European elites are destroying Europe – again
Strategic Culture Foundation | November 29, 2024
One would think that having suffered two world wars only decades apart, European politicians might be more cautious about starting another one. Incredibly, however, the countries of Europe are being plunged into another conflagration.
Not much has changed over a century, it seems. War is still the result of imperialist intrigue and no accountability to the masses of citizens by arrogant politicians aided by relentless media propaganda lies.
European elitist rulers are a treasonous clique who are destroying Europe because of their abject servility to U.S.-led Western imperialism.
To put it crudely, Europe is being abused like a bondage plaything for the Washington and European elites. Shudder the thought of Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas in dominatrix garb or Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz as the gimps. But sometimes, the truth can be stranger than fiction.
Russian President Vladimir Putin nailed it this week when he slammed European political heads who are “dancing to the tune of the Americans.” In an address to the Collective Security Treaty Organization summit in Kazakhstan, Putin said the crisis over Ukraine showed that European so-called leaders have no independence or autonomy. They are non-entities as far as serving the democratic interests of their nations is concerned.
Instead of pushing for a diplomatic solution to the worst conflict on the European continent since World War Two, European political elites are slavishly going along with Washington’s criminal proxy war against Russia, which is in danger of spiraling into a nuclear Armageddon.
This week the buffoonish former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson openly admitted that the conflict in Ukraine was a proxy war against Russia. But that didn’t give Johnson pause for thought or shame. He urged the Europeans to send more weapons to Ukraine. Nor did his crass candidness elicit any outcry or condemnation. Johnson, the imbecile, was, in effect, confirming what Russia has been warning is the essence of the conflict in Ukraine – a U.S.-led war using Ukrainian cannon fodder.
Then, we had the chief of Britain’s intelligence agency MI6, “Sir” Richard Moore, holding forth to an audience in Paris that Russia’s Putin was causing “staggeringly reckless sabotage” across Europe. The British spymaster claimed that Russia was threatening the continent with nuclear weapons to weaken NATO support for Ukraine. He omitted the glaring fact that the U.S., Britain, and France have dramatically escalated the conflict by supplying a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine with long-range missiles to strike Russia.
Meanwhile, the governments in Germany and Nordic countries are issuing dire public warnings for people to “get ready for war” by building bomb shelters in their homes and stocking up on non-perishable foods.
You could hardly make this insanity up except in the dystopian novels of George Orwell. The continent is being led by the nose to disaster by politicians and corporate-controlled media who have lost their minds. They long ago lost any self-respect or independence and are simply acting as the most pathetic surrogates for U.S.-led imperialism.
Even without the ultimate catastrophe of war, Europe has been brought to ruination by elitist politicians who have unquestioningly followed the American agenda of trying to strategically defeat Russia through a proxy war.
Central to this U.S. strategic objective is vanquishing decades of mutually beneficial energy trade between Europe and Russia. The sanctions imposed on the Nord Stream gas pipelines by Trump during his first administration, followed by the blowing up of the pipes by the Biden administration in September 2022, are testimony to that bigger picture. None of the European governments or their news media properly investigated that huge crime of state-sponsored terrorism.
The proxy war and sanctions on Russian energy that the European leaders happily went along with have caused the European economies to implode. Critical commentators talk about the deindustrialization of Europe.
Even the Financial Times, in a recent in-depth report on Germany’s “broken economy”, sounded aghast at “the most pronounced downturn in Germany’s postwar history.” The report surveys auto, chemical and engineering sectors crucial to the German economy and cites “high energy costs” as the detrimental factor.
However, the Western media, even in supposed “in-depth reports” like the Financial Times, are careful not to spell out the obvious cause of Europe’s economic collapse: the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine and the consequent damage in Europe’s relations with Russia.
Media reports deplore a “jobs massacre” in Germany’s industrial giants like Volkswagen and Thyssenkrupp without explaining the cause as if the calamity is somehow random misfortune.
As if that is not bad enough, the incoming Trump administration is lining up heavy tariffs on exports from Europe as well as China, Canada, and Mexico. That will be a coup de grâce for the European economies delivered by its American ally.
Europe is in this appalling predicament – facing economic ruin amid a potential military conflagration – all because it has been misled by people like Ursula von der Leyen, Josep Borrell, France’s Macron, Germany’s Scholz (and Angela Merkel before him), and Netherlands former premier Mark Rutte, who is now the gung-ho head of NATO calling for more European weapons to Ukraine. Many others can be named from the Nordic countries, Poland, and the Baltic states. Rather fittingly, the European elitist political class has a long and vile history of Russophobia, going back to collaboration with Nazi Germany in its genocidal aggression against the Soviet Union.
The tragedy of Europe is not something mysterious or ill-fated. It is the direct result of elitist rulers who have assiduously conducted policies that harm European citizens. These charlatan leaders are shameless in their Russophobia and surrogacy for U.S.-led Western imperialism – even to the point of killing their own people through economic devastation or worse – world war.
The conflict in Ukraine is solvable through negotiations and dialogue that acknowledges the historical causes. From Russia’s point of view that pertains to NATO’s treacherous expansionism since the end of the Cold War.
But this is the deep dilemma facing Europe. Not one of the politicians (apart from a few honorable exceptions) is capable of thinking or acting independently because they are ideological slaves.
Rational diplomacy and respect for democracy and peace are beyond these political degenerates. Their complicity in a bankrupt system of Western imperialism makes them incapable of doing the right thing for humanity. That’s why the vile history of wars keeps repeating. They and their corrupt, warmongering system must be swept aside.
Deception, manipulation, sabotage: What the UK does to keep the Ukraine war going
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | November 30, 2024
Unless you want to be blind, it is obvious that Ukraine under the Zelensky regime is not remotely a free country. In politics, after massive repression, there are only remnants of an opposition, which face continuing oppression and harassment by the government, as even the French newspaper Le Monde, generally naïve about the Zelensky regime, has reported.
Ukraine’s public sphere is stifled by nationalist propaganda, pressure, and demonstrative, intimidating terror. Before the escalation of 2022, even a robustly propagandistic tool of Western information warfare such as Freedom House could still acknowledge that much: its 2018 report, authored by Ukrainian researcher Vyacheslav Likhachev, identified Ukraine’s Far Right organizations as “a threat to democracy” and “aggressively trying to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society, including by using force against those with opposite political and cultural views.”
Regarding Ukraine’s media, expect not much resistance from there. They are tightly controlled and, often, pro-actively obedient, whether out of misguided conviction, fear, or careerism. Even Ukraine’s Western supporters, as well as some courageous critics in Ukraine, have voiced criticism of the crude propaganda habits of the Zelensky regime.
Make no mistake: The authoritarian features of the rule of Vladimir Zelensky – formerly the object of a veritable Western personality cult that, by now, at least some devotees must feel embarrassed about – are not the result of the large-scale war. The politics of Zelenskyism, to coin an ugly but handy term, were always unusually deceitful and manipulative and, by 2021 at the latest, openly bending toward authoritarianism, as many Ukrainian critics pointed out at the time.
And yet: Imagine a future trial, maybe to be held in Ukraine, of Zelensky and his team. The defense would not be able to do much about their record of corruption, but it would certainly at least try to blame some of the former leader’s underhanded and tyrannical tendencies on the war. It would be a stretch, but lawyers have to do their best, even for the worst of clients.
In the case of the Western users of the Zelensky regime, though, such a defense would not be merely far-fetched but completely absurd. Yet a defense some of them at least might come to need. Take for instance the case of Britain’s Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland and his shadowy but numerous associates.
The unfortunately important general – boasting of his pirate ancestors and in charge of “UK-led joint and multinational overseas military operations” – and his motley crew have just been the object of an investigative exposé by Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg. In, for now, two articles, the Grayzone has detailed how, in 2022, Stickland set up a below-the-radar network of “an assortment of leading academics, authors, strategists, planners, pollsters, comms, data scientists and tech.” Under the name Project Alchemy and overlapping and liaising with another group of wannabe keyboard Ninjas calling themselves – I kid you not – “the Elders,” this conspiratorial group has worked on, in essence, keeping the Ukraine war going at any price and by means foul and fouler.
Based on leaked documents, the Grayzone’s reporting is revealing in more ways than can be discussed here. Yet, as we are dealing with prose authored by militant bureaucrats and self-weaponizing intellectuals in the land of George Orwell, that old stickler for the English language, we would be remiss not to appreciate their bizarre lingo. It brings together a certain jejune rugby field boyishness – “mischief” is proudly being made – with a militarized sociolect of corporatese: “fusion players” and “sideways thinkers” get “badged” and “meshed in” to “move at pace,” and – greatest pride of the eminent executive – stand ready to work over the weekend!
Doing what exactly? All kinds of things, really, and all based on one stupid yet once immensely popular assumption: that the proxy war in Ukraine could be leveraged to defeat Russia, reduce it to geopolitical insignificance, impose regime change on it, and even break it up. Some, including the new de facto foreign minister of the EU, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas – imagine Annalena Baerbock, but without the brilliant intellect – still seem to be on that political equivalent of an LSD trip gone terribly wrong. What a hangover it will be one day, probably soon.
In Britain, highlights of Project Alchemy groupthink included hatching plans for stay-behind sabotage networks and recommending the example of the underground “Gladio” operations that NATO ran in Western – not, please note, Eastern – Europe during the Cold War. Strictly speaking, Gladio was an Italian label, while the same bad idea had different names in other countries. By now, though, Gladio stands for a whole plethora of clandestine organizations set up, ostentatiously, to engage in partisan resistance in case of a Soviet attack and occupation.
You may feel that, in principle at least, for generals, preparing for the possibility of future partisan warfare is not an objectionable activity. Yet the issue is that, in reality, the Gladio operations were not only extremely dubious in constitutional and legal terms, as being entirely beyond democratic control and oversight, as well as tied to foreign intelligence services. In addition, these networks served to fight a dirty war against the domestic left, including by terrorism, false-flag attacks, the systematic use of far-right conspirators and terrorists, and support for military coups.
An influential, black-ops-connected British general and his chums wanting to learn lessons from Gladio for underground networks in Ukraine? The country with the best-armed (compliments of the West), most whitewashed and naively underestimated (compliments of the Western media and self-weaponizing intellectuals of the Anne Applebaum/Tim Snyder variety), most aggressive, and most militarized far right in the world? Swimming in arms right next to an EU-NATO Europe they will soon feel bitterly disappointed by? What could possibly go wrong? But maybe Charlie ‘Pirate’ Stickland is “fusion”-”thinking” “sideways” in Churchillian terms: “Set Europe Ablaze!” Yet Stickland seems to have overlooked that Churchill wanted to set it ablaze against the Nazis, not with them.
All of this is, in and of itself, very bad, if unsurprising, news. But Project Alchemy has been prolific, producing lousy ideas the way Russian industry is churning out artillery shells and missiles. There also were: a frank emphasis on “creatively using” – let’s be honest: breaking – the law so as to get silly violent things done, including “deniable ops”; a daft idea to attack the Kerch Bridge, as if Russia would not strike back (both have by now happened, the militarily useless attack and the painful payback); an anticipatory strategy of how to manipulate the British public in case it should get tired of pumping money into the proxy war; attempts to undermine BRICS-plus (thinking big and bigger); plans to shut down Russian media in the West, obviously; and, last but not least, an aggressive strategy to use covert lawfare and deliberate financial pressure to bring down Western critical media as well, including, as it happens, the Grayzone. Say what you will, but Stickland and company seem to have had a foreboding from where exactly they would get their richly deserved come-uppance.
It would be tempting to think of this wave of disinformation and manipulation in the West as a kind of “Ukrainization.” As if the West had caught the contagion of the Zelensky regime’s very bad habits. But to be fair, the West has its own, well-established tradition of waging war by massive lying on the home front. In 2019, it was the Washington Post, usually hewing close to the American government line, that ran a series of in-depth stories detailing how, during the West’s long war in Afghanistan, started almost two decades before, the US had been “at war with the truth.” Suddenly, clearly in preparation of the impending Western retreat, readers were allowed to learn that while “officials constantly said they were making progress,” they “were not, and they knew it.”
And the name of that Washington Post series? The Afghanistan Papers. That, of course, was a reference to the famous Pentagon Papers, an internal and classified Defense Department review of US policy and warfare in Vietnam that was leaked to the New York Times by the historic whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who suffered severe, criminal attempts to silence, and in effect, destroy him. The long American intervention, begun indirectly in the 1940s and escalating into one of the most brutal US campaigns of the twentieth century in the 1960s, only ended with the total defeat of both Washington and its South Vietnamese proxy in 1975.
The New York Times began to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Once again, as with the later bloody Western fiasco in Afghanistan, the moment of truth – some truth – came late, only toward the end of a policy catastrophe that had long been supported by compliant mainstream media. The Grayzone is considered alternative media, and its reporters are doing a much better job at real journalism than their competition in the mainstream version. As to the mainstream media, they clearly have not yet reached the stage of always-too-late revelation that, during the proxy wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, was marked by 1971 and 2019, respectively.
How do we know? They are ignoring the Grayzone’s sensational revelations about a military-think-tank-industry conspiracy to undermine the law, deliberately manipulate the public, and wage proxy war in a way that is both dirty and bound to backfire very badly on the West itself. One more sign that all too many in the West are not yet ready to face reality, even while the Ukrainians they claim to help but only use keep dying.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Ugly Truth of Ukraine’s Criminal Use of Chemical Weapons
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 30.11.2024
Politicization of the work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by the US and its allies is illustrated by the situation around the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, Vladimir Tarabrin, Russian Permanent Representative to the OPCW underscored at the 107th session of the organization’s Executive Council in October.
November 30 marks the Day of Remembrance for All Victims of Chemical Warfare, which is observed annually by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
This commemoration throws into focus how warnings about Ukraine’s use of toxic chemicals against Russia’s Armed Forces are being ignored by the West. Instead, fabricated allegations are being peddled against Moscow, noted Vladimir Tarabrin, Russia’s permanent representative to the OPCW.
Russia has sufficient expertise to identify facts of chemical weapons use in the zone of its special military operation in Ukraine. It is conducting investigations as required by OPCW provisions.
Unlike the unfounded accusations concocted by Ukraine and its Western patrons, Russia operates “exclusively with verified facts.”
Ukraine covertly used DM-105 chemical munitions under the guise of smoke shells in the city of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region in August, revealed Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops.
More than 400 cases of the use of chemicals such as BZ, prussic acid, chlorine cyanide, and riot-control chemical agents have been recorded in Ukraine since 2022.
Tests of wipe-samples from chemical equipment found in a lab near Avdeyevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) revealed it had been producing 3 kg of toxic substances per day.
Ready-to-use agents containing a toxic mixture based on thallium nitrate were found in a cache seized from Ukrainian troops in August 2024.
Washington boosted efforts to develop bioagents capable of selectively targeting specific ethnic groups, the Russian Defense Ministry said in August.
Ukraine procured hundreds of tons of toxic chemical precursors scheduled by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), according to the ministry.
Ukrainian forces are being trained to use chemical ammunition with Western artillery systems, captured documents and manuals show.
The US Pentagon, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and American biotech firms have been funding potentially illegal biological research in Ukraine in violation of international treaties.
Seoul: Lawmakers decry defense cost sharing with Washington
Press TV – November 28, 2024
South Korean lawmakers and activists are opposing the Special Measures Agreement on defense cost sharing with the US, criticizing it as secretive and detrimental to South Korean sovereignty.
The agreement, which includes an 8.3% increase in South Korea’s payment to the US, is seen as setting a precedent for unequal relations.
Lawmakers, joined by activists on the steps of South Korea’s National Assembly, blasted the agreement on cost sharing for US troops deployed in South Korea.
With incoming US President Donald Trump saying he wants even more money from Seoul, Progressive Party members want the deal nullified.
“If Trump calls us a money machine, let’s say this Special Measures Agreement on defense cost sharing is a robbery.
Let’s scrap the agreement and renegotiate it from the beginning.
This is what we should do as we approach the Trump era.”
Jung Hye-Kyung, South Korean Lawmaker
Those opposed to the deal argue that negotiations were secret, that it increases the public’s financial burden, undermines South Korean sovereignty, and, sets the tone for further unequal relations with the United States of America.
This 12th defense cost sharing Special Measures Agreement stipulates an 8.3% increase in South Korea’s payment to the US for the deployment of American forces at bases across the country.
During his presidential campaign, US President Elect Donald Trump called South Korea a wealthy nation that should pay more for US forces stationed in South Korea.
American forces have been deployed in South Korea since the end of the 1950 to 53 Korean War.
But the mission of the 28,500 US troops here has shifted with US strategic interests to contain China.
“The nature of the United States Forces Korea is changing a lot on the Korean peninsula; the USFK is playing a role in keeping China in check.
If that is the case, the US also needs to pay for the use of the bases on the Korean peninsula or pay for the cost of stationing troops here.”
Kang Hye-Jin, Peace Activist
Each round of the closed door talks faced intense opposition.
This week, South Korean lawmakers shall debate the US troop cost sharing deal in committees, likely to include dissenting opinions, before potentially ratifying the agreement.
Is the US Fueling a New Nuclear Arms Race?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 29.11.2024
The pace of US nuclear weapons modernization is accelerating, meaning Washington has de facto launched an arms race against Russia and China, the Roscongress Foundation warned in its recent report obtained by Sputnik.
The report outlined key developments:
- The US is planning to spend about $138 billion on the modernization of nuclear warheads until FY 2049.
- Another $500 billion will be spent on stockpile management, including dismantling and disposal of components of warheads removed from armaments, as well as research, development, testing and evaluation, other weapons activities and, finally, infrastructure operations.
- Over 67,000 employees have been involved in the implementation of the US nuclear weapons modernization program. Their number has increased by more than 70% over the past ten years.
- The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has fast-tracked plutonium pit production, with a 2018 plan to produce 80 pits annually for nuclear warheads.
- In addition, the US is modernizing most of the nuclear weapons storage bases in Europe. Presently, the US stores its tactical nuclear weapons at six bases in five NATO member countries, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkiye.
- In 2023, the Pentagon received over 200 updated nuclear munitions, which was the largest annual delivery since the end of the Cold War.
According to Federation of American Scientists, the total inventory of US nuclear warheads amounts to 5,044 including 1,770 deployed warheads, 1,938 reserved for operational forces, and 1,336 retired warheads.
The State Department estimates that the US had roughly 1,420 warheads deployed on 662 missiles and bombers as of March 1, 2023, including:
- Minuteman III ICBM 396 warheads
- Trident (D-5) SLBM 981 warheads
- B-52 bombers 33 warheads
- B-2 bombers 10 warheads
According to US Congressional Budget Office 2023 estimates, US programs to operate and modernize nuclear forces would cost $756 billion over the next 10 years.
Washington’s War in Ukraine: Narrowing Options, Growing Consequences
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – November 29, 2024
Russia’s use of its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in eastern Ukraine represents an unprecedented escalation in what began as a US proxy war against Russia in 2014.
The missile’s capabilities represent a serious non-nuclear means of striking targets anywhere in Europe without the collective West’s ability to sufficiently defend against it.
The possibility of the West now facing direct consequences for what has so far been a proxy war, may reintroduce rational thought across the West otherwise not required when spending the lives of others. It may, however, cause Western policymakers to double down, confident in the belief that they remain decoupled from any possible consequences despite unprecedented escalation.
The missile’s use is only the latest demonstration of Russia’s military and escalatory dominance amid the ongoing proxy war. It alone would be unable to significantly impact the fighting, but because the Russian Federation over the last two decades has invested deeply in the fundamentals of national defense, it compliments a range of other capabilities serving as a deterrence against continued Western encroachment.
Before the deployment of the Oreshnik, the progress of Russian forces along the line of contact in Ukraine had been accelerating, triggering panic across the capitals of Western nations. This was not achieved through any single “wonder weapon,” but through Russia’s post-Cold War strategy of preparing its military forces and its military industrial capacity to wage a large-scale, prolonged, and intense conflict against Western-backed forces building up along Russia’s borders.
This included the development and large-scale production of both simple and advanced weapons ranging from main battle tanks and other armored vehicles, to drones, cruise missiles, air defense systems, and electronic warfare capabilities.
Because Russia’s arms industry operates under state-owned enterprises prioritizing state needs over generating profit, the systems required in terms of both quality and quantity were made available. This was possible because surplus production capacity had been maintained across a large number of Russian arms production facilities. Excess labor and equipment that would have been slashed by private enterprise across the West to maximize profits was maintained if and when needed. Come February 2022, this excess capacity was utilized and has since been the central factor contributing to Russia’s growing success against NATO-backed forces in Ukraine.
The West, on the other hand, is suffering a growing military industrial crisis. Excess production capacity needs to be built from scratch, taking years or longer. Across the collective West, skilled labor shortages prevent assembly lines from being expanded significantly, even if the will and resources exist to do so. In all areas of production, from air defense missiles to artillery shells, the collective West is struggling to meet even the most meager production targets.
Washington, determined to prevail in Ukraine either outright or through severely overextending Russia amid this proxy war, has steadily escalated the conflict from 2014 when the US overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, to 2019 when the US began arming Ukrainian forces already being trained by NATO, to full-spectrum sanctions on Russia from 2022 onward, to the transfer of artillery, tanks, aircraft, and long-range missiles the US has now finally authorized strikes into Russia itself with.
Each escalation represents an attempt by Washington and its European proxies to inflict prohibitive costs on Russia. As each escalation falls far short of doing so, additional escalations are devised.
Recently, France and the UK have discussed the possibility of sending their own troops into Ukraine as yet another serious escalation of a war the collective West is already all but fighting against Russia directly.
It should be remembered that the US is also engineering crises elsewhere along Russia’s periphery, including Georgia as well as Syria, to similarly overextend Russia. Recent military operations carried out by US-backed extremists in Syria were likely prepared months in advance and launched as a substitute for the Westn’s own inability to overpower Russia in Ukraine.
Narrowing Options, Growing Consequences
Even without the Oreshnik’s appearance amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, it is clear that the West’s attempts to escalate versus Russia have fallen far short of extending Russia in the manner many Western analysts, politicians, and military leaders have hoped.
The wider geopolitical effect appears to be bolstering rather than undermining the shift from US-led unipolarism toward multipolarism.
Options for escalating are narrowing for the West. The deployment of Western forces in Ukraine would lead to the same problems Ukrainian troops themselves face – a lack of artillery shells, armored vehicles, and air defense systems to protect their forces from the 4,000+ missiles Russia has fired on Ukraine each year.
The Oreshnik itself represents a non-nuclear means of striking at any target either in Ukraine or across the rest of Europe. It would be a means by which to inflict serious damage on European and American military targets in the region, further reducing the West’s already dwindling military power. The missile, like many others in Russia’s growing arsenal, would be able to overcome Western air and missile defenses both because of fundamental flaws in their performance and because Western stockpiles of interceptors have been exhausted with no means of readily replenishing them.
Because the collective West’s military industrial capacity is so limited versus its overreaching pursuit of global primacy, the use of its military aviation, cruise missiles, and other existing capabilities can only be committed in one of at least three primary regions of focus – Europe, the Middle East, or the Asia-Pacific.
Were the US and Europe to commit significant forces to a direct conflict with Russia in Ukraine, even if it fell short of nuclear war, it would exhaust military power the West sought to preserve for potential war with either Iran and/or China. While there would be no guarantee that these capabilities would tilt the conflict in Ukraine back in their favor, it would guarantee that US-European ambitions in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific would be forfeited indefinitely.
It could be that the US seeks to extend its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine across the rest of Europe, with the US itself preserving its military capabilities for its continued involvement in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific. But the conflict in Ukraine has exposed fundamental flaws in the collective West’s system overall. A system incapable of collectively overpowering Russia, having exhausted itself in the process of trying, will have less fortune still overpowering a much larger and more capable China.
While the US may believe it improves its chances by shifting the burden of intervention in Ukraine to its European proxies, the US still suffers from a fundamental inability itself to produce the number of arms and ammunition required to fight a similar conflict in the Asia-Pacific.
The introduction of the Oreshnik, a capability China will also almost certainly be capable of producing if it does not already possess it – represents a further means of deterring the US and its proxies – a promise of non-nuclear consequences in a missile exchange the US and Europe would enter at a disadvantage. This, on top of a large and growing disparity in terms of military industrial capacity, confines US and European options to resorting to nuclear weapons or reformulating a more realistic and constructive foreign policy in the first place.
Because Russia and China possess their own large and growing stockpiles of nuclear weapons – the West’s use of such weapons really isn’t an option. But because the current circles of power in the West lack the military strength, intelligence, and moral fortitude to reformulate their foreign policy, from their point of view, they may believe in the possibility of a limited nuclear war they could emerge from with an advantage, believing this may be their only option. Thus, the notion of mutually assured destruction must be fully impressed upon the West now as it was during the Cold War, reintroducing the fear of personal consequences for policymakers so rational thought unnecessary when spending the lives of others can be reintroduced into the equation.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.
US mercenary firms compete for ‘huge contracts’ to control security in north Gaza: Report
The Cradle | November 28, 2024
Israel is examining the launch of a “pilot program” that could see US private security firms replace the army in northern Gaza to “accompany food and medicine convoys” for Palestinians who remain in the devastated region, according to a report by Israeli daily Globes.
Among the top competitors for the multi-million dollar contract are Constellis, the direct successor to infamous mercenary company Blackwater, and Orbis, a little-known South Carolina company run by former generals that has worked with the Pentagon for 20 years.
Officials say the pilot program for north Gaza aims to “prevent Hamas or other gangs from taking over the aid trucks and free the IDF soldiers from the dangerous mission.”
In recent weeks, Gaza’s interior ministry established a new police force to deal with groups of bandits and gangs that have been raiding humanitarian aid shipments and blackmailing international organizations in the southern Gaza Strip.
The UN has said these gangs are likely “benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” or “protection” from the Israeli army.
In October, a third US security firm – Global Delivery Company (GDC) – which describes itself as “Uber for warzones” – claimed to be working with another firm to create and manage “humanitarian bubbles” in Gaza.
GDC is run by Mordechai Kahane, an Israeli businessman who worked with Israeli intelligence during the war on Syria to arm extremist groups seeking to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Although no official figure exists about the size of the contracts being offered by Tel Aviv for these mercenary firms, Globes cites Lt. Col. Yochanan Zoraf, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and former advisor on Arab affairs in the Israeli army, as saying the figure will likely reach “billions of shekels per year.”
“These are not companies that will manage the daily lives of the residents,” Zoraf claims, adding that “peripheral responsibility for the defense of [north Gaza] as well as the civil responsibility itself” falls at Israel’s feet.
The former army officer also says Tel Aviv will likely “ask that the US – or an outside party – finance the program.”
On Tuesday, Israel Hayom reported that the pilot program has yet to receive approval from the security cabinet “due to legal difficulties in defining the occupation” based on international law.
“In order to circumvent the legal obstacles, the security services are examining bringing in external funding from humanitarian aid organizations or foreign countries for the [mercenary firms], which costs tens of millions of dollars to operate,” the report adds.
Since the start of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the Israeli government has turned to mercenaries to overcome an enlistment crisis. This includes cooperation with German intelligence to recruit asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria.
“Over the past seven months, the Values Initiative Association and the German–Israeli Association (DIG) have worked to enlist these refugees from war-torn Muslim-majority countries as mercenaries for Israel. Offered monthly salaries ranging between €4,000 to €5,000 and fast-tracked German citizenship, many have joined the fight. Reports suggest that around 4,000 immigrants were naturalized between September and October alone,” writes The Cradle columnist Mohamed Nader al-Omari.
A ‘position of strength’ for the West and Ukraine doesn’t exist anymore
As long as Kiev’s backers keep deluding themselves that Russia can be defeated or forced to accept unfavorable terms, the war will not end
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | November 28, 2024
“To negotiate from a position of strength” is a favorite cliché of the West. And understandably so, as that short phrase is quite handy: It serves to cover up the opposite of a genuine negotiation, namely vulgar blackmail and crude imposition of fait-accompli terms, backed up by force and threats of force.
The expansion of NATO after the end of the Cold War, for instance, was handled in that manner: “Oh, but we are willing to talk,” the West kept saying to Russia, “and, meanwhile, we will do exactly as we please, and your objections, interests, and security be damned.”
This approach seemed to “work” – very much for want of a better term – as long as Russia was weakened by the unusually deep political, economic, social, military, and, indeed, spiritual crisis that accompanied the end of the Soviet Union and outlasted it for roughly a decade.
When, finally, Moscow tried to put the West on notice that Russia had recovered sufficiently to demand a healthier style of interaction, Western media informed their publics only in a biased and superficial manner. And Western elites reacted with irritation, while also failing to at least take seriously what irritated them. That is what happened, for instance, after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s now famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Yes, that long ago already.
In other words, Western elites obstinately kept insisting on believing in their own rhetoric, even while it was quickly losing whatever tenuous link to reality it had, for a short moment that was historically anomalous. While Russia’s (and not only Russia’s) “strength” was clearly increasing and that of the West decreasing, non-”negotiating” by force and fait accompli remained a Western addiction. That, obviously, is a large part of the very sad story of how Ukraine was turned into rubble.
Which brings us to the present. At this point, it takes clinical-grade delusion not to notice that “strength” is on Moscow’s side in the war in and over Ukraine. Russian troops are “advancing at the fastest rate” since early 2022, the gung-ho, pro-NATO British Telegraph admits. Ukraine’s forces remain over-aged, over-matched, over-burdened, and stretched thin. Units designed to hold a 5-kilometer line are frequently assigned to 10 or 15 kilometers. Russia has clear, even crushing superiority in artillery and sheer manpower as well: ordinary soldiers, NCOs, and officers – all are scarce on the Ukrainian side. Ukraine’s predictably wasteful August incursion into the Kursk Region of Russia, meanwhile, faces an intense Russian counterattack that, as the Wall Street Journal admits coyly, “appears to be working.” Russia’s pressure in an air war waged with various missiles and drones is relentless.
Unsurprisingly, the mood of Ukraine’s population is reflecting these difficulties. The Economist – only slightly more refined than the Telegraph in its stoutly Russophobic bellicosity – reports Gallup polls showing that a majority of Ukrainians want negotiations to end the war. Within a year, their share has risen from 27% to 52%, while those claiming that they would prefer to go on to the bitter end (misnaming that option as “victory” ) has declined from 63% to 38%. If those false “friends of Ukraine,” who apparently believe friendship consists in burning up your buddies in a proxy war, were serious about their once so fashionable rhetoric about Ukrainians’ “agency,” they would now be helping the Ukrainians to make peace by concessions.
All the more as Ukrainian pollsters confirm the Gallup data, according to Ukrainian semi-dissident news site Strana.ua. They found that almost two thirds of Ukrainians (64%) are ready for “freezing” the war along the current front lines, that is by giving up on all territories under de facto Russian control. Well over half (56%) think that “victory” should not be defined as retaking all territories within Ukraine’s 1991 borders. Meaning they, too, explicitly disagree with the long-held, if now perhaps quietly eroding, official position of the Zelensky regime and are prepared to concede territory for peace. And while reading such poll figures, always keep in mind that Ukraine is now a de facto authoritarian, media-streamlined, and oppressive country where voicing doubt takes special courage – or despair.
And then, there is Trump. Despite his campaign promises to rapidly shut down the proxy war, it remains impossible to predict what exactly president-elect Donald Trump will do once he is inaugurated in January. It would be imprudent to simply assume that he will force the Zelensky regime into a peace Moscow can agree to. Trump has chosen retired General Keith Kellogg as his special envoy for Ukraine. Kellogg, at this stage, represents the ambiguity of the Trumpist approach: He is the co-author of a think-tank paper published before the elections under the title “America First, Russia, & Ukraine.” While its policy proposals provide more reasons to worry for Kiev than Moscow, the paper also displays unrealistic assumptions, such as that Russia can still be coerced by threats of further escalation or will settle for a mere postponing – instead of complete elimination – of Ukraine’s NATO perspective.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for one, has just articulated a certain skepticism, declaring that a settlement is still far off, in essence, because the West is not yet ready to face reality. This, again, is all the more likely as Moscow insists not only on territorial changes but also real neutrality for Ukraine, taking NATO membership – whether official or by stealth – off the table forever.
And yet, there can be no doubt that from Kiev’s perspective, Trump and at least part of his team look and very well could be dangerous. Not, really, for Ukraine and ordinary Ukrainians, who need this initially avoidable war to end, but for the Zelensky regime and the often corrupt, war-profiteering elites tied to it. In addition, reports are emerging that Trump’s team is also considering opening direct contact with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. That as well could be a sign that Trump’s inauguration may really be followed by a political turn against continuing the proxy war, insofar as claims that North Korean combat troops have entered the war on Russia’s side have served to justify the Western escalation of helping Ukraine fire Western missiles into Russia.
In short, the West and Ukraine’s Zelensky regime are on the back foot, militarily, geopolitically, and in terms of popular support inside Ukraine as well. And what is their reaction? This is where there’s another perverse twist as only Western elites can come up with: With its proxy war project of using Ukraine to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia in tatters, instead of signaling a willingness to change course, the West – whether sincerely or as a bluff – is outdoing itself in militant rhetoric and some serious escalatory action, too.
In Washington, the outgoing Biden administration’s decision not simply to permit but to assist in the launching of Western missiles into Russia is only the tip of the iceberg. Crushingly defeated in the elections and clearly without a real mandate, the Democrats are doing everything they can to heap up more combustible material between the West and Russia: Moscow is facing yet more sanctions affecting its banking and energy sector, the delivery of US land mines to Ukraine, and Washington’s official lifting of restrictions on US mercenaries getting active in Ukraine (not that that makes much of a real-life difference; they are, of course, already there). US secretary of state Antony Blinken has been explicit that the aim is to release a maximum amount of aid before Trump comes into office with the intention – unrealistic yet destructive – of making Ukraine fit to fight next year.
In Europe, the UK has already rapidly followed the US lead – as is its wont – and also helped Ukraine fire missiles into Russia. With France, things seem a little murkier in that regard, but that may only be due to Paris preferring to do things a little more quietly. In any case, London and Paris have come together, if in a haphazard way, in once again publicly toying with the harebrained notion of bringing Western ground forces – including officially, not black-ops/mercenary style as of now – into the war. The ideas reported are vague and contradictory, it is true: the spectrum of potential deployment seems to reach from sending NATO-Europeans – for instance, French, British, or Polish troops – to die on the frontlines in a direct clash with a battle-hardened, well-equipped, and highly motivated Russian army to much more modest schemes, involving stationing them in what will be left of Ukraine after the fighting ends.
It is also unclear whether the reports of such plans – if that is the word – first surfacing in the French newspaper Le Monde are to be taken seriously at all. We may be looking at another hapless attempt to produce “strategic ambiguity,” i.e. to try to impress Moscow with things Moscow knows the West cannot really do. If so, the West can’t even keep up a poker face: British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has already come out to reassure the British public that his country will not send ground troops. Even tiny Estonia felt a need to chime in: Its defense minister Hanno Pevkur has publicly argued against sending ground troops, too. Instead, he suggested, the West should ramp up its financial and military-industrial support for Ukraine.
And that, it seems, may be where things are really going. Or, at least, where the West’s most stubborn bellicists want to take them. In the case of the UK and France as well, not all discussions have focused on troops. Instead, the military enterprises DCI (in France) and Babcock (in Britain) are a key part of the debates. In addition, there are, of course, ongoing training efforts. The UK has by now pre-processed over 40,000 Ukrainian troops for the proxy war meat grinder. France is setting up a whole brigade.
It is a wide-open question if European NATO members, economically squeezed and soon to be at least semi-abandoned by the US, will be able to afford such a strategy. Most likely, not. And yet, what matters for now are elite illusions that it could. Trying alone will be extremely destructive, for the people of Europe as well as of Ukraine.
If I were Ukrainian, I would look at all of this with dread, because if that is the NATO-European approach to keeping the war going – boosting equipment and training – then it, of course, means that even more Ukrainians will have to be mobilized and sacrificed. Indeed, the Biden desperados have just put fresh pressure on Kiev to lower the conscription age to 18 and sacrifice even more Ukrainians in a lost war. Their prospects are grim, and by now, they are openly told so, by no one less than Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief. Speaking to Ukrainian troops training in Britain, Valery Zaluzhny has just stressed that dying is their most likely fate. The West and its Ukrainian servants have reached the “Banzai!” charge stage of the war. But then, Zaluzhny also believes that World War Three has already started. So, nothing to lose, it seems.
Yet here is the final irony of this bleak picture: In the US, Joe Biden is the lamest of ducks, discredited in every way conceivable, including his de facto participation in Israel’s Gaza genocide. Emmanuel Macron in France must be the least popular president since the Fifth Republic started in the late 1950s, kept in office by constitutional mis-design and manipulation; Britain’s Keir Starmer has alienated his people to such an extent that an unprecedented de facto plebiscite is on its way to get rid of him. It won’t be able to actually push him out, but it certainly signals the depth of the public’s contempt. And Valery Zaluzhny, from Ukraine, but currently a misfit of an ambassador in London? He may actually have quite a future in Ukrainian politics, which is precisely why he was exiled to Britain. But for now, he, too, is a marginalized, sometimes slightly comical figure.
Acting “from a position of strength”? It is striking: Not only is the West in general no longer in that position. The most belligerent figures in the West now often are the ones with the weakest popular mandates at home. Compensatory behavior? A desperate attempt to distract from or to overcome that weakness? Sheer arrogance reaching delusional loss-of-reality level? Who knows? What is certain is that as long as the West is under this kind of management, Lavrov will be right and peace will remain remote.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
The Russian General Staff Prepares Retaliation Friday Night-Saturday Morning
Gorilla Radio Reviews the Coming Russian Message for the Trump Warfighters
By John Helmer | Dances With Bears | November 27, 2024
On Tuesday afternoon, November 26, the Russian Defense Ministry issued an unusual bulletin revealing that since the Oreshnik strike on November 21, the US had launched two ATACMS attacks across the Ukrainian border on Russian military targets in the Kursk region. The first of these on an S-400 air defence unit on November 23 had not been disclosed before. Both the November 23 and November 25 ATACMS strikes, totalling 13 missiles in all, had been partially intercepted. Russian casualties were suffered, including several fatalities.
The Defense Ministry also telegraphed its punch. “Retaliatory actions are being prepared,” the bulletin concluded.
Earlier that same morning, November 26, the airspace around the Oreshnik launch site at Kapustin Yar — east of Volgograd in the north of Astrakhan region — was identified for closure to civilian flights by an international notice to airmen (NOTAM). The notice said the no-flight zone would start at 04:00 on Thursday, November 27, and continue until 20:00 on Saturday, November 30. Kapustin Yar was the launch pad for the first Oreshnik strike on the Yuzhmash plant at Dniepropetrovsk on November 21.
The flight distance for that Russian missile from launch to target was 800 kilometers. If a second Oreshnik strike is being prepared at Kapustin Yar, the range to US and Ukrainian military bunkers at Kiev is within 1,100 kms; to the comparable military targets in Lvov, 1,600 kms; to the US-Ukrainian base at Rzeszów, on the Polish side of the border, 1,750 kms. The Oreshnik can strike targets at up to 5,000 kms, making it an “intermediate range”, not an “intercontinental range” missile.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 27, President Vladimir Putin arrived in Astana, Kazakhastan, for two days of talks. He is due to return from Kazakhstan on the evening of Thursday, November 28.
Once the president is in Moscow, he will be in position to order, direct, and follow a retaliation strike by the General Staff against US and Ukrainian targets. If the strike flies at Oreshnik speed of Mach 10 to Mach 12, the operation will run from 5 to 9 minutes. If a 30-minute advance warning is sent to the US, and if a civilian evacuation warning is also issued, as Putin has foreshadowed, then one hour on Friday or Saturday will be what Putin has called the “danger zone”.
“In case of an escalation of aggressive actions,” Putin has said, “we will respond decisively and in mirror-like manner… It goes without saying that when choosing, if necessary and as a retaliatory measure, targets to be hit by systems such as Oreshnik on Ukrainian territory, we will in advance suggest that civilians and citizens of friendly countries residing in those areas leave danger zones. We will do so for humanitarian reasons, openly and publicly, without fear of counter-moves coming from the enemy, who will also be receiving this information.”
The Defense Ministry has now confirmed the escalation by the US on November 23 and 25. Putin will decide his retaliation before Saturday evening.
***
Led by Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio, listen to the discussion of what is about to happen, and of the Trump officials to whom the Kremlin and the General Staff are sending their message.
Click to play: https://gradio.substack.com/
The discussion begins at Minute 32.
The warning issued by Russia’s Deputy UN Representative Dmitry Polyansky, quoted partially in the broadcast, was this: “We believe it is our right to use our weapons against military facilities in those countries which allow their weapons to be used against our facilities. We’ve warned you about this, but you’ve made your choice.” Note that Polyansky’s warning identifies the target of retaliatory action to be “military facilities”.
Atlanticists mobilise to salvage NATO as Russia toughens its stance
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | November 28, 2024
The American film maker and philanthropist who created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, George Lucas, once said, “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Within a week of Russia “testing” the Oreshnik hypersonic missile in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, against which the NATO has no defence, the Western alliance is already transiting through the Dark Side from fear to hatred and hurtling toward unspeakable suffering.
The Russian Defence Ministry has disclosed that since the Oreshnik’s appearance in the war zone, Ukraine carried out two more attacks on Russian territory with ATACMS missiles. In the first attack on November 23, five ATACMS missiles were fired at an S-400 anti-aircraft missile division near the village of Lotarevka in Kursk Region. The Pantsir missile defense system, which provided cover for this division, destroyed three of them while two missiles reached the target damaging the radar. There are casualties among the personnel.
In the second attack by 8 ATACMS missiles at the Kursk-Vostochny airfield on Monday, seven were shot down while one missile reached the target. The falling debris slightly damaged the infrastructure facilities and two servicemen suffered minor injuries. The Russian MOD stated that “retaliatory actions are being prepared.”
The Russian military experts estimate that the attacks were planned for some time and the Americans handled the targeting. On November 25, the White House acknowledged for the first time the shift in policy allowing the use of ATACMS to attack Russian territory. Admiral John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the White House National Security Council, revealed during a press gaggle on Monday, inter alia, saying that “well, obviously we did change the guidance and gave them [Kiev] guidance that they could use them, you know, to strike these particular types of targets.”
Following the attack on Monday, Ukraine sought an emergency meeting of the NATO–Ukraine Council in Brussels at the level of permanent representatives. Oreshnik was the main topic, and the need to strengthen the air defence system. The NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said later, “Our support for Ukraine helps it fight, but we need to go further to change the trajectory of this conflict.”
No doubt, NATO is very concerned about the emergent situation but still won’t accept a Russian victory. Hotheads in the West are once again talking about the deployment of troops by NATO countries to Ukraine for combat operations, which was originally mooted by French President Emmanuel Macron in February.
But plainly put, unless the US is willing to put boots on the ground, the rest of NATO will simply run around like a headless chicken. The UK with an 80,000-strong army has very few combat units; the 175,000-strong German army has forgotten how to fight; and France is in deep political and economic crisis. As for the US, public opinion opposes wars and president-elect Donald Trump cannot ignore it.
However, petrified that Trump may turn his back on the war, there is a school of thought in Europe that they could offer something interesting to incentivise him other than the carrot of Ukraine’s vast stores of critical minerals that Americans lack — eg., more trading incentives for America; greater spending on NATO; more pressure on Iran; “peacekeeping boots on the ground” inside Ukraine; help in Trump’s upcoming economic skirmishes with China and so on. Meanwhile, much brainstorming is going on in the US too as to how to save NATO from Trump’s scalpel.
A Guardian columnist wrote, “If the EU and UK seize the $300bn of Russian state assets sitting in Euroclear, money Putin has long written off, we can bring serious funding to the table. Trump does not need to spend any more money on Ukraine – we can buy the weapons. America can even make a profit while securing peace in Europe. Trump would be able to show how he got those parasitic Europeans to cough up, prove his detractors wrong by rebooting America’s most traditional alliances – all while putting “America first”.”
All this testifies to the angst in the European mind that Oreshnik has forced a paradigm shift in the Ukraine war. The triumphalist betting that Russia would be bluffing on nuclear deterrence has given way to fear, since Russia now may not need nuclear weapons to retaliate against attacks on its territory. Oreshnik is a non-nuclear weapon, it is by no means a weapon of mass destruction but is a high-precision weapon of immense destructive power that annihilates its targets — and Europeans have no means to defend against it.
Succinctly put, if Biden’s plan to “Trump-proof” the Ukraine war has put Europe and Ukraine in a royal fix making them a punch bag for Russia. Make no mistake, Oreshnik will soon make sure that there won’t even be a proxy regime in Ukraine for the West to “support”. It is humiliating to watch the proxy’s nose being rubbed in the dust.
A punishing Russian retaliation is imminent for the two latest ATACMS attacks. The sharp deterioration in Russia’s ties with the UK suggests a high probability that Britain could be in Moscow’s crosshairs. The station chief of the British intelligence in the embassy in Moscow has been expelled; western reports cite significant supplies of Storm Shadow missiles (numbering 150) to Ukraine lately after the election of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The top Russian military expert Alexei Leonkov told Izvestia newspaper, “Here is the fact of the US targeting, here are the fragments of the ATACMS missile, by which it can be clearly identified. We have the right to strike back. Where and how will be decided by the Ministry of Defence and the Supreme Commander—in-Chief. He [Putin] said that they would be warned about the impact. Our enemies must prepare for an answer.
The big question is at what point Russia may strike the NATO military hubs in Romania and Poland. The former Russian President and Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday that all bets are off. “If the conflict develops by the escalation scenario, it is impossible to rule out anything, because the NATO member states have effectively got fully involved in this conflict,” he said in an interview with Al Arabiya.
Medvedev added in chilling words, “The Western states must realise that they fight on Ukraine’s side… Meanwhile, they fight not only by shipping weapons and providing money. They fight directly, because they provide targets on Russian territory and control American and European missiles. They fight with the Russian Federation. And if this is the case, nothing could be ruled out… even the most difficult and sad scenario is possible.
“We would not want such scenario, we have all said that repeatedly. We want peace, but this peace must take Russia’s interest into consideration in full.”
Indeed, the only logical explanation for Biden’s brinkmanship in collusion with the Atlanticists in Europe in the lame duck phase of his presidency is that Oreshnik has upstaged his best-laid plans. Saner voices in Europe are speaking up. In a hugely symbolic act of defiance, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico disclosed on Wednesday that he has accepted an official invitation from Putin to the events in Moscow in May commemorating the 80th anniversary of Victory in World War II. Slovakia is a member country of both EU and NATO.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in a telephone conversation with Trump, reaffirmed Austria’s readiness to serve as a platform for international peace talks on Ukraine. During the conversation, Trump reportedly evinced interest in Nehammer’s previous exchanges with Putin on Ukraine.
Rumble Sues California Over Censorship Law That Impacts Satire
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | November 27, 2024
A new legal challenge, spearheaded by Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, has thrust the state of California into the spotlight once again over allegations of infringing on free speech rights. This federal lawsuit, lodged on behalf of video-sharing platform Rumble, argues that two new California statutes unconstitutionally restrict users’ ability to share political content online.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
Under these controversial laws, specifically AB 2655, platforms like Rumble are coerced into policing and removing content that the state deems harmful. These regulations have been criticized for compelling platforms to censor speech, thereby becoming unwilling agents of government censorship. According to ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler, in a press release sent to Reclaim The Net, “California’s war against political speech is censorship, plain and simple. We can’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates.” He emphasized the importance of platforms like Rumble, which resist governmental pressures to curtail free expression.
The complaint details the operational challenges: “The law forces Rumble to undertake the impossible task of training its team to recognize and then remove and label content based on inherently vague and subjective terms on which even pollsters and government officials cannot agree, such as what content may be ‘likely to harm’ electoral prospects or may likely undermine confidence in an election.”
Further, Rumble contends that AB 2655 oversteps by altering and compelling the speech of private entities, thus infringing upon their rights to free speech. It argues that neither the Constitution nor Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act allows California to “alter and compel Rumble’s speech while also mandating that it censor its users’ speech. As such, this Court should enjoin AB 2655 and declare it unlawful.”
The genesis of these laws can be traced back to July when a parody video targeting Vice President Kamala Harris spurred Gov. Gavin Newsom to advocate for making such content illegal. Subsequently, the California Legislature expedited the passage of these laws, which Gov. Newsom signed into action on September 17. AB 2839, in particular, imposes vague criteria to penalize individuals for sharing content related to elections, such as political memes and parodies.
In the detailed legal challenge, attorneys argue that AB 2655 forces Rumble to alter its own speech and police its users’ speech based on arbitrary criteria that even experts cannot uniformly interpret. The law imposes a duty on Rumble to train staff to identify and mitigate content that could potentially damage a politician’s reputation or undermine confidence in elections — criteria seen as inherently subjective.
This lawsuit follows a similar successful defense of free speech by ADF on behalf of The Babylon Bee and attorney Kelly Chang Rickert, leading to a temporary halt on enforcing AB 2839 against them while their legal battle continues.
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