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Niger broke military pact with US after being ‘warned’ about Iran, Russia ties

Press TV – March 19, 2024

Niger’s junta decided to suspend a military agreement with the United States after a delegation of senior US military officials visited the Western African country and “expressed concerns” about its growing relations with Russia and Iran.

The Pentagon said on Monday that the officials traveled to the Nigerien capital Niamey last week to discuss the matter with the country’s military leadership, seeking clarification about the way ahead.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh asserted that the US government had “direct and frank” conversations in Niger, and was continuing to communicate with the country’s ruling military council – known as the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP).

“The US delegation was there to raise a number of concerns. … We were troubled (about) the path that Niger is on. And so these were direct and frank conversations, to have those in person, to talk about our concerns and to also hear theirs.

“US officials expressed concern over Niger’s potential relationships with Russia and Iran,” Singh said.

Niger’s junta announced on Saturday that it had canceled a 2012 defense cooperation agreement with the US.

“The government of Niger, considering the aspirations and interests of its people, responsibly decides to denounce with immediate effect the agreement that permitted US military personnel and civilian employees from the American Department of Defense on Niger’s territory,” Nigerien government spokesman Amadou Abdramane said in a statement on national television.

The move followed a visit to Niamey by a delegation of senior US military officials led by Under Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee.

Abdramane accused US officials of not following diplomatic protocol and not informing Niger about the composition of the delegation.

He added that Niger regretted the “intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right of choosing their partners and partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism.”

High-level Russian military officials, including Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov, have visited Niger and met with the country’s military leadership.

The prime minister of the ruling junta, Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine, visited Iran in January.

Foreign Minister of Niger, Bakary Yaou Sangare, visited Tehran in October 2023 to explore opportunities for strengthening political and economic ties, as well as boosting cooperation in scientific and technological sectors between the two countries.

Commending Iran’s skills in various economic, scientific, and technological sectors, the Nigerien diplomat underscored that Iran’s capabilities are well-matched to cater to Niger’s requirements in the energy and industrial domains.

March 19, 2024 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Russia Considers US Proposals to Start Arms Control Talks ‘Hypocrisy’

Sputnik – 18.03.2024

Moscow considers Washington’s proposals to hold arms control talks “hypocrisy,” the Russian Foreign Ministry told Sputnik on Monday.

“American officials are declaring their alleged desire to enter into arms control discussions with Russia without preconditions but they clearly did not bother to read the February 29 address of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly, which has our fundamental assessments of this kind of hypocrisy and demagogy amid Washington’s desire to inflict ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia,” the ministry said.

Earlier in the day, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that the United States stands ready to engage in bilateral arms control talks with China and Russia without any preconditions.

“The United States is willing to engage in bilateral arms control discussions with Russia and China right now, without preconditions. All they have to do is say ‘yes’ and come to the table in good faith,” Thomas-Greenfield said during a UN Security Council meeting.

Russia’s policy has not changed, and the country is ready to discuss arms control altogether with focus on issues that directly involve Moscow’s security interests, the Russian Foreign Ministry added.

“In the meantime, we are invited to conduct dialogue exclusively on US terms and only on those issues that are of interest to Washington,” the ministry said.

Deputy Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy in turn said that the strategic dialogue between Russia and the United States on arms control is only possible if the US and NATO revise their anti-Russian course.

“Any interaction will only be possible if the United States and NATO review their anti-Russian course and when they show that they are ready to participate in comprehensive dialogue taking into account all of our strategic stability factors and removing all of the concerns that we have,” Polyanskiy said at the UN Security Council meeting.

He stressed that the strategic dialogue between the US and the Russian Federation cannot be separated from the general and military context.

At the same time Russia stands ready to negotiate on the issue of nuclear disarmament with interested countries during the new Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) Review conference, Polyanskiy added.

“We expect that our Western colleagues will abandon their very dangerous and destructive course. We are open within the new NPT Review conference to a constructive dialogue with all countries interested in reaching a consensus understanding on how we can create preconditions for further nuclear disarmament,” he said.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Major Studies Find No Evidence of Brain Injury in Alleged ‘Havana Syndrome’ Patients

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | March 18, 2024

Two studies conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) on scores of people claiming to have Havana Syndrome did not find any evidence of brain damage. Purported victims of Havana Syndrome claim they were targeted by a foreign power with a mysterious weapon that caused undetectable neurological issues.

Havana Syndrome was first reported among American diplomats in Cuba in 2016 who claimed to be exposed to a sonic weapon that caused headaches. An investigation published by JASON, a group of scientists who advise the US government, concluded that crickets native to Cuba were making the noise, causing neurological symptoms among American officials in Havana.

Since, scores of diplomats have reported symptoms in a range of countries including Vietnam, Russia, and China. The self-identified victims claim they were targeted with some form of microwave, sonic, or direct energy weapon that caused a myriad of symptoms, including headaches, as well as problems with sleep, vision, and hearing.

On Monday, NIH published two studies that concluded Havana Syndrome was not caused by directed energy weapons. Additionally, in both investigations, researchers were unable to detect any signs to indicate the patients had suffered neurological damage.

“In this exploratory neuroimaging study, there was no significant MRI-detectable evidence of brain injury among the group of participants who experienced [anomalous health incidents] compared with a group of matched control participants,” the authors wrote. However, researchers did not dismiss the possibility that somehow the claimed victims were actually targeted with a mysterious weapon.

Robert E. Bartholomew and Dr. Adam Gaffney argued that Havana Syndrome, rather than being caused by weapons, is a mass psychogenic illness. In an essay published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Bartholomew explains, “As is typical in mass psychogenic illness outbreaks, as news of the ‘attacks’ spread among the diplomatic community, more US Embassy staff were affected, including members of the Canadian Embassy.”

He continues, “The irregular patterning of the ‘attacks’ is not typical of an infectious agent. Many ‘incidents’ were said to have occurred in homes and hotels. Why were some people affected, while others either standing or sleeping next to the ‘victim,’ were not?”

Still, allegations of attacks causing Havana syndrome continued to impact American officials around the world into the first years of the Joe Biden administration. The claims of attacks have led to the demonization of Russia, the breakdown of diplomatic relations with Cuba, and the delay of high-level visits to foreign nations.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Supreme Court Appears Wary of Blocking Biden Admin-Big Tech Censorship Collusion

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | March 18, 2024

During oral arguments in a major First Amendment case on Monday, the Supreme Court expressed reservations about restricting interactions between the Biden administration and social media platforms. This concern emerged during the Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v. Biden) case, which delves into the extent of governmental influence over online content.

Brian Fletcher, Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, presented oral arguments for the petitioners in the case, Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy and several other current and former members of the Biden administration.

The respondents in the case, the States of Missouri and Louisiana, and several other individuals who were subject to social media censorship, allege that the federal government had pressured platforms to block or downgrade posts on various topics, including some related to Covid and the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Several lower courts agreed with the respondents, with a district judge describing the Biden administration’s Big Tech-censorship collusion as “Orwellian” and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finding that the Biden admin likely violated the First Amendment when pushing for social media censorship.

During the oral arguments today though, the justices displayed skepticism towards a broad prohibition on governmental communications with social media platforms. They raised concerns that such a ruling could unduly restrain the government’s ability to address pressing issues.

Fletcher defended the Biden admin’s actions and framed them as the government exercising its right to “speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers.” He argued that the government is entitled to communicate with social media companies to influence their content moderation decisions, as long as these interactions do not veer into coercion. According to Fletcher, the litmus test for legality should be the presence or absence of threats from the government, asserting that using the bully pulpit for exhortations is a right protected under the First Amendment.

Fletcher also tried to argue for the significant power and autonomy of social media companies, noting their capability to resist governmental pressures.

The solicitor general of Louisiana, Benjamin Aguiñaga, representing one of the Republican-led states behind the lawsuit, argued that the government’s actions amounted to coercion, effectively leading to censorship by social media platforms. He highlighted a significant shift in the focus of government-led content moderation. Initially aimed at tackling foreign interference and misinformation, these efforts increasingly targeted speech by American citizens, particularly around the contentious topics of the 2020 election and the pandemic.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson challenged Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga’s viewpoint. “And so I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country. And you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information. So, can you help me? Because I’m really worried about that.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett also voiced concerns, questioning whether the FBI could legally request social media platforms to remove content, such as posts revealing personal information about officials.

Aguiñaga’s argument was that such actions could potentially suppress constitutionally protected speech.

The oral arguments went off into the weeds and into the nuances of what constitutes “coercion” by the government in its interactions with social media platforms, rather than directly addressing the core text of the First Amendment. This focus on “coercion” rather than the First Amendment’s explicit wording – prohibiting the “abridging” of the freedom of speech, or of the press – played into the Biden administration’s hands.

Justices Kavanaugh and Kagan drew a comparison between the case and the interactions that often occur between administration officials and news media. They proposed that efforts by officials to shape media coverage should be seen as constructive dialogue, not necessarily an attempt at censorship, and suggested such actions don’t violate the First Amendment’s provisions.

Kagan challenged the lawyer from Louisiana to demonstrate that the removal of the contentious posts was the result of government intervention rather than actions taken by the social media companies themselves.

“What distinguishes this as an act of the government rather than a decision made by the platforms?” Kagan inquired.

The discussion among the justices also ventured into the standing of the plaintiffs – Missouri and Louisiana, accompanied by five individuals – to bring the lawsuit. They questioned whether these parties had experienced a direct injury that would justify their legal challenge. Furthermore, the justices expressed doubts about the appropriateness of a wide-ranging injunction that would bar various officials from contacting social media platforms as a remedy to the alleged issue.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor specifically addressed concerns regarding the approach taken by the plaintiffs in presenting their case. Directing her comments to Aguiñaga, Justice Sotomayor criticized the framing of their argument. She pointed out that the plaintiff’s brief seemed to leave out crucial information, thereby altering the context of certain claims, a point which she found particularly troubling.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared to concur with the notion that the federal government’s diverse array of agencies, which often lack a unified stance, weakens the argument of coercion. During a dialogue with the attorney from Louisiana, he observed, “It’s not monolithic.” He then posed a question that implied this multiplicity of voices in the federal government could substantially diminish the idea of coercion: “That has to dilute the concept of coercion significantly. Doesn’t it?”

While the justices mostly appeared skeptical of prohibiting the federal government from pressuring social media platforms to censor speech, there were some moments where they questioned the Biden admin’s arguments.

Justice Sotomayor pressed Fletcher to give her specifics on how the injunction that prohibits officials from coercing or significantly encouraging a platform’s content-moderation decisions would harm the government.

Fletcher responded by claiming that the injunction would prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from flagging foreign “disinformation” to platforms, prevent White House officials from criticizing the platform’s practices on “misinformation,” and prevent officials complaining about or flagging various other types of legal content on social media.

Justice Samuel Alito also noted that two lower courts have found or accepted that some examples of Big Tech censorship that were highlighted in this case were “traceable to the government’s actions.”

He added: “We don’t usually reverse findings of fact that had been endorsed by two lower courts.”

Additionally, Justice Alito expressed skepticism about the White House and other federal officials constant “pestering” of Facebook and other social media platforms.

“And I thought, wow, I cannot imagine federal officials taking that approach to the print media,” Justice Alito said. “I thought, you know, the only reason why this is taking place is because the federal government has got Section 230 and antitrust in its pocket, and it’s…to mix my metaphors, and it’s got these big clubs available to it. And so it’s treating Facebook and these other platforms like their subordinates.”

After the hearing, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), one of the legal groups representing the respondents in this case, urged the justices to recognize that the Biden admin’s censorship pressure violated the First Amendment.

“Our clients, who include top doctors and scientists, were censored for social media posts that turned out to be factually accurate, depriving the public of valuable perspectives during a public health crisis,” Jenin Younes, Litigation Counsel at the NCLA said. “We’re optimistic that the majority will look at the record and recognize that this was a sprawling government censorship enterprise without precedent in this country, and that this cannot be permitted to continue if the First Amendment is to survive.”

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Dissecting the ultra-Zionist cult Chabad and its complicity in genocide in Gaza

By David Miller | Press TV | March 18, 2024

In December last year, in the town of Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, a Jewish religious outpost was established in a partially destroyed building. It was described as the ‘first Chabad House’ in the besieged, war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

Chabad is an ultra-orthodox Jewish cult. It has many adherents in the genocidal Israeli occupation forces. Many of them wear Chabad patches on their uniforms. Here is a Zionist tank flying the distinctive Chabad flag in Gaza.

In addition, there are also Chabad Rabbis attached to the Israeli occupation forces. One notes that the genocide is actually about “rooting out evil”. Here two Chabad Rabbis erected the Jewish religious symbol, the Menorah, in Gaza.

But what is Chabad? It styles itself as a friendly outgoing Jewish movement dedicated to helping Jews reconnect with Judaism. However, in reality, it is a supremacist, hate-mongering Zionist cult.

In the past it was anti-Zionist, but back then, even as far back as 1929, its adherents in Al Khalil (or Hebron as it is called by Zionists) were involved in spying on the Palestinians for the Haganah terror militia as well as storing weapons for them.

Chabad is now so ultra-Zionist that it called in December for Gaza to be recolonized with Jewish settlers. Worse, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, its adherents believe – as laid out in the Tanya, Chabad’s key religious text – gentiles have only animal souls, not human souls.

In January, the Tanya was printed out by the Israeli occupation forces in Gaza. This supremacism is carried over into its attitude to the Palestinians.

Followers of a Chabad Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh are known as the ‘hilltop youth’. Two of his followers wrote the hugely controversial King Torah, which was also recommended by Ginsburg.

The book states that it is permissible to kill Palestinian children, including babies.

“There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”

Ginsburg was even detained by police over his promotion of the book.

It’s not just words. Ginsburg’s followers in the so-called ‘Hilltop Youth’ are said by the Zionist intelligence agency Shin Bet to be responsible for most ‘price tag’ revenge attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

In 1988, Israeli regime premier Benjamin Netanyahu famously met with the leader of Chabad in New York where the notorious Zionist cult has its global headquarters.

Netanyahu has maintained a strong relationship with Chabad ever since. Here he is seen addressing them at an event in 2014.

These are the forces – supported and aided by the United States and the United Kingdom – unleashed as part of the genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

In December, it was revealed that a Chabad group in the UK was fundraising to support the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has already claimed the lives of more than 31,700 Palestinians, 70 percent of them children and women, since October 7.

Rabbi Aryeh Sufrin of Chabad claimed back in October that the Hamas resistance movement is “worse than ISIS (Daesh)” in full conformity with Zionist entity talking points. He also disclosed that his son is a British recruit to the occupation forces and was in occupied Palestine at the time.

The Chabad appeal read “Vital equipment needed by the IDF… Funds raised will go directly to equipment needed by Aron DovSufrin’s reserve unit, up in the North of Israel, and Support Units.”

Aron DovShufrin is of course the son of the Rabbi, serving actively in the genocidal occupation forces.

Chabad-Lubavitch is an ultra-orthodox Hasidic sect that also happens to be a Zionist supremacist and genocidal cult. It originates in Liubavichi in Russia near the border with Belarus and is a global movement with more than 5,000 offices in over 100 countries and in all 50 states of the US.

The cult even has offices in seemingly unlikely places such as China, Belarus, Tunisia, Morocco and Venezuela.

It has prominent supporters in many places. For example, the new Argentinian president Javier Milei is a Chabad devotee. Donald Trump donated to Chabad, though not as much as his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who played a pivotal role in the normalization of the Zionist entity.

Obviously, Chabad has been highly organized in Ukraine and its followers were amongst those recruited to the Nazi Azov Battalion, which it is important to recall, was co-founded by a former member of the Israel occupation forces.

Press TV’s flagship weekly show Palestine Declassified previously reported how Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky bankrolled Chabad in Ukraine as well as the Nazi Azov and Aidar battalions.

Back in the UK, there are around one hundred Chabad groups or offices. It flies under the radar and is widely regarded as well-meaning if a little eccentric.

In reality, it is an extremist group that is building support for genocide in the UK.

Ironically, the Community Security Trust has aided Chabad – giving them security advice after an edition of Palestine Declassified exposed some of their activities.

The CST has ‘educating about extremism‘ as one of its charitable objectives, but it is unwilling to educate us on the extremism of Chabad.

There is a very good reason for that. Gerald Ronson, who created and runs the CST, is himself a Zionist extremist and has been supporting Chabad for more than half a century.

Here he is in 2013 as a guest of honor at one of their events.

Zionist extremists are widely scattered across the UK and form a mutually supportive network. This is a key element of the justification and support for genocide in Gaza.

David Miller is the producer and co-host of Press TV’s weekly Palestine Declassified show. He was sacked from Bristol University in October 2021 over his Palestine advocacy. 

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza Genocide Exposes Fraud of U.S.-led NATO’s Humanitarian Wars

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 17, 2024

Twenty-five years ago, the United States and the NATO military alliance launched an illegal war on former Yugoslavia.

It was a watershed event that led to a series of US-led NATO wars around the world over the next quarter century until today – all on the basis of some lofty principle about “defending” human rights or democracy.

In the former Yugoslavia, the 10-week aerial bombing campaign that began on March 24, 1999, caused hundreds of civilian deaths and destroyed the infrastructure of what was then a well-developed socialist country.

The rationale for the military intervention was declared to be a “humanitarian” one – allegedly to protect civilians in a civil war.

International lawyer and author Dan Kovalik says that the “humanitarian” pretext for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was a sham.

The real objective, he says, was for the United States and its Western imperialist partners to create a precedent for systematically violating international law.

Kovalik is the author of the book ‘No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using Humanitarian Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests’.

The NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia did not have legal authorization from the United Nations Security Council. It was a unilateral action more accurately defined as an illegal aggression – a war crime.

Kovalik notes that the historical period was a crucial one. During the 1990s, the United States was reconfiguring its imperial power in the post-Cold War era (1945-90). With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington was proclaimed to be the sole superpower. He says that the United States wanted to establish its prerogative in the post-Cold War world of using its military power and that of its NATO partners wherever and whenever it needed for the purpose of advancing its strategic interests.

The US-led aggression against Yugoslavia was thus an opening to a new world order for American and NATO military power to be used at will in total disregard of international law and the United Nations Charter that had been drawn up in 1945 to prevent the kind of aggression that Nazi Germany had waged.

In short, it was a reinvention of imperialism dressed in a cloak of virtue.

Following Yugoslavia, which was balkanized as a result of the NATO aggression, the United States and its military partners embarked on a 25-year orgy of illegal wars and covert interventions. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and other places in the Middle East and Africa. Endless wars costing the Western public trillions of dollars and fomenting a litany of socio-economic problems from mass migration to mass poverty – all of these wars have been engaged in by successive US presidents, including Democrat incumbent Joe Biden and his Republican rival Donald Trump.

The current war in Ukraine – the biggest since World War Two – can be attributed to NATO’s relentless expansion towards Russia’s borders over the past 25 years. Washington and its Western partners claim to be defending democracy, human rights and international law in Ukraine against alleged Russian aggression. This Western narrative ignores the reality that the US and its NATO partners have militarized a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine for at least eight years before the current conflict erupted on February 24, 2022.

Daniel Kovalik concludes with a devastating argument: if the United States and its NATO allies are so concerned by humanitarian principles and democracy then why are they not intervening to stop the genocide in Gaza against Palestinians? Over 30,000 people – mainly women and children – have been killed by Israeli military offensive. Far from intervening to protect civilians from Israeli slaughter and starvation, the United States and its NATO partners are fully complicit in supporting Israeli war crimes – militarily, politically and diplomatically.

Western “humanitarian intervention” so readily embarked on elsewhere is exposed as a grotesque fraud to cover for US imperialist crimes.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

SpaceX’s spy satellite network deal a major step toward ‘space militarization,’ poses new threat to global security: experts

By Fan Anqi and Guo Yuandan | Global Times |March 17, 2024

SpaceX’s increasing involvement in US’ military deployment poses a new threat to world peace and stability, and may even impact the everyday lives of ordinary people around the world, experts warned after the company is reportedly building a powerful spy satellite network using hundreds of its satellites for US intelligence agencies.

In an exclusive report from Reuters on Saturday, the commercial space giant is allegedly building a network of spy satellites under a classified contract worth $1.8 billion with a US intelligence agency called the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Reuters said, citing sources familiar with the program.

A special business unit under SpaceX, Starshield, is undertaking the project, the sources revealed, and if successful, it would significantly advance the US military’s ability to quickly spot potential targets “almost anywhere on the globe,” the reports said.

The reason the NRO chose SpaceX was mainly due to the company’s advantage in the number of small satellites it has in orbit, which allows for maximum coverage of more orbital levels, Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military expert and media commentator, told the Global Times on Sunday.

“The large number of satellites can enable the monitoring of a certain area without any blind spots, not only in coverage but also in time duration, thereby creating an all-encompassing spy network above the heads of all countries around the world,” Wei said.

Starshield was established in December 2022, when the company announced it was “expanding its Starlink satellite technology into military applications.” The target customers of Starshield includes the Pentagon and other national security agencies.

While the company tried hard to separate the two units to calm public worries, it is clear to all that the line is not so clear. Starshield will utilize the Starlink satellite constellation in low-Earth orbit to meet the growing needs of the US defense and intelligence agencies, media reports said, further blurring the boundary between civilian and military use.

Prior to this program, the Pentagon was already a big customer of SpaceX, using its Falcon 9 rockets to launch a dozen military payloads into space, according to media reports.

“This move is very dangerous,” Wei said, as once space becomes another arena for arms race, the company’s assets could be in jeopardy. In addition, if this spy satellite network gets involved in a US-instigated “space war” and thus poses threats to other countries, SpaceX may become a target for retaliation or counterbalance.

Wang Ya’nan, chief editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, believes that countries and regions will definitely take countermeasures once the network become operational, such as by moving facilities underground or using optical camouflage for concealment. As a result, obtaining sensitive information would still not be “a piece of cake” for US intelligence agencies, Wang told the Global Times.

Nevertheless, observers believe the spy network will pose a new threat to global peace and security. “The US’ extensive intelligence reconnaissance of countries or regions of interest will inevitably make some hot-button issues more sensitive or even escalate, and it will also make already complex international relationships more difficult to handle,” Wang said.

Wei warned that the satellite system will not only monitor military targets but civilian targets as well, potentially exposing the daily lives of ordinary people to surveillance, which will have significant negative implications for information security and personal privacy protection worldwide.

While the US incessantly hypes China’s “growing threat” in space and advocates for “demilitarization,” it has not stopped building up its military capabilities in the field, with the true aim of achieving a dominant position in space technology to support its superiority. “Due to the US’ instigations, we may eventually have to face the fact that space has become a new battleground,” Wang noted.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Iraq’s Islamic Resistance strikes Israel’s air base in occupied Golan with drones

Press TV – March 18, 2024

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq says it has carried out another anti-Israeli operation, targeting the regime’s air base in the occupied Golan Heights with drones.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which is an umbrella group of the country’s anti-terror movements, made the announcement in a statement on its Telegram channel early Monday without naming the Israeli air base.

“The fighters of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, at dawn today, Monday, 3/18/2024, targeted with drones an air base for the Zionist occupation’s drones in the occupied Golan,” the statement said.

It added that operations against the occupying entity will continue and double during the holy month of Ramadan in order to destroy more enemy strongholds.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq asserted that the new strike was part of the second phase of its operations against the Israeli regime and in support of the Palestinian people in Gaza, amid the regime’s ongoing genocide across the territory.

Israel’s military aggression against Gaza has so far killed at least 31,645 Palestinians and injured 73,676 others.

The regime has also imposed a complete siege on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, medicine and water to more than two million Palestinians living there.

The new operation came almost a week after the Iraqi resistance struck Israel’s main airport in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“The fighters of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq … targeted Ben Gurion Airport deep within the usurping entity by drone,” it said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the Iraqi resistance announced it had targeted the Haifa Airport in the northern part of the occupied territories in another pro-Palestinian operation.

The group has also staged numerous attacks against bases housing American occupation forces in Iraq and neighboring Syria in protest at the United States’ unreserved political, military, and intelligence support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Which European Countries are Most Dependent on US Gas?

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 18.03.2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier cautioned that the EU’s decision to stop the purchase of Russian energy supplies was “absolutely political” and would backfire on the bloc.

Every tenth cubic meter of gas used by the EU in 2023 was supplied by the US, with Lithuania the most dependent on the fuel, Sputnik research based on data from the UN platform Comtrade and the International Energy Agency has revealed.

According to the findings, the EU’s gas consumption stood at 330 billion cubic meters last year, 20% less than in 2021.

The US supplied 34.5 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG), or 10.4% of all gas consumed by the bloc in 2023, with Finland, which didn’t buy US gas in 2021, consuming 38,2% last year.

As for Lithuania, it consumed a record 40% of the American gas last year, against 22.3% in 2021.

The research also revealed that an array of other countries increased US gas supplies in 2023, including Croatia, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Poland, Italy and Germany. With 32%, Croatia proved to be the most dependent on US gas after Lithuania and Finland. The only countries that reduced American gas deliveries last year were Greece, Malta and Portugal.

The research comes after a previous Sputnik review of Eurostat data showed that EU countries had to pay some €185 billion ($201 billion) extra on natural gas over the past 20 months after cutting themselves off from cheap Russian pipeline gas.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin earlier warned that the EU’s “suicidal” and politically motivated decision to halt the purchase of Russian energy supplies as part of Western sanctions would come back to bite the bloc.

“Rejection of Russian energy resources means that Europe will systematically become the region with the highest energy costs in the world… This will seriously – and according to some experts irrevocably – undermine the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry, which is already losing the competition to companies in other regions of the world,” Putin underscored.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

US is not a democracy – Putin

RT | March 17, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that by criticizing democratic processes in other states, all while using their own administrative resources to suppress one of American presidential candidates, Washington has become a laughing stock of the rest of the world.

Speaking to the journalists at his campaign headquarters in Moscow on early Monday morning, after the preliminary results indicated his victory with over 87% of the vote in the country’s presidential elections, the Russian leader said that the “whole world is laughing at what is happening” in the US.

“We are behaving with more restraint than their opponents in other countries, but this is just a catastrophe, not a democracy – that’s what it is,” Putin said.

Putin noted that the US administration is using all its power and resources to attack one of the presidential candidates, apparently referring to former president Donald Trump, who is facing a litany of lawsuits despite being the frontrunner and virtually the only remaining Republican hopeful.

In a pre-election interview earlier this week Vladimir Putin said that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections and will work with any elected US president.

“I think it’s obvious to everyone that the American political system cannot claim to be democratic in any sense of the word,” he said in an interview with journalist Dmitry Kiselyov. Putin refused to comment further on the current presidential campaign in the US, but described the atmosphere as becoming “increasingly uncivilized.”

March 17, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

The West in Decline – John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

The Duran | March 16, 2024

The West in Decline – John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

ALEXANDER: https://www.youtube.com/AlexanderMercourisReal
ALEX: https://www.youtube.com/alexchristoforou

March 17, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Gates of hell will open’: Iraqi resistance issues ultimatum on ouster of US forces

By Wesam Bahrani | Press TV  | March 17, 2024

After weeks of strategic silence, one of the biggest units within Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) has made its position emphatically clear on key national security issues.

Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) reminded the government, the largest bloc in parliament (the Coordination Framework) as well as officials in the committee tasked with overseeing the withdrawal of foreign forces that they “should not grant immunity to the occupying forces, or else the gates of hell will open.”

By “occupying forces”, the resistance group referred to the US military, which has more than 2,500 troops deployed in bases across Iraq and thousands of others stationed at the US embassy in Baghdad.

The remarks by Abu Ali Al-Askari, the head of the KH Security Bureau, were directed at Iraqi authorities and the warning was aimed at Washington – it’s high time to pack up and run.

That’s important to highlight, as some have rightly noted, that Americans are telling the government in Baghdad one thing and telling certain other Iraqi factions something else.

More than a month ago, the Iraqi resistance suspended attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria, which were staged in solidarity with Gaza and to expel American forces for complicity in the Gaza genocide.

The decision to halt the attacks (despite deadly US airstrikes against PMU positions and commanders) was to allow breathing space for talks between Baghdad and Washington over the US military exit.

The government is believed to have assured the Iraqi resistance factions that if talks proceed uninterrupted, there is a better chance of US forces leaving without further foot-dragging. And that the process of negotiations would be faster than the operations on US bases.

Since then, as KH states, the US occupation forces “have not changed their movements and behavior on the ground and in the sky so far” and “even their statements indicate evasion to gain time and to keep their occupying forces in the country.”

There is a simple formula (which almost all Iraqis can agree on now) over whether the US military presence is an occupation, as large segments of Iraqi society say, or is “advising and training Iraqi forces to fight Daesh (ISIS)” as Washington claims.

When the US military returned to Iraq in 2014 on the pretext of fighting Daesh, it openly declared its position as a “combat mission”, which went unnoticed at the time since the wider focus was on defeating Daesh terrorism.

After the PMU defeated Daesh in 2017 and the Iraqi parliament voted for the withdrawal of all foreign “combat” forces in early 2020, the US transitioned its mission from a “combat” role to an “advisory” role in a bid to avoid being categorized as an “occupation”.

At least that’s what it said on paper in Washington.

In practice, violating Iraqi airspace, forbidding Iraqi forces to inspect US military bases, bombing PMF positions in Baghdad or the Syrian border, or killing top Iraqi commanders is far from an “advisory” role.

That is a purely “combat” role, which makes the US military presence in the Arab country an occupation. Many, however, argue that it’s been an occupation since 2017.

What’s happening now is that the PMF has realized that something isn’t quite right.

Sources say the US is in no position to defeat the PMF, which has become a formidable democratic force, without which there would be no Iraqi government today, but the US is pressuring certain parties within the country’s political system to replace PMF commanders.

Before even speaking about “opening the gates of hell”, Abu Ali al-Askari warned that “removing leaders or replacing others must be decided by the PMF internally, and acting otherwise and at this inappropriate time would be a significant mistake.”

This is why al-Askari addressed the government and the coordination framework who are pretty much allies of the PMF and which KH essentially notes as having good intentions for national security but is advising them to be very cautious of a fifth column.

Who could that be? The PMF warns that “controversial figures should not be brought in to lead the parliament, to avoid creating division within the legislative institution,” and that “the Iraqi parliament speaker should be chosen according to previous agreements and customary practices.”

The Kurds oversee parliament procedures, as they always have done. The parliament speaker has always been a Kurd, and the method of selecting the speaker has been the same since 2003.

Are Kurdish elements trying to influence parliament or switch tactics to change the PMF leadership? The same PMF leadership that is leading the calls for an end to the US occupation? Changes to KH and the PMF that were both in part set up by late anti-terror commander and PMU deputy chief Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis (assassinated by the US) by Kurdish factions?

With Reuters citing a senior Iraqi official on “condition of anonymity” as saying that talks to end the US occupation may not conclude until after the US presidential election in November, al-Askari connected the dots.

“Our brothers in the field of gathering information should start presenting documents and confessions confirming that Erbil is a conspiratorial espionage hub that works to harm Iraq’s security and is an advance base for the Zionist entity,” he stressed.

The northern Iraqi Kurdish city is increasingly and openly being used by some Iraqi Kurds as a meeting center for Mossad agents.

In particular now with the genocide in Gaza going on, the Israelis are more fearful of the Axis of Resistance and the damage it is capable of inflicting on the illegitimate entity in Tel Aviv.

The Islamic resistance in Iraq has shown no fear. It has entered phase two of its operations involving direct attacks against vital Israeli interests and enforcing a “blockade in the Mediterranean Sea on Israeli ships”.

At this rate, the PMF, with all its factions, may enter the fray against US bases in Iraq. What the PMF and its commanders sacrificed for the Iraqi people and the state is not something that Baghdad can ignore.

The successful battles to defeat Daesh terrorism in what was the biggest security challenge that faced the country in modern history require Iraqi leaders to show some respect to the PMU leadership.

Wesam Bahrani is an Iraqi journalist and commentator.

March 17, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

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