Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

US enlists extremists to attack Russian troops in Syria: Official

The Cradle | January 26, 2024

The Russian President’s Special Envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, has accused Washington of directing Syrian armed groups to carry out attacks against Russian troops in the country. 

“There are indications that the Americans are specifying tasks for their forces from among the Syrian armed opposition to inflict the greatest amount of damage on Russian military forces in Syria,” Lavrentiev said on 26 January. 

Lavrentiev added these attacks are planned not only against Russian forces in southern Syria but also in what is known as the Idlib de-escalation zone northwest of the country – patrolled by Russian and Turkish forces in line with a 2018 agreement. 

“[The US] has begun … supplying [extremist groups] with modern weapons and modern drones so that it can carry out raids, including on the Hmeimim base.” 

Hmeimim is a Russian-operated military base located southeast of the Syrian city of Latakia. Hostile, unidentified drones have approached the Hmeimim base in the past. 

On 3 October, Idlib-based extremists launched a drone towards a crowded military college in the city of Homs, killing dozens of civilians and graduating officers. 

Russian officials have repeatedly accused the US of harboring and training extremist militants in Syria, particularly inside Washington’s Al-Tanf military base. 

Russian and Syrian officials have also accused US forces of providing ISIS with logistical support and allowing it to operate from the 55-kilometer area surrounding the Al-Tanf base. 

Lavrentiev’s comments come as ISIS is making a resurgence in Syria. Despite losing the majority of its territory in the country, the group’s cells operate in the Syrian desert – geographically linked to Al-Tanf and the 55-kilometer zone around it – carrying out frequent hit and run attacks against Syrian troops, civilians, farmers, and truffle harvesters. 

This marked resurgence in ISIS activity coincides with ongoing attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq by Iraqi resistance factions in support of Gaza and in rejection of US support for Israel. 

Since October, the Iraqi resistance has launched at least 153 attacks on the US bases.

US officials are reportedly also in talks to establish a time-table with the Iraqi government for a withdrawal of their troops from Iraq. 

However, sources told Reuters that the talks “are expected to take several months, if not longer, with the outcome unclear and no US troop withdrawal imminent.”

As US bases in Syria come under fire, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a US-backed Kurdish militia which helps oversee Washington’s occupation of the country’s oilfields – has also been facing a widespread rebellion since last August, waged by Arab tribes with Syrian government backing. 

January 26, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi, Chinese vessels undeterred by Yemen Red Sea ops

The Cradle | January 26, 2024

Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, is continuing to send oil and fuel tankers through the Red Sea, despite US and UK bombing of Yemen and attacks by Yemen’s armed forces on Israeli, US, and UK-linked ships passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

“We’re moving in the Red Sea with our oil and products cargoes,” Mohammed al-Qahtani, head of Aramco’s refining and oil trading and marketing businesses, told Bloomberg on 26 January.

The risks of continuing to use the Red Sea route to Europe amid the violence are “manageable,” he said.

In November, Yemen’s de-facto government, led by the Ansarallah resistance movement, began targeting ships with Israeli links and ships traveling to Israel via the Red Sea and Suez Canal.

Ansarallah took the decision in response to Israel’s bombing and ground campaign against Gaza, which many view as a genocide.

Rather than press Israel to end attacks on Gaza, the US and UK began bombing targets in Yemen, endangering not only Israeli-linked ships but ships from other nations as well.

In response, many of the world’s largest shipping companies began redirecting ships around the Horn of Africa, adding two weeks to the journey from Asia to Europe.

But in January, Aramco increased crude shipments through the Red Sea toward Europe, according to vessel tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

“That is also giving us huge access and optionality,” Qahtani said. “We are assessing that almost on a daily basis.”

He said that the cost of these shipments has increased, as few shipping companies are willing to travel the route, and insurance costs have risen. “But overall it’s is very manageable.”

Most Saudi crude is exported east to Asia, but the kingdom has been able to continue using the Red Sea route for western shipments due to its continued ties with the Yemeni government.

Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah continue to negotiate a formal end to the war they fought between 2015 and 2022.

As western shipping companies have rerouted their ships, Chinese firms have stepped in to fill the void, as China also enjoys good relations with Ansarallah and does not fear its ships being attacked in the Red Sea.

Chinese firms have been serving ports such as Doraleh in Djibouti, Hodeidah in Yemen, and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, which all saw major drops in port traffic following the attacks.

Cichen Shen, the China expert at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, told the Financial Times that the “easiest explanation” for the rush of Chinese operators into the region was that they seek to exploit their relative invulnerability to attack to win business.

“You have commercial interest and you see this capacity gap and you see the demand,” Shen said of the lines’ motivation for moving ships to the region. “I think the commercial interest is probably the biggest reason.”

January 26, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who Is the Antiwar Candidate?

Fuggedaboutit!

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JANUARY 25, 2024

I sometimes wonder what the Founders, if they could return to life and see their creation, would think of today’s American Republic. President George W. Bush described the Constitution of the United States as “just a goddamned piece of paper” before he went on a rampage all over the world in what he called the “war on terror.” Of course, he had probably never even read the Constitution or the Federalist Papers and therefore did not understand how the Founders had deliberately made it difficult to go to war, which they regarded as the greatest evil confronting the new nation. Bush proceeded to push through other unconstitutional legislation including the so-called Patriot Act which empowered him to kill some hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings in places like Afghanistan and Iraq without declaring war on anyone after having produced fabricated information to justify the brutality.

But that was then and now is quite different and even worse, with a president who often appears to be lacking any brain cells holding hands behind his furrowed brow. The United States is currently at war in two countries, has illegal occupying military forces based in at least three more, and is quite possibly conniving at adding a few more enemies du jour, namely Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, China and Russia. All of this is being accomplished without declarations of war from Congress and without even compliance with the 1973 unconstitutional War Powers Act, which mandated that the president should be confronting an imminent threat to take such action. Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken have also twice sidestepped the requirement that Congress should approve all arms transfers to foreign nations by falsely claiming an “emergency” to ship $250 million of armaments to Israel, weapons that are being used to carry out a genocide against the Palestinians, making the US totally complicit in that war crime.

I have of course been following the Republican primaries as well as the flow of self-justifying verbiage otherwise known as lying coming out of the mouths of the Democratic Party incumbents, most notably the Zionist-Catholic Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden; his able sidekick Kamala “has anyone seen her lately” Harris; his Antony Blinken who goes to Israel to negotiate and the first thing he tells Bibi is that he is a Jew; his Director of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas who has forgotten that real countries have borders; and his Treasury Secretary Janice Yellen who is happy funding multiple wars simultaneously while running up the already unsustainable federal debt. Behind it all is the apparent belief that the United States should be empowered to tell the rest of the world how to behave. Oh, and the Democrats have decided to base their 2024 campaign on the highbrow principle of free abortions for everyone! Joe Biden’s confessor would like to hear that!

And then there is Congress, which is following the Senator John McCain principle that one should always embrace the possibility for a new war. Congressman Nancy Pelosi and Senator Schumer seem to love Ukraine and Israel so much that it leaves little time to do anything for their actual constituents. Schumer often reminds audiences that his surname is close to the Hebrew word for protector, making him “the Jewish state’s protector in the Senate.”

The problem is that America’s so-called government has been so corrupted by both money pouring in from defense contractors and Jewish/Israeli interests that they have lost sight of the people who have the misfortune of having voted the bastards into office. Opinion polls suggest that the public has gone off both the comedians running Ukraine and the Israeli baby killers in Gaza. The voters have also learned that they have little to no say regarding what the psychopaths in the White House and on Capitol Hill decide to do with their tax money and even their very lives.

Just to show how useless voting has become, it is interesting to look at the policies concerning war and peace that have been enunciated by current and recent presidential candidates to find out if anyone seriously wants to step on the brakes of the war machine. Bear in mind that the Neocons have come to control the foreign policies of both major parties which means that Israel will always come first in Washington while war will also be a constant element in America’s relationship with the world.

First comes Genocide Joe whose record speaks for itself. He managed to get out of Afghanistan by abandoning many billions of dollars-worth of military equipment and killing a bunch of American soldiers, but he quickly sought to make up for that by avoiding a negotiated end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict and giving Israel a free hand backed by money and weapons to undertake the slaughter in Gaza. He has made America accessory to both conflicts and has a hit list of other countries he might decide to weaken or attack to demonstrate that he is a strong leader. The possible victims include major nations like Iran, Russia and China. He is now attacking the Houthis in Yemen and has warned that if even a single American is killed at the illegal military bases in Iraq and Syria he might have to go to war with Iran, which he blamed for the incidents without providing any evidence. His Vice President is Kamala Harris, who is married to a Hollywood Jewish lawyer. She is, of course, little more than an affirmative action token in place, but makes noises indicating that she is fully on board with what is going on with Israel and Ukraine.

Trump the GOP nominee-apparent? He is completely ignorant on most issues including foreign policy and wars and he appoints reckless hawks and neocons like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to senior positions. Christian Zionist Mike Pence, a dispensationalist who wants the world to end so he can be wafted up to heaven, was his Vice President. Trump is totally owned by the Israel Lobby operating through his son-in-law and his former Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Friedman notably spent his time in the Jewish state supporting Israel rather than working on behalf of American citizens or US interests. Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem in spite of international agreements making such a move illegal after receiving $100 million in political donations from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He also recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, allowed illegal settlement expansion, and gave Netanyahu a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians. Trump also ordered the killing of Qassim Suleimani, a senior Iranian official who was in Baghdad on a peace mission and staged missile attacks on Syria based on false intelligence. Trump gives lip service to ending “useless wars” but never did so in practice when he was in office. He is prone to throwing around threats and has declared recently that if an enemy in the Middle East spills a “’drop of American blood’ I will spill a ‘gallon of yours.’” This comes from a man who avoided the Vietnam War draft because he found a doctor who discovered that he suffered from “bone spurs.”

And then there is still standing the Republican contender Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina and Donald Trump’s United Nations representative. She has been described as the female version of John McCain and she is a complete supporter of the carnage in Ukraine and is even more so a total Israel firster. She is a hawk across the board and it is believed that the bulk of her political financial support comes from Jewish sources that are tied to Israel. She has said that Israel should eliminate Hamas, which she considers to encompass all Palestinians, and that the US should not take in any Palestinian refugees. She also rejects the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict because the Palestinians, who have rejected several two states solutions according to Nikki, want instead a one-state solution that would eliminate Israel. She also supports the war against Russia in Ukraine.

And then there is good old Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who recently dropped out of the race. He might just be the most vicious Zionist of them all. He has led a number of delegations from Florida to Israel and was one of the first to respond to October 7th Gaza events by banning Palestinian groups at all state universities due to their alleged “antisemitism.” He did not ban or even criticize a single Jewish group for cheerleading the subsequent slaughter of the Palestinians and even opposes giving Palestinian refugees US visas because he claims they are all “antisemites.” He fully supports everything Israel is doing in Gaza and believes that Netanyahu should have a free hand to do whatever he wants to the Arabs. When DeSantis was a Congressman he notoriously refused to meet with survivors in his district from the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty which killed 34 American crewmen and injured more than 170. The Israelis sought to sink the ship and a cover-up of the incident ensued thanks to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who declared that he would rather see the ship go to the bottom of the sea and all on board killed than embarrass his Israeli friends. LBJ also ordered the recall of a squadron of US jet fighters that were sent to help the Liberty.

Not much room left! Finally there is Robert F. Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr) who initially did a good job in fooling potential voters into thinking he was a man of peace, but he turned all John McCain after he blundered by praising Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters. Israel’s friends and partisans quickly informed him that Waters was on their enemies list because of his openly expressed support for the Palestinian cause. Kennedy immediately deleted his praise of Waters and declared him to be a “vicious anti-Semite.” He also claimed falsely that the Palestinian Authority has offered to pay a bounty to any Palestinians who “kill a Jew anywhere in the world” while also claiming that Palestinian children are all “being raised as serial killers. He approves of the demolitions of Palestinians’ homes and argues that in Gaza “Israel is doing more right now to protect human life” while he also praises the IDF’s “unique moral approach” to war.

Kennedy also issued a detailed statement online and has become one of the Jewish state’s most outspoken supporters. He posted on X: “This ignominious, unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defense. We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now. As President, I’ll make sure that our policy is unambiguous so that the enemies of Israel will think long and hard before attempting aggression of any kind. I applaud the strong statements of support from the Biden White House for Israel in her hour of need. However, the scale of these attacks means it is likely that Israel will need to wage a sustained military campaign to protect its citizens. Statements of support are fine, but we must follow through with unwavering, resolute, and practical action. America must stand by our ally throughout this operation and beyond as it exercises its sovereign right to self-defense.”

Kennedy’s inability to separate fact from fiction is evident in his referral to “Palestinian settlements within Israel,” when describing Palestinians living in what is left of their former land that is now under Israeli occupation and subject to constant settlement expansion, as though the Palestinians are the ones colonizing the Israelis. Kennedy is now running as an independent but has lost many of his staffers because of his position on Gaza. Many antiwar Americans were initially thrilled when Kennedy announced that he would be against Joe Biden in this year’s primaries and that he’d hired former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, an antiwar progressive, to be his campaign manager. But Kucinich quit in the middle of October. In November, Kennedy’s field team, headed by former California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s wife Rhonda, also quit. In December, his foreign policy and veteran’s affairs adviser James R. Webb, Marine Corps veteran of Iraq War II and son of the former senator from Virginia, also submitted his resignation. Webb revealed that his resignation was in disgust over Kennedy’s stance on Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip and Kennedys’ claim that “collective punishment” of civilians is justified.

One might add that there is another interesting more-or-less independent in the race, namely Jill Stein who will be seeking the nomination of the Green Party. She is a genuine antiwar person whom I have known for eight years and she has criticized the “endless war machine” as well as what is going on in Ukraine and in Gaza, where she has called for an immediate cease fire. Alas, she has no chance of getting more than a couple percentage points of the votes cast.

Other fringe candidates include Cornel West, an independent, and two Democrats who will continue to appear on the primary ballots going ahead. They are Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. So, there you have it folks. To paraphrase the immortal Donald Trump, peace on earth is for losers!

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.

January 26, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Only Democrats are allowed to question election validity

By Drago Bosnic | January 26, 2024

Ever since Joe Biden took the presidency in the United States, the mainstream propaganda machine has been absolutely merciless toward anyone who’d dare to question the validity of the 2020 presidential election. The DNC-dominated federal institutions, particularly the highly politicized Department of Justice (DoJ), offered full support in this regard, looking to suppress any attempts of “undermining American democracy”, which is just another lifeless euphemism used against anyone daring to expose lies and outright voter fraud. However, this sort of behavior uncovers another form of hypocrisy and double standards in American politics (not that those were ever in deficit). Namely, the Democratic Party never had any qualms about questioning the validity of the 2016 presidential election, as well as countless other instances when elections on state and other levels weren’t beneficial to them.

In fact, it could easily be argued that the so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory that has been recycled over and over in the last well over half a decade is a prime example of questioning the validity of elections by the Democrats. What’s more, this laughable claim was even used as a pretext to change the geopolitical landscape by bringing the relations between Russia and the US to (First) Cold War levels, perhaps even worse, pushing the world to the edge of an abyss. Of course, no such concern was shown during the much more controversial 2020 election that saw actual mass voter fraud committed, as evidenced by recent findings. However, that’s a forbidden topic for the DNC, the so-called “Big Tech” and the mainstream propaganda machine. God forbid anyone would ask any questions about it, as they’d get nothing but open hostility or even get prosecuted.

Steve Watson of the Modernity News recently covered this topic, showing the case of the Fox News reporter Peter Doocy who confronted the troubled Biden administration’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre over this practice. Namely, on January 24, he pointed out the recent footage of Joe Biden calling Democrat Terry McAuliffe “the real governor of Virginia”. Doocy asked whether questioning election validity is a joke now, resulting in an awkward exchange with Jean-Pierre, who was clearly agitated by the question. Her rather clumsy attempt to play ignorance didn’t last long and she soon found herself having to defend Joe Biden’s statement as a supposed “joke”. When Doocy asked for further clarification, Jean-Pierre failed to provide one, trying to go around the question. However, the Fox News reporter refused to back down and stood his ground, asking the following:

“How are you going to convince people, though, that this idea of denying election results is very bad if President Biden is going out and making jokes like this?”

Jean-Pierre kept insisting that this was “merely a joke”. However, as Watson pointed out, this wasn’t the first time Joe Biden questioned election validity. He previously called former president Donald Trump “an illegitimate president”. Biden’s practice of denying election results goes back decades, as evidenced by his claim that “Al Gore really won the 2000 election”. There are numerous other examples of the DNC’s top people questioning election validity, perhaps best illustrated by this video showing 24 minutes of footage proving it. And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine is “worried about our democracy” whenever the Republicans question election results. Apparently, claiming that Trump is supposedly “illegitimate” and even “Vlad’s pal” is perfectly fine and doesn’t constitute any sort of “danger for American democracy“. However, similar criticism of the DNC is “deplorable“.

Worse yet, these same people are demanding Trump be prosecuted and even jailed for “undermining our democracy” by refusing to acknowledge that the 2020 election was valid. What’s more, on December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court banned Trump from running for presidency under the pretext that he led the so-called “January 6 insurrection”. Although he was never formally charged (let alone convicted) for that highly controversial event, the Court made its decision based precisely on that premise. On the other hand, the DNC-aligned judges probably didn’t expect this obviously partisan decision would open up a political “Pandora’s box” in the US. Namely, in response to the ruling, high-ranking officials from Texas, Arizona and Pennsylvania suggested taking Biden off the ballot. Such developments could even lead to America’s collapse along state lines.

As for election validity, recent findings show that the public’s trust in the impartiality of federal institutions has been severely undermined. The latest poll, conducted jointly by Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports, found that 20% of voters who cast mail-in ballots during the 2020 presidential election admitted to participating in voter fraud. However, such findings aren’t limited to polls, as evidenced by a recent court ruling in Connecticut. Namely, according to the Epoch Times, Superior Court Judge William Clark overturned the results of a Democrat mayoral primary in November 2023 and ordered a new election. The ruling was based on hours of video evidence showing hundreds of illegally harvested absentee ballots being stuffed into drop boxes in the city of Bridgeport. Clark called the videos shocking and warned they “should be shocking to all the parties”.

The report further points out other instances when election results were nullified by lower court decisions across the US, including the 2021 Compton City Council run-off race that was initially decided by a single vote. The judge tossed four fraudulent ballots cast by people not legally registered in the jurisdiction, while five people pleaded either guilty or no contest to conspiring to commit election fraud. The report cites an even worse case in Mississippi, where both state and federal institutions were deeply involved in election fraud and attempted cover-up. There are dozens of such cases across the country, many still pending for court proceedings. The Epoch Times also pointed out the thousands of court convictions for election fraud in the last two decades. This is yet another proof that the “rule of law” in the US is nothing but a myth that not even Americans themselves believe.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

January 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

How the Israel Lobby Takes Out Its Opponents

Glenn Greenwald | January 21, 2024

This is a clip from our show SYSTEM UPDATE, now airing every weeknight at 7pm ET on Rumble. You can watch the full episode for FREE here: https://rumble.com/v47eafo-system-update-show-212.html

Now available as a podcast! Find full episodes here: https://linktr.ee/systemupdate_

Join us LIVE on Rumble, weeknights at 7pm ET: https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald

Become part of our Locals community: https://greenwald.locals.com/

Follow Glenn:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald

January 26, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

The DOJ Quietly Prosecutes the Covid Resistance

Brownstone Institute | January 24, 2024

Midwives in New York and plastic surgeons in Utah didn’t close schools, shutter businesses, or add trillions of dollars to the national debt, yet they are the primary targets of the Biden DOJ’s Covid prosecution.

Court documents reveal how the Department of Justice has dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars in resources to prosecuting Americans who forged Covid vaccination statuses, according to a new report from David Zweig.

The feds have used undercover agents to take down midwives and local doctors who forged vaccine cards. Many of the “criminals” had no profit motive; they objected to the mandates based on ideological principles or medical concerns, and they needed cards to participate in society.

Zweig highlights cases that have been brought as late as spring 2022, “long after it was widely known that the vaccines did not stop infection or transmission, which was the only ethical and logistical justification for mandates.”

More than ever, it is clear that the calls to “move on” from Covid are reserved for protecting those who implemented tyranny.

Politicians like Gavin Newsom, who celebrated their acquisition of dictatorial powers in 2020, demand forgiveness for eviscerating the Bill of Rights. In the Atlantic, Professor Emily Oster called for a “pandemic amnesty” after advocating for vaccine mandates for employees and students, school closures, “full lockdowns” over the holidays, and universal masking. “Let’s focus on the future,” she insists.

The Biden White House has largely adapted this strategy; substituting foreign conflicts as its new justifications for exorbitant foreign spending and widespread domestic censorship.

With the presumptive nomination of President Trump in the Republican Party, citizens’ hope for answers on the Covid response hinges on Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s participation in the presidential debates. Both parties will work to ensure that does not happen.

In effect, the powerful have already enjoyed a pandemic amnesty. Politicians have not lost their power nor faced a serious inquiry into their malfeasance. Pharmaceutical companies received government-sponsored immunity from lawsuits while pocketing billions of dollars from federal, state, and local mandates. The apparati behind the Covid response remain intact with little threat to their continued acquisition of power.

But the “focus on the future” does not extend to those who resisted the Covid hegemon. “The mandates were so feared and loathed by significant and diverse numbers of citizens that they were willing to become criminals rather than comply,” Zweig explains.

The Biden Department of Justice will not give dissidents the courtesy of a pandemic amnesty. Instead, the targets of the regime will join the ranks of Americans punished by the Department of Justice for their resistance while nondescript bureaucratic tyrants continue their careers unscathed.

The damage to the nation, however, cannot be glossed over. Learning loss, business closures, vaccine injuries, the erosion of trust in all major institutions, trillions of dollars added to the national debt, trillions more in collateral damage, and the institution of a censorship state will take decades to fix, if possible at all.

But there is no indication that the powerful will be held accountable for the damage they imposed. Instead, the Biden Administration has decided to target citizens who resisted its irrational edicts. The same edicts for which they insist they must be granted an “amnesty.” Such actions only increase the devastation from a disastrous policy response.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

CHD, Parents Take on Philadelphia Health Officials in Bid to Overturn Law Allowing Kids to Get Vaccines Without Parents’ Consent

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.| The Defender | January 23, 2024

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and seven Pennsylvania parents last week opposed the City of Philadelphia’s motion to dismiss their lawsuit seeking to overturn the city’s law that allows minors as young as 11 to consent to vaccination without their parents’ knowledge.

Tricia Lindsay, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender it is important the case be heard and that its significance goes beyond the City of Philadelphia.

“This case is one which addresses pivotal issues, and is significant for all citizens,” Lindsay said, adding, “The right of a parent to the care, custody and control of their children is not a right which should be taken lightly, and is not one that can simply be extinguished with the stroke of a pen.”

The lawsuit, filed Nov. 1, 2023, alleges the City of Philadelphia engaged in a “wink and a nod” practice of vaccinating children behind parents’ backs without informed consent for the past 15 years, under the cover of its 2007 General Minor Consent Regulation (MCR).

That rule allows children 11 and older to consent to vaccination without parental knowledge as long as they receive a “vaccine information statement” for the administered shot.

It also absolves the vaccine administrator of liability related to the vaccine if the minor gives consent.

On May 14, 2021, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health enacted an additional COVID-19 Minor Consent Regulation, allowing children ages 11 and up to consent to the COVID-19 vaccine then available under emergency use authorization.

In its motion to dismiss, filed on Jan. 5, the city and its health department argued that none of the plaintiffs had been directly harmed or are likely to be harmed by the regulations and therefore they lack standing to sue.

City and health officials also argued that even if the plaintiffs did have standing, the complaint failed to “state a claim,” or show sufficient facts and legal justification, that Philadeliphia’s law violated federal or state law or that it violated parents’ constitutional rights to make decisions about their children’s upbringing.

But the defendants ignored a key relevant federal court decision — Booth v. Bowser — cited by the plaintiffs to support their claim and which legally “eviscerates” the regulations, CHD told the court.

Plaintiffs in Booth v. Bowser sought to stop the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020, a bill that similarly would have allowed children as young as 11 in the District of Columbia to be vaccinated without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Defendants in that case tried to have the case thrown out using the same rationale invoked by Philadelphia plaintiffs — lack of standing and failure to state a claim.

In Booth v. Bowser, the court found the plaintiffs did have standing, had adequately pleaded their claims and were likely to win their case. When the amended version of the bill —  Consent for Vaccinations of Minors Amendment Act of 2022 — took effect March 10, 2023, the section allowing children under age 11 to consent to vaccines without their parents’ knowledge had been repealed.

But in the Philadelphia case, rather than following that precedent and repealing the regulations, CHD attorneys wrote:

“Defendants here refuse to acknowledge that children, particularly those as young as eleven, are simply incapable of making vaccination decisions on their own, especially when defendants engage in manipulative tactics directly targeting children with false statements of safety and efficacy, calculated bullying, and peer pressure campaigns.

“Defendants have the audacity to say they are not actively interfering in compelling children to be vaccinated without parental knowledge and consent when they are blatantly manipulating children to the point of compelling children to make critical health decisions on their own and then, through the MCRs, providing the vehicle for children to obtain healthcare in secret.

“The MCRs are a critical part of [the] defendants’ propaganda machine. Without the MCRs, children cannot receive these vaccines in the absence of parental consent.”

Videos pressuring teens promote ‘name calling, outright bullying and violence’

CHD and the parents suing the city argued that whether or not their children were vaccinated without their consent, they were injured because the regulations put their children at risk of imminent vaccination, violating their constitutionally and statutorily protected parental rights.

The parents — all of whom are either residents of Philadelphia or travel frequently to Philadelphia — said they are concerned their children may be pressured into vaccination when they are in the city because of measures put in place targeting teens to get vaccinated.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Philadelphia, like the district, created a “pressure-cooker environment,” in which children could be psychologically manipulated into defying their parents and getting vaccinated, the plaintiffs allege.

The plaintiffs’ memo included several examples illustrating the intense pressure teens could be subject to, which along with the arguments in the brief, “exposed the underbelly of city officials’ methods of persuasion and coercion by directing extreme forms of psychologically manipulative peer pressure under the guise of empowerment, equality, freedom and health,” Ray Flores, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender.

That evidence included two videos that Flores called “cringeworthy.”

In one video, teens perform a skit where one teen pressures another to go with her to get the COVID-19 vaccine, by pushing her and calling her an idiot. The video, Flores said, “promotes name calling, outright bullying and violence.”

No parents are present or referenced and the teens in the skit go to get vaccinated alone.

After the skit, another teen presents a series of “facts” about the vaccine, including a guarantee that the vaccines do not affect DNA, they have no adverse effects and that they provide immunity to the virus.

“We provide the facts, so you can get the vax!” the teens chant.

In a second video, a “Teen Vaxx Ambassador” talks about how effective “teen-to-teen” conversations are in convincing others to get vaccinated. She also details how they make getting the vaccine fun by creating a “party-like atmosphere” around the vaccine.

“The city indoctrinates these children to convince peers to make rash decisions without any professional information,” Flores said. “Given that these children can receive nearly any injection without parental permission, the dangers are clear and obvious since a plethora of vaccination sites are located within the city limits.”

The memo also included links to several news stories celebrating the city’s policy allowing minors to consent to vaccination and promoting vaccination to teens.

The plaintiffs also underscored several key arguments from the complaint.

They argued that Philadelphia’s regulations conflict with the consent requirements of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA), the federal law that has primacy over conflicting local laws on such matters, according to the U.S. Constitution, and must be applied equally in all places.

They also argued that children are not “capable of providing informed consent” for vaccines, as the regulations suggest, because the vaccine information sheets or COVID-19 fact sheets are not written for children to understand. Additionally, children may not know their health history, or understand and be able to navigate the process for identifying and seeking compensation should they become vaccine-injured.

The memo reiterates that vaccinating a child without parental consent violates parental constitutional rights to direct their children’s upbringing. In their motion to dismiss, the defendants argued this right is only violated if the child is compelled to be vaccinated.

The plaintiffs countered that the injury occurs when parents are deprived of their right to make the decision in the first place.

They wrote:

“The Defendants have crafted a procedure to clandestinely bypass parents lawfully exercising their authority. Meanwhile, the City has ratcheted up the pressure on children whose parents have opted out of vaccines and even on children who do not know their vaccination status and thus even are susceptible to over-vaccination.

“The City has publicly and vocally encouraged children to be vaccinated as part of its program to do an end-run around parents.”


Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

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.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Insurance underwriters insert ‘no connection to Israel’ clause for shipping

MEMO | January 25, 2024

Insurance underwriters are requiring some clients to sign contracts guaranteeing that they have no connection to Israel or the US in order to obtain cover for cargo ships passing through the Suez Canal, the New York Times has reported. The demand comes as Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have pushed up insurance premiums for merchant vessels.

According to the NYT, the attacks at this critical choke point handling 12 per cent of global trade have more than doubled the average worldwide shipping costs. Some ships are opting to avoid the Suez Canal and instead take the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, adding weeks to delivery times.

Passing through the Red Sea still necessitates expensive speciality war risk insurance offered by London brokers to cover potential Houthi strikes. Rates have jumped as much as 50 times more than before the Yemen conflict, and now cost up to one per cent of a ship’s value despite relatively minimal damage to ships so far. For a ship carrying goods worth $100 million, that could mean an extra $1m to be insured.

Insurers blame the increased risk on Israel’s military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza. By forcing clients to guarantee that they have no ties with Israel and its Western allies, underwriters aim to shield themselves from inadvertently covering any vessels associated with the current geopolitical tensions underlying the attacks.

Analysts say that the ripple effects on global trade and consumer prices are still unfolding. They warn that if Red Sea transit remains high-risk, inflation could return.

The demand by underwriters follows previous preventative measures taken by vessels to avoid Houthi attacks. Earlier this month, cargo ships passing into the Red Sea began to declare that they have no links to Israel, according to data from the navigation safety feature known as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which transmits the identity, location and destination of larger vessels.

Israel’s Western allies appear to be running out of options in their attempt to contain the Houthis. Yesterday, the Financial Times revealed that the US has urged China to help curb Houthi attacks around the crucial Bab Al-Mandab Strait. Chinese ships are not being targeted by the Yemeni group and nor are vessels of countries that are not supporting Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Nevertheless, China is reported to have expressed “concern” about the attacks, and called for “restraint”.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yemeni missiles force US navy to turn back from Bab al-Mandab Strait

The Cradle | January 25, 2024

The Yemeni armed forces announced late on 24 January that intense clashes took place with several US warships escorting two commercial vessels attempting to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

“A clash occurred today between a number of US destroyers and warships in the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab while they were protecting two US commercial ships,” the spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a video statement.

“Despite attempts by the warships to intercept them, our ballistic missiles reached their targets successfully,” Saree’s statement added, noting that a US warship was “directly hit” and the commercial vessels “were forced to retreat.”

According to the Yemeni official, the battle lasted for about two hours.

Abdullah bin Amer, Deputy Head of the Moral Guidance Department at the Yemeni Ministry of Defense in Sanaa, said that the US warships tried to counter the attack “in a confused and intense manner,” launching missiles that reportedly “fell into the sea [and] on the Yemeni mainland in empty areas.”

In the early hours of Thursday, Danish shipping giant Maersk confirmed that explosions nearby forced two ships operated by its US subsidiary – Maersk Line Limited (MLL) – were forced to turn around as they attempted to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait with a US navy escort.

“While en route, both ships reported seeing explosions close by, and the US Navy accompaniment also intercepted multiple projectiles,” Maersk said in a statement, adding it was suspending Red Sea transits by vessels of its US subsidiary.

The two vessels were carrying “US military supplies.”

MLL carries cargo for the Department of Defense, Department of State, USAID, and other US government agencies.

Wednesday’s battle is the latest escalation between Yemen and the US, as the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa has pledged to enforce a naval blockade against Israeli, US, and UK-linked vessels until the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza stops.

The crossfire came less than a day after US warplanes conducted their most recent air raid campaign over Yemen. US and UK warplanes, ships, and submarines have launched dozens of attacks across Yemen in retaliation for the country’s pro-Palestine actions.

Earlier on Wednesday, Yemeni authorities ordered US and British nationals to leave the country within a month.

“The ministry … would like to stress that you must inform officials and workers with US and British citizenships to prepare to leave the country within 30 days,” reads a letter sent by the Yemeni foreign ministry to the UN’s acting humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Peter Hawkins.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Coverage of Gaza conflict by US media shows overwhelming support for Israel

MEMO | January 25, 2024

Prominent US newspapers have applied double standards in their coverage of the Gaza conflict, mostly showing support for Israel, according to an analysis, Anadolu Agency reports.

Leading newspapers, such as the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have published news biased against Palestinians during Israel’s attacks against Gaza, according to a 9 January report by US-based news outlet, The Intercept.

“The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza showed a consistent bias against Palestinians, according to an Intercept analysis of major media coverage,” it said.

Although 14,800 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children, were killed in the first six weeks of the conflict, US newspapers maintained a close relationship with Israeli statements.

More than 1,000 articles regarding Israel’s attacks on Gaza were examined, and some keywords and the context in which they were used were calculated.

Major newspapers disproportionately emphasised Israeli deaths in the conflict and used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis.

In the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, “Israeli” or “Israel” appear more than “Palestinian” or variations thereof, even as Palestinian deaths far outpaced Israeli deaths.

The report said, for every two Palestinian deaths, Palestinians were mentioned once. For every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned eight times, or a rate 16 times more per death than Palestinians.

Also, highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like “slaughter”, “massacre” and “horrific” were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians.

Only two headlines out of more than 1,100 articles in the study mention “children” related to Gazan children.

“Despite Israel’s war on Gaza being perhaps the deadliest war for children in modern history, there is scant mention of the word “’children’ in headlines,” it added.

The report underlined that biased coverage in major newspapers and mainstream television affects general perceptions of the war and leads viewers to a distorted view of the conflict.

Tensions have been running high across the West Bank since Israel launched a deadly military offensive against the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian Resistance group, Hamas, in which Israel said 1,200 people were killed.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

At least 25,700 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and more than 63,740 injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Top Democrat-linked PR firm tapped by pro-Israel groups to control Gaza war narrative

By Kit Klarenberg | MintPress News | December 29, 2023

On December 6, it was announced with much fanfare that the 10/7 Project, a new “centralized communications operation to promote continued US bipartisan support for Israel; push for accurate, complete coverage of the Israel-Hamas war,” and achieve a “stronger” media “focus” on the victims of October 7’s Al-Aqsa Flood would be launched, by a quintet of the largest Israeli lobby groups on U.S. soil.

Who and what is funding the 10/7 Project isn’t at all clear. Publicity material spoke vaguely of an unnamed “coterie of philanthropists” and the organization’s interest in sourcing “more philanthropic support” moving forward. Future formal financial disclosures may make for fascinating reading, but its founders offer some clues.

The five comprise the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. This is quite the rogue’s gallery of Zionist entities, several of which have deplorable track records of actively whitewashing, if not outright facilitating, Israeli apartheid propaganda activities that have become turbocharged since October 7.

As such, the 10/7 Project’s professed mission of countering “disinformation” about October 7 and “Israel’s response” to the events can only be considered highly disquieting, especially given its target audience is “key media and government influencers.” In reality, of course, the organization is just the latest salvo in the Zionist state’s long-running information war against Palestinians and the Western world. This pitched battle has recently become ever more treacherous, specifically due to Tel Aviv’s genocidal “response” to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

One could be forgiven for thinking the 10/7 Project had already floundered in its objectives. After an initial ripple of mainstream interest, primarily from Israeli outlets and Zionist news platforms, the organization has seemingly vanished without a trace from the media landscape – or at least, its name has. As we shall see, though, it’s evident that in the manner of an iceberg, the 10/7 Project’s public footprint represents but the visible tip of something far larger and considerably more destructive.

‘STRANGLEHOLD ON CONGRESS’

While the 10/7 Project may not be directly making headlines daily, its parent organizations certainly are. The ADL has since October 7 published a steady stream of reports, lapped up by the media largely without question, testifying to an explosion of “anti-Semitic incidents” across the Western world in the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Shocking stuff, one might think. Yet, as an investigation by MintPress News Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod revealed, the ADL is producing such staggering figures by categorizing anti-Israel and pro-Palestine rallies and corresponding chants at both as individual “anti-Semitic incidents.” Despite the exposure of its embarrassing, Enron-style accounting, the League continues to pump out the same bogus “research” at regular intervals. On December 12, it claimed “anti-Semitism” in the US was now up 337% in the wake of October 7, “an all-time record.”

It is far from the first time ADL definitions of anti-Semitism have failed to pass muster. For example, in December 2022, The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein revealed that the League did not categorize Ukraine’s openly Neo-Nazi paramilitary Azov Battalion to be the “far right group it once was.” This, despite the fact that Azov’s mission to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen,” as articulated by founder Andriy Biletsky, remains unchanged.

Meanwhile, the infamous AIPAC – accurately described by U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer as “a de facto agent for a foreign government, [with] a stranglehold on Congress” – has made clear its significantly intensified mission to rid Washington DC of any elected official possessed of even vaguely anti-war, pro-Palestinian views, by declaring war on lawmakers such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

When AIPAC moves against, or in favor, of particular politicians, they mean business – and depressingly, the organization usually wins. Annually, the organization publishes a report on its “policy and political achievements” that year. Its 2022 installment boasts, among other things, of bagging $3.3 billion “for security assistance to Israel, with no added conditions” and having gifted $17.5 million – the most of any U.S. PAC – to “pro-Israel candidates,” 98% of whom won their elections, in the process defeating 13 anti-Israel challengers.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

The official website of the 10/7 Project is spartan in the extreme. Visitors are offered a “contact us” form, a link to subscribe to its regular newsletter, and a “what we do” section listing purported activities. This includes informing the public “with credible, real-time information about events in Israel and Gaza,” highlighting “excellent reporting,” calling out “biased coverage,” holding “biased media accountable,” and offering “expert spokespeople for press and broadcast outlets.”

Unmentioned anywhere is that the 10/7 Project is represented by a trio of notorious PR and political consultancies – CKR Solutions, OnMessage Public Strategies, and SKDK. Together, they move in the shadows to advance the organization’s interests and messaging publicly and on Capitol Hill. SKDK’s contribution will inevitably be the most insidious and impactful.

Since its founding in 2004, the company has careened from damaging scandal to damaging scandal yet consistently secures major, big-ticket clients. The reason for this is clear. SKDK was founded by and employs a retinue of high-ranking, well-connected Democratic operatives. Among them is Anita Dunn, Barack Obama’s White House Communications Director, credited as the “mastermind” of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and widely regarded as a key member of the President’s “inner circle.”

Joe Biden speaks with SKDK’s Anita Dunn ahead of his State of the Union address in February 2023. Adam Schultz | White House

Ever since Obama’s 2008 election win, SKDK has been plausibly accused of selling privileged access to the White House to clients despite failing to register as a lobbying firm. This means major corporations have a direct means of encouraging – and bribing – the Oval Office to offer tax breaks, shred regulations, dump legislation, smash unions, and generally harm the U.S. public interest with total impunity and in absolute secrecy.

SKDK’s expansive Rolodex also helps politicians get out of serious trouble. In 2018-2019,  Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan paid the company $200,000 for “crisis communications” assistance after one of his campaign workers sued him for harming her professionally when she complained of sexual harassment by one of his top aides. Meanwhile, in August 2021, it was revealed a senior SKDK staffer personally intervened to suppress negative media coverage of sexual harassment allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Even more perversely, it’s since been revealed that at the same time, SKDK was advising Madigan on how to navigate his public controversy, the company was also helping his former campaign worker bring a lawsuit against the aide who’d sexually harassed her. A more perfect demonstration of the DC blob’s incestuous nature and SKDK’s total lack of ethical and professional scruples one would be hard-pressed to find. And both are highly competitive categories.

SKDK played a pivotal role in Biden’s 2020 presidential bid, decisively reversing his fortunes after abysmal performances in various caucuses. While the mainstream media primarily praised the miraculous work of the company and Dunn – his de facto campaign director – there has also been fierce controversy surrounding its electioneering activities. For example, SKDK fired off daily “Misinformation Briefings” to major tech and social media firms, including Google, Meta and Twitter, requesting that specific content be suppressed or removed.

In most cases, the recipients complied, meaning SKDK exerted extraordinary influence over what voters did and did not know and could and could not see during the controversial 2020 Presidential election. Which surely at least partially accounts for Biden’s victory. To make matters even worse, the company was simultaneously. reaping a $35 million windfall from the government of California by running the state’s supposedly bipartisan “get-out-the-vote” campaign. The contract, originally to be financed by local taxpayers, was mysteriously awarded to SKDK on a “no-bid” basis.

‘DICTATE TERMS’

Clearly, the 10/7 Project was intended to be a very public affair. In an early promotional interview, executive director Josh Isay – perhaps unsurprisingly, until August 2022 SKDK’s longtime CEO – boasted about the “widespread enthusiasm” with which the organization’s “efforts to set the record straight and combat misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” had so far been received:

We look forward to continuing to do the critically important work of providing policymakers and the American public with reliable information about Israel and Hamas, and uplifting the stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre.”

Yet, there is no obvious sign of those ambitions bearing fruit to date. A partial explanation for this failure may lie in the 10/7 Project’s wish to transform the “innocent victims” of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood into human interest stories and atrocity propaganda while elevating the organization’s eponymous date to the position of 9/11 in the American public’s mind.

In the weeks since the 10/7 Project’s inception, it has become ever-increasingly clear the Zionist narrative of what unfolded when Hamas breached Gaza’s armored concentration camp walls – unquestioningly regurgitated over and again for weeks after that by the Western media – is completely and grotesquely fraudulent.

For example, on December 15, it was reported based on social security data that Tel Aviv’s claim that 1,200 civilians died in the initial assault was greatly exaggerated. In reality, just 695 lost their lives. The previous figure was itself a revision from an initial civilian casualty “estimate” of 1,400.

Every civilian death in a warzone is an extremely grave crime. It is surely for this reason that Tel Aviv on December 12 desperately argued “it would not be morally sound” to investigate “friendly fire” incidents in “kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities” during Operation Al Aqsa Flood – civilians killed by Israeli Occupation Forces. Nonetheless, the numbers involved are avowedly “immense.”

Among the “stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre” selected by the 10/7 Project for public “uplifting” in service of whitewashing and justifying the Gaza genocide will have been a great many individuals slaughtered in cold blood by indiscriminate, excessively violent IDF actions. This is all but inevitable. Urgently casting those victims into obscurity while ensuring the entire issue of Zionist “friendly fire” is not examined is now of paramount importance.

More significantly, though, the exposure – and occasional admission – of Tel Aviv’s brazen lies has fundamentally shifted mainstream narratives and sympathies away from Israel and towards the Palestinians. Audiences of every extraction globally can witness the monstrous reality of the genocide in Gaza and learn of Zionist abuse of the Palestinians even before the colonial entity’s founding in 1948 with their own eyes and ears.

Israeli deceit has been so relentless and so readily exposed that even typically subservient Western news networks and their featured pundits are treating official claims with enormous skepticism. Similarly, Zionist violence is so constantly unremitting and wantonly sadistic that graphic reports of carpet bombs maiming and slaughtering every generation of Palestinians are now commonplace.

Meanwhile, developments such as the revelation that IDF soldiers killed three shirtless Israelis waving a white flag, speaking Hebrew and seeking their assistance have traveled widely, in turn highlighting prior examples of identical “peacetime” atrocities inflicted upon Palestinians. By contrast, there has to date been no “misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” to combat at all.

A LOSING BATTLE

As a result, the 10/7 Project and its founders are placed in the invidious position of having to publicly defend the indefensible – namely, a modern-day genocide unfolding on television screens and front page headlines the world over. In such circumstances, overt and unashamed advocacy work is best conducted behind the scenes. Yet, it is precisely in this context that the 10/7 Project may be most dangerous and potent due to its open-door Oval Office access.

Tireless solidarity efforts by European activists, protesters, citizen journalists, and civil society organizations have produced significant results. Paris went from mulling legislation criminalizing anti-Zionism in November to now leading global pressure for a ceasefire. Multiple governments and opposition leaders are likewise changing their tune. Senior British officials openly warn Netanyahu to drastically rein in his unquenchable bloodlust if he wishes to retain any international support.

Stateside, however, while the crusading work of grassroots pro-Palestine voices and groups has been redoubtable, the Biden administration’s commitment to facilitating, encouraging, and exacerbating the Gaza genocide, however it can, remains undimmed. While the President has demanded Netanyahu’s slaughter be wrapped up by the new year, there is no indication material, financial, and diplomatic support upon which the new Nakba depends is being curtailed. On December 18, during an official visit to Tel Aviv, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a bloodcurdling oath:

This is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms. Our support [for] Israel’s right to defend itself is ironclad, as you’ve heard me say a number of times, and that’s not going to change.”

One way greater pressure could be brought to bear against the Biden administration might be for citizens to demand their elected representatives in Washington to disclose what dealings they may have had with the 10/7 Project or its representatives since its launch.

To ascertain whether and how White House policy and public pronouncements are being directly informed, if not explicitly dictated, by the wishes and wills of a shadowy and unaccountable lobbying coalition with indeterminate but no doubt intimate political and financial connections to the perpetrators of a 21st century Holocaust.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Arizona GOP Chair Resigns After Kari Lake Threatens “More Damaging” Recording

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 24, 2024

One day after the Daily Mail published a leaked recording of Arizona GOP Chairman Jeff DeWit trying to bribe Trump ally Kari Lake to stay out of politics for two years, DeWit resigned.

“This morning, I was determined to fight for my position,” he said in a statement reported by Just the News. “However, a few hours ago, I received an ultimatum from Lake’s team: resign today or face the release of a new, more damaging recording. I am truly unsure of its contents, but considering our numerous past open conversations as friends, I have decided not to take the risk. I am resigning as Lake requested, in the hope that she will honor her commitment to cease her attacks, allowing me to return to the business sector—a field I find much more logical and prefer over politics.”

Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake called on the state’s GOP chair Jeff DeWit to resign after a recording emerged of him trying to bribe Lake to stay out of politics for two years.

In the recording, first reported by the Daily Mail, DeWit, 51, can be heard asking lake to name her price not to run.

“There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” he can be heard telling her in a conversation recorded last March.

He then, after asking her not to mention the conversation to anyone, makes his first offer:

“So the ask I got today from back east was: “Is there any companies out there or something that could just put her on the payroll to keep her out?”

Lake is taken aback.

“This is about defeating Trump and I think that’s a bad, bad thing for our country,” she replied.

DeWit later framed it in a different way.

“Just say, is there a number at which –

“I can be bought?” Lake interjected. “That’s what it’s about?”

“You can take a pause for a couple of years. You can go right back to what you’re doing,” DeWit replied.

Lake repeatedly shuts him down, and says she wouldn’t pull out for a billion dollars.

“This is not about money, it’s about our country,” she says (one her own recording, we’re guessing).

Listen (via Collin Rugg).

Following the report, Lake called on DeWit to resign.

“He’s gotta resign. We can’t have somebody who is corrupt and compromised running the Republican Party,” she told an NBC reporter during Trump’s New Hampshire primary victory party.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment