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The 17th Amendment Allowed Empire

Tales of the American Empire | May 9, 2024

Most Americans know that political corruption is destroying the United States, which devotes massive resources to expand and rule its empire. The US Constitution was written to keep some power in the hands of the states, who appointed their US Senators, but the 17th Amendment, promoted by American business titans and ratified in 1913, removed this control with direct Senate elections to allow the centralization of power in Washington DC. Repealing the 17th Amendment is a simple idea that would have an immediate impact on the nation as states regain control of the federal government. US Senators would suddenly focus funding on helping people in their state and have little interest in military interventions overseas.

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“Trump Tanks ‘Bipartisan’ $60 Billion Ukraine-Border Deal”; Glenn Greenwald describes our corrupt Senate; January 27, 2024;    • Trump Tanks “Bipartisan” $60 Billion …  

Related Tale: “A Genocide Called World War I”;    • The Genocide Called World War I  

“Ben Sasse Calls for Repealing 17th Amendment, Eliminating Popular-Vote Senate Elections”; Brittany Bernstein; National Review; September 9, 2020

“NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data”; Ashley Belanger; Arstechnica; January 26, 2024

May 12, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

US contradictory report on Israeli arms: credibility vs. inconsistency

Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024

Between “credible and reliable” Israeli assurances that it will use US weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law, thus allowing for the further transfer of American arms to “Israel” amid its war on Gaza, and saying it was “reasonable” to assess that “Israel” did use US-supplied weapons that were “inconsistent” with its international humanitarian law obligations, the US seems lost for words when it comes to “Israel’s” use of its arms.

According to the American administration, the Israeli occupation has most likely violated international standards when it came to the protection of civilians in Gaza, the United States Department of State told Congress on Friday, as reported by The New York Times.

While the Israeli occupation is violating international standards, the US argued that there was no justification for withholding military aid.

The State Department report said the Israeli occupation “has the knowledge, experience, and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations.” However, “Israel” is still not being held accountable for not doing so.

“The results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” as to whether the Israeli occupation forces are making sufficient use of said tools, the report acknowledged.

Still, the report, in one of its many contradictions, said the US had no hard proof of Israeli violations in Gaza.

It underlined difficulties faced by Washington in collecting reliable information from Gaza, especially since the Israeli occupation was yet to share complete information to verify whether weapons it had been given by the US were used in specific incidents involving human rights violations.

Finally, somehow, the report differentiates between the broader potential for the Israeli occupation to have breached international law and drawing conclusions based on specific incidents that could substantiate what has been proven as factual time and time again.

For now, it seems that the Biden administration finds assurances given by “Israel”, i.e., mere word of mouth, that it would use US arms consistently with international law, sufficient.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ukraine War

By William Schryver | imetatronink | May 11, 2024

The essay below was originally published in early July 2022. Version 1.0 of #TheMotherOfAllProxyArmies in Ukraine had been severely attrited, and Version 2.0 would not appear until later in the summer.

Nevertheless, it had already become very apparent that the Russian strategy and doctrine for this war was not at all what the vast majority of western military “experts” expected it to be. And consequently they lacked the capacity to understand what was happening.

For the most part, they still don’t get it.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million Ukrainians (and a few thousand NATO-affiliated “volunteers”) have been sacrificed on the altar of western hubris and military ineptitude. Vast quantities of western equipment and ammunition has been expended — to the point of near-exhaustion in European NATO countries, and acute depletion of American stockpiles.

And yet the doctrine and tactics described in this mid-2022 article have changed only in the sense that the Russians have consistently refined and improved them along the way, even as the US/NATO have effectively learned nothing.

I’ve watched a LOT of drone footage from this war. I’ve seen, from a bird’s eye view, as it were, the design of the field fortifications Ukraine constructed, with NATO guidance, over the course of eight years.

The logic of these miles and miles of fortifications harkens back to the 1864-65 Battle of Petersburg (US Civil War), with a few World War I innovations thrown in for good measure.

It is a logic where victory largely depends on you not running out of men, heavy weaponry, and ammunition — and the enemy being comparatively stupid.

In many ways, the revealed logic of Ukraine’s long-prepared strategy for this war is a reflection of American military delusions and vanities, which multiplied and solidified over the course of the brief and fleeting “unipolar moment”.

Despite not having won a war since 1945, the US military is consumed with the vanity that it has always dominated opposing forces in every conflict.

There is a measure of truth in this perspective. But it is irrelevant. Because, since no later than the Korean War, the US has not faced a peer or near-peer adversary in a high-intensity conflict. The US military has not been, for almost three-quarters of a century, truly tested “under-fire”.

The US has measured its battlefield mettle, for decades, against brave sandal-shod men with AK-47s, RPGs, and a certain savoir faire for constructing IEDs.

But they have never faced anything like Russian artillery or missiles – not even in Hollywood movies or video games.

Consequently, the Pentagon’s self-perception of unquestioned supremacy has served to disinform and corrupt its doctrinal and procurement decisions for multiple generations of its officer corps. For most US generals and admirals, all potential opponents are underestimated.

That said, I believe a great many have now been awakened from their intellectual slumber by the manner in which the Russian armed forces quickly assessed the Ukrainian order of battle, and then professionally adapted their strengths and tactics to decisively defeat it.

The Battle of the Donbass

Here is a brief summation of the Russian tactical approach to the Battle of the Donbass:

Step #1: Advance reconnaissance units (often in force, with dozens or hundreds of drones overhead) to assess the situation; draw fire; relay to commanders raw video and geo-coordinates.

Step #2: With target-correcting drone swarms overhead, relaying real-time strike video, proceed to savage the fortifications with towed and mobile artillery, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (in gradations of strength and precision), and even horrific thermobaric munitions for particularly suitable targets.

Let smoke clear.

Repeat Step #1.

Still something moving there?

Repeat Step #2.

Repeat Step #1.

Dead bodies everywhere?

Step #3: Send in tanks and infantry to mop up.

Move to next series of fortifications.

And so on and so forth …

This is why Ukraine now suffers hundreds of battle deaths every single day. And why, for months, the Russians have suffered very few casualties — likely as low as a 1:8 ratio, and quite possibly even lower.

Artillery, airstrikes, and precision guided munitions are doing almost all the fighting.

The Fatal Hubris of NATO War Strategy in Ukraine

But back to Ukraine’s apparent strategy for this war, and the apparent US influence on that strategy.

I will preface my commentary on this issue by stating that Ukraine’s fatal blunder was buying into NATO’s over-confident delusion that they (the Armed Forces of Ukraine) actually had a reasonable opportunity to defeat the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in a high-intensity conflict.

I initially believed NATO military leaders must have had a sober view, far in advance, that their half-million-strong, well-armed, trained-to-NATO-standards Ukrainian proxy army had almost no chance of prevailing on the field of battle against Russia.

But watching drone video of Ukrainian fortifications has convinced me the US military brain trust, in the course of their eight-year-long preparation of the eastern Ukrainian battlefield, effectively disdained the Russian military and its commanders.

Their vanity persuaded them the Russians would mindlessly smash themselves to pieces against an entrenched well-armed force.

Indeed, they were so confident of the genius of their plan that they persuasively encouraged many hundreds of now-killed or captured NATO veterans to “share in the glory” of humiliating the Russians and bringing down the Putin regime once and for all.

They deluded themselves into believing the Russians lacked strategic and logistical acumen, a sufficiently well-trained force, and – arguably the biggest miscalculation of all – sufficient stockpiles of ammo to conduct a protracted high-intensity conflict.

In short, I have come to believe US/NATO commanders actually persuaded themselves that this “Mother of All Proxy Armies” had an excellent chance to soundly whip the Russians in a battle situated in their own back yard.

In other words, they disregarded centuries of European history that they somehow convinced themselves had no relevance to their 21st century aspirations to defeat Russia militarily and take a great spoil of its resources.

But, as is now readily apparent to all objective, knowledgeable military analysts around the globe, the Ukrainian proxy army has been pulverized by a patient, methodical, and significantly outnumbered Russian force, using long-established Russian doctrines and tactics.

Even more revealing is that once-vaunted and universally feared US/UK weaponry – almost all of it actually rather antiquated – has proven to be far less “game-changing” than the pea-brained strategists in Washington and Whitehall mistakenly believed.

Javelins, NLAWs, and Stingers have been exposed as mostly ineffective against their intended targets (tanks, helicopters, and low-flying jets). M-777 howitzers break down after just a few fires. GPS-guided “precision” munitions are routinely jammed by Russian electronic warfare counter-measures.

Worse yet, the inculcation of NATO field doctrines in the minds of the Ukrainian officer cadre has resulted in pervasively inflexible responses to battlefield events that develop contrary to expectations. Consequently, discipline has disintegrated, and improvisation has been paralyzed.

To be sure, if one were to go by the laughable assessments of western think-tank propagandists and their dutiful lackeys in the media, “Ukraine is winning” and “the inept Russian military has been humiliated”.

But more discerning observers around the world know better.

Sober military men in potential adversary countries across the globe see with clarity that Russia has, with one hand tied behind its back, eviscerated the massive, relatively well-armed and well-trained Ukrainian military.

The US/NATO intimidation factor has been forever compromised.

More geopolitically significant, at least in the near future, is that European NATO members can also read the scorecard of this war: they now understand as they never could previously that standing on the NATO side of the field is hardly a guarantee of security.

I am convinced NATO will not survive the results of this war in Ukraine. Sure, they’ll “keep up appearances” for the time being, but there can be no doubt most now understand that siding with a rapidly declining empire is fraught with great risk and minimal gain.

More concerningly, the Chinese have been watching all of these developments with great interest. They are almost certain to be emboldened to act decisively to secure their sphere of influence in the emerging multipolar world.

Great dangers now await in east Asia …

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

CUOMO, MAINSTREAM REVERSE COURSE ON VACCINE INJURY

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | May 9, 2024

In a shocking turn, mainstream voices who censored and suppressed conversation around vaccine injury have reversed course, even calling for a “9/11-style tribunal.” Yet they’re “limited hangout” falls short of full accountability or vindication for the injured. Del has a message for Chris Cuomo.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

‘We Get Paid to Vaccinate Your Children’: Pediatrician Reveals Details of Big Pharma Payola Scheme

By John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | May 6, 2024

Can pediatricians afford to run their medical practices without the generous kickbacks they receive for vaccinating every child?

Dr. Paul Thomas, a Dartmouth-trained pediatrician, discussed this dilemma during an April 16 interview with Polly Tommey on Children’s Health Defense’s “Vax-Unvax: The People’s Study” bus tour.

“You cannot stay in business if you’re not giving pretty close to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] [childhood vaccine] schedule,” said Thomas, who ran a general pediatrics practice with 15,000 patients and 33 staff members.

Thomas also addressed the risks and harms of vaccines — including COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — and the importance of boosting our immune systems naturally.

‘We were losing … over a million dollars’

Thomas, author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Year,” gave parents in his practice a choice: vaccinate their children on the CDC schedule, vaccinate more slowly by waiting for the child’s immune system to develop or not vaccinate at all.

As more patients refused vaccines, Thomas began to notice the financial impact on his practice.

He and his staff conducted a thorough analysis of their billing records, examining the income generated from vaccine administration fees, markups and quality bonuses tied to vaccination rates.

The results shocked him. “We were losing … over a million dollars in vaccines that were refused.”

He explained that pediatric practices heavily rely on vaccine income to stay afloat, with overhead costs running as high as 80%.

“It is very expensive to run a pediatric office,” he told Tommey. “You need multiple nurses, multiple receptionists, multiple billing people and medical records — it’s a huge operation.”

Three financial incentives for giving vaccines

Pediatricians receive several types of financial incentives for administering vaccines.

The first is the administration fee, which Thomas described as a “Thank you for giving the shot.” He estimated that pediatricians typically receive about $40 for the first antigen and $20 for each subsequent antigen.

“Let’s just say a two-month well-baby visit, there’s a DPT — that’s three shots, three antigens,” he told Tommey, plus “Hib [Haemophilus influenzae type b], Prevnar [pneumococcal], Hep B [hepatitis B], polio, rota [rotavirus] — [that’s] about $240.”

The second way pediatricians profit from vaccines is through a small markup on the cost of the vaccines themselves, though Thomas noted that this is not a significant source of income.

The third and most substantial financial incentive is quality bonuses tied to vaccination rates. Insurance companies offer pediatricians bonus payments for meeting certain benchmarks, typically around 80% of patients being fully vaccinated by age 2.

“I get dinged maybe 10-15% off of those RVUs — relative value units — that are ascribed,” he said, describing the points system used to calculate physician reimbursements.

With his practice’s vaccination rate a mere 1%, Thomas was at risk of losing up to 15% of his overall revenue.

“Really, it effectively means a pediatric practice cannot survive using insurance without doing most of the vaccines, if not all of them,” he said. “And I think that explains the blinders — [why doctors] just won’t go there and look at the fact that these vaccines are causing a lot of harm.”

Neurodevelopmental issues ‘clearly linked to vaccines’

Tommey asked about sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

“When you hear the word syndrome, it means we don’t know what it is … [or] what causes it,” Thomas said. “But we actually have a pretty good clue.”

Thomas said six studies examined the correlation between SIDS cases and vaccines. “In one data set, 97% were in the first 10 days after the vaccine. Only 3% were in the subsequent 10 days,” he said.

Other studies showed similar patterns, with 75-90% of SIDS deaths occurring within the first week after vaccination, he said.

Thomas also highlighted the increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders, allergies and autoimmune diseases in vaccinated children.

“We know without a doubt that things like neurodevelopmental concerns, learning disabilities, ADD, ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder], autism [are] clearly linked to vaccines,” he stated. “The more you vaccinate, the more likely you are to have these problems.”

Vaccinated children are more prone to infections and illness compared to their unvaccinated peers, according to Thomas, who published a study comparing the health outcomes of each group.

“It’s the vaccinated who get more ear infections, more sinus infections, more lung infections,” he said. “Any kind of infection you look at, the vaccinated get more.”

‘Healthy adults just “Boom!” — dropping dead’

The risks associated with vaccines extend beyond childhood. Thomas drew attention to the recent phenomenon of “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome” (SADS) following the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

“We see it on the news, we see it on the ball fields: healthy adults just ‘Boom!’ — dropping dead,” he said. “And that’s all happened since the COVID jabs.”

Thomas expressed particular concern about the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccine development. He pointed out that despite decades of research, mRNA vaccines have never been proven safe or effective.

He cited previous attempts to develop mRNA vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which consistently failed in animal trials.

“When they got to the animal trials, they would vaccinate the rats,” he said. “When they re-exposed those rats, in one study, 100% of them died.”

The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines’ narrow focus on the spike protein is also problematic because it causes the immune system to become “focused on just one thing,” Thomas said.

“When the [viral] organism mutates, those who are vaccinated can’t recognize this new mutation,” he said, recalling how at a family gathering during the pandemic, it was mostly the vaccinated who contracted COVID-19.

Thomas shared a personal story about his mother’s experience with pulmonary fibrosis after receiving three COVID-19 vaccines.

“After her third COVID shot, she started really running out of energy and then getting short of breath,” he said. “Within a month, her lungs [had a] ground-glass appearance.”

Tommey asked about the risks of vaccine shedding.

“Shedding seems to be happening, and it’s been documented in studies,” he said, explaining that vaccinated individuals can expose others to spike proteins through body fluids and secretions.

‘We can no longer go to our doctors and say, “Fix me”’

Thomas discussed the likelihood of new pandemics being declared in the future, driven by the immense financial gains pharmaceutical companies reaped from the COVID-19 vaccines.

“They made too much money — Pfizer alone made over $100 billion,” he said. “So the power that the public health machinery got to themselves with COVID has to be intoxicating to them.”

In light of this, Thomas stressed the importance of personal health and natural immunity.

“We can no longer go to our doctors and say, ‘Fix me,’ after we’ve trashed our own health,” he said. “So we’ve got to take responsibility for eating right, avoiding stress, getting adequate sleep … [and] boosting our immune system naturally with organic produce.”

Thomas also encouraged people to question public health authorities and make informed decisions about their health.

“I can no longer trust the CDC, the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], the NIH [National Institutes of Health],” he said. “Some good people work in these institutions, but the institutions themselves are captured.”

Thomas said that when it comes to vaccines or a new pandemic illness, “They’re the last people you want to trust.”

‘Vax Facts’ book coming soon

Thomas shared information about his upcoming book, “Vax Facts,” co-authored with his partner DeeDee Hoover. He said the book provides an easy-to-read, comprehensive guide to understanding the vaccine issue, regardless of one’s current stance.

“This is going to … allow you to really understand it in an organized, reasonable way why it makes sense now to pause” taking vaccines, Thomas said.

Tommey reminded viewers of Thomas’ weekly show on CHD.TV, “Pediatric Perspectives,” where he interviews pediatricians and doctors who focus on children’s health.

Thomas encouraged viewers to visit his website, Kids First 4 Ever, to learn more about his work and to access coaching services for childhood vaccines and wellness.

Video link

John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

May 10, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Is Your Car Spying on You?

By Andrew P. Napolitano | May 9, 2024

I predict future happiness for Americans,
if they can prevent the government from
wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them.
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Last week, Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward Markey of Massachusetts revealed that automobiles sold in the United States with a GPS or emergency call system accumulate the travel data of the vehicle on computer chips located in the vehicle and the vehicle manufacturers have remote access to the computer chips. They revealed this is a letter to the Federal Trade Commission that, at this writing, has gone unanswered.

The senators complained that the computer chips in late-model vehicles retain the records of the location and driving habits utilized by the operator of each vehicle.

One probably expects some of this as most GPS systems ask if you are looking for directions to a location to which you have traveled in the past. That very request on your dashboard should trigger the observation that the vehicle’s computer chip has stored the requests you have input to the GPS.

But it doesn’t stop with a record of your GPS requests. What the two senators revealed was truly startling. The computer chips record every movement and speed of the vehicle; and some vehicles — those equipped with certain sensors and exterior cameras — also record the surroundings of the location of the vehicle.

Both senators complained that Americans largely do not know that the manufacturer of the vehicle they drive has remote access to the computer chips in the vehicle, and most Americans are largely unaware that the vehicle manufacturers make this data available to the government without a search warrant.

Is this constitutional? In a word: NO.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was written to protect the quintessential American right — the natural human right — to be left alone. Justice Louis Brandeis called it the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized persons.

It presumes that you can think as you wish and say what you think and read what you want and publish what you say, that you can exclude whomever you wish — including the government — from your property and from your thoughts; that you can move around from place to place; and do all this without a government permission slip, fear of government reprisal or the government’s prying eyes.

This natural right is expressly protected by the Fourth Amendment, which requires a warrant issued by a judge based upon probable cause of crime before the government can invade your property or spy on you, directly or indirectly. When the government has access to the data in your personal vehicle, it is simultaneously invading your property and spying on you.

The warrant requirement serves three purposes.

The first is to force the government to stay in the lane of crime solving, rather than crime predicting.

The colonists loathed when the British entered their homes with general warrants ostensibly looking to see if the colonists had purchased government stamps as the Stamp Act required. The true goal of these forced entries was to search for revolutionary materials in order to help the government predict who might be planning the revolution that came in 1776.

The second purpose of the warrant requirement is to prevent fishing expeditions using general warrants. General warrants permit the bearer to search wherever he wishes and seize whatever he finds. Thus, the Fourth Amendment also requires that the warrants specifically describe the place to be searched and the person or thing to be seized.

The third and most fundamental purpose of the warrant requirement is to reduce to writing the right to privacy. All persons naturally yearn for privacy. The Framers knew this and believed they had guaranteed it in the Fourth Amendment. They were wrong.

Some have argued that the culprits with these computer chips are the vehicle manufacturers. They are wrong. The culprit is the government.

The federal Department of Transportation — found nowhere in the Constitution — mandates the specs for the computer chips installed in vehicles sold in the United States. And the recent amendment to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires all persons and entities that manufacture or install facilities that transmit data over fiber-optic cables in the U.S. to make those facilities available to the federal government’s spies.

That mandate includes the CIA, even though its charter forbids it to spy domestically or engage in domestic law enforcement; the FBI, even though the federal prosecutors for whom FBI agents work cannot use evidence in federal prosecutions obtained via surveillance without a search warrant; and the National Security Administration, the federal government’s 60,000 dedicated domestic spies, whose management falsely claims it obtains warrants from the FISA court for all its spying.

What have we here?

What we have is the slow silent erosion of personal liberty perpetrated by a Congress afraid of the intelligence community it created in 1947 and which it is supposed to regulate, enabled by every president since Ronald Reagan who has looked the other way when the spies plied their foul crafts, and carried out by nameless faceless bureaucrats with large and awful eyes whose appetites for acquiring private data about ordinary Americans as to whom there is no suspicion or probable cause of criminal behavior is utterly and literally insatiable.

Even former President Donald Trump, who was infamously the subject of unlawful and unconstitutional spying when he was a private citizen and while in the White House, has fallen for all this.

What we have here is only lip service by our elected representatives to the words, their meanings and the underlying values of the Constitution. Efforts to stop this in the House and the Senate last month fell short by a single vote in each house. And that was before the Wyden/Markey revelations about your car spying on you!

Do you know anyone who has consented to this? Who will protect us from lawless government? Don’t we know by now that sacrificing liberty for safety leads to neither?

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

May 10, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

UNGA backs membership for Palestine

RT | May 10, 2024

The UN General Assembly passed a resolution accepting Palestine as the 194th member of the world body on Friday. The US has previously vetoed Palestinian statehood at the Security Council, however.

Palestine has been a non-voting observer in the global body since 2012. The new resolution would grant it “new rights and privileges,” as well as full membership if approved by the Security Council. It was adopted with 143 votes in favor, nine against, and 25 abstentions.

US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood said his government was opposed to the resolution, indicating that Washington would veto Palestinian membership at the council again – as it did last month.

Friday’s resolution included an expression of “deep regret and concern” by the General Assembly that the US had vetoed the admission of Palestine on April 18, and urged the council to “reconsider the matter favorably” in line with the UN Charter and decisions by the International Court of Justice.

The General Assembly voiced its “unwavering support for the two-state solution of Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, based on the pre-1967 borders.”

Though Israel has nominally accepted the idea of Palestinian statehood in the abstract, the government in West Jerusalem has rejected its implementation in practice. During last month’s Security Council debate, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan described the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, as “a terror-supporting entity that does not deserve any status in the UN.”

Israel has also vowed to completely destroy Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, after last year’s October 7 attacks.

After exercising his veto last month, Ambassador Wood said that the US action “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood, but instead is an acknowledgement that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties,” adding that Palestine can’t join the UN so long as Hamas is in control of Gaza.

Russia’s permanent representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia has accused the US of holding the Security Council “hostage” over events in the Middle East. He also argued that Palestinian statehood and UN membership would “equalize the starting negotiating positions of the parties.”

An estimated 1,200 Israelis died in the October 7 attacks by Hamas. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent Israeli offensive, which is presently targeting the city of Rafah in the south of Gaza. Israel has pressed the attack despite the reservations of the US, made known at official levels.

May 10, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US losing ground globally to Russia and China – report

RT | May 9, 2024

While both China and Russia have improved their standing in the world over the past year, the US has seen its approval rating deteriorate in the Middle East and even in Europe, according to respondents from 53 countries.

Dubbed Democracy Perception Index 2024, the survey was compiled by the German company Latana, on behalf of Alliance of Democracies, a NGO headed by former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Russia and China are now viewed as positively as the US in most of the surveyed countries in Asia and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA), as Washington’s approval plummeted due to the conflict in Gaza. Things aren’t looking up for the US in Europe, either.

“For the first time since the start of the Biden administration, many Western European countries have returned to net negative perceptions of the US,” according to Frederick DeVeaux, the senior researcher at Latana.

The reversal of previously positive attitudes has been “particularly stark in Germany, Austria, Ireland, Belgium and Switzerland,” DeVeaux said.

America’s global reputation took a beating since last year, in particular in Muslim-majority countries surveyed – Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, and Türkiye. The researchers attributed this to President Joe Biden’s unequivocal support to Israel’s war on Gaza.

Meanwhile, sentiments about Russia and China in every region except Europe are steadily getting more positive.

The European region is the only one besides the US that still supports cutting economic ties with Russia over the Ukraine conflict, while the rest of the world prefers to keep doing business with Moscow. The world is also divided “between the West and the rest” when it comes to possibly sanctioning Beijing if it were to “invade” the island of Taiwan.

The Democracy Perception Index is an annual survey carried out in 53 countries. This year’s research canvassed some 63,000 respondents for opinions about “democracy, geopolitics and global power players.”

May 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MTG Says ‘Uniparty’ Win Saving Johnson’s Speakership Will Mean More Money for Foreign Wars

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, speaks to reporters before a meeting with US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, about a possible Motion to Vacate filing to remove him from the speakership, at the US Capitol on May 7, 2024, in Washington, DC.
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 09.05.2024

House Democrats and Republicans joined forces on Wednesday to shoot down the congresswoman’s motion to oust the speaker over his efforts to secure tens of billions of dollars for wars abroad while overlooking the crisis at the US southern border, and to reauthorize measures allowing for warrantless surveillance of US citizens by the state.

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took to X on Thursday to issue a scathing attack targeting her fellow Republicans who joined with Democrats to block her push to vacate the House and prompt the selection of a new Speaker to replace Mike Johnson.

“All the scary bad things they all told you would happen if I called the motion to vacate didn’t happen. They said ‘Democrats would take control of the House and [Minority Leader Hakeem] Jeffries would become speaker because Republicans only have the majority with one seat’. Didn’t happen. Instead, Democrats voted to save Johnson because they knew it was impossible to take control of the House and they want to keep Johnson because he’s given them everything they want,” Greene wrote.

“They said ‘we should be focused on more serious issues! None of this does anything for the American people!’ Doing things for the American people and focusing on serious issues didn’t happen because the Uniparty reared its ugly head and voted to protect their Uniparty leader and to keep the status quo which has done nothing for the American people or solved problems on serious issues,” the lawmaker added.

“And you know what else didn’t happen? Congress, which is paid by the American people and sent to represent them, didn’t stop the border crisis, didn’t stop funding foreign wars, didn’t protect America’s energy industry, didn’t cut spending to reduce inflation, didn’t defund the weaponized government. Instead Congress protected itself and kept the Uniparty control over the People’s House,” Greene wrote.

Greene, 49, is one of a handful a new breed of Republicans calling for a radical review of the America’s domestic and foreign priorities, calling for a halt to US support for foreign wars, measures to clamp down on illegal immigration, and efforts to deal with America’s gargantuan $34+ trillion federal debt.

43 House lawmakers voted against tabling Greene’s motion to vacate the House on Wednesday, among them ten Republicans, including Paul Gosar, Thomas Massie, Andy Biggs and Chip Roy. Nearly three dozen Democrats also voted against killing the motion, which would have opened the door to Johnson’s removal, among them several members of the so-called Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Jamaal Bowman, Pramila Jayapal, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Democratic support saved Johnson’s speakership, but potentially puts the politician in an electoral tight spot among conservatives as a speaker propped up by the opposition.
However, former president and presumptive GOP nominee for president Donald Trump – whose 2016 election gave rise to the anti-neocon Republican movement, and ultimately Greene’s election in 2020, rushed to Johnson’s defense in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.

“I absolutely love Marjorie Taylor Greene. She’s got Spirit, she’s got Fight, and I believe she’ll be around, and on our side, for a long time to come,” Trump wrote. “However, right now, Republicans have to be fighting the Radical Left Democrats, and all the Damage they have done to our Country. With a Majority of One, shortly growing to three or four, we’re not in a position of voting on a Motion to Vacate. At some point, we may very well be, but this is not the time.”

Emphasizing in all caps that a motion to vacate would show “DISUNITY” and “be portrayed as “CHAOS,” Trump said that Johnson was “good man who is trying very hard,” and that while he wished “certain things were done over the last period of two months… we will get them done, together.”

Trump, whose backdoor negotiations with House Republicans reportedly included the idea of turning new Ukraine aid into a ‘loan’ to earn GOP support last month, did not elaborate on what these “certain things” were.

Greene, Gosar, Massie, Biggs, Roy, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Andrew Clyde, Eli Crane, Bob Good, Troy Nehls, Ralph Norman and Matt Rosendale, all Republicans, were the only House lawmakers to vote against all the legislation put before the floor on April 20, including aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, a TikTok ban and new sanctions against Iran after its retaliatory April 14 attack on Israel.

Johnson is the second Republican House speaker to have been targeted by an effort to oust him from his conservative flank, with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy ousted in October 2023 over what Rep. Gaetz alleged was a “secret side deal on Ukraine” to provide Kiev with more funding. McCarthy’s ouster was made possible after conservative Republicans secured the support of Democrats to force him out, with the move resulting in the blockage of nearly $100 billion in US military and economic support for foreign wars for more than six months.

May 9, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Malaysia tells US it doesn’t recognise sanctions imposed unilaterally

MEMO | May 9, 2024

Malaysia has told the US that it does not recognise sanctions imposed unilaterally by individual states, Interior Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said today.

“I emphasised that we will only recognise sanctions if they are imposed by the UN Security Council,” added Ismail at an event after meeting with Brian Nelson, the top sanctions official of the US Treasury Department, Free Malaysia Today has reported. “The delegation from the US respected our stance.”

Nelson is in Malaysia reportedly to discuss issues related to funds being moved to Iran and its proxies, and funding for the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas from within the Malaysian financial sector.

The minister pointed out that Kuala Lumpur is committed to combating terrorist financing with a “clear strategic plan in place to tackle illicit funding and money laundering.” Moreover, he said that Malaysia’s policies and strategies “comply with international standards.”

The meeting came as the US said it was trying to prevent Malaysia from becoming a jurisdiction where Hamas could both fundraise and then move money. Washington also said that Iran’s capacity to move its oil was due to service providers based in Malaysia.

The minister, however, described his meeting with Nelson as “productive” and said that Malaysia was “always open to engaging with the US.”

May 9, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Protecting Israel Is Washington’s Number One Job

The White House and Congress rally around the Star of David Flag

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 8, 2024

When, as expected, President Joe Biden signs off on the Antisemitism Awareness Act the Department of Education will be empowered to send so-called antisemitism monitors to enforce civil rights law at public schools as well as at colleges to observe and report on levels of hostility towards Jews. The monitors’ reports will eventually wind up in Congress which can propose remedies as required, including cutting funding and recommending civil rights charges in extreme cases. One of the more regrettable features of the act is that it accepts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism as it applies to the state of Israel, making criticism of the Jewish state ipso facto antisemitism. Its text includes the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity” as an antisemitic act. In reality, however, actual antisemitism is not as prevalent as Israel partisans claim. Most of what they call antisemitism is simply criticism of the legally self-proclaimed apartheid “Jewish State” and most of the animosity Israel experiences is opposition to its brutal treatment of the Palestinians. Giving legal sanction to that presumption that Israel must be protected from bigots means that the United States is well on the way to forbidding any criticism of Israel at all. Americans can criticize their own country or nations in Europe, or at least they are able to do so currently, but bad-mouthing Israel could soon constitute a criminal offense.

The Antisemitism Awareness Act is just one aspect of how the power of organized Jewish groups over the government and media is shaping the kind of society that Americans will be living in in the near future. It will be a society devoid of several fundamental constitutional rights, like free speech, due to deference to the preferences of one tiny demographic. And the one most interesting aspect of that power is how it has successfully hidden the fact that it even exists while also propagating the myth that Jews and Israel are especially worthy of special consideration because they are frequently or even always perceived as victims, an extension of the holocaust myth.

Indeed, Israel is recently always in the news and most often completely protected by the media and the talking heads elements, particularly true if one sinks to watching Fox or reading the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or Washington Post. Even the loathsome Benjamin Netanyahu frequently gets good press while nonviolent student peace demonstrators are invariably described as anti-Israeli or pro-Hamas terrorists even when they are assaulted by Zionist thugs led by an Israeli special ops officer and funded and armed by Jewish billionaires as occurred recently in Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, sometimes something slips through the defenses that reveals all too clearly what is going on. In responding to a question from a journalist, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made a claim recently that absolutely no one who has spent any time in Washington will believe. The journalist had asked whether the Federal Government in making its foreign policy decisions tended to favor and/or excuse the behavior of some countries while condemning others for exactly the same actions. Blinken replied “We apply the same standard to everyone. And that doesn’t change whether the country in question is an adversary, a competitor, a friend or an ally.”

Everyone in the room understood very clearly that Blinken wasn’t telling the truth and was trying to preserve the fiction that the United States holds allies and clients to the same “rules based international order” standard that it uses for others, most notably competitor nations like Russia and China or adversaries like Iran. No one takes what Blinken says seriously in any event, and it does not help his general credibility when he feels compelled to lie for no reason whatsoever.

Would that someone in the room had had the temerity to cite one of Blinken’s most egregiously partisan comments, his greeting to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the airport tarmac of Ben Gurion airport shortly after the October 7th Hamas attack. He said “I come before you as a Jew. I understand on a personal level the harrowing echoes that Hamas’s massacres carry for Israeli Jews – indeed, for Jews everywhere.” It prompted one to mutter, “No Anthony, you are the Secretary of States of the United States of America. You are there to represent American interests in avoiding a major war in the Middle East, not to represent the interests of your tribe by declaring yourself one of them.”

The Blinken meeting with Netanyahu was particularly telling as few in Washington would doubt that the Joe Biden White House and Congress have totally surrendered to Israeli interests rather than serving the needs of their constituents in the United States. Paul Craig Roberts describes it as “The US Congress has become an extension of the Israeli government.” To answer the journalist’s question honestly Blinken should have admitted that the Biden government is fully committed to protecting Israel and even its perceived interests when they conflict with normal US policy. On Wednesday the Biden administration indicated that it has indefinitely delayed a required report investigating potential Israeli war crimes in Gaza that was supposed to be released by the US State Department. If the report had concluded, which it should have, that Israel violated international humanitarian law, the US would have to stop sending foreign aid due to the Leahy Law, which makes it illegal for the US government to provide aid to any foreign security forces found to be committing “gross violations of human rights.” So Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken decided to deep six the report instead to protect Israel by breaking US law, though they have reportedly delayed one shipment of bombs lest they be used on civilians in Rafah. Nevertheless, Biden clearly means what he says when he repeatedly stumbles to confirm that US security guarantees to Israel are “ironclad.” Indeed, the tie with the Jewish state goes well beyond what is generally due to anyone even described as an ally, which Israel, also no democracy, is not in any event, as an alliance requires both reciprocity and a precise understanding of the red lines in the relationship.

Nothing illustrates the total subservience of Washington to Israel better than how the United States is unnecessarily getting itself involved in an argument that might well prove to be a major embarrassment as well as trouble in America’s relationship with many foreign states. And, as is often the case, it involves Israel. There have been confirmed reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is preparing to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and two other senior Israeli officials in connection with war crimes related to the ongoing genocide directed against the Gazans. Netanyahu is reportedly reaching wildly out to his many “friends” to prevent such a development. And, in line with Washington-Jerusalem thinking that every good crisis deserves an excessive use of force or even a military solution, there are already reports that pressure, including threats, is being exerted both by Israel and the US against the jurists on the court and even directed against their families. The Israeli government warned the Biden administration that if the ICC issues arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, it will take retaliatory steps against the Palestinian Authority that could lead to its collapse, further destabilizing the region. Israel is also conducting a parallel diplomatic channels outreach in Europe to convince the local governments to advise their representatives on the court that it would be desirable to squash its investigation.

Netanyahu, who called President Joe Biden and asked for help, has in response to news reports tweeted that Israel “will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense. The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it.” Netanyahu also denounced the possible warrants as an “unprecedented antisemitic hate crime.” As ICC deliberations are secret it would appear that an American or British jurist must have leaked the story to enable Netanyahu to mount a campaign against it. The White House and Congress are already moving full speed ahead to make the warrants go away and are exploring options to directly confront and discredit the court if the Israelis are actually punished.

The US has nothing to gain and much to lose in confronting the ICC as the court is generally well respected. And more might be coming. There are reports that prosecutors from the ICC have interviewed medical staff at two of Gaza’s largest hospitals in their investigation of other possible war crimes committed by Israel in connection with the mass graves recently discovered. ICC was founded in 2002 as a last resort court to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity that were not addressable otherwise. The court was established by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute and does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction. However, should a warrant in Netanyahu’s name be issued, his travel could be restricted, as the 123 countries that recognize the court may consider themselves obliged to arrest him.

As of March 2023, there were 123 member states of the Court. The United States is no longer a member because on May 6th, 2002, the United States, having previously signed the Rome Statute, formally withdrew its signature and indicated that it did not intend to ratify the agreement. Another state that has withdrawn its signature is the Sudan while some states that have never become parties to the Rome Statute include India, Indonesia, and China. United States policy concerning the ICC has varied by administration. The Clinton administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit it for Senate ratification. The George W. Bush administration, which was the US administration at the time of the ICC’s founding, stated that it would not join the ICC. The Obama administration subsequently re-established a working relationship with the Court as an observer. There has been no change in the status since that time, but the relationship is regarded as inactive.

What will the United States do to bail out Israel one more time? It has already made its position known. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre stated “We’ve been really clear about the ICC investigation. We do not support it. We don’t believe that they have the jurisdiction.” Deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel doubled down on that declaring “Our position is clear. We continue to believe that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the Palestinian situation.” The White House was joined by leading congressional Republicans. Zionist Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has pressured the White House and State Department to “use every available tool to prevent such an abomination,” explaining how conceding the point to ICC “would directly undermine US national security interests. If unchallenged by the Biden administration, the ICC could create and assume unprecedented power to issue arrest warrants against American political leaders, American diplomats, and American military personnel.”

There is a precedent to the US taking action against the ICC. On September 2, 2020, the United States government imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, in response to an investigation by the court into US war crimes in Afghanistan, so there is some sensitivity to the fact that as the US is the world’s leading source of war crimes, it would be wise to delegitimize agencies that would look too deeply into that fact. But the ICC sometimes has its uses as when the Biden administration publicly welcomed a war crimes investigation by the ICC against Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine. Asked why the United States supported an International Criminal Court investigation into Russian officials, Patel declared that “There is no moral equivalency between the kinds of things that we see [Russian President Vladimir Putin] and the Kremlin undertake in comparison to the Israeli government,” once again demonstrating that what Blinken said to the journalist was nonsense.

The Republican Party is seeking to outdo the White House in demonstrating its love for Israel. A letter signed by twelve GOP Senators was sent to Karim Khan, chief prosecutor on the ICC. The letter threatens members of the court over the possible indictment of Netanyahu and company. The group of 12 Republican senators who I like to refer to as the “Dirty Dozen” due to the large political contributions they receive from pro-Israel sources, sent a letter to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan that threatens “severe sanctions” if the court goes ahead with the plan to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his Defense Minister and one other senior official. The letter, dated April 24, referenced the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, a law that authorizes the president to use any means to free any US personnel detained by the ICC even though it does not apply to Israel. It says, ridiculously, that “If you issue a warrant for the arrest of the Israeli, we will interpret this not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but as a threat to the sovereignty of the United States” and goes on to deny that the ICC even has jurisdiction to issue warrants since Israel is not a member of the court. The apparent drafter, Senator Tom Cotton, was seemingly unaware that Palestine is a member of the ICC and the arrest warrants would be based on war crimes committed by Israel on its nominal territory, Gaza and the West Bank.

The letter concludes with a heavy-handed threat: “The United States will not tolerate politicized attacks by the ICC on our allies. Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward with the measures indicated in this report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and your associates, and bar you and your family from the United States. You have been warned.” A few days later, the ICC issued a statement condemning the threats made against the court and said attempts to “impede, intimidate, or improperly influence” ICC officials must “cease immediately.” The 12 Republican senators who signed on to the letter include Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Marsha Blackburn, Katie Boyd Britt, Ted Budd, Kevin Cramer, Ted Cruz, Bill Hagerty, Pete Ricketts, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Tim Scott. Only Lindsay Graham was missing and he was probably busy drumming up support for his plan to “destroy the enemies of the state of Israel.” Cotton, who has recommended that people who are inconvenienced by protesters should confront them and beat them up, has also introduced legislation denying college loan relief to students who faced state or federal charges while demonstrating against the deaths in Gaza. Some other Republican congressmen who are short on brain cells but strong on Israel are seeking to have protesters “convicted of unlawful activity on the campus of an American university since October 7th 2023” deported to do six months community service in Gaza, though how that would be implemented is not clear. Congressman Randy Weber of Texas explained “If you support a terrorist organization and you participate in unlawful activity on campuses, you should get a taste of your own medicine. I am going to bet that these pro-Hamas supporters wouldn’t last a day, but let’s give them the opportunity.”

So the United States will again go to bat for Israel and Israel will ignore what comes out and dodge any consequences. The real losers in the process will be the American people, who more clearly than ever will see and hopefully recognize that they have a government that spends an awful lot of time and money on Israel and doing things that are being promoted by Jewish groups. We have a legislature and executive branch that have been corrupted and compromised from top to bottom, always doing what is wrong for the most selfish reasons, often out of loyalty to foreign governments like Israel that could care less. The United States was once a symbol of freedom and opportunity. Now it has become an international embarrassment.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

May 9, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran’s POSITION On Israel And Gaza w/Professor Marandi

Sabby Sabs | May 7, 2024

May 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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