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The US, Russia, and Ukraine: 75 Years of Hate Propaganda

Zelensky: The “Winston Churchill of Our Time” (George W. Bush)

In the Western symphony of propaganda, the hated Putin, the “autocrat,” is contrasted with the heroic Zelensky the “democrat” (Time magazine’s 2022 “person of the year”). But how democratic is Zelensky?

His man-of-the-hour image had help from international friends. Zelensky’s global perception management team is run by a well-connected London-based British firm, The PR Network, that helps him prepare messages for global consumption.

BY GERALD SUSSMAN APRIL 18, 2023,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/18/the-us-russia-and-ukraine-75-years-of-hate-propaganda/

“It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.”

– Henry Kissinger

“But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

– Adolf Hitler

“We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses [on deceiving the public].”

– Mike Pompeo on his time as CIA director

What is state propaganda? It is a disciplined and coordinated discourse using mass persuasion on behalf of state interests. It’s one instrument of what’s called realpolitik – foreign policy designed to advance “national interests,” which in a neoliberal economy like the US means corporate interests. The oligarchs, the billionaire class in the age of neoliberalism, in their unfettered greed have employed both US political parties and their accessories in the media, the intelligence community, and Congress and turned them into a collective ministry of (dis)information and subalterns of empire. Propaganda as a tool in foreign policy commonly relies on hate-laden ideology to mobilize public consensus.

Enemies

A key to successful mass mobilization of the public mind is the enemy construct. One of the key studies on the subject found that the US has had a permanent need for enemies, and when not “readily available, we have created them” (Finlay, Holsti, and Fagen, cited in Murray & Myers, 1989, p. 555). Russia as enemy (Russophobia) works just as well if not better when it’s conceived in demeaning ethnic rather than political economic terms. That’s because hierarchical race and ethnicity ideas are closer to the surface of public prejudice than those focused on, for example, effigies of socialism or communism. In other words, it is easier to orchestrate hatred toward Russia and Putin when there preexists a deep distrust of Russians, their history, and (orthodox religious) culture and its people based on “difference” and a perceived civilizational threat to the West. Under such collective psychological conditioning, this has led to a rejection of Russia membership in the congregation controlled by white European Christian nations.

The US has manufactured innumerable enemies during the course of its existence, and it has had to in order to become a world superpower. Since 1776, there have been only 16 years when the country was not at war. In the pantheon of America’s villains during its 247-year history, one of the most prominent portraits is that of the demonic Vladimir Putin, whose “enemy” status among Americans was pumped up to 70% by March 2022, soon after the start of Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine.

The “liberal” Democrats are found to be far more inclined to carry out a proxy war against Russia than Republicans and much more supportive of supplying Ukraine with advanced weapons and US troops: tanks (67% to 48%), long-range missiles (60% to 41%), fighter jets (56% to 39%), direct invasion (33% to 22%) (Frankovic and Orth, 2023). Former CIA director and defense secretary under Obama, Leon Panetta bluntly declared, ‘It’s a proxy war with Russia, whether we say so or not” (Bloomberg, 2022).

The massive US “proxy” assault on Russia, more like a full-scale invasion but without its own troops physically on the ground and in the air, is only the latest episode of a hundred-year-old effort to impose Western hegemony over that country. It started with the joint “expedition” that the sanctimonious Woodrow Wilson (“I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men”) sent to Siberia and northern Russia in a failed attempt, along with mainly European allies, to back the White Russians in the civil war and overthrow the Bolshevik government. Anti-communism was toned down during the Second World War, as it was the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, tactically allied with the US and the British Empire, that bore by far the heaviest burden, suffering 27 million deaths, in defeating the Nazi regime. It’s a sobering reality of historical proportions that is rarely acknowledged in the US. Immediately following the war, the US quickly converted the USSR/Russia from ally to enemy (and their enemies to allies) and worked closely with anti-communist groups in Ukraine and the larger Soviet region in efforts to break apart the Soviet state.

The then newly formed CIA, established in 1947, covertly supervised underground far right organizations in Ukraine, in particular the pro-Nazi Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the anti-Soviet Ukraine Insurgent Army (UPA), as part of its “psychological warfare activities

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June 24, 2024 Posted by | history, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Leaked doc reveals Israeli military KNEW of Hamas plan to raid and take hostages 2 weeks before Oct 7, Israeli news reports

SOTT, Grace Eliza Goodwin, Business Insider, 2024-06-18

The Israeli military knew about Hamas’ plans to attack southern Israel weeks before October 7 — even how many hostages the militant group planned to capture, according to a report from Israeli public broadcaster Kan.

The Israel Defense Force’s Gaza Division reportedly distributed an internal intelligence document on September 19, 2023, outlining the details of Hamas’ planned raid, according to Kan.

The document, which Kan reportedly saw, states that the IDF had observed Hamas conducting a series of trainings where militant fighters practiced attacking both Israeli military stations and civilian kibbutzim communities.

The IDF also knew, according to the document viewed by Kan, that Hamas trained its units on how to capture hostages and how to guard them once they were taken back to the Gaza Strip.

Comment: The following is a AI dubbed translation of the report: English dub of an Israeli news report about a document the IDF distributed internally on September 19th, 2023, titled “Detailed End-to-End Raid Training” — it described the impending 10/7 attack in close detail, down to the number of hostages and how Hamas planned to handle them.  https://x.com/BoltzmannBooty/status/1802780095934796125?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1802780095934796125%7Ctwgr%5E03c00f0d7a7896eeb5714ea82f7f7840b511a996%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sott.net%2Fembed%2FrqC_5-5FwJyE6YzTfNGB8znT2Ak

The IDF’s Southern Command and Gaza Division also wrote in the document, according to Kan, that they expected Hamas to take between 200 and 250 hostages. The officials even had intel on how Hamas intended to treat the hostages in certain extreme circumstances and what rules Hamas set for executing hostages, Kan reported.

Comment: The recent hostage ‘rescue’ (and ensuing massacre) reveals that Hamas has been treating the hostages very well.


Israel mistakenly believed, the Times of Israel reported, that Hamas would never be able to get past its high-tech border security — an “Iron Wall” composed of concrete, tunnels, and razor wire, complete with remote-controlled machine guns, that was installed two years before the attack.

That oversight prevented top Israeli intelligence leaders from doing anything about the internal report detailing Hamas’ plans, Kan News reported.

And it wasn’t just a few weeks before October 7 that Israel reportedly knew about Hamas’ plans.

More than a year before the attack, Israel had a 40-page document detailing, play-by-play, exactly how Hamas would attack the southern border, The New York Times reported last year. But, Israel never took Hamas’ plans seriously, assuming the militant group would never get past Israel’s defenses, the Times reported.

Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage, many of whom are still being held in captivity.

The exact number of hostages Hamas took is unclear, but Israel has estimated it was around 240, with about 116 still in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Israel’s subsequent airstrikes and war against Hamas in Gaza have killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, many of whom are women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities…………………………………https://www.sott.net/article/492398-Leaked-doc-reveals-Israeli-military-KNEW-of-Hamas-plan-to-raid-and-take-hostages-2-weeks-before-Oct-7-Israeli-news-reports

June 20, 2024 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Unveiling Cosmic Secrets: Black Budget Tech and UFOs with Aerospace Expert Michael Schratt

The U.S. military and intelligence agencies have billions of dollars’ worth of secret projects they don’t want you to know about. These billions have funded a secret world of advanced science, technology, weapons, and various covert activities, which have always been shielded from congressional oversight and public scrutiny. Back in the 90s, Members of the House Armed Services Committee once said that 70 percent of the black budget could be declassified at no risk to national security. Our taxpayer dollars are funding these black budget programs, and we have a right to know what we’re paying for. So why the secrecy? What is being kept hidden from the public?

To investigate this further, we recently interviewed private pilot and military aerospace historian Michael Schratt, who’s studied top secret advanced technologies buried deep within the military-intelligence complex for over 25 years. He alleges to have first-hand experience with classified government black budget programs, with access to former US Air Force pilots, retired Naval personnel and former aerospace engineers with top-secret clearance. He’s one of the leading authority voices in investigating government programs involving the recovery and study of off-world technology, also known as UAP/UFO crash retrieval programs. He’s author of DARK FILES, which brings to life historically significant and credible UFO cases obtained from university archives, research centers, and private collections using carefully re-constructed illustrations of the events. Whether it’s advanced military aircraft or serious signs of extraterrestrial life, the implications are too profound to ignore. Michael is suggesting that publicly known technology and weapons programs might be fronts for black budget operations dealing with technologies way more advanced than the public is aware of.

Join us in this fascinating 38-min video interview, with many images and videos throughout to verify and illustrate the points being discussed.

  • 00:00:00 Introduction to the military-industrial complex and the black budget world 00:03:54 Interview begins 
  • 00:06:00 What drew Michael Schratt to studying advanced black budget technologies and UFO phenomena 
  • 00:07:22 If you could declassify one technology developed under a black budget program, what would it be and why? 
  • 00:10:20 Out of all the advanced technologies in use on Earth, how much has ET influence? 
  • 00:11:39 UFO/UAP crash retrieval programs 
  • 00:18:05 Top secret technologies 101 00:22:32 The infamous Tic Tac video: a UFO, reverse-engineered craft, experimental military tech, or all of the above
  • 00:26:32 The military bases that are purported to study ET tech and house advanced technologies 
  • 00:29:25 How can the most powerful technologies help humanity instead of harm? 
  • 00:30:37 How to balance disclosure with national security obligations 
  • 00:33:01 Michael’s thoughts on the UAP Disclosure Act 
  • 00:36:32 What keeps Michael inspired and hopeful  

June 17, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Uncle Sam cool with arming, training Neo-Nazi Azov Brigade in Ukraine.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 16 June 24

Back in 2018, the US banned military assistance to the Azov Brigade due to its neonazi and white supremacist ideology.

Azov was founded by Andriy Biletsky in 2014 to assist Kyiv’s destruction of Ukraine’s breakaway Donbas region, Biletsky also led related group Social National Assembly whose goal was “to prepare Ukraine for further expansion and to struggle for the liberation of the entire White Race from the domination of the internationalist speculative capital…and to punish severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that lead to the extinction of the white man.” Ouch.

But with Ukraine near collapse from America’s proxy war against Russia, the Biden administration decided that Azov wasn’t that bad after all. Doesn’t matter that current head Denis Prokopenko has been associated with its neonazi idology since its founding, not that Azov still uses the Wolfsangel neonazi symbol

When the US initially banned Azov, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) praised the decision: “I am very pleased that the recently passed omnibus prevents the US from providing arms and training assistance to the neonazi Azov Battalion fighting in Ukraine.”

But that was before the US provoked an unnecessary war in Ukraine, spiraling it into a failed state. Desperate to achieve victory without shedding any US blood, the Biden administration, with not of peep of protest from Khanna, has suddenly turned neonazi Azov into the Sons of Liberty

June 17, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

From the Hiroshima bomb to Israel’s nuclear weapons, the path leads back to Congo’s uranium

Conspiracies in the Congo Linda Pentz Gunter 16 June 24  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/06/16/conspiracies-in-the-congo/
It involved the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); a Belgian mining company; a fictitious Liberian trading company; a German-named ship — the Scheersberg A; a Spanish crew; a German petrochemical official; an Italian paint company; an Israeli freighter; the Greek island of Crete; a Turkish port; and a confession made in Norway.

If this sounds like the plot for an elaborate work of fiction, it was — it formed the basis of Ken Follett’s 1979 thriller, Triple. But it was also all true. The clandestine operation, which took place in November 1968, smuggled an estimated 200 tonnes of uranium yellowcake out of the DRC, transporting it to Israel. It was orchestrated by Mossad, the Israeli secret intelligence service and came to be known as Operation Plumbat, since the illicit cargo was marked as lead.

The scheme was set in motion when, after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, France curtailed its weapons supplies to Israel and likely the uranium fuel as well needed for Israel’s Dimona reactor, believed then and still to be at the heart of the country’s nuclear weapons program. The operation concluded with an exchange of ships and cargos on the high seas, the Scheersberg A eventually docking empty in Turkey while the uranium, now aboard an Israeli freighter, made its way to Haifa and eventually to Dimona.

The Plumbat operation was first exposed in April 1977 at a non-proliferation conference in Salzburg, Austria by Paul Leventhal, who went on to found the Nuclear Control Institute in 1981.

Israel officially denies that any of this took place, despite ample documentation and the later confession of one of its Mossad officers after his arrest in Norway. This was yet another bizarre twist in the tale when a Mossad operation in Lillehammer to assassinate one of the 1973 Munich Olympic attackers instead mistakenly took out an innocent Moroccan waiter on his way home from work. One of the agents, in order to prove to Norwegian authorities that he was indeed with Mossad, related the story of Operation Plumbat.

Of course, Israel also officially denies the existence of its nuclear weapons arsenal.

The uranium bound for Israel came from the Shinkolobwe mine in DRC’s Katanga province. The veins of uranium that run through Shinkolobwe bleed everywhere. And so do its victims.  

The DRC is the site of the present day genocide that no one talks about. As many as six million people have now died in the ongoing fighting there, mostly over mineral rights. That long and bloody history began in the 1880s when the despotic Belgian king, Leopold II, enslaved and brutalized the country’s population, violence that continued under the subsequent Belgian government that took control in 1908.

The Belgians first began mining uranium at Shinkolobwe in 1921. In 1939, Albert Einstein, by then aware that a nuclear bomb could potentially be built and that Nazi Germany might be pursuing one, alerted President Roosevelt to the need for access to a rich uranium supply. The best such, Einstein said, could be found in what was then known as the Belgian Congo.

Once Nazi Germany had occupied Belgium in 1940, concerns grew that the uranium stockpiled at Shinkolobwe could fall into Hitler’s hands. A plan was quickly developed to ship 1,200 tons of uranium ore to the US where it was first stored on Staten Island and eventually transported to the Manhattan Project’s nuclear bomb factory at Los Alamos in New Mexico. 

As recounted in Susan Williams’s non-fiction book, Spies in the Congo, US agents in various guises slipped in and out of the Congo, secretly shepherding the uranium back to the Manhattan Project. A second shipment of 1,000 tons of stockpiled ore soon followed. Wrote Williams, citing Gabrielle Hecht’s book, Being Nuclear, Africans and the Global Uranium Trade: “The miners sorted and packed up the uranium ore by hand and, according to estimates, they could have been exposed to a year’s worth of radiation in about two weeks.”

Seventy percent of the uranium in the Hiroshima atomic bomb came from Shinkolobwe and another ten percent was used in the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

However, the colonialist skulduggery didn’t end there. When the DRC gained its independence in June 1960 and Patrice Lumumba became the country’s first democratically elected prime minister, Katanga province abruptly seceded from the country. In an effort to quell the rebellion, Lumumba appealed to the United Nations but was rebuffed. He then turned to the Soviet Union for help, sealing his fate.

The assassination of Lumumba on January 17, 1961 after barely six months in office, appears to have come on direct orders from President Eisenhower, officially out of concerns that Lumumba’s association with the Soviets would create a communist stronghold in the region.

But uranium was also at the heart of the plot and the US may not have acted alone. UK Labour Party peer, David Lea, reported in 2013 that a former MI6 operative, Daphne Park, told him she and MI6 orchestrated the assassination to protect the uranium supply. “Lumumba would have handed over the whole lot to the Russians,” said Park according to Lea.

All of these schemes and intrigues have come about at the price of peace and stability for the Congolese people. Contamination from the radioactive and heavy metals left behind at the mine site continues to poison people and the environment. Other minerals, especially cobalt and copper, have invited further plunder and conflict.

And there could soon be renewed interest in Shinkolobwe’s uranium. “At a time when many nations are engaged in an arms race, stockpiling weapons of mass destruction to prove their ‘strength’, Shinkolobwe mine still risks being seen as an attractive prospect,” wrote young Congolese climate activist, Remy Zahiga in a paper for the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

Renewed interest may be coming from countries such as France (which inked a deal, thus far unexploited, in 2008) and China, eager to continue and expand their nuclear power programs under the false premise of climate mitigation. China already owns other mines in the DRC. “The existence of hidden entrances and ownership of all surrounding infrastructure would make the Shinkolobwe mine an attractive location should China decide to supplement its current uranium imports,” writes Daniel Allen in his 2024 paper, Uranium Security in the DRC.

And yet, the world looks away.

During an online event hosted by the Peace & Justice Project, an initiative of former UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and his wife Laura Alvarez, Congo-born London councillor, Michelline Safi-Ngongo, asked with rightful indignation and somewhat rhetorically why the media never talked about the on-going genocide in her country?

The answer was sadly all too obvious, including to her. Black faces. Far away places. Africa, where these things “happen all the time”. Worthy of a shrug, then forgotten. When the West needs uranium or cobalt or copper, workers in the Congo and their families become suddenly expendable.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. You can learn more about the Congo’s uranium history in her forthcoming book, Hot Stories. Reflections from a Radioactive World, will be published in autumn 2024.  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/06/16/conspiracies-in-the-congo/

June 17, 2024 Posted by | AFRICA, history, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Uranium | Leave a comment

Top civil servant joins EDF after running department that struck nuclear deal

Alex Chisholm, who led business office during Hinkley Point C negotiations, appointed UK chair of energy firm

Rowena Mason Guardian, Whitehall editor, Wed 12 Jun 2024

One of the UK’s most senior civil servants, Alex Chisholm, has been revealed as the new UK chair of the energy company EDF, after having previously run the department that struck a deal for it to build a new nuclear power station.

Chisholm was permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, and before that led the business department, which worked on the government deal for EDF to go ahead with the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset. The agreement was struck in 2016 with UK bill payers bearing the cost of the construction over a 35-year period.

The long-delayed project’s costs have soared from an estimated £18bn to at least £31bn and it is due to be completed in 2031 – about 14 years after EDF thought it would be up and running.

The French state-owned company is a specialist in nuclear power, and one of the “big six” energy providers that have been criticised for huge profits during the energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine.

Chisholm’s departure is one of a number of high-profile exits from the civil service before a likely change of governing party. Alex Aiken, a former longstanding head of government communications, recently left Whitehall for a job as an adviser on communications to the government of the United Arab Emirates.

There is also speculation about the future of Simon Case, the cabinet secretary and former royal aide installed by Boris Johnson, given incoming prime ministers often want their own preferred candidate in the job.

Chisholm’s EDF role was approved by the watchdog on post-government jobs, known as the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments. But the watchdog said he must wait three months after departing government to take up the job and observe a ban on lobbying the government or involvement in negotiating government contracts for two years after leaving office.

The watchdog said: “In 2016, his department was responsible for the decision on finalising the first contract for difference [a pricing mechanism], with respect to EDF and the construction of Hinkley Point C. However, this was ultimately a decision for the secretary of state and followed the 2014 approval from the European Commission and was based on terms agreed then, 10 years ago.

“Significantly, due to the period of time that has elapsed, the committee did not consider Sir Alex could reasonably be seen to have influenced this decision in anticipation of an offer of work a decade later.”

Chisholm said his appointment came “at a time of great change and opportunity in the energy sector”……….https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/11/top-civil-servant-edf-department-nuclear-deal-alex-chisholm

June 13, 2024 Posted by | politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

Biden hits ‘new low’ in arming ‘pro-Nazi’ Azov: US Congressman

ByAl Mayadeen English, Source: Agencies, 12 Jun 2024  https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/biden-hits–new-low–in-arming–pro-nazi–azov–us-congressm

Paul Gosar says the Biden administration’s decision to lift a ban on arms supplies to Ukraine’s Azov battalion prolongs the war.

US President Joe Biden has reached a new low after his administration decided to remove restrictions on arms supplies to Ukraine’s Azov battalion, US Congressman Paul Gosar pointed out on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post, citing the US State Department, reported that the Biden administration has lifted the ban on arms supplies to and training of the Azov battalion.

Established in 2014 by Ukrainian ultra-nationalists in the wake of the Western-backed Maidan riots, the Azov Battalion was included in the National Guard of Ukraine in November of that year.

The battalion has come under severe criticism for its support of Nazi ideology and symbols, as well as its human rights violations against the Russian-speaking population of Eastern Ukraine.

Russia’s Supreme Court designated Ukraine’s Azov Battalion as a terrorist organization in August 2022.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov called the reported decision by the United States outrageous, adding that it raises serious concerns about US readiness to fight terrorism.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office last year accused Azov militants of employing prohibited means and methods of warfare, including the torture of civilians and the killing of children.

The battalion’s symbol is the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel, a black swastika against a yellow background. Founded by Andriy Biletsky, who vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen,” the group is a pack of neo-Nazis working with the US-backed Ukrainian military.

June 13, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukrainian officials stole $490 million meant for military – MP

 https://www.rt.com/russia/599073-ukraine-fortification-construction-embezzlement/ 10 June 24

Criminal proceedings are underway in relation to dozens of cases of alleged embezzlement, according to politician Mikhail Bondar.

Nearly $500 million given to Kiev for the construction of defensive fortifications to repel Russia’s advance has been embezzled or stolen, media reported on Sunday, citing Mikhail Bondar, a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

Ukrainian law enforcement authorities have launched around 30 criminal proceedings linked to the embezzlement of 20 billion hryvnias ($491 million), Bondar told lawmakers at a closed-door session of the parliamentary investigative commission on fortifications, according to multiple media reports. In the absence of defensive fortifications, Russian forces have made rapid advances in the country.

“Members of the commission from Servants of the People [Ukraine’s ruling party], when they heard such figures, immediately tried to defend the managers of the funds,” Bondar said. However, he claimed that the “lion’s share” of the funds had been disbursed through Ukraine’s military and civil authorities, which the MP described as the “vertical of the president.”

Ukrainian lawmakers have urged the defense ministry, as well as local military authorities, to provide information on the use of budget funds for the construction of defenses.

Last month, Ukrainian media reported that military and civilian authorities in Kharkov Region had paid millions of dollars to fake companies for the supply of non-existent construction materials to build fortifications.

According to Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, Kharkov Region authorities alone embezzled or stole 7 billion hryvnias ($176.5 million) that they had been given to build fortifications along the border. The lack of defenses has resulted in Russian troops overrunning a dozen settlements in quick succession.

For the supply of wood, the Kharkov Department of Housing and Communal Services and OVA Regional Military Administration signed contracts worth 270 million hryvnias ($6.8 million) with five companies that had been set up immediately after the contracts were announced. No bidding process took place, and at least two of these companies were owned by the same person, an anti-corruption report claimed.

In May, Russia launched a large-scale offensive on Kharkov Region, capturing multiple towns and villages. Some Ukrainian troops, including Denis Yaroslavsky, a commander active in the area, blamed their superiors for putting up inadequate defenses, claiming they may have embezzled money intended for their construction.

For months, Kharkov Region has been a source of Ukrainian cross-border attacks on Russia’s Belgorod Region. Its proximity has allowed Ukrainian troops to regularly shell the Russian city with multiple rocket launch systems.

In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that Moscow could be forced to “create a cordon sanitaire” in Kiev-controlled territories to prevent attacks on Russian border regions.

June 11, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

In D-Day Speech, Biden Celebrates Deaths of Russian Soldiers in Ukraine

Russia was not invited to the event in Normandy commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day

by Dave DeCamp June 6, 2024  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/06/06/in-d-day-speech-biden-celebrates-deaths-of-russian-soldiers-in-ukraine/

President Biden celebrated the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine during a speech in Normandy, France, commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

“They’ve suffered tremendous losses, Russia. The numbers are staggering — 350,000 Russian troops dead or wounded. Nearly 1 million people have left Russia because they can no longer see a future in Russia,” Biden said.

The real number of dead or wounded troops in the Ukraine war is unclear since neither side shares information about casualties. But it’s likely Ukraine has suffered more casualties since the conflict is largely an artillery war, and Ukrainian forces have been significantly outgunned.

Russian officials were not invited to the D-Day commemoration despite the Soviet Union being an ally of the US and France during World War II and suffering tens of millions of deaths. Biden used the event to rally support for NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “tyrant.”

“We know the dark forces that these heroes fought against 80 years ago.  They never fade,” Biden said. “Here, in Europe, we see one stark example.  Ukraine has been invaded by a tyrant bent on domination.”

Biden also declared that NATO was the “greatest military alliance in the history of the world” and framed the proxy war in Ukraine as a battle for “democracy” despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky canceling elections and remaining in power after his term ended.


“Let us be the generation that when history is written about our time — in 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 years from now — it will be said: When the moment came, we met the moment. We stood strong.  Our alliances were made stronger. And we saved democracy in our time as well,” Biden said.

Biden’s speech came about a week after he gave Ukraine the green light to use US-provided missiles to strike Russian territory, a significant escalation that risks sparking World War III. Putin has warned of “serious consequences” for NATO countries that support strikes on Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron is preparing another major escalation of the proxy war. According to a report from Reuters, the French president is holding a meeting with Zelensky on Friday and could announce a deployment of French troops to Ukraine to train Ukrainian soldiers. Russia has warned that any French trainers in Ukraine would be legitimate targets.

June 10, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Everything About Israel Is Fake

 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/everything-about-israel-is-fake?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=145435573&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email 9 June 24

Everything about Israel is fake. It’s a completely synthetic nation created without any regard for the organic sociopolitical movements of the land and its people, slapped rootless atop an ancient pre-existing civilization with deep roots. That’s why it cannot exist without being artificially propped up by nonstop propaganda, lobbying, online influence operations, and mass military violence.

Israel is so fake that its far right minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir has been stoking religious tensions by encouraging militant Zionists to pray on the Temple Mount — known to Muslims as Al-Aqsa. This is an illustration of how phony Israel and its political ideology are because Jews were historically prohibited from praying at the Temple Mount under Jewish law; a sign placed there in 1967 and still upheld by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate reads, “According to Torah Law, entering the Temple Mount area is strictly forbidden due to the holiness of the site.” It’s just this weird, evangelical Christian-like thing that Zionists have started doing in contravention of their own traditions and religious texts to advance their nationalist agendas.

Journalist Dan Cohen explains on Twitter:

“‘Prayer’ on the Temple Mount is 100% a Zionist invention in total contravention of Jewish law. Jews don’t step foot onto the Temple Mount, let alone ‘pray’ there. That’s why the sign below is posted at the entrance non-Muslims use. 

“Ben Gvir publicly announced this in order to provoke a reaction to use as a pretext to restrict and expel Muslims from the site, explode Jerusalem and the West Bank, and expand the regional war. 

“Ben Gvir holds Netanyahu hostage. Together, they’re leading Israel to self-destruction.”

There’s no authentic spirituality in such behavior. It has no roots. No depth. No connection. It’s the product of busy minds with modern agendas, with nothing more to it than that.

Israel is so fake that Zionists artificially resurrected a dead language in order for its people to have a common “native” tongue for them to speak, so that they could all LARP as indigenous middle easterners together in their phony, synthetic country.

Israel has no real culture of its own; it’s all a mixture of (A) organic Jewish culture brought in from other parts of the world by the Jewish diaspora, (B) culture that was stolen from Palestinians (see “Israeli food”), and (C) the culture of indoctrinated genocidal hatred that is interwoven with the fabric of modern Zionism. The way Israel has become a Mecca of electronic dance music points clearly to an aching cultural void that its people are trying desperately to fill with empty synthetic pop fluff.

Even international support for Israel is fake, manufactured astroturf that has to be enforced from the top down, because it would never organically occur to anyone that Israel is something that should be supported. 

The phenomenally influential Israel lobby is used to push pro-Israel foreign policy in powerful western governments like Washington and London. Just yesterday US Representative Thomas Massie told Tucker Carlson that every Republican in Congress besides himself “has an AIPAC person” assigned to them with whom they are in constant communication, who he describes as functioning “like your babysitter” with regard to lawmaking on the subject of Israel. 

The Israel lobby exists with the full consent of the western imperial war machine and its secretive intelligence cartel, because western military support for Israel is also phony and fraudulent. The western empire whose strategic interests directly benefit from violence and radicalism in the middle east pretends it’s constantly expanding its military presence in the region in order to promote stability and protect an important ally, but in reality this military presence simply allows for greater control over crucial resource-rich territories whose populations would otherwise unite to form a powerful bloc acting in their own interests. The Israel lobby is a self-funding consent manufacturer which helps the empire do what it already wants to do.

Support for Israel in the media is also phony and imposed from the top down. Since October outlets like The New York Times, CNN and CBC have been finding themselves fighting off scandals due to staff leaks about demands from their executives that they slant their Gaza coverage to benefit the information interests of Israel. Briahna Joy Gray was just fired by The Hill for being critical of Israel as co-host of the show “Rising”, a fate that all mass media employees understand they will share if they are insufficiently supportive of the empire’s favorite ethnostate.

Israel’s support from celebrities is similarly forced. A newly leaked email from influential Hollywood marketing and branding guru Ashlee Margolis instructs her firm’s employees to “pause on working with any celebrity or influencer or tastemaker posting against Israel.” As we discussed recently, celebrities are also naturally disincentivized from criticizing any aspect of the western empire by the fact that their status is dependent on wealthy people whose wealth is premised upon the imperial status quo.

Support for Israel on social media is likewise notoriously phony. For years Israel has been pioneering the use of social media trolls to swarm Israel’s critics and promote agendas like undermining the BDS movement. After the beginning of the Gaza onslaught Israel spent millions on PR spin via advertising on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, and The New York Times has just confirmed earlier reports that Israel has been targeting US lawmakers with fake social media accounts to influence their policymaking on Israel.

In truth, nobody really organically supports Israel. If they’re not supporting it because their lobbyists and employers told them to, they’re supporting it because that’s what they were told to support by the leaders of their dopey political ideologies like Zionism, liberalism and conservatism, or by the leaders of their dopey religions like Christian fundamentalism. It’s always something that’s pushed on people from the top down, rather than arising from within themselves due to their own natural interests and ideals.

Israel is not a country, it’s like a fake movie set version of a country. A movie set where the set pieces won’t even stand up on their own, so people are always running around in a constant state of construction trying to prop things up and nail things down, and scrambling to pick up things that are falling over, and rotating the set pieces so that they look like real buildings in front of the camera. Without this constant hustle and bustle of propagandizing, lobbying, online influence ops, and nonstop mass military violence, the whole movie set would fall over, and people would see all the film crew members and actors and cameras for what they are.

Clearly, no part of this is sustainable. Clearly, something’s going to have to give. Those set pieces are going to come toppling down sooner or later; it’s just a question of when, and of how high the pile of human corpses needs to be before it happens.

June 10, 2024 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

President Biden’s subliminal D Day speech in France

Walt Zlotow. 9 June 24

President Biden’s subliminal D Day speech in France We heard the 1,800 words President Biden spoke at the 80th anniversary of the D Day invasion Tuesday. But below the surface was the subliminal message that coursed thru Biden’s mind, reflecting his real, tho unheard meaning.

D Day Biden: “Today, NATO stands at 32 countries strong. And NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.”

Subliminal Biden: “NATO should have disbanded 30 years ago upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it provides billions to US weapons markers and allows America to dominate Europe and weaken Russia.”

D Day Biden: We know the dark forces that these heroes fought against 80 years ago. They never fade. Aggression and greed, the desire to dominate and control, to change borders by force — these are perennial.

Subliminal Biden: “Actually, that pretty much sums up American foreign policy in the 21st century. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, Gaza…all turned into failed states from American aggression.”

D Day Biden: “Ukraine has been invaded by a tyrant bent on domination Subliminal Biden: “Took America 8 years after we helped depose Russian leaning Ukraine President Yanukovych, but we finally provoked Russia to defend its borders from NATO nukes and save Donbas Ukrainians we armed Kiev to slaughter. D Day Biden: “Ukrainians are fighting with extraordinary courage, suffering great losses, but never backing down. They’ve inflicted on the Russian aggressors — they’ve suffered tremendous losses, Russia. The numbers are staggering — 350,000 Russian troops dead or wounded. Nearly 1 million people have left Russia because they can no longer see a future in Russia.”

Subliminal Biden: “Ukrainian men are fleeing the draft in greater proportion than Russian men. Ukraine losses dwarf Russia’s, so much so Ukraine is running out of new cannon fodder. But America demands Ukraine keep fighting to weaken Russia on America’s behalf till the last Ukrainian solder is kaput.”

D Day Biden: “The United States and NATO and a coalition of more than 50 countries standing strong with Ukraine. We will not walk away because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated.

Subliminal Biden: “Neither the US or its 31 NATO allies will shed 1 drop of blood to save Ukraine from losing the Donbas it has been subjugating for the past 10 years, and collapsing into failed state status.” .

D Day Biden: “And make no mistake, the autocrats of the world are watching closely to see what happens in Ukraine, to see if we let this illegal aggression go unchecked. We cannot let that happen.”

Subliminal Biden: “Actually, the rest of the world outside of NATO, is horrified America is stupidly seeking to extend its unipolar dominance long after its shelf life has expired.”

D Day Biden: “And we must remember: The fact that they were heroes here on D Day does not absolve us from what we have to do today.”

Subliminal Biden: “Keeping the Ukraine war going with billions in weapons instead of negotiating a mutually acceptable ceasefire, is not a good way to honor all who died here on D Day to achieve peace.”

June 10, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Israel ordered secret campaign to influence US lawmakers – NYT

At its peak, Israel’s influence campaign used hundreds of fake accounts that posed as US students, concerned citizens and local constituents on various social media platforms, including X, Facebook and Instagram, the New York Times reports.

The country allegedly paid $2 million to target American legislators in order to foster support for its war in Gaza

Israel allegedly organized and funded an influence campaign last year targeting the US to drum up support for its ongoing Gaza offensive, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed Israeli officials and documents related to the operation.

The outlet claims that the country’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, which is responsible for connecting Jews across the world with the State of Israel, commissioned the covert campaign and allocated some $2 million for the operation, hiring the Tel Aviv political marketing firm Stoic.

The campaign was apparently launched sometime in October, when the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) launched its war in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken hostage. 

Israel’s subsequent war on Hamas and relentless siege of Gaza has drawn international criticism, including threats of sanctions, as the IDF is estimated to have caused the death of over 36,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s health authorities.

At its peak, Israel’s influence campaign used hundreds of fake accounts that posed as US students, concerned citizens and local constituents on various social media platforms, including X, Facebook and Instagram, the New York Times reports.

These accounts were allegedly used to post pro-Israel comments and articles backing West Jerusalem’s position on the war, and were mainly focused on attracting the attention of US lawmakers, primarily Black Democrats, urging them to continue funding the country’s military.

Many of the posts were reportedly generated using the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot ChatGPT. Stoic, which was in charge of the campaign, also reportedly created three fake English-language news sites that predominantly featured pro-Israel articles, often stolen from outlets such as CNN and the Wall Street Journal.

In March, the Israeli government’s campaign was noted by FakeReporter – an Israeli misinformation watchdog. Last week, it was also reported on by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, as well as ChatGPT’s owner OpenAI; both said they had found and disrupted the influence operation.

“Israel’s role in this is reckless and probably ineffective,” Achiya Schatz, the executive director of FakeReporter, was quoted as saying by NYT, noting that the fact that Israel “ran an operation that interferes in US politics is extremely irresponsible.”

In a statement to the New York Times, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has denied any involvement in the operation and insisted it has no connection to Stoic.

Meanwhile, FakeReporter has estimated that the fake accounts created through the campaign have accumulated just over 40,000 followers across X, Facebook and Instagram. Meta and OpenAI concluded that Israel’s influence operation ultimately failed to have a widespread impact, noting that most of the followers of these fake accounts were likely bots.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | 1 Comment

What’s Next for Battlefield America? Israel’s High-Tech Military Tactics Point the Way

“I did not know Israel was capturing or recording my face. [But Israel has] been watching us for years from the sky with their drones. They have been watching us gardening and going to schools and kissing our wives. I feel like I have been watched for so long.”—Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet

If you want a glimpse of the next stage of America’s transformation into a police state, look no further than how Israel—a long-time recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid from the U.S.—uses its high-tech military tactics, surveillance and weaponry to advance its authoritarian agenda.

Military checkpoints. Wall-to-wall mass surveillance. Predictive policing. Aerial surveillance that tracks your movements wherever you go and whatever you do. AI-powered facial recognition and biometric programs carried out with the knowledge or consent of those targeted by it. Cyber-intelligence. Detention centers. Brutal interrogation tactics. Weaponized drones. Combat robots.

We’ve already seen many of these military tactics and technologies deployed on American soil and used against the populace, especially along the border regions, a testament to the heavy influence Israel’s military-industrial complex has had on U.S. policing.

Indeed, Israel has become one of the largest developers and exporters of military weapons and technologies of oppression worldwide.

Journalist Antony Loewenstein has warned that Pegasus, one of Israel’s most invasive pieces of spyware, which allows any government or military intelligence or police department to spy on someone’s phone and get all the information from that phone, has become a favorite tool of oppressive regimes around the world. The FBI and NYPD have also been recipients of the surveillance technology which promises to turn any “target’s smartphone into an intelligence gold mine.”

Yet it’s not just military weapons that Israel is exporting. They’re also helping to transform local police agencies into extensions of the military.

According to The Intercept, thousands of American law enforcement officers frequently travel for training to Israel, “one of the few countries where policing and militarism are even more deeply intertwined than they are here,” as part of an ongoing exchange program that largely flies under the radar of public scrutiny.

A 2018 investigative report concluded that imported military techniques by way of these exchange programs that allow police to study in Israel have changed American policing for the worse. “Upon their return, U.S. law enforcement delegates implement practices learned from Israel’s use of invasive surveillance, blatant racial profiling, and repressive force against dissent,” the report states. “Rather than promoting security for all, these programs facilitate an exchange of methods in state violence and control that endanger us all.”

“At the very least,” notes journalist Matthew Petti, “visits to Israel have helped American police justify more snooping on citizens and stricter secrecy. Critics also assert that Israeli training encourages excessive force.”

Petti documents how the NYPD set up a permanent liaison office in Israel in the wake of 9/11, eventually implementing “one of the first post-9/11 counterterrorism programs that explicitly followed the Israeli model. In 2002, the NYPD tasked a secret ‘Demographics Unit’ with spying on Muslim-American communities. Dedicated ‘mosque crawlers’ infiltrated local Muslim congregations and attempted to bait worshippers with talk of violent revolution.”

That was merely the start of American police forces being trained in martial law by foreign nations under the guise of national security theater. It has all been downhill from there.

As Alex Vitale, a sociology professor who has studied the rise of global policing, explains, “The focus of this training is on riot suppression, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism—all of which are essentially irrelevant or should be irrelevant to the vast majority of police departments. They shouldn’t be suppressing protest, they shouldn’t be engaging in counterinsurgency, and almost none of them face any real threat from terrorism.”

This ongoing transformation of the American homeland into a techno-battlefield tracks unnervingly with the dystopian cinematic visions of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, both of which are set 30 years from now, in the year 2054.

In Minority Report, police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs in order to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

While Blomkamp’s Elysium acts as a vehicle to raise concerns about immigration, access to healthcare, worker’s rights, and socioeconomic stratification, what was most striking was its eerie depiction of how the government will employ technologies such as drones, tasers and biometric scanners to track, target and control the populace, especially dissidents.

With Israel in the driver’s seat and Minority Report and Elysium on the horizon, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine how the American police state will use these emerging technologies to lock down the populace, root out dissidents, and ostensibly establish an “open-air prison” with disconcerting similarities to Israel’s technological occupation of present-day Palestine.

For those who insist that such things are celluloid fantasies with no connection to the present, we offer the following as a warning of the totalitarian future at our doorsteps.

Facial Recognition

Fiction: One of the most jarring scenes in Elysium occurs towards the beginning of the film, when the protagonist Max Da Costa waits to board a bus on his way to work. While standing in line, Max is approached by two large robotic police officers, who quickly scan Max’s biometrics, cross-check his data against government files, and identify him as a former convict in need of close inspection. They demand to search his bag, a request which Max resists, insisting that there is nothing for them to see. The robotic cops respond by manhandling Max, throwing him to the ground, and breaking his arm with a police baton. After determining that Max poses no threat, they leave him on the ground and continue their patrol. Likewise, in Minority Report, police use holographic data screens, city-wide surveillance cameras, dimensional maps and database feeds to monitor the movements of its citizens and preemptively target suspects for interrogation and containment.

Fact: We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers. This is exactly how Palestinian poet and New Yorker contributor Mosab Abu Toha found himself, within minutes of passing through an Israeli military checkpoint in Gaza with his wife and children in tow, asked to step out line, only to be blindfolded, handcuffed, interrogated, then imprisoned in an Israeli detention center for two days, beaten and further interrogated. Toha was finally released in what Israeli soldiers chalked up to a “mistake,” yet there was no mistaking the AI-powered facial recognition technology that was used to pull him out of line, identify him, and label him (erroneously) as a person of interest.

Drones

Fiction: In another Elysium scene, Max is hunted by four drones while attempting to elude the authorities. The drones, equipped with x-ray cameras, biometric readers, scanners and weapons, are able to scan whole neighborhoods, identify individuals from a distance—even through buildings, report their findings back to police handlers, pursue a suspect, and target them with tasers and an array of lethal weapons.

Fact: Drones, some deceptively small and yet powerful enough to capture the facial expressions of people hundreds of feet below them, have ushered in a new age of surveillance. Not even those indoors, in the privacy of their homes, will be safe from these aerial spies, which can be equipped with technology capable of peering through walls. In addition to their surveillance capabilities, drones can also be equipped with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, tear gas, and tasers.

Biometric scanners and national IDs

Fiction: Throughout Elysium, citizens are identified, sorted and dealt with by way of various scanning devices that read their biometrics—irises, DNA, etc.—as well as their national ID numbers, imprinted by a laser into their skin. In this way, citizens are tracked, counted, and classified. Likewise, in Minority Report, tiny sensory-guided spider robots converge on a suspected would-be criminal, scan his biometric data and feed it into a central government database. The end result is that there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide to escape the government’s all-seeing eyes.

Fact: Given the vast troves of data that various world governments, including Israel and the U.S., is collecting on its citizens and non-citizens alike, we are not far from a future where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. In fact, between the facial recognition technology being handed out to law enforcement, license plate readers being installed on police cruisers, local police creating DNA databases by extracting DNA from non-criminals, including the victims of crimes, and police collecting more and more biometric data such as iris scans, we are approaching the end of anonymity. It won’t be long before police officers will be able to pull up a full biography on any given person instantaneously, including their family and medical history, bank accounts, and personal peccadilloes. It’s already moving in that direction in more authoritarian regimes.

Predictive Policing

Fiction: In Minority Report, John Anderton, Chief of the Department of Pre-Crime, finds himself identified as the next would-be criminal and targeted for preemptive measures by the very technology that he relies on for his predictive policing. Consequently, Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer networks to track its citizens.

Fact: Precrime, which aims to prevent crimes before they happen, has justified the use of widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and snitch programs. As political science professor Anwar Mhajne documents, Israel has used all of these tools in its military engagements with Palestine: deploying AI surveillance and predictive policing systems in Palestinian territories; utilizing facial recognition technology to monitor and regulate the movement of Palestinians; subjecting Palestinians to facial recognition scans at checkpoints, with a color-coded mechanism to dictate who should be allowed to proceed, subjected to further questioning, or detained.

Making the Leap from Fiction to Reality

When Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, he was convinced that there was “still plenty of time” before his dystopian vision became a nightmare reality. It wasn’t long, however, before he realized that his prophecies were coming true far sooner than he had imagined.

Israel’s military influence on the United States, its advances in technological weaponry, and its rigid demand for compliance are pushing us towards a world in chains.

Through its oppressive use of surveillance technology, Israel has erected the world’s first open-air prison, and in the process, has made itself a model for the United States.

What we cannot afford to overlook, however, is the extent to which the American Police State is taking its cues from Israel.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we may not be an occupied territory, but that does not make the electronic concentration camp being erected around us any less of a prison.

June 6, 2024 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Journalist, critic of U.S. Ukraine policy, pulled off plane, U.S. seizes his passport

Judge Napolitano of Judging Freedom was also escorted off the plane according to some reports.

  https://www.rt.com/news/598711-us-seizes-scott-ritters-passport/, 3June 24
The RT contributor was stopped from visiting Russia

The US State Department has seized the passport of former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, he told RT on Monday.

Ritter was on his way to Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) when he was pulled off the plane and had his documents confiscated.

“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me,” Ritter told RT. “They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.”

“Was this done in accordance with the First Amendment, or the Fourth,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, commenting on the news. The first amendment to the US constitution protects freedom of speech, press and assembly, while the fourth bars the government from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, who later served as the US and UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He is also a RT contributor, writing about international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.

He most recently visited Russia in January, spending time in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg, among other places.

The most recent post on Ritter’s Telegram channel put the Clooney Foundation for Justice on notice for its alleged crusade against “Russian propagandists.”

“Here I am. In your face. If telling the truth about Russia makes me a propagandist in your book, then I accept the title,” he wrote. “Bring it on. I’ll school you on the First Amendment.”

“You have zero concept of what free speech is. Try and arrest me and you’ll find out. In spades. It’s war,” he added.

June 5, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

38 Years After Chernobyl Disaster, 12% of Belarus’s Territory Is Still Contaminated

Belarus is not communicating anything about Chernobyl to other countries.

May 26, 2024 by Global Voices, By Daria Dergacheva,  https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/38-years-after-chernobyl-disaster-12-of-belaruss-territory-is-still-contaminated/

On April 26, 1986, a catastrophic accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. A planned shutdown of the reactor, lasting 20 seconds, seemed like a routine check of electrical equipment. However, a few seconds later, a chemical explosion released about 520 types of dangerous radionuclides into the atmosphere. Thirty-eight years later, Belarusian officials say 12 percent of the country’s territory is still contaminated.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was located near the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, then part of the Ukrainian SSR, close to the border with the Byelorussian SSR. Pripyat has been abandoned since the year of the accident, and an exclusion zone was created with a radius of 30 km around the plant. Over 100,000 people were evacuated from the zone

To the north of the Ukrainian part of the Exclusion Zone is the Polesie State Radiation-Ecological Reserve, which belongs to the territory of the Republic of Belarus. There are 96 abandoned settlements in the area, where more than 22,000 residents lived before the accident and evacuation in 1986.

According to Belarus state media, in the end of April 2024, the first deputy head of the State Atomic Inspectorate in Belarus Leonid Dedul said during a press-conference:

As a result of explosions and fires, about 200 types of radionuclides with half-lives ranging from a few hours to hundreds of thousands of years were released into the atmosphere, with Belarus taking the main blow. For example, if we consider the radionuclide cesium-137, 35 percent of the total amount that fell down landed in our country. This radionuclide accounts for about 90 percent of the radiation dose load on the population. Since the post-accident period, the area of contaminated territory in Belarus by cesium-137 has decreased by almost half and now amounts to about 25.5 thousand square kilometers, or 12 percent of the country’s total area. 

Today, more than 2,000 populated areas are located in radioactive contamination zones, with approximately 930,000 people (185,000 of whom are children) living in them.

Although the state media reports on the success of Belarusian state-sponsored Chernobyl program that deals with economic, social and environmental consequences of the disaster, those outside the country are skeptical about it.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has been the leader of Belarus for 30 years now, said that the program worked so well that it has “beaten Chernobyl in the face.”

However, Belarusian historian Alexander Fridman thinks that Lukashenka’s regime, through propaganda, is manipulating public memory and opinion around the tragedy. Economic goals, he says, and the ability to use contaminated territories for them, were the driver of Lukashenka’s Chernobyl program. In his opinion piece for DW, he says the people were overlooked, and research that showed grave consequences of using the land even after years have passed was repressed.

One of the researchers was Yury Bandazhevsky, former director of the Medical Institute in Gomel, a scientist working on the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in Belarus in 2001. According to many human rights groups Dr. Bandazhevsky was a prisoner of conscience. His arrest came soon after he published reports critical of the official research being conducted into the Chernobyl incident.

He was released on parole in 2005, and is now working in Ukraine. Bandazhevsky said in one of his interviews to the DW 30 years after the disaster:

I believe that even three decades after the Chernobyl disaster, the situation hasn’t changed enough to allow for safe living and agricultural activities in these territories. Yes, the radiation levels of cesium-137 and strontium-90, which have a half-life of about 30 years, have indeed decreased. However, cesium’s half-life product is barium, which hardly exits cells.

Radionuclides have migrated into the soil, entering biological chains into plants, animals, and humans, affecting the cells of vital organs. This is ignored by those [officials] who speak of safe living in areas affected by the nuclear power plant accident.

We began to study the changes occurring in the human body under the influence of radioactive elements in the fifth year after the explosion. At that time, we recorded serious pathologies of internal organs — brain, heart, and endocrine system — that could be assessed as a result of direct radiotoxic exposure. But [Belarusian] officials didn’t want to connect cause and effect. Meanwhile, in the Vetka district of Belarus, many of the children we observed in 1993–1995 have died.

We must consider that victims can also include those who live far from the Chernobyl area but consume products from there. In Belarus, after the Chernobyl accident, some “smart” individuals came up with the idea to mix “clean” products with “dirty” ones. In the Gomel region, contaminated lands were initially secretly, then openly, used to produce agricultural products, with livestock being fed grain from there. Products from the region continue to be distributed throughout the republic. Now, the situation has reached the point where these territories are reclassified as “clean,” saving on social payments.

In October 2023, as the media reported, an NGO, Children of Chernobyl, which had helped thousands of kids from contaminated areas to visit European countries in order to receive health and psychological support, was shut down by a Belarusian court as part of ongoing crack down on Belarusian civil society. In addition, for over two years since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine started (supported by Lukashenka), Belarus is not communicating any research or other issues about Chernobyl to other countries, apart from rare meetings of IAEA, Belarusian state media reports. Thus, it is impossible to conduct an independent evaluation of what is going on in contaminated areas of Belarus. It is safe to suggest that, until Lukashenka’s regime fails, the public within and outside the country will not know the real cost of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster for Belarus.

May 29, 2024 Posted by | environment, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | 1 Comment

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