UN Launches Gates-Funded Global Digital ID Program as Experts Warn of ‘Totalitarian Nightmare’
“the reality is that these tools have the potential for furthering exclusion of political activists, whistleblowers, and other individuals who hold controversial opinions,”
With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations this month launched its “50-in-5” campaign to promote and accelerate the development of a global digital public infrastructure. One critic called the campaign “a totalitarian nightmare” designed to “onboard” small countries with “digital ID, digital wallets, digital lawmaking, digital voting and more.”
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. The Defender, 6 Dec 23
With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations (U.N.) this month launched an “ambitious-country-led campaign” to promote and accelerate the development of a global digital public infrastructure (DPI).
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said its “50-in-5” campaign will spur the construction of “an underlying network of components” that includes “digital payments, ID, and data exchange system,” which will serve as “a critical accelerator of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
“The goal of the campaign is for 50 countries to have designed, implemented, and scaled at least one DPI component in a safe, inclusive, and interoperable manner in five years,” the UNDP stated.
Critics of the campaign include Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, who told The Defender he believes DPI “is a mechanism for surveillance and control that combines digital ID, central bank digital currencies [CBDC], vaccine passports and carbon footprint tracking data, paving the way for 15-minute smart cities, future lockdowns and systems of social credit.”
The UNDP is leading the “50-in-5” campaign along with the Center for Digital Public Infrastructure, Co-Develop, the Digital Public Goods Alliance. Supporters include GovStack, the Inter-American Development Bank and UNICEF, in addition to the Gates Foundation.
In September 2022, the Gates Foundation allocated $200 million “to expand global Digital Public Infrastructure,” as part of a broader plan to fund $1.27 billion in “health and development commitments” toward the goal of achieving the SDGs by 2030…………………..
California-based privacy attorney Greg Glaser described the “50-in-5” campaign as “a totalitarian nightmare” and a “dystopian” initiative targeting small countries “to onboard them with digital ID, digital wallets, digital lawmaking, digital voting and more.”…………………
Another California-based privacy attorney, Richard Jaffe, expressed similar sentiments, telling The Defender the “50-in-5” initiative “point[s] to the much bigger issue of the globalization, centralization and digitalization of the world’s personal data.”
“My short-term concern is bad actors, and that would be individuals and small groups, as well as state mal-actors, who will now have a big fat new target or tool to threaten the normal operation of less technologically sophisticated countries,” he said.
Jaffe said Gates’ involvement “scares the hell out of him.” Derrick Broze, editor-in-chief of The Conscious Resistance Network, told The Defender that it is “another sign that this renewed push for digital ID infrastructure will not benefit the average person.”
“Projects like these only benefit governments who want to track their populations, and corporations who want to study our daily habits and movements to sell us products,” Broze said.
Initiatives to promote DPI globally also enjoy the support of the G20. According to The Economist, at September’s G20 Summit in New Delhi — held under the slogan “One Earth, One Family, One Future” — India garnered support from the Gates Foundation, UNDP and the World Bank for a plan to develop a global repository of DPI technologies……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
According to Hinchliffe, Togo’s DPI system had seemingly benign origins, launching as a universal basic income scheme for the country’s citizens, “but shortly after that, they expanded the system to implement vaccine passports…………………….
Speaking at the G20 Summit in September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “The trick is to build public digital infrastructure that is interoperable, open to all and trusted,” citing the EU’s COVID-19 digital certificate as an example.
Four of the “First-Mover” countries are African. Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, executive director of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Africa Chapter, told The Defender the “50-in-5” campaign will be used as a geo-political tool. “Africa is always a prime target because it is comparatively untapped digitally,” she said.
Along similar lines, Hinchliffe said, “The world doesn’t need ‘50-in-5.’ The people never asked for it. It came from the top down. What the people want is for their governments to do their actual jobs — to serve the people.”
A 2022 World Economic Forum (WEF) report, “Advancing Digital Agency: The Power of Data Intermediaries,” said vaccine passports “serve as a form of digital identity.”
In 2020, WEF founder Klaus Schwab said, “What the Fourth Industrial Revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, our digital and our biological identities.”
Digital ID intended to be ‘securely accessed’ by government, private stakeholders
According to The Economist, India is heavily promoting its digital ID technologies, first deployed domestically, for global implementation in “poor countries.” These technologies have garnered support and funding from Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.
For instance, Lawson said Togo was issuing biometric digital ID “for all our citizens using MOSIP” — Modular Open Source Identity Platform — a system developed at India’s International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore.
MOSIP, backed by the Gates Foundation, the World Bank and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is modeled after Aadhaar, India’s national digital ID platform — the largest in the world — which has been beset by controversy.
Launched in 2009, Aadhaar enrolled over 99% of all Indian adults, linking them with many public and private services. But according to The Economist, Aadhaar “suffers security breaches,” and though it “was supposed to be optional, it is hard to function without it.”
Glaser said Aadhaar “has been a nightmare for Indians. It is constantly hacked, including, for example the largest personal information hack in world history earlier this month, with personal information sold on the dark web.”
“Aadhaar is openly mocked in India,” Glaser said. “The only reason it is still used by the citizenry is because people have no practical choice. To participate meaningfully in Indian society, you need the digital ID,” he added.
Nevertheless, Gates has praised Aadhaar — describing it on his blog as “a valuable platform for delivering social welfare programs and other government services.” In October 2021, the Gates Foundation issued a $350,690 grant for the rollout of India’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, a digital health ID system linked with Aadhaar.
A Business 20 (B20) communique issued following this year’s G20 summit called on “G20 nations to develop guidelines for unique single digital identification … that can be securely accessed (based on consent) by different government and private stakeholders for identity verification and information access within three years.”
In April, Nandan Nilekani, former chair of the Unique Identification Authority of India, told an International Monetary Fund panel on DPI that digital ID, digital bank accounts and smartphones are the “tools of the new world.” He added that if this is achieved, “Then, anything can be done. Everything else is built on that.”
“The lesson of course for the rest of the world is to never let digital ID take root in your society,” Glaser said. “Once a nation’s consumer class adopts digital ID with global partners, as in India, it is basically checkmate for that nation.”………………………………………………………………..
“inclusivity” is one of the key narratives employed to promote DPI. The “50-in-5” campaign states, “Countries building safe and inclusive DPI … can foster strong economies and equitable societies” and that DPI “promotes innovation, bolsters local entrepreneurship, and ensures access to services and opportunities for underserved groups, including women and youth.”
Experts who spoke with The Defender warned DPI has the potential to be exclusionary.
“While the United Nations, the Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation promote DPI as necessary for an ‘equitable’ world, the reality is that these tools have the potential for furthering exclusion of political activists, whistleblowers, and other individuals who hold controversial opinions,” Broze said.
Similarly, CHD Africa’s Mohamed claimed, “People, groups and organizations that pose a threat to the establishment will be targeted for digital surveillance and socio-economic isolation” via DPI. “This … is an easier way to control critical thinkers.”
Hinchliffe said DPI will “accelerate technocratic control through digital ID, CBDC and massive data sharing, paving the way for an interoperable system of social credit.”
Similarly, Glaser said, “With DPI, the U.N.’s plan is to issue everyone a social credit score in line with U.N. SDGs (Agenda 2030) … Your digital ID will become the new you. And from the perspective of governments and corporations, your digital ID will be more real than your flesh … required in various measures to travel, work, buy/sell, and vote.”
“When they say inclusive, they really mean exclusive, because the system is set up to exclude people who don’t go along with unelected globalist policies,” Hinchliffe said. “What they really want is for everybody to be under their digital control.”
Notably, a June 2023 WEF report titled “Reimagining Digital ID” concedes that “Digital ID may weaken democracy and civil society” and that the “greatest risks arising from digital ID are exclusion, marginalization and oppression.”
Making ID — digital or otherwise — mandatory may exacerbate “fundamental social, political and economic challenges as conditional access of any kind always creates the possibility of discrimination and exclusion,” the report adds.
Experts who spoke with The Defender said people must be given the choice to opt out.
“If the U.N. and its member states push the digital ID agenda, they must ensure that their respective populations have a simple way to opt out without being punished or denied services,” Bronze said. “Otherwise, the digital ID creep will eventually become mandatory to exist in society and we will see the end of privacy, and, in the long-term, liberty,” Broze said.
Jaffe said that while he does not oppose digital payment systems, he “would be vehemently opposed to the elimination of non-digital payment, like fiat paper currency,” calling this an issue of “freedom and privacy.”
Similarly, Hinchliffe said, “There should be non-digital alternatives available at all times and this should be a right of every citizen. Systems can fail. Databases can be breached. Governments can become tyrannical. Corporations can become greedy.”
The endgame is sovereignty by transhumanists’
Many of the initiatives that are backing “50-in-5” are themselves interlinked — in addition to their connections to entities such as the Gates Foundation.
For instance, the Omidyar Network, one of the supporters of “50-in-5,” has provided funding to MOSIP — as has the Gates Foundation………………………………………………………………….
Glaser said that Gates attained wealth by “monopolizing his operating system into every home and business worldwide” and “is doing the same now at the U.N. level with vaccines and DPI applications.”
“DPI platforms essentially outsource sovereignty to international governing bodies that do the bidding of financial entities like Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street,” he said.
“Companies with that much information on citizens hold enormous power to sabotage infrastructure [with] very few ethics to stop them,” Mohamed said.
“The endgame is sovereignty by transhumanists,” Glaser added. “The reason digital ID is an existential threat to society is because it separates people from their local governments, who have always worked cooperatively to prevent tyranny.”
“DPI is being sold to authorities on the grounds that it will include them in the worldwide economy, when in reality it will commodify their people and remove the ability of local authorities to ever govern meaningfully again,” he said.
Hinchliffe also connected DPI to policies that purport to combat climate change………………………………………..
“If we can legislate and litigate to retain the right to traditional identification, then this categorically protects all of our rights,” Glaser added. “As long as the consumer classes of large nations like the United States resist digital ID, there is hope.”
“These schemes do little to nothing for the prosperity of the majority of Africans, but rather, they further the interests of a small economic and political class,” Mohamed said. “With growing economic disparity and anger, the attempt to waste more African resources on digital ID may lead to widespread revolt.”
“Generally, once Africans know what Bill Gates is about, they refuse to get involved in or support his activities,” she added. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gates-funded-global-digital-id-program-totalitarianism/
The Nakba 2.0: Issa Amro’s Insider Account of Israeli Torture in Hebron
By Alan Macleod and Mnar Adley / MintPress News
Coming back to his house on October 7, world-renowned activist Issa Amro was dragged away by 15 armed Israelis, blindfolded, gagged, and cuffed so tightly he now needs an operation on his hands. The settlers and soldiers kept him imprisoned for days, beating and torturing him, constantly simulating his execution.
Speaking with MintPress News, Amro told the story of what life is like for Palestinians living in the West Bank city of Hebron. “In my city where I live now, since October 7, there is a curfew,” he told Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod.
But this curfew is far more restrictive than others. Palestinian families – those who have not already fled the genocidal Israeli violence – are given only six hours a week to leave their homes. They are not even allowed out into their own yards. This means that school has stopped, work has ended, and life is on pause.
In those six hours, Palestinian families must buy all their food, pick up essentials such as medicine and conduct any social activities. But being outside is dangerous, as they have to pass though multiple checkpoints with armed guards and AI smart shooters pointing guns at them. Violence from vigilante settler groups is also a danger.
“It’s scary to walk alone between armed soldiers and armed settlers, all of them pointing their guns at you. Then, when you come back, it takes them five to ten minutes to search every person,” Amro said, revealing that the guards wanted to go so far as to cut open his potatoes and tomatoes to check for “weapons.”
“It’s a kind of jail” right now, Amro said, although he notes that being in jail is considerably safer than being a Palestinian in Hebron right now.
Issa Amro is an activist and the co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. He has led campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience against apartheid and Israeli occupation and has been recognized and given awards by international organizations, including the United Nations. He joins MintPress to chronicle recent Israeli attempts to force Palestinians from their homes and their ancestral land.
While leaving the house is extremely dangerous, staying inside is barely safer. Amro and others have experienced Israeli raids where troops tell Palestinians that they have 24 hours to leave or they will be murdered.
“History is repeating itself,” Amro told Adley and MacLeod today, “Now I understand why my people left in 1948,” referencing the Israeli genocide of three-quarters of a million Palestinians from their land in order to create the state of Israel.
It is no exaggeration to call the current Israeli actions genocidal. Indeed, senior Israeli politicians are directly comparing it to the events of 1948. Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, for example, described his country’s actions as the “Gaza Nakba 2023.” “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” he told local outlet Channel 12 on Saturday. “From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the Israeli army seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers,” he added.
In this conversation, Amro provides a crucial first-hand perspective rarely heard in corporate media. Watch the full interview only at MintPress News.
What lies behind Benjamin Netanyahu’s lies and Hamas’s evasions?
The official version of the Hamas-Israel war raises more questions than it answers. Here, the author highlights seven major contradictions. On reflection, Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu, far from being enemies, are acting in concert with no regard for the lives of Palestinians or Israelis. Behind them, the United States and the United Kingdom are pulling the strings.
VOLTAIRE NETWORK | PARIS (FRANCE) | 28 NOVEMBER 2023 by Thierry Meyssan
We are reacting to the attack on Israel on October 7 and the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza on the basis of the information available to us. However, we feel that the official version of the Israeli government and Hamas is a lie.
Seven major questions remain unanswered:
1. How did Hamas manage to dig and build 500 kilometers of tunnels at a depth of 30 meters without arousing suspicion?
Tunnel-drilling equipment is considered to have both civilian and military uses. It is not manufactured in Gaza and cannot be brought in under any circumstances, unless there is complicity within the Israeli administration.
The excavated earth (1 million m3) was not detected by aerial surveillance. Even supposing it had been scattered in many different places and mixed in with the soil from other construction sites, it is impossible for the Israeli intelligence services not to have detected anything for twenty years.
Tunnel ventilation equipment is not considered to be for military use. It is possible to bring it into Gaza, but the quantity required should have attracted attention.
The reinforced concrete needed to solidify the walls is not manufactured in Gaza. It too is not considered military equipment, but the quantity required should have attracted attention.
2. How could Hamas stockpile such an arsenal?
Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has large quantities of rockets and handguns at its disposal. Hamas may have manufactured parts of the rockets itself, but it has managed to import thousands of handguns into Gaza, mainly from the Ukraine, despite high-performance scanners. This seems impossible without complicity within the Israeli administration.
3. Why did Benjamin Netanyahu dismiss all those who warned him?
Egypt’s Minister of Intelligence, Kamel Abbas, personally phoned him to warn of a major Hamas attack.
His friend, Colonel Yigal Carmon, Director of Memri, personally warned him of a major Hamas attack.
The CIA sent Israel two intelligence reports warning of a major Hamas attack.
Defense Minister Yoav Galland was fired in July because he warned the government of the “perfect storm” prepared by Hamas.
4. Why did Benjamin Netanyahu demobilize the security forces on the evening of October 6?
The Prime Minister had authorized the Security Forces to stand down for the holidays of Sim’hat Torah and Shemini Atzeret. At the time of the attack, therefore, there were no personnel available to monitor the security fence around Gaza.
5. Why did security officials remain locked up at Shin Bet headquarters that morning?
The Director of Counterintelligence (Shin Bet), Ronen Bar, had called a meeting of the heads of all the security services for 8 a.m. on October 7, to examine the second CIA report warning of a major Hamas operation in preparation.
However, the attack began at 6.30 a.m. on the same day. Security officials didn’t react until 11am. What did they do during this interminable meeting?
6. Who triggered the “Hannibal directive” in this way, and why?
When the Security Forces began to react, the IDF was ordered to apply the “Hannibal directive”. This stipulates that enemies must not be allowed to take Israeli soldiers hostage, even if it means killing them. An Israeli police investigation confirms that the Israeli air force bombed the crowd fleeing the Supernova Rave Party. A significant proportion of those killed on October 7 were therefore not victims of Hamas, but of Israeli strategy.
In theory, the “Hannibal directive” only applies to soldiers. Who decided to bomb a crowd of Israeli civilians, and why?
It is not possible today to determine with any certainty which Israelis were killed by the attackers and which were killed by their own army.
7. Why are Western forces threatening Israel?
The Pentagon has deployed two naval groups, around the USS Gerald Ford and the USS Eisenhower, and a cruise missile submarine, the USS Florida. Haaretz even mentioned a third aircraft carrier. America’s allies (Saudi Arabia, Canada, Spain, France, Italy) have installed fighter-bombers in the region.
These forces are not installed to threaten Turkey, Qatar or Iran, which the Western press accuses of being involved in the Hamas attack, but off the coast of Israel, in Beirut and Hamat. They are encircling Israel. And Israel alone.
WHAT LIES BEHIND THESE MYSTERIES?
Obviously the version defended by both Hamas and Israel is false. We must consider other possible explanations so as not to be manipulated by either one or the other.
Let’s formulate a hypothesis. There is nothing to say whether it is the correct one, but it is compatible with the factual elements, which is not the case with the version shared today by everyone. So it’s better than that one. It is obviously extremely shocking, but only those who are able to answer the previous 7 questions can dismiss it.
This interpretation is based on an analysis of the complex structure of Hamas, whose rank-and-file fighters are unaware of what their leaders are up to. There it is :
The entire operation of Hamas and Israel is led by Americans, perhaps under the direction of the Straussian Eliott Abrams [1] and his Vandenberg Coalition (Think Tank which succeeded the Project for a New American Century). The Muslim Brotherhood and the Revisionist Zionists, who apparently are waging a cruel war, are in reality accomplices at the expense of the rank-and-file Hamas fighters, the Palestinian people and Israeli soldiers. Here is their plan: Hamas is presented as the only effective resistance force to the oppression of the Palestinians, but it lets Israel liquidate the hope of a Palestinian state, while the Muslim Brotherhood, crowned with the sacrifice of the Palestinians, takes power in the Arab world.
The heads of Hamas’s military and political branches are both subordinate to the Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, the successor to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, yet nobody talks about him. From his point of view, the Brotherhood will be the big winner of the “Flood of Al-Aqsa”, even if Gaza is razed to the ground and the Palestinians driven from their land.
Hamas is now divided into two factions. The first, under the leadership of Ismaël Haniyeh, follows the Brotherhood’s line. It seeks neither to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation, nor to found a Palestinian state, but is dedicated to building a Caliphate over all the countries of the Middle East. The second, under the leadership of Khalil Hayya, has abandoned the Brotherhood’s ideology, and is fighting to put an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israelis.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a political secret society, organized by British intelligence services on the model of the United Grand Lodge of England [2]. It was gradually taken over by the CIA to the point of being represented on the US National Security Council. After the collapse of the Islamist regimes of the Arab Spring, the Brotherhood fractured into two trends. The London Front, led by Guide Ibrahim Munir (who died a year ago), proposed a way out of the crisis by leaving the political arena and securing the release of prisoners in Egypt. The Istanbul Front, led by interim leader Mahmoud Hussein, advocates, on the contrary, changing nothing and continuing the struggle to establish a Caliphate. A third group is attempting to establish an intermediate position, putting forward the idea of abandoning politics until the prisoners have been released, only to return to it at a later date………………………… more https://www.voltairenet.org/article220078.html
Musk’s Lawsuit Is About Destroying Free Speech
The point of this lawsuit is to intimidate anyone who speaks out against antisemitism, white supremacy and other forms of bigotry.
SCHEERPOST, By Ari Paul / Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) November 27, 2023
He wasn’t bluffing.
After threatening to sue liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America (CNBC, 11/18/23), Twitter’s principal owner Elon Musk did just that, arguing in papers filed in a Texas court that the group “manipulated” data in an effort to “destroy” the social media platform, causing major advertisers to pull back (BBC, 11/20/23
The world’s richest human was responding to an MMFA report (11/16/23) about Twitter—which Musk has rebranded as X since purchasing the once publicly traded company—and its promotion of far-right, antisemitic content. It said that while “Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” the social media network has been “placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.”
The report came just as the world stood in shock of Musk’s latest outburst of antisemitism: Just before the lawsuit was filed, he “publicly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory popular among white supremacists: that Jewish communities push ‘hatred against whites’” (CNN, 11/17/23). This received widespread condemnation, including from the White House (Reuters, 11/17/23).
A few weeks earlier, the South African–born billionaire had endorsed the “white genocide” conspiracy theory (Mediaite, 10/27/23), a central myth of white supremacy: “They absolutely want your extinction,” he replied to a Twitter user who claimed that the melting down of a statue of Robert E. Lee was proof that “many seek our extinction.” The reported exodus of advertisers from Twitter in such a brief time span has been enormous (AP, 11/18/23).
The AP (11/20/23) reported that Twitter’s lawsuit claims MMFA “manipulated algorithms on the platform to create images of advertisers’ paid posts next to racist, incendiary content,” and that the lawsuit states that the instances of hateful content near such advertisements were “manufactured, inorganic and extraordinarily rare.” (By “manufactured,” Musk means that MMFA got its results by following far-right accounts on Twitter as well as the accounts of Twitter‘s major advertisers.)
Antisemitic vitriol
It isn’t a secret that antisemitic vitriol has increased on the site under Musk’s management (New York Times, 12/2/22; Washington Post, 3/20/23; Vice, 5/18/23). What’s different now is that the MMFA report and the anger toward his last outburst happened as he is losing the business he desperately needs, as the brand has been rapidly tanking since he spent $44 billion to acquire it (Fortune, 5/30/23).
The case was filed in Texas, although Twitter is based in California and MMFA is in Washington, DC. Musk’s choice of venue has everything to do with his right-wing politics and nothing to do with compliance with the law. …………………………………………………………………
I have written for several years about the right’s attempt to use the courts and legislatures to destroy press freedom to suppress reporting and opinions the rich and powerful don’t like (FAIR.org, 3/26/21, 5/25/22, 11/2/22, 3/1/23). The lawsuit sends a warning to reporters and advocates that can be easily interpreted: Musk isn’t just interested in taking over one social media network, but also drowning out the voices of anyone who challenges him. The point of this lawsuit is to intimidate anyone who speaks out against antisemitism, white supremacy and other forms of bigotry.
For those of us who care deeply about free speech and a free press, let’s hope this lawsuit is swiftly tossed out. https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/27/musks-lawsuit-is-about-destroying-free-speech/
The Myth that Putin Was Bent on Conquering Ukraine and Creating a Greater Russia
By John J Measheimer / Substack https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/27/the-myth-that-putin-was-bent-on-conquering-ukraine-and-creating-a-greater-russia/
There is a growing body of compelling evidence showing that Russia and Ukraine were involved in serious negotiations to end the war in Ukraine right after it started on 24 February 2022 (see below). These talks were facilitated by Turkish President Recep Erdogan and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and featured detailed and candid discussions on the terms of a possible settlement.
By all accounts, these negotiations, which took place in March-April 2022, were making real progress when Britain and the US told Ukrainian President Zelensky to abandon them, which he did.
Coverage of these events has focused on how foolish and irresponsible it was for President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson to put an end to these negotiations, given all the death and destruction that Ukraine has suffered since then – in a war that Kyiv is likely to lose.
Yet an especially important aspect of this story regarding the causes of the Ukraine war has received little attention. The well-entrenched conventional wisdom in the West is that President Putin invaded Ukraine to conquer that country and make it part of a Greater Russia. Then, he would move on and conquer other countries in eastern Europe. The counter-argument, which enjoys little support in the West, is that Putin was mainly motivated to invade by the threat of Ukraine joining NATO and becoming a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. For him and other Russian elites, Ukraine in NATO was an existential threat.
The negotiations in March-April 2022 make it clear that the conventional wisdom on the war’s causes is wrong, and the counter-argument is right, for two main reasons. First, the talks were directly focused on satisfying Russia’s demand that Ukraine not become part of NATO and instead become a neutral state. Everyone involved in the negotiations understood that Ukraine’s relationship with NATO was Russia’s core concern. Second, if Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would not have agreed to these talks, as their very essence contradicted any possibility of Russia conquering all of Ukraine. One might argue that he participated in these negotiations and talked a lot about neutrality to mask his larger ambitions. There is no evidence, however, to support this line of argument, not to mention that: 1) Russia’s small invasion force was not capable of conquering and occupying all of Ukraine; and 2) it would have made no sense to delay a larger offensive, as it would afford Ukraine time to build up its defenses.
In short, Putin launched a limited attack into Ukraine for the purpose of coercing Zelensky into abandoning Kyiv’s policy of aligning with the West and eventually bringing Ukraine into NATO. Had Britain and the West not intervened to scotch the negotiations, there is good reason to think Putin would have achieved this limited objective and agreed to end the war.
It is also worth remembering that Russia did not annex the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia until September 2022, well after the talks had ended. Had a deal been reached, Ukraine would almost certainly control a far greater share of its original territory than it does now.
It is becoming increasingly clear that in the case of Ukraine, the level of foolishness and dishonesty among Western elites and the mainstream Western media is stunning.
Possibly irradiated items stolen at site 3 km from Fukushima plant
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, November 26, 2023
OKUMA, Fukushima Prefecture–Potentially highly radiated items have been stolen from a temporary storage site for contaminated waste here and were likely put up for sale, The Asahi Shinbun has learned.
Although the site is strictly controlled, managers on the front line said there is a limit in what they can do to monitor the waste. So it is unknown if or how many possibly dangerous goods have been sold to unsuspecting buyers.
The site, located about 3 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, features a home improvement center that was abandoned after the triple meltdown in March 2011. The building and merchandise inside were left untouched.
The site and the surrounding area are now used for temporary storage.
Nishimatsu Construction Co., a second-tier general contractor, has been commissioned to demolish the commercial facility.
The special measures law concerning the handling of radioactive materials states that contaminated waste should be taken to temporary storage sites to measure their radiation levels before deciding where they should be disposed of………………………………………
The ministry has yet to announce the theft.
RISK OF RESALE
Each entrance to the temporary storage site has a gate to keep out unregistered workers and vehicles.
But an on-site manager said it was practically impossible to check all the comings and goings of people and vehicles.
“A total of 1,000 workers were involved in the demolition project, with 30 to 40 of them coming in and going out of the site on a steady basis,” the manager said. “Frankly speaking, if they put merchandise into their pockets and took them outside, I wouldn’t know.”…………………………………….
A worker said several 4-ton trucks have entered the demolition site on a few occasions after employees of Nishimatsu Construction, which oversees the site, finished their shifts and left their posts.
“The truck beds were covered with tarps, so I don’t know what was inside,” the worker said.
He added that a rumor was going around that merchandise taken from the demolition site was being sold on flea market app Mercari…………………………..
Recently, four former workers were arrested on suspicion of stealing iron scraps from a demolition site of a library and folklore museum, which lie within the “difficult-to-return zone” in Okuma.
It is impossible to recover the iron scraps because they were already sold and distributed in the market, according to the Environment Ministry.
(This story was written by Yukiko Sakamoto, Nobuyuki Takiguchi and Takaoki Yamamoto.) https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15045134
UK GOVERNMENT BLOCKS MP QUESTIONS ABOUT GAZA-RELATED ACTIVITY AT ITS CYPRUS BASE
Ministry of Defence takes extraordinary step of censoring all requests for information by MPs about RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, which Declassified has reported is facilitating arms supplies to Israel’s war on Gaza.
MATT KENNARD AND MARK CURTIS, 20 NOVEMBER 2023 https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-government-blocks-mp-questions-about-gaza-related-activity-at-its-cyprus-base/
- MP whose questions were blocked tells Declassified: “This is totally unacceptable in a democracy”
- RAF sent A400M military transport aircraft from Cyprus base to Tel Aviv this morning
- Britain’s Cyprus base has secretly become international military hub supporting Israel’s bombing of Gaza
The British government has blocked MPs asking any questions about activity at RAF Akrotiri, its vast air base on Cyprus, Declassified can reveal.
Blocking all parliamentary questions from MPs is a highly unusual move.
Government departments routinely refuse to answer specific questions about military operations for reasons of “national security”, but blocking all questions by elected parliamentarians goes far beyond the usual level of Whitehall secrecy.
It comes after Declassified revealed the RAF has made over 30 military transport flights to Tel Aviv since Israel began bombing Gaza. The Ministry of Defence refused to provide us any detail of the cargo or personnel on the flights.
Just this morning an A400M Atlas military transport aircraft operated by the RAF landed in Tel Aviv from Akrotiri. The aircraft can carry 116 soldiers, a Chinook helicopter or a payload of 37 tonnes.
RAF Akrotiri sits 180 miles from Tel Aviv with a flight time of 40 minutes.
Declassified has also reported that the US is moving arms to Israel using RAF Akrotiri, which has become an international military hub supporting Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza. Half of US planes flying from British Cyprus are said to be carrying weapons for Israel.
Kenny MacAskill, Alba MP for East Lothian, told Declassified he put down a number of parliamentary questions concerning what military support the UK is providing to Israel and the role of RAF Akrotiri in the supply of military equipment.
“Your question has been queried because it is subject to a block by Government,” he was told in an email. “The Department [Ministry of Defence] has stated that it will not comment on operational matters at this base.”
MacAskill, a former Scottish justice secretary, told Declassified: “This is totally unacceptable in a democracy. Genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza and we have a right to know what our Government is doing about it.”
MacAskill said he had never experienced such a ‘block’ on asking parliamentary questions before.
He added: “The failure to call for an immediate ceasefire is bad enough but any complicity raises issues of participating in war crimes. We need openness and transparency by our government. This is not in our name.”
Secrecy
The UK military-run Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee – better known as the ‘D-Notice’ committee – has also sent out an ‘advisory’ to all British media to suppress reporting on UK special forces’ activity related to Gaza. The SAS was previously reported to have deployed a force to Cyprus.
No British mainstream media outlets have reported on Declassified’s recent findings about RAF Akrotiri and Gaza despite the President of Cyprus Nikos Christodoulides having to defend his government from accusations of complicity in Israel’s bombing of Gaza.
In answer to questions about the use of RAF Akrotiri by Cypriot journalists over the weekend, Christodoulides said: “There is no such information, our country cannot be used as a base for war operations”.
However, RAF Akrotiri has long been the staging post for British bombing campaigns across the Middle East. Declassified also recently revealed that 129 US airmen are also permanently deployed at the base.
The censorship of information requests from MPs makes it all but certain that RAF Akrotiri is being used for covert military purposes that the government does not want the public to know about.
It is likely the UK is sending material military aid to Israel during its bombing of Gaza, which has now killed over 12,000 Palestinians, although it previously told Declassified it was not providing “lethal aid”.
First Tel Aviv Anti-War Demonstration Reveals the Limits on Protest in Today’s Israel
The first anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv since October 7 offered an important look at the current state of the protest movement in Israel, as well as how the government will seek to repress it.
SCHEERPOST, By Yoav Haifawi / Mondoweiss , November 20, 2023
Since October 7, Israeli police have implemented full dictatorship from the river to the sea. This has included preventing any anti-war protest within the Green Line and filling the prisons with ‘freedom-of-expression’ prisoners. Today, November 18, after a month and 11 days of massive bloodshed, there was the first anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv. I joined the protest mostly because I felt obliged to support the call for immediate ceasefire and call for an “all for all” captives and prisoners’ exchange. But I also wanted to assess what this demonstration teaches us about the current policies of the repressive Israeli regime and about the protest movement.
Court ruling allows demonstration
Hadash (“The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality,” organized around the Israeli Communist Party) applied for a license to demonstrate in Tel Aviv against the war and for a prisoners’ exchange. Their initial application was refused by the police, which suggested they hold a meeting in a closed venue instead. Then Hadash, with the help of ACRI (The Association for Civil Rights in Israel), appealed to the Bagatz (Hebrew acronym for “High Court of Justice”), which finally forced the police to allow the demonstration.
…………………………………………………… Local Call‘s report about the demonstration was titled “At an anti-war demonstration, the police forbade the waving of anti-war signs.” They went on to report what banners were refused by the police: ……………………………..
Speakers call for ceasefire, prisoner exchange
If we could demonstrate safely in Palestinian towns and villages and Arab neighborhoods in mixed cities, you would see tens of thousands coming out in solidarity with Gaza’s people. However, the police are terrorizing the Arab population, and many people believed that this demonstration in Tel Aviv would be attacked even though it was permitted. Besides, there is a real danger of lynch mobs in the Jewish areas, especially as the Ben-Gvir police distributed tens of thousands of weapons to local militias. The militia in Tel Aviv is headed by a right-wing rapper called “The Shade,” well known for organizing attacks against peace demonstrations during previous wars.
There were about five hundred brave demonstrators who dared to gather in the park. Haaretz, by the way, always under-reporting leftist protest, headlined their report “Tens demonstrated in Tel Aviv.” About 80% of the demonstrators were Jews. It was all held in Hebrew, and the content was adjusted to challenge but not break with the current awful mood in the Israeli Jewish society.
The main demands of the demonstration were immediate ceasefire and the return of all captives, POWS, and prisoners through a comprehensive exchange deal, “all for all.” These are the most essential demands in the current situation, and they made this demonstration important…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/20/first-tel-aviv-anti-war-demonstration-reveals-the-limits-on-protest-in-todays-israel/
Biden Admin Justifies Israel’s Assault on Gaza Hospitals With Recycled Israeli ‘Intelligence’
In November alone, official Israeli social media accounts have been forced to walk about at least a half-dozen false assertions
The same week, Israel’s main government account on Twitter had to delete its false claim that “AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre”
As Israel assaults Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, the Biden administration claims that “Hamas does use hospitals” as military bases. Once again, Washington appears to be relying on dubious Israeli propaganda rather than independent analysis.
By Wyatt Reed / The Grayzone, https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/19/biden-admin-justifies-israels-assault-on-gaza-hospitals-with-recycled-israeli-intelligence/
With Israeli troops storming Gaza’s Al-Shifa and Al-Rantisi hospitals, the United States and Israel are doubling down on discredited claims that Hamas has been maintaining “command centers” out of the basements of hospitals in Gaza, even after so-called evidence produced by Tel Aviv was thoroughly debunked.
“I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.
Kirby’s claim echoed the assertion by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who maintained that “open-source reporting” shows “Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.”
On November 14, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that US intelligence had no “boots on the ground,” nor any intelligence assets capable of independently gathering intelligence from or about Shifa. When asked if the declassified intel briefing spun out by Kirby and Sullivan arrived through Washington’s “Israeli counterparts,” she refused to answer. But she strongly suggested the intelligence dump was politically motivated.
“This is newly-downgraded information that we felt was important to get out today, because there have been a lot of questions about the hospital and how Hamas operates, and so it was important to get out there,” Singh insisted.
Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes, and both local healthcare workers and international humanitarian organizations back that up. “I’m sick and tired of these [Israeli] claims that there are Hamas command centers [in hospitals],” Norwegian physician Dr. Mads Gilbert told Al-Jazeera on November 12. Having performed life-saving procedures for several weeks inside Shifa during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, Gilbert noted, “As I’ve said 100 times… we’ve never seen high-ranking Hamas people in Al-Shifa,” adding “we’ve been able to roam freely.”
But that did little to prevent Israeli troops from waging an all-out assault on the facilities. As Israeli forces surrounded Shifa hospital on Tuesday with the full-throated support of the Biden administration, arresting journalists outside the facility and violently clearing displaced people from its grounds, doctors inside were forced to move babies in intensive care from one wing of the hospital to another to save their lives. A lack of fuel had already forced many of those infants off vital oxygen supply units.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have been unable to find any presence of hostages inside or around the hospital. As Israeli Army Radio reported on November 15, “There is no indication of the presence of abductees inside the hospital.”
Systematic Israeli misinformation campaign dismissed by US as “fog of war”
Israeli and American officials have yet to produced any proof that Hamas operates a “command center” under Al-Shifa. Video published by the Israeli military purporting to prove Hamas kept hostages in the basement of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, Gaza’s last remaining medical center with a pediatric cancer ward, was less than convincing.
In that video performance, top Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claims that what appears to be a bomb shelter for young children is actually a Hamas torture chamber, citing objects as unlikely as a baby bottle and a woman’s clothes. In one particularly memorable and widely panned moment, Hagari insisted the days of the week written in Arabic on a calendar were actually the names of the “terrorists” meant to guard captive Israelis ostensibly being held there.
The Israeli military has since attempted to downplay the deception as a “mistake in translation.”
It was hardly the first round in Tel Aviv’s fake news campaign. In the weeks since Palestinian resistance groups launched their shock assault on October 7, native Arabic speakers have taken to social media to mock the audio recordings Israel regularly publishes which purport to show Hamas members gleefully discussing carrying out war crimes.
In November alone, official Israeli social media accounts have been forced to walk about at least a half-dozen false assertions. A video showing a crying woman describing how she retrieved her son’s decomposing body from the streets of Gaza was transformed by Israel’s embassy to the US, which used fake captions to falsely claim she was blaming Hamas for the siege. When questioned, the embassy subsequently deleted the post.
The same week, Israel’s main government account on Twitter had to delete its false claim that “AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre” – a lie which the New York Times condemned as “reckless” and said put its journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza “at risk.”
Days later, Israel’s official Arabic-language Twitter account deleted footage of a woman dressed in nursing scrubs who claimed to work as a nurse in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital denounced Hamas for supposedly stealing fuel and medicine. Other doctors and nurses at the medical center reportedly told journalist Younis Tirawi: “We don’t know this woman; she has never worked here before & we’ve never seen her at the hospital.”
Social media users claimed the woman was Israeli actress Hannah Abutbul, who moonlights as a social media manager of an Israeli company named Aish International that works alongside the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Abutbul denies appearing in the video.
On November 10, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) claimed Hamas was “INSIDE the Indonesian hospital last night,” citing a video which appeared to show a firearm being displayed. An observer who pointed out that the object was actually a billy club had their reply ‘hidden’ by the official Israeli account.
Throughout the blood-spattered onslaught on the Gaza Strip, US officials have consistently taken Israeli claims at face value, even parroting Tel Aviv’s excuses when prompted. Following Biden’s now-retracted claim to have seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” US officials continue to exhibit a remarkable willingness to side with the Israeli government and echo its talking points.
During a November 14 press briefing, a reporter asked State Department spokesman Matthew Miller about the Israeli government’s habitual spreading of “misinformation.” Miller responded by brushing off Israel’s parade of fabrications as an inevitable feature of the “fog of war.”
UK gov’t departments compiling ‘secret files’ on its critics to prevent them speaking at official events
‘Shocking’ scale of UK government’s secret files on critics revealed
Dossiers were compiled by 15 departments after scouring social media activity to vet people invited to speak at official events
Guardian Anna Fazackerley 19 Nov 23
Fifteen government departments have been monitoring the social media activity of potential critics and compiling “secret files” in order to block them from speaking at public events, the Observer can reveal.
Under the guidelines issued in each department, including the departments of health, culture, media and sport, and environment, food and rural affairs, officials are advised to check experts’ Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. They are also told to conduct Google searches on those individuals, using specific terms such as “criticism of government or prime minister”.
The guidelines are designed to prevent anyone who has criticised the government in the previous three to five years from speaking at government-organised conferences and other events.
In September, the Observer revealed how three early-childhood education experts discovered that the Department for Education tried to cancel invitations for them to speak at government-funded events because they were judged to have been critical of government policy. Many more education experts and school staff have since uncovered files of their critical social media posts held by the department.
However, it has now become clear that the practice is widespread across government and is probably targeting large numbers of individuals. The scale of the monitoring was uncovered by human rights experts at law firm Leigh Day and shared with the Observer.
The revelations will be hugely embarrassing for a Conservative party that regularly claims to champion free speech and has slammed universities for allowing students to “no platform” experts with whom they disagree.
Tessa Gregory, partner at Leigh Day, who is pursuing legal action against the government on behalf of at least two experts, said: “This is likely to have impacted large numbers of individuals, many of whom won’t know civil servants hold secret files on them. Such practices are extremely dangerous.”
Gregory maintains that these hidden checks are unlawful, running contrary to data protection laws and potentially breaching equality and human rights legislation.
Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert, was disinvited in April from giving a keynote speech at a UK defence conference after officials found social media posts criticising Tory ministers and government immigration policy. He told the Observer this weekend that he knows of 12 others who have uncovered evidence of similar government blacklisting, most of whom are frightened of speaking out. But he said far more will be unaware they ever failed secret vetting.
He said: “The full extent of this is shocking and probably not fully known. I was lucky enough to be given clearcut, obvious evidence. It’s truly awful……………………………………………………………………
Caroline Wilson Palow, legal director at Privacy International, which has been investigating social media monitoring by the government for many months, said: “If the government is blacklisting people for using their right to free expression in a very valid way then that is very dangerous.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/18/shocking-scale-of-uk-governments-secret-files-on-critics-revealed
How a hasbara group’s sham investigation put Gaza journalists in the firing line
Honest Reporting’s claims against Palestinian photographers were echoed by Israeli leaders and media. But they’re factually and journalistically unfounded.
+972 Magazine, ByOren Ziv, November 13, 2023
On Nov. 8, Honest Reporting, an organization that claims to monitor “anti-Israel” bias in the media, published an “investigation” accusing Palestinian photojournalists in the Gaza Strip of having advance knowledge about Hamas’ lethal October 7 attack on southern Israel. ……………………..
The report quickly gained traction, with Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Government Press Office both sharing the report on their official X pages (the former has since deleted the post). Israeli leaders rushed to put out their own condemnations of the journalists, equating them with those responsible for the massacres…………………………………..
However, even a cursory examination of the investigation’s claims revealed major discrepancies……………………………………
Indeed, the allegations against the Palestinian journalists appear to be completely baseless. Gil Hoffman, Honest Reporting’s director and a former longtime correspondent at the Jerusalem Post, admitted as much two days after the report’s publication, in response to refutations issued by the four outlets implicated by the claims: Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, and The New York Times.
…………………………………………………………………….. Claims debunked
In order to properly respond to the dangerous claims made by Honest Reporting, it is necessary to understand how both photo agencies and international media outlets work with photographers.
First, these organizations usually use staff photographers, independent photographers, and/or photographers who either approach agencies and outlets to sell their photos or are contacted by these bodies to buy their work.
On October 7, there were no international photographers in Gaza (who would require permits from the Israeli authorities to enter the Strip), and since Hamas’ attack and the start of Israel’s intensified siege and bombardment, none have been able to enter. Therefore, for the purpose of covering the events of that day, the media relied on their permanent local Palestinian staff as well as additional Palestinian photographers.
The Israeli media, which parroted Honest Reporting’s allegations unquestioningly, claimed that the Palestinian photographers “documented the massacre.” This is false: while one journalist photographed a mob attacking the body of a dead soldier that had been removed from an Israeli tank along the Gaza fence, none of them documented killing. The photographs mentioned in the report went online in real time, with full credit to the photographers, and Israeli media outlets themselves used these photos extensively. Some of them have become iconic, such as the image of a commandeered tank that was set on fire next to the Gaza fence.
Nonetheless, the international outlets mentioned in the report took Honest Reporting’s claims seriously, and conducted their own investigations. CNN, The New York Times, AP, and Reuters all looked into the allegations and offered responses. AP, for example, emphasized that it did not know in advance about the attack, and that the initial photographs — taken by freelancers — were taken more than an hour after the attack began. The other outlets published similar clarifying statements.
………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Even after Honest Reporting admitted they had no proof that the photographers were complicit in the attack, most of the Israeli media that reported on the initial findings did not bother to publish anything about the organization’s sudden change in tune. The claim that Palestinian journalists were responsible for Hamas’ war crimes has already taken root and become just one more example in the wave of attacks by the Israeli public against Palestinian journalists.
A flawed logic
Like photojournalists all over the world, the Gaza-based photographers arrived to fulfill their journalistic duty and document a difficult, painful, and cruel event, of which they did not know all the details at the time………………………………………………………………………
The Palestinian photographers set out to document an event that took place near their homes. That same morning, Israeli photojournalists — myself included — set out to document the events in the south. We filmed the wounded, the bodies lying on the ground, and the gun battles at the Sderot police station between Palestinian fighters and Israeli security forces. Does this mean we had a hand in the events or could have helped? Of course not.
………………………………………………………… It is difficult to accept that an unfounded investigation was accepted by large parts of the Israeli media as fact, went viral on social media, was quoted without reservation, and strengthened the incitement against those who are trying in impossible conditions to document the reality on the ground. Israel has killed at least 39 journalists in Gaza since the war began. The accusations made by Honest Reporting serve to legitimize their deaths and the bloodletting of others.
Had the organization bothered to contact the various media outlets for a response before publishing their claims, the damage could have been avoided. But as Hoffman told AP, Honest Reporting doesn’t “claim to be a news organization,” and thus, it seems, the traditional journalistic standards of asking for comment before publication does not apply to them. Honest Reporting is a right-wing, hasbara organization with a clear agenda, and should be treated as such by all who interact with it.
A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here. https://www.972mag.com/honest-reporting-gaza-journalists/
Biden and Israel Refuse to Provide Proof of Hamas Base at Gaza Hospital
my comment:
Even if there were Hamas base, Hamas officials, underneath the hospital – that does not justify the mass killing of children women, men in the hospital
Neither Israel nor the U.S. have put forth concrete evidence that Hamas set up its headquarters under al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest medical facility.
By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/16/biden-refuses-to-provide-proof-of-hamas-base-at-gaza-hospital/—
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday repeated the Israeli government’s claim that Hamas located its headquarters under Gaza’s largest hospital but refused to provide any evidence when pressed by a reporter amid Israel’s raid of the facility, which drew international alarmand condemnation.
During a press conference in California, Biden said that “you have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital.”
“And that’s a fact,” the president added. “That’s what’s happened.”
But at the end of the press conference, Biden declined when asked to detail the evidence the U.S. has seen showing that Hamas has a command center beneath al-Shifa, which is been under assault by Israeli forces for weeks.
“No, I can’t tell you,” Biden replied. “I won’t tell you.”
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to Biden’s remarks that “a U.S. official tells me that the ‘U.S. intel’ is simply based on what Israel has provided, i.e. ISRAELI intel.”
“This may be why a dissent cable accused Biden of misleading the American public,” Parsi added, referring to an internal memo signed by dozens of U.S. foreign service officials.
Gaza health officials have repeatedly denied that Hamas has a command center inside or beneath al-Shifa, where thousands of patients, medical workers, and displaced people remain. Israel has used the claim to justify its attacks on the hospitals, which human rights groups have called a war crime.
Following its initial raid on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released photos and video footage purporting to show Hamas weapons and combat equipment at al-Shifa, but Israel has yet to provide any evidence of a secret Hamas base or tunnels under the hospital.
As The Washington Postreported, Israel said “no further evidence of Hamas activities in the hospital was scheduled to be made public for now” following the Wednesday release of the photos and video footage.
“Israel had hoped the controversial raid would turn up firm evidence of substantial militant activity in al-Shifa, a European diplomat told the Poston Thursday,” the newspaper added. “But the absence of clear proof to date has already led Western allies, including the United States, to increase pressure on Israel to accept a pause in fighting, said the diplomat.”
On Thursday, Israeli troops raided al-Shifa from the south, according to Al Jazeera, destroying a wall and interrogating the hospital’s workers.
Mohammed Zaqout, the director-general of Gaza’s hospitals, told Al Jazeera that “there is no member of Hamas in al-Shifa Hospital.”
“There is no military activity in al-Shifa,” Zaqout added. “All that happened is around the hospital but inside the hospital, all of the people are civilians.”
An IDF spokesperson claimed Wednesday that Hamas “knew we were coming” and “tried to hide evidence of their war crimes,” but analysts have expressed growing skepticism about the government’s insistence that Hamas used al-Shifa as a major command center.
“Did 200 Hamas forces, who IDF intelligence claims were present at Shifa Hospital after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, vanish out of thin air?” Yonah Jeremy Bob, the Jerusalem Post‘s senior military correspondent, asked Wednesday.
“All of the following could change radically if the IDF finds a larger smoking gun overnight Wednesday or on Thursday, but at press time, the IDF had presented a much weaker case to the world about Hamas’ presence at the hospital than expected,” he added. “The IDF announced zero arrests and even foreign media only mentioned two arrests, with five Hamas terrorists being killed just outside the hospital, but none inside—not even a single gunfight.”
Don’t be fooled. Biden is fully signed up to genocide in Gaza
what the Biden administration really needs is a cover story to justify the fact that it is continuing to supply the weapons and funding needed by Israel to carry out its crimes in broad daylight
The White House needs a cover story to obscure its complicity. In desperation, it is once again resurrecting the long-dead two-state solution
JONATHAN COOK, NOV 15, 2023, [First published by Middle East Eye]
The White House faces a dilemma. It has the power to stop the death and destruction in Gaza in its tracks, at any time of its choosing. But it chooses not to.
The US is determined to back its client state to the hilt, giving Israel licence to wreck the tiny coastal enclave, seemingly whatever the cost in Palestinian lives.
But the optics – and that is all that concerns Washington – are disastrous.
TV images have shown hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their destroyed homes, on a scale unseen since Israel’s earlier mass ethnic cleansing operations of 1948 and 1967.
Even the western media is struggling to obscure the veritable mountain of crushed and bleeding bodies in Gaza. The known death toll has now surpassed 11,000, with thousands more buried under rubble. Those who survive face a genocidal policy, starving them of food, water and power.
By the weekend, Israel’s declared war on Hamas had shifted into an open war on Gaza’s hospitals. Medicins San Frontieres reported that al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City had been bombed repeatedly and its power cut off, with horrific scenes of premature babies dying after their incubators had stopped functioning. Staff who tried to evacuate, as Israel had ordered them to, were shot at. Similar scenes unfolded at al-Rantisi hospital.
Western publics are growing increasingly incensed. Protest marches have attracted numbers not seen since the mass demonstrations against the Iraq war 20 years ago.
Western allies are finding it harder to obscure and justify their complicity in what are indisputable Israeli crimes against humanity. French President Emmanuel Macron broke ranks at the weekend. His message was summed up bluntly by the BBC: “Macron calls on Israel to stop killing Gaza’s women and babies.”
In private, US allies in the Middle East are pleading with the US to use its leverage to restrain Israel.
Meanwhile, Washington is only too aware of how quickly Israel’s regional opponents could get dragged in, dangerously expanding and escalating the conflict.
Its immediate response has been desperate, and preposterous, stop-gaps to ease the criticism, including from 500 administration staff who submitted a letter to Biden on Tuesday protesting the White House’s blanket support for Israel.
Those measures have included the president calling for “less intrusive action” from Israel towards the hospitals, shortly before Israeli forces were reported storming al-Shifa, and rumours that Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who joined the US attack on Iraq in 2003 in violation of international law, might serve as the West’s “humanitarian coordinator” in Gaza.
Never-ending occupation
But what the Biden administration really needs is a cover story to justify the fact that it is continuing to supply the weapons and funding needed by Israel to carry out its crimes in broad daylight.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken set out his stall last week at the G7 summit. The goal is to shift the focus away from Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza, and Washington’s backing for them, to a purely theoretical discussion about what might happen after the fighting ends…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The no-state solution
The truth is that Washington formally abandoned the so-called two-state solution years ago, aware that Israel would never allow even the most circumscribed of Palestinian states.
Over the past three decades, Israel has gone from the pretence – maintained during the Oslo process – that it might one day concede a sham, demilitarised Palestinian state, cut off from the rest of the Middle East, to outright rejection of Palestinian statehood on any terms at all. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The goal is transparent: to expel Gaza’s population into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai. And given Israel’s previous form, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that Gaza’s refugee families – some of them about to be exiled by Israel for a second or third time – will never be allowed to return to the ruins.
The Biden administration can pretend to be resurrecting a non-existent two-state solution. But the reality is that Israel has had just such an expulsion plan – called the Greater Gaza Plan – on the drawing board for decades.
According to reports, Washington has been signed up to the creation of a Palestinian enclave in Sinai since at least 2007…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
No eradicating Hamas
But perhaps the most fraudulent of the White House deceptions is the assumption that Hamas – and by extension, all Palestinian resistance – can be eradicated from Gaza……………………………………………………………………….
Israel’s genocidal policies – unless it intends to wipe out every Palestinian in Gaza – will not moderate that impulse for resistance. Israel will simply inflame more anger and resentment, and a stronger motive for vengeance. ……………………………………………..
Israel and the US know all this, too. History is crammed full of such lessons taught to greedy, arrogant colonisers and occupiers.
But their goal, whatever they claim, is not a solution or a resolution. It is permanent war. It is perpetuating the “cycle of violence”. It is greasing the tank treads of the West’s profitable war machine by spawning the very enemies that western publics are told they need protecting from.
Whether Palestinians are returned to the Stone Age in Gaza, as Israeli military commanders have long desired, or expelled to live in refugee camps in Sinai, they will not accept a fate in which they are treated as “human animals”.
Their fight will go on. And Israel and Washington will have to keep inventing new, ever more fanciful stories to try to persuade us that the West’s hands are clean. https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/dont-be-fooled-biden-is-fully-signed?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=476450&post_id=138886737&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email
Who will clean up America’s nuclear wastes in Greenland?
Maine Voices: Long-buried U.S. nuclear waste would complicate any bid for Greenland https://www.pressherald.com/2019/08/24/maine-voices-long-buried-u-s-nuclear-waste-would-complicate-trumps-bid-for-greenland/
Would the U.S. or Denmark be responsible for cleaning up over 47,000 gallons of Cold War-era radioactive waste?
Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign?
The scale of US intelligence support for Kiev’s murderous operations has been brought to light at a very interesting moment
https://www.rt.com/russia/586692-cia-sbu-kiev-assassinations/
By Chay Bowes, journalist and geopolitical analyst, MA in Strategic Studies, RT correspondent
As Ukraine slips quietly from the top of the Western media’s news agenda, fascinating insights into the granular nature of the CIA’s involvement in Kiev’s assassination program are being revealed. By the very same outlets that had previously suggested Ukraine was on a solo run with its slew of extrajudicial killings and terror attacks.
Western media has routinely ignored the brutal exploits of Kiev’s successor to the KGB, the SBU. When they are reported upon, instead of calling out the illegal killing of journalists and activists, the press seeks to frame them as masterful operations of a band of freedom fighters administering tough justice to the “enemies of Ukraine.” A key element of that narrative was that while the US, British, and French intelligence services worked closely with the SBU, they didn’t have any direct control of its actions, particularly when those actions involved assassinating unarmed civilians. However, a recently published article in the Washington Post has now revealed that the CIA had, and continues to have, a central role in the group’s most disturbing activities.
A Washington Post article “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia” outlines a labyrinthine relationship between the two intelligence agencies, and while the CIA still maintains it doesn’t sanction particular operations, the details revealed in the telling article suggest that this is nothing more than the usual stock disclaimer which accompanies most of Langley’s covert operations. The article is based on interviews with “more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, US and Western intelligence and security officials” and its revelations are both shocking and fascinating.
One of the first claims it makes is that the relationship between the Ukrainian SBU and the CIA has been developing for decades with the latter working to “develop” Ukraine’s abilities to carry out sabotage and “operations” since at least 2014. The CIA has also been providing detailed intelligence, equipment and training to the SBU during that period and continues to spend “tens of millions” of dollars developing its capabilities. The sources quoted also confirm that the CIA even designed and built a new headquarters for the SBU in Kiev and currently share “levels of information and intelligence unthinkable” prior to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.
According to the Washington Post, the CIA also now maintains a significant presence in Kiev, not only in terms of men and materiel but also information flow, all of which suggests that despite maintaining an overt distance, the CIA is in fact intimately involved in all aspects of SBU operations including the planning and execution of operations outside the state.
One such operation, and probably the most infamous carried out by the SBU since February 2022, was the assassination of Daria Dugina, daughter of prominent Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. The Washington Post article goes into great detail to outline the complexity of the “operation” performed by the SBU that resulted in the death of the unarmed 23-year-old non-combatant in a car bombing outside Moscow in August 2022. It tells of the use of a pet carrier to transport explosives into Russia, and of the surveillance of the deceased woman’s home by the assassin, who then fled across the border soon after the horrendous killing, which was cynically referred to by the SBU as a “liquidation.”
The granular details outlined in the article suggest sources either within the CIA or SBU have now confirmed that their relationship, once presented as purely advisory and business-like, is in fact a deep and long-standing partnership. The article goes on to confirm the SBU’s involvement in several other targeted murders on Russian territory, including the assassination of Vladlen Tatarsky with a bomb in a crowded St. Petersburg cafe and the murder of ex-submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, who was shot in the back while jogging unarmed in a park in Krasnodar.
The revealing article also refers to “uneasiness” in Kiev and Washington regarding the SBU’s penchant for this kind of assassination, noting concern that they could tarnish Ukraine’s image abroad especially among donor countries who recently admitted that without their help Ukraine would collapse within weeks.
What is most interesting about this piece is probably not its confirmation that the CIA is intimately involved in the operations of the SBU, what’s most fascinating is why a newspaper widely recognized as itself having an intimate relationship with the CIA has suddenly decided to basically confirm what many analysts already knew when it comes to Langley and the SBU.
The Washington Post’s revelation comes not only in the aftermath of the bloody Hamas incursion into Israel and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza but also as international attention, and more importantly, appetite to support Kiev, wanes. This shift in attention, not only in the media but also potentially in the scale of aid, bodes poorly for President Vladimir Zelensky’s regime, as it faces increasing domestic pressures and war-weary neighbors.
Couple this with the oncoming winter and the view looks increasingly grim for Zelensky even before mentioning Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and recent Russian battlefield gains. It now also looks inevitable that Ukraine will find itself playing second fiddle to an emerging political and potentially military crisis in the Middle East while competing for the vital US aid that keeps the Kiev regime afloat. Crucially, all of these woes offer a beleaguered NATO an opportunity to apply pressure on Zelensky to seek peace, potentially solving an increasingly difficult puzzle for Kiev’s backers as they head towards elections that will be decided by populations ever more vocal in their disdain for the conflict.
So as Kiev’s woes compound and the world’s gaze shifts towards Gaza, it seems the truth about the West’s intimate relationship with the SBU is now being pulled out of the closet, not by a whistleblower or dissenting investigative journalist, but by a stalwart of the US intelligence community, the Washington Post. The question we should all be asking is why? How does this benefit or promote a Western ‘victory’ in Ukraine? The answer may well be that it’s not a victory that these revelations are supposed to facilitate. It’s more likely that it’s part of a strategy of edging Kiev towards accepting the undeniable reality that the entire US project in Ukraine is set to fail, and for Zelensky to seek accommodation before there’s nothing left to negotiate with.
The task now is to end it as painlessly as possible for NATO and Kiev’s exhausted backers, and to move on to the next crusade, leaving a devastated and dysfunctional Ukraine to be consigned to the growing graveyard of bloody US foreign policy misadventures.
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