter.

Jane reckons we are not yet at ‘Covid stable’. Yes, the commissars of the Covid State do actually talk like this. She says we should keep advertising the (unnecessary, dangerous and ineffective) vaccines ‘till 2024’. Why stop at 2024?

Seriously, how does this woman have the gall to keep telling blatant, self-serving porkies?  (To see why I say self-serving, just search her CV; she has a massive interest in prolonging the narrative).

To say that the Guardian’s reportage of Covid remains breathless would be to indulge in understatement. (‘Twindemic’ and ‘Covid stable’ are vying for Covid Bulls**t Term of the Week at this point).

Mercifully, the Guardian is still keeping us informed of Gates’s moods, with one recent headline stating: ‘The strain is the worst of my lifetime’: How Bill Gates is staying optimistic.  

Thank God Bill is staying optimistic. He has doubled his wealth in his proclaimed ‘decade of vaccines’, and now, in effect, runs global public health. The New World Order is running to plan. No wonder he is optimistic. And to have the Left media on side as well!

The point is that fascism as an ideology has far more in common with the Left than with the conservative or libertarian versions of ‘the Right’. The American conservative writer Jonah Goldberg realised this some time back, when he published his excellent book Liberal Fascism.

Fascism has more in common with anyone (like the World Economic Forum) supporting public-private partnerships, than with Meloni-type pollies – since fascism is, above all else, an ideology of the corporate state, big government and of global crony capitalism.

The irony of Left-wing media siding with Big Capitalism is exquisite, or would be if it were not so deadly. The Covid State IS fascism, nothing more and nothing less.

The ‘fascist-adjacent’ Meloni actually wants to get rid of the vile Green Passes (vaccine passports) in Italy. Hint to the Left – this is precisely why she was elected.

This is despite Meloni’s apparent support for elements of the Covid State in the past. It would be hilarious if Badham accidentally spoke the truth about Meloni. Perhaps Badham is like the broken clock, right twice a day. But for the wrong reasons, and she would not understand if I tried to explain it.

Supporting Covid policies in the past is the only link to fascism that I can see in Meloni, and it is tenuous at best. The alt-media as a jury is still very much out on the new Italian PM, not least because of the Covid stances referred to above. She also sounds too good to be true.

But it seems Meloni has clearly seen the error of her Covid policy ways.  (Like the economist John Maynard Keynes, who is famously said to have stated: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’) Fact is, Meloni’s party alone in Italy stood up for freedom when it mattered in 2021.

Nicholas Farrell in the Spectator last year saw the irony, and was bemused by the non-opposition from Leftists to the Green Pass.   

He wrote: ‘Here is your starter for ten. Which Italian political party believes that individual liberty is sacred? Answer: The party invariably defined by the international media as “far Right” or “fascist” and jointly Italy’s most popular party in the opinion polls – in other words, the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy).

‘Here in Italy, birthplace of fascism, the 44-year-old leader of the Right-wing Fratelli d’Italia – Giorgia Meloni – has been busy promoting distinctly anti-fascist values. In defence of human liberty, she has spoken out passionately against the decree issued on 22 July by Italian Premier Mario Draghi which will introduce the “Green Pass” to Italy.

‘As of this Friday, all Italians over the age of 12 will be banned from most enclosed public spaces and many open-air ones as well, unless they are equipped with this digital pass that proves they have had at least one Covid vaccine.’

But the legacy media cannot resist all the ‘far Right’ nonsense in its reportage on the Italian election. Here is Roberto Saviano in the Guardian: ‘The Brothers of Italy (a delightfully sexist name for a political party) leader denies she is a fascist, but clings to the Mussolini-era slogan “God, homeland, family”’.

It is hard to say which is the more ludicrous – bagging the support for nation, religion and family as dangerous, or branding it as fascist.

For patriots, deplorables, populists and conservatives everywhere, such a motto might be summarised thus: ‘Not all that we want, but a fine start’.

Throw in some ‘climate inaction now’, ‘woke comes here to die’ (with apologies to Ron DeSantis) and ‘crush the Covid State’ and we might just have a platform worth supporting.  And a platform that is not remotely fascist, by the way, on any definition.

Saviano also claims that Hungarians have lost all their rights under Meloni’s assumed mentor, Viktor Orban, another hate-figure for the Left and globalists everywhere.

Lost rights? This is rich coming from the Covid State’s chief media promoter. Here is the irony again. It is the truly fascist Covid Class that has disempowered people across the world.  The Guardianistas obviously don’t do irony, or read dictionaries.

October 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Hated by the woke: The conservative woman who could be Italy’s leader tomorrow

By Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack | TCW Defending Freedom | September 25, 2022

According to the BBC ‘Italians are deciding whether to choose their most right-wing government since World War Two’ in their elections today.  Giorgia Meloni, the woman at the helm of The Brothers of Italy party, has had pretty much everything flung at her. All but called facist by the BBC for her ’embrace’ of ‘God, Fatherland and Family’ her sins include condemning the world of LGBTQ and a tough stance on unfettered migration from Africa. Comparisons with Mussolini abound. Yesterday in the Telegraph David Selbourne put another slant on it, writing ‘that at the heart of Meloni’s strength in the poll ratings is the rejection by many people, decent and indecent alike, of today’s “progressive” orthodoxies, whether in Italy, Poland, Hungary, Sweden or elsewhere’.

In June, TCW’s own Campbell Campbell-Jack tracked Meloni’s rise and the reasons for it. He concluded that the woman who shouts out ‘I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am an Italian, I am Christian, and you cannot take that away from me!’ is a principled anti-globalist conservative. No wonder the media smear and hate her. We republish his considered article here.

THE Left is worried so be prepared to hear a great deal more about the ‘far-Right’, ‘hard-Right’, ‘Right-wing extremist’ Giorgia Meloni. Press mentions of Italy’s rising centre-Right star almost always include a reference to Mussolini or assertion of her Brothers of Italy party’s ‘neo-fascist origins’. She is characterised as a figurehead who ‘threatens to send Italy down a dangerous authoritarian path’. The Guardian warns, ‘Success of far-Right Brothers of Italy raises fears of fascist revival.’ It is clear that the prospect of her party gaining ground in Italy’s next general election is sending shock waves through the mainstream media.

Named after the opening words of Italy’s national anthem, the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) is a national conservative party which is growing in prominence and is being touted as having a good chance of leading the government after the election, which must take place next year. Meloni also chairs the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, an alliance of centre-Right parties in the EU.

In recent local elections the Brothers of Italy took 10.3 per cent of votes in nearly 1,000 local contests, significantly more than the 6.7 per cent won by the rival League party led by Matteo Salvini. This reverses the result of the 2019 European elections in which Salvini took 34 per cent and Meloni just 6 per cent.

Meloni is now in the driving seat in a Right-wing coalition alongside Salvini and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Polls make their Right-wing alliance favourite to win the 2023 election and if the Brothers of Italy takes more votes than the League, Salvini has agreed she will become prime minister.

Meloni is not the type of conservative to whom we have grown accustomed. She is a national conservative and this frightens the Euro-elites because her aim is to put conservatism back into its traditional sphere of national identity. She sees the nation state as the sole means of combating globalism and protecting freedom. ‘The Nation is the place where our values are safeguarded and transmitted.’

Globalism takes power from the people and transfers it to supra-national organisations run by and in the interests of the elites. Globalists thus see national identity as a hindrance to their totalising ambitions which has to be overcome. We see this in the continuing media and political stress on diversity with its consequent fracturing of communities through identity politics pitting one single identity group against another, each fighting for its own rights and caring little for the good of all. National identity is being continuously eroded throughout Europe.

National conservatism is the opposite of what we have fed to us by the mainstream parties of Right as well as Left. Most centre-Right parties favour liberal conservatism with free-market economic policies, deregulation and controlled spending the overriding priorities. Most European parties nominally of the Right, such as the UK’s Conservatives, are run by economically liberal conservative elites who have deliberately marginalised the social and cultural issues which concern their electorate. We are used to continual promises to cut immigration to ‘the tens of thousands’ yet it keeps growing, as this suits the economic interests of the establishment by keeping wages low and weakening opposition to globalist aims. What the people want is sidelined or ignored.

Meloni has gained support by demanding that the EU leaves the global compact on migration. Whilst welcoming immigrants who would be able and willing to integrate into a European country with a Christian heritage, she is staunchly opposed to taking in any more migrants and refugees who cross the Mediterranean from North Africa. The party advocates a naval blockade of North Africa to stop illegal immigration.

National conservatism emphasises patriotism, nationalism, cultural conservatism and monoculturalism. Meloni sees national conservatism as the only real democracy because only by defending the nation state do we defend the political sovereignty of the people who belong to that state. Nations composed of people sharing the same historical and cultural memory are the bedrock of democracy.

Meloni is quite clear on the dangers of political correctness. ‘You see, political correctness is a shockwave, a cancel culture that tries to upset and remove every single beautiful, honourable and human thing that our civilisation has developed. It is a nihilistic wind of unprecedented ugliness that tries to homogenise everything in the name of One World. In short, political correctness – the Gospel that a stateless and rootless elite wants to impose – is the greatest threat to the founding value of identities.’

Meloni sees the protection of ‘religious and moral values, the noblest purpose of all political action’. Democracy without cultural values degenerates into a free-for-all plunge into decadence, something we can see around us in ‘Pride Month’ where a Pride march can be little more than a celebration of perversity.

Meloni is dedicated to the freedom of the individual. Although she had a Covid vaccination herself, she was vehemently opposed to the Green Pass scheme by which all Italians over the age of 12 were banned from most enclosed public spaces and many open-air ones as well, unless they could prove they had received at least one jab.

‘The idea of having to use this Green Pass to be able to participate in communal life is chilling, and the ultimate step towards the realisation of an Orwellian society,’ she tweeted when Mario Draghi, Italy’s technocratic non-elected Prime Minister, announced the policy. ‘It is an unconstitutional act of madness that Fratelli d’Italia rejects outright. For us individual liberty is sacred and inviolable.’

National conservatives are painted as obtuse nationalists, thinking only of the good of the home nation. Modern national conservatism defends the identities of nations as the basis for new forms of co-operation. It does not want to impose its own interests at the expense of other nation-states. What it actually wants is co-operation between independent nation-states once again able to defend the freedom, identity and sovereignty of their peoples. Brothers of Italy defends Viktor Orban’s Hungary and Kaczynski’s Poland, nations under attack from the European progressive mainstream. The aim is to build a true, real Europe of peoples and identities, not an abstract Europe run by nameless bureaucrats.

Meloni sees Europe facing challenges today that will shape the future and the very survival of our shared civilisation, challenges which we have to face together. No wonder the established elites vilify her.

September 25, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

EU Commission head issues veiled threat to Italy

Samizdat | September 23, 2022

The EU has “tools” to respond if the political situation in Italy goes in a “difficult direction,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday. She hinted that the country could face punishments such as those recently leveled against Hungary and Poland if the upcoming election results in the predicted right-wing sweep.

“My approach is that whatever democratic government is willing to work with us, we’re working together,” she said in response to a question over whether she had “concerns” about Sunday’s Italian parliamentary vote, in which the conservative Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) are projected to take first place.

“If things go in a difficult direction, I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland, we have tools,” von der Leyen explained.

While EC spokesman Eric Mamer was quick to clarify that von der Leyen was merely “stressing the role of the Commission as guardian of the [European] treaties with regard to the rule of law,” not everyone interpreted her words that way.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the populist League party, denounced von der Leyen’s “shameful arrogance” and called on the EC to “respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people!” In the last round of polls earlier this month, the League was projected to take home 12% of the vote.

The EC earlier this month recommended suspending €7.5 billion ($7.5 billion) in funding to Hungary – a third of the money it receives from Brussels – over alleged “erosion of the rule of law.” Brussels leveled a similar punishment at Poland last year after the country’s constitutional tribunal found that some Polish laws override those of the EU.

Italy’s snap parliamentary election was triggered by the resignation of PM Mario Draghi in July after his partners in the ruling coalition abandoned him. As of September 9, when the blackout on publishing election polls took effect, the Fratelli d’Italia were estimated to take 25% of the vote. In addition to the League’s 12%, coalition partner Forza Italia is predicted to garner 8%, meaning a victory for the conservative bloc is easily within reach. Fratelli d’Italia barely won 4% of the vote in 2018.

Like the rest of the EU, Italy has been wrestling with a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by bloc-wide sanctions on Russian oil and gas. A general election had previously been set for next year.

September 23, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , | Leave a comment

G7 unveils plan to enforce Russian oil price cap

Samizdat | September 2, 2022

The finance ministers of the Group of Seven influential nations announced on Friday their intention to ban maritime services transporting Russian oil if its price is not approved by ‘international partners.’

“We commit to urgently work on the finalization and implementation of this measure,” representatives from the US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Japan said in a joint statement seen by AFP, without specifying the cap level.

“We seek to establish a broad coalition in order to maximize effectiveness and urge all countries that still seek to import Russian oil and petroleum products to commit to doing so only at prices at or below the price cap,” they added.

The move is aimed at slashing Moscow’s revenues while maintaining a flow of its crude to the international markets, to avoid a price surge.

“We will curtail [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s capacity to fund his war from oil exports by banning services, such as insurance and the provision of finance, to vessels carrying Russian oil above an agreed price cap,” British Finance Minister Nadhim Zahawi reportedly said, according to a tweet by a Sky News reporter.

According to the statement, the initial price cap will be based on a range of technical inputs, and the price level will be revisited as necessary. “We aim to align implementation with the timeline of related measures within the EU’s sixth sanctions package,” the ministers noted.

Western leaders agreed in June to explore a price ceiling to limit how much refiners and traders can pay for Russian crude. Moscow has made it clear that it would not comply, instead shipping its crude to countries not bound by the cap. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak warned on Thursday that nations that support the price cap will not get Russian crude.

September 2, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Occupation raids, attacks Palestinian organizations: EU, US and Canada are complicit!

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | August 21, 2022

In the early morning hours of Thursday, 18 August, armed Israeli occupation forces invaded the offices of seven prominent Palestinian NGOs, civil society organizations and human rights defenders: the Health Work Committees, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Bisan Centre, Defence for Children International – Palestine, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. These organizations have all been designated by the Israeli occupation as “terrorist” in retaliation for their advocacy and community organizing work for Palestine, and then labeled “illegal organizations” in a military order covering the occupied West Bank of Palestine.

The invading forces ransacked the offices, confiscating computers, legal client files, documentation, printers and monitors and leaving clutter behind — as documented by the organizations’ surveillance cameras, recording the occupation forces’ invasion. The doors of the organizations were welded shut and a paper military order affixed to the door declaring their operation “illegal” under the occupation’s (illegal) military orders.

The organizations declared that they would not be silenced by these attacks, holding press conferences and returning to the offices to reopen them and continue their work. The attacks received widespread condemnation not only from Palestinian and pro-Palestinian forces but even from European governments whose policies and practices consistently target the Palestinian people and their fundamental rights.

Now, on Sunday, 21 August, occupation intelligence authorities — the Shin Bet — phoned Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin to threaten him with interrogation and arrest if the organization’s work continues, while Defence for Children International – Palestine director Khaled Quzmar was summoned to and held under interrogation.

“Terror” Designations and Political Control

The invasions, interrogations, ransacking and attacks on these organizations reflect the failure of the occupation’s regime of “terror” designations to undermine their work. In 2021, not only did the regime designate Al-Haq, Addameer, DCI, Bisan, the UPWC and the UAWC as “terrorist” organizations — quickly followed by the military orders banning their work in the occupied West Bank of Palestine — it earlier in the year designated Samidoun (on 21 February 2021), followed by three more organizations. Previously and in a similar pretext, the occupation had issued a similar designation against the Health Work Committees along with designations of groups including the Arab Organization for Human Rights UK, the Palestinian Return Centre and Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

As we noted at the time, this

“indicates just how meaningless the term ‘terrorist’ is in the hands of the Israeli regime. It means precisely any organization, activist, or freedom fighter that challenges Zionist colonialism through any method or means of resistance at all. The flurry of ‘terrorist’ designations for organizations working to expose Israel’s crimes and organize Palestinians underlines this reality….These designations are not attacks on individual organizations but against Palestinian human rights defenders and those around the world who stand up for Palestinian liberation — and, fundamentally, the Palestinian people as a whole, especially the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons. They attempt to repress growing support for the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people and confrontation of imperialism and Zionism.”

Further, it is clear that the use of such designations is intended to further political control over Palestinian society. These designations hinge on the allegation that organizations are close to one or another Palestinian resistance organizations, most commonly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or Hamas. Israeli officials have shopped around “evidence” to various governments that is so weak so as to be ludicrous, consisting almost entirely of unsubstantiated statements or on the idea that employing a person who supports a political organization (or, in some cases, relatives of people in political organizations “designated” by the occupation) is “funding” that organization by paying employees a salary for doing their job.

While it is obvious that these are false claims, the objective of this type of attack goes beyond simply lobbing allegations. Indeed, the European governments that have criticized the attacks and designations have also repeatedly affirmed their willingness to “examine evidence” and “act” if the Israeli regime “proves” that popular organizations, civil society groups and human rights advocates are in some way “tied” to Palestinian resistance movements. Not only are the organizations “innocent” of the Israeli claims, the claims themselves are fundamentally repugnant. The Palestinian people have the right to resist occupation and to be a part of political, social and armed movements in that resistance; this is not “terrorism” but an essential right of people under occupation and colonization.

Rather than affirming the right of Palestinians to resist and to organize themselves to achieve those goals, these European governments instead use these attacks to impose even greater political scrutiny and conditions. In many cases (such as the Netherlands), these governments recommend or require that all employees of these organizations must not be associated with any “banned” Palestinian political organization. If Palestinians are part of a political party or movement, they must be unemployable and impoverished: this is both the argument of the occupation and of the European states providing a meager “defense” of Palestinian civil society.

For the European funding agencies and many large foundations, supporting Palestinian NGOs has never been primarily about empowering or supporting the Palestinian people to achieve their liberation but rather about redirecting Palestinian energies into “state-building” and/or “reform” projects that exist within the confines of Oslo. Time and time again, these forces have introduced new conditional funding mechanisms and restrictions on everything from the political affiliation of individual employees to the names of buildings and schools.

European Union: Partners in Colonialism and Apartheid

This is borne out once again by the statement of nine European states — Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden — which invokes the promotion of “democratic values and the two-state solution,” a fundamental contradiction as the so-called “two-state solution” itself is the legitimization of the colonization and occupation of 78% of Palestine and no solution at all for the Palestinian people. This brief comment lays bare the real political motivation for European involvement in funding Palestinian organizations, which is to limit rather than to achieve rights, justice and liberation. Further, the statement notes that “should convincing evidence be made available to the contrary, we would act accordingly.”

Here, the “evidence” being referred to would be any “links” between these NGOs and the Palestinian resistance. By including this statement in their alleged defense of the organizations, these European states actually encourage the occupation to continue its raids and ransacking, confiscation of files, arrests and interrogations, in an attempt to manufacture such “evidence”.

Of course, the position of these states themselves — members of the aggressive NATO alliance, defenders of the Israeli occupation in international arenas — is all too clear. The European Union, while rejecting the designation of advocacy and civil society organizations, continues to designate Palestinian resistance organizations as “terrorists.”

France continues to imprison Georges Ibrahim Abdallah while doing almost nothing to advocate for its citizen Salah Hamouri, jailed without charge or trial under Israeli administrative detention, as the government attempts to criminalize Palestinian activism, such as the Collectif Palestine Vaincra. Germany not only engages in weapons deals with the occupation, it also engages in severely repressive practices against Palestine organizing, particularly Palestinian communities in exile and diaspora, from the expulsion of Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat and Palestinian torture survivor and feminist Rasmea Odeh to the ban on 15 May Nakba demonstrations in Berlin. This is not to mention the links between Zionism and European colonialism from the very beginning of the Zionist project.

Now, Israeli prime minister and war criminal Yair Lapid is scheduled to come to Brussels on 6 October to convene the “Association Council” with all EU member states’ foreign ministers, for the first time in 10 years. This is the council under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the agreement that provides for free trade for occupation products inside the EU and allows for occupation institutions to receive European grants for research and development.

Ending the EU-Israel Association Agreement is a long-time demand of the Palestine solidarity movement, but despite their expressed “concerns” about the violent repression imposed on Palestinians, these European states are planning to welcome Lapid and convene the Association Council after a long hiatus, celebrating their complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Canadian government has refused to make any meaningful statement about these attacks, despite posing as a defender of “human rights.” U.S. officials stated their “concern,” while continuing to provide $3.8 billion in military support to the occupier.

**

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network affirms that these attacks are part and parcel of the ongoing war on Palestinian existence and organization, carried out by the Zionist state and supported by the imperialist powers that ally with the Israeli occupation, as well as Arab reactionary regimes engaged in “normalization” and the Palestinian Authority. While PA officials declare their public support for the targeted organizations, the PA continues to engage in security coordination with the occupation, declined the use of its security forces to defend the organizations, and has even previously detained leaders, directors and staff of these organizations challenging its repression at the behest of the occupier.

We reaffirm that the primary way that we can confront these designations is by intensifying our organizing, action, mobilization and resistance to bring down the structures of colonialism, implement the right to return for Palestinian refugees, and support the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners and of Palestine, from the river to the sea. This includes campaigning to bring an end to the so-called “terrorist lists” used to terrify Palestinian communities and Palestine solidarity organizers, which only provide a weapon in the hands of the occupation and encourages it to engage in further specious designations.

We also urge all to take action to confront Lapid’s visit on 6 October in Brussels and to bring down the “EU-Israel Association Agreement,” an agreement built on the colonization of Palestine and the massacres targeting the Palestinian people. It is incumbent upon all institutions and organizations concerned about these raids and about the Palestinian people to adopt and implement the boycott and international isolation of Israel, including at the United Nations and its bodies.

Further, we urge all to join us in organizing to march in Brussels on 29 October for the March for Return and Liberation to the European Parliament, to demand an end to European complicity, involvement in and support for the colonization of Palestine, the siege on Gaza, the imprisonment of Palestinians and the denial of millions of Palestinians’ right to return home.

samidoun@samidoun.net

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »