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Ukraine quietly abolishes corruption oversight rule.

Rt.com 23 Nov 22, Activists have blasted Zelensky for “harmful” move they say shatters Kiev’s EU dreams.

President Vladimir Zelensky has harmed Ukraine’s hopes of joining the EU by signing an amendment that reduced financial oversight of politicians, anti-corruption activists in Kiev said on Monday.

The measure “practically kills” efforts to combat money-laundering, the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) claimed. The body is funded by the US government and EU member states and elites in Kiev have long been hostile to its work, despite their dependence on Western funding and support.

Ukraine had previously mandated lifetime financial monitoring of “politically exposed persons,” including government officials and lawmakers – until Zelensky signed an amendment last week limiting it to just three years. Officially, the law is supposed to “protect Ukraine’s financial system from Russia and Belarus,” but the AntAC says it will harm the country’s interests instead.

“With this law, politicians destroyed the system of financial monitoring of their loved ones, which means they actually blocked negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU,” AntAC head Vitaly Shabunin said on social media. The amended law “practically kills the system of preventing money-laundering by Ukrainian politicians,” he added.

AntAC’s executive director Daria Kaleniuk pointed out that the law also breaks Kiev’s promise to the European Union, one of the seven commitments made by Zelensky to Brussels in June.  

In order for us to be able to convince our European partners that we are serious about joining the EU and are implementing all the necessary reforms for this, we need to correct this,” she told Hromadske. …………………….. more https://www.rt.com/russia/566960-zelensky-ukraine-corruption-monitoring/

November 24, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Videos showing execution of Russian POWs in Ukraine are authentic – New York Times

Rt.com 21 Nov 22

The clips suggest captive troops were “killed at close range,” the American newspaper insists.

The New York Times says it has verified the authenticity of videos that surfaced online last week, showing the execution of captive Russian soldiers by Ukrainian troops. The men “appear to have been shot dead at close range,” according to the newspaper.

The events shown in the clips occurred in the village of Makeyevka in the People’s Republic of Lugansk, earlier this month, the newspaper reported on Sunday.

“The videos… whose authenticity has been verified by The New York Times, offer a rare look into one gruesome moment among many in the war, but do not show how or why the Russian soldiers were killed,” the NYT wrote, adding that what actually happened to the soldiers remains “a mystery.”

However, the outlet noted out that judging by the footage, “at least 11 Russians… appear to have been shot dead at close range after one of their fellow fighters suddenly opened fire on Ukrainian soldiers standing nearby.”

The NYT also cited Dr. Rohini Haar, medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights, who said that “killing or wounding a combatant, who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defense, has surrendered at discretion” is a violation of the laws of international armed conflict……………….. https://www.rt.com/news/566901-ukraine-pow-execution-nyt/

November 22, 2022 Posted by | civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

With Kiev exposed for a lie that could have triggered a third world war, it is time to examine past deceptions that Western media promoted.

As the war grinds on, elements in the Biden administration appear to be growing impatient with the tall tales of their Ukrainian clients. “This is getting ridiculous,” an unnamed NATO official told the Financial Times on November 16. “The Ukrainians are destroying our confidence and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”

Zelensky, media lackeys caught in most dangerous lie yet.  https://thegrayzone.com/2022/11/18/zelensky-media-lie/ ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN·NOVEMBER 18, 2022

With Kiev exposed for a lie that could have triggered a third world war, it is time to examine past deceptions that Western media promoted.

A missile that exploded on Polish soil on November 15 killed two civilians and destroyed farm equipment. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Western corporate media rushed to blame the explosion on Russia in apparent hopes of triggering NATO’s Article 5, which requires NATO states to defend one another militarily when attacked by a hostile force.

Polish and NATO members including US President Joseph Biden have since confirmed the missile that struck Poland was, in fact, a Ukrainian S-300 anti-aircraft missile. Yet Zelensky is sticking to his line, blaming Russia for the strike, while NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg still insists that “Russia bears ultimate responsibility.” Meanwhile, the media outlets that reflexively pointed the finger at Russia have been forced to take a step back from their initial reporting.

“Russian missiles hit Poland, the territory of our friendly country. People died,” Zelensky insisted on November 15, the night of the attack. “The longer Russia feels impunity, the more threats there will be to anyone within reach of Russian missiles. To fire missiles at NATO territory! This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a very significant escalation. We must act.”

Zelensky held firm the following day, despite mounting evidence that his own country’s air defenses were responsible, declaring “I have no doubt that this is not our missile… I believe that this was a Russian missile, based on our military reports.” By this time, most analysts rejected the Ukrainian president’s assessment, including the founder of the US government-sponsored intelligence cutout Bellingcat, who wrote “At this point I think it’s fair anyone saying that a Russian missile hit Poland based on the current evidence is being irresponsible.”

A Russian attack on NATO member Poland could have triggered Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which compels its member states to consider “an attack against one Ally” to be “an attack against all Allies.” Such a mobilization would have amounted to World War III.

Despite the clear risk of such a catastrophic escalation – or perhaps because of it – Western corporate media immediately blamed Russia for the strike, never even posing the question of why Russia would consider Polish farmland such an important military target that it would be willing to risk a full-scale war with the 30-member NATO alliance. 

Initially, the Associated Press ran with the headline “Russian missiles cross into Poland during strike on Ukraine.” The article cited a “senior US intelligence official,” and later, “a second person.” 

On November 16, AP began redirecting the link to its original article to a correction that stated, “The Associated Press reported erroneously, based on information from a senior American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland and killed two people. Subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.”

Time Magazine ran with the headline, “Russian Missiles Cross Into Poland During Strike, Killing Two,” and cited the AP report.

Fox News similarly announced, “Russian missiles cross into NATO member Poland, kill 2: senior US intelligence official, citing the Associated Press. MSNBC also blamed a “Russian missile” for the strike in its headline.

Then there was CNN, which reported, “Poland says Russian-made missile killed two, will consider invoking NATO Article 4.” NATO Article 4 deals with the meetings between NATO states that are to take place in the event one of them is “threatened” and would theoretically precede any invocation of Article 5. Like CNN, Reuters cited the Polish Foreign Ministry and ran the headline, “Poland says Russian rocket hit its territory as NATO weighs response.”

The New York Times stated in the second sentence of its report on the missile strike that “the blast came as Russia fired roughly 90 missiles into Ukraine.” Two lines later, the Times stated “local media suggests a Russian missile strike.” Readers of the paper of record would have to scroll down several times to even read that Russian officials denied responsibility.

Earlier in the war, in an article on “Ukraine’s online propaganda,” the New York Times sought to downplay the Ukrainian government’s penchant for pushing fake news, arguing that Kiev’s information war merely “dramatize[s] tales of Ukrainian fortitude and Russian aggression.” The article quoted an unnamed Twitter user, who wrote, “Why can’t we just let people believe some things? … If the Russians believe it, it brings fear. If the Ukrainians believe it, it gives them hope.”

The US media’s support for Ukraine’s propaganda efforts meant that it covered some of the most suspicious events without a hint of skepticism, and thereby encouraged more. 

These questionable incidents included the following:

  • On March 8, Western media reported that a Mariupol maternity hospital was attacked by Russian aircraft. Zelensky claimed the attack was evidence of Russian “genocide” against Ukraine. However, a key witness – a pregnant woman in the hospital photographed by AP – stated that no such airstrike occurred, and that nearby explosions were caused by Ukrainian artillery shells.
  • On March 16, the Ukrainian government blamed a targeted Russian airstrike for destroying the Mariupol Dramatic Theater and causing anywhere from 300 to 600 deaths. Western corporate media promoted the Ukrainian narrative of the event despite a total absence of footage showing a missile strike, no images or evidence of large numbers of dead civilians inside, no images or evidence of any attempted rescue, and testimony by Mariupol locals asserting the Azov Battalion fighters that controlled the theater’s grounds staged the explosion to provoke NATO military intervention. Photographic evidence showed that Azov fighters removed all vehicles from the theater’s parking lot one day before the explosion.
  • The Kramatorsk train station bombing that was blamed on Russia despite the fact the Tochka-U missile responsible for the blast contained a serial number matching others in Ukraine’s arsenal and originated from Ukrainian-controlled territory.

As the war grinds on, elements in the Biden administration appear to be growing impatient with the tall tales of their Ukrainian clients. “This is getting ridiculous,” an unnamed NATO official told the Financial Times on November 16. “The Ukrainians are destroying our confidence and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”

November 20, 2022 Posted by | media, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

US Empire Views Ukrainians And Russians As Lab Rats For Weapons Testing

One of the many reasons the US and its complex network of allies, partners and assets are always fighting so many wars is because new weapons technology needs to be tested in battle before it can be deemed effective. What this means in practice is using human bodies as test subjects, the way a scientist uses laboratory rats or guinea pigs.

The US-centralized empire pretends to care about Ukrainian lives, but in reality it only cares about them to the extent that a researcher cares about his lab rats. And for exactly the same reason.

What could be more sinister than that? Well, the agendas that they are running those tests in preparation for, I suppose.

Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 18 2022,

A surprisingly frank article by The New York Times titled “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” describes how the imperial war machine is capitalising on the US proxy war to test its weapons for future use.

“Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come,” write’s NYT’s Lara Jakes.

Jakes writes that “new advances in technology and training in Ukraine are being closely monitored for the ways they are changing the face of the fight.” These new technological advancements include an information system known as Delta, as well as “remote-controlled boats, anti-drone weapons known as SkyWipers and an updated version of an air-defense system built in Germany that the German military itself has yet to use.”

A former Lithuanian president is quoted as saying, “We’re learning in Ukraine how to fight, and we’re learning how to use our NATO equipment,” adding, “It is shameful for me because Ukrainians are paying with their lives for these exercises for us.”

Yeah, no shit.

At some point The New York Times article was re-titled from “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” to the slightly less obvious “For Western Weapons, the Ukraine War Is a Beta Test.”

News that the west is using Ukraine to test weapons systems for future wars aligns with recent comments by the commander of the US nuclear arsenal that the proxy war is a test run for a much bigger conflict that’s on its way.

“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said US STRATCOM head Charles Richard at a naval conference earlier this month. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”

So in addition to being used to advance longstanding US geostrategic objectives, apparently this war is also being used to sharpen the imperial war machine’s claws for a looming hot war with China and/or Russia. The US would certainly have an advantage in military test runs over the years in such a conflict.

As an aside, it’s probably worth noting that all the testing of new western weapons technology would likely explain reports from Ukrainian astronomers that the skies over Kyiv have been “swarming with unidentified flying objects (UFOs).” The aforementioned New York Times article quotes Ukrainian vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov as saying that the weapons testing he’s seen has convinced him that “the wars of the future will be about maximum drones and minimal humans.”

One of the many reasons the US and its complex network of allies, partners and assets are always fighting so many wars is because new weapons technology needs to be tested in battle before it can be deemed effective. What this means in practice is using human bodies as test subjects, the way a scientist uses laboratory rats or guinea pigs.

The US-centralized empire pretends to care about Ukrainian lives, but in reality it only cares about them to the extent that a researcher cares about his lab rats. And for exactly the same reason.

What could be more sinister than that? Well, the agendas that they are running those tests in preparation for, I suppose.

November 18, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | 3 Comments

Blowback: Italian police bust Azov-tied Nazi cell planning terror attacks

Nazism has found a safe space in the Ukrainian armed forces

a 2022 Department of Homeland Security document acknowledged that “Ukrainian nationalist groups including the Azov Movement are actively recruiting racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist white supremacists to join various neo-Nazi volunteer battalions in the war against Russia”

ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN·NOVEMBER 15, 2022,

The arrest of Italian neo-Nazis affiliated with the Ukrainian Azov Battalion highlights the terrifying potential for blowback from the Ukraine proxy war

Italian police announced a series of raids against the neo-Nazi Order of Hagal organization. Accused of stockpiling weapons and planning terror attacks, the group has established operational ties to the Ukrainian Azov Battalion.

Five members of an Italian neo-Nazi organization known as the “Order of Hagal” were arrested on November 15th while an additional member remains wanted by authorities. He happened to be in Ukraine, fighting Russian forces alongside the Azov Battalion, which has been formally integrated into the Ukrainian military. 

The “Hagal” members are accused of plotting terrorist attacks on civilian and police targets. A sixth member of the Hagal group, now considered a fugitive, is in Ukraine and embedded with the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that has been incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard. 

Members of the Order of Hagal reportedly maintained “direct and frequent” contacts over Telegram with not just the Azov Battalion, but also the neo-Nazi Ukrainian military formations Right Sector and Centuria, “probably in the view of possible recruitment into the ranks of these fighting groups,” according to Italian media.

The police investigation was launched in 2019 and has included extensive computer searches and wiretapping; tactics which have revealed members of the group’s intent on carrying out violent acts in Italy. ……………………………

Footage of the arrests broadcast by the news channel Sky Tg24 shows long knives, a Nordic-style axe, a bat emblazoned with the words “Leader Mussolini,” a swastika flag, a gas mask, an Azov Battalion t-shirt and “Valhalla Express,” a memoir by an Azov fighter.

But Ukraine is not the only country to have been visited by members of the Order of Hagal; “some members” also traveled to Israel to train in Krav Maga and the use of long and short weapons,” according to police officials. In fact, they were even given diplomas for completing the training…………………………….

While Nazism has found a safe space in the Ukrainian armed forces, the arrests and warrants against the members of the Order of Hagal that planned terror attacks suggests the potential for blowback from NATO’s Ukraine proxy war, as battle-hardened, ideologically extreme veterans encouraged by Western governments and supported with US and EU aid return home to cities across Europe.

“The high availability of weapons during the current conflict will result in the proliferation in illicit arms in the post-conflict phase,” Interpol Secretary General Juergen Stock has warned. 

As The Grayzone has reported, a 2022 Department of Homeland Security document acknowledged that “Ukrainian nationalist groups including the Azov Movement are actively recruiting racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist white supremacists to join various neo-Nazi volunteer battalions in the war against Russia” but noted a key intelligence gap: “What kind of training are foreign fighters receiving in Ukraine that they could possibly proliferate in US based militia and white nationalist groups?” https://thegrayzone.com/2022/11/15/blowback-italian-azov-tied-nazi-terror/

November 18, 2022 Posted by | Italy, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Moscow accuses Ukrainian soldiers of killing POWs (DISTURBING IMAGES)

https://www.rt.com/russia/566776-kiev-soldiers-kill-russian-captives/ 18 Nov 22, A video has surfaced on social media showing what appear to be Kiev’s troops alongside executed Russian servicemen.

THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS DISTURBING IMAGES

The Russian Defense Ministry has accused Ukrainian forces of committing a war crime after a video surfaced on social media, on Friday, which appears to show captured Russian servicemen first alive and subsequently dead.

The footage depicts soldiers dressed in Russian uniforms first surrendering to troops in uniforms bearing Ukrainian insignia before being shown lying on the ground, presumably dead.

The ministry described the video as evidence of “the deliberate and methodical murder” of over ten Russian servicemen at the hands of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who “shot them straight in their heads.” Such actions prove the “barbaric nature” of the government in Kiev led by President Vladimir Zelensky, as well as “all those, who defend and support it,” the statement added. 

The video also purports to show one of the supposed Russian soldiers opening fire on the Ukrainians as his fellow servicemen already lie on the ground with their hands behind their heads. At least one of Kiev’s fighters was allegedly injured in the incident, according to the footage. It is unclear how this particular episode was linked to what happened to the Russians next.

The Russian Presidential Human Rights Council reacted to the alleged incident by calling for an international probe into what its head, Valery Fadeev, described as a “demonstrative and audacious crime.

This is a violation of all possible conventions banning cruel treatment of captives, as well as of international law and moral norms,” Fadeev said in a statement, adding that “we will demand a reaction from the international community, as well as an investigation.” According to Fadeev, the UN Human Rights Office is already studying evidence of extrajudicial killings near the Ukrainian town of Kupyansk, as well as the shelling of a civilian river crossing in the city of Kherson.

READ MORE: Russia investigates alleged footage of Ukrainian troops torturing POWs

Moscow will send the information on the alleged execution of Russian captives to the UN Human Rights Office, the Council of Europe, as well as Amnesty International, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, Fadeev added.

This is not the first high-profile incident supposedly involving Ukrainian troops and Russian prisoners-of-war. In late March, footage surfaced purportedly showing Ukrainian servicemen shooting Russians, under their care, in the legs at point-blank range.

November 18, 2022 Posted by | civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Corruption exposed: US meddled in Ecuador’s election, using Julian Assange as bargaining chip

A former minister of Ecuador testified that the US government conspired with a right-wing political party to run a disinformation campaign against the leftist Correísta movement, backing a millionaire banker for president in exchange for giving up journalist Julian Assange, who had asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy.

MP, Ben Norton, 13 Nov 22,

Ecuador’s former energy minister testified that the US government conspired with a right-wing political party to run a disinformation campaign against the leftist Correísta movement of ex President Rafael Correa.

He said that US “federal agents” pledged to help “influence” the 2017 presidential elections and support the candidacy of conservative millionaire banker Guillermo Lasso in exchange for the promise to turn over journalist Julian Assange, who had been given asylum by Correa and was stuck living for years in Ecuador’s embassy in London.

The former energy minister, Carlos Pareja Yannuzzelli, had fled a corruption investigation in Ecuador and was living as a fugitive from justice in the United States in late 2016 when he was offered large sums of money and US government protection in return for reading a carefully prepared “script” that made false accusations of corruption against Correa and his Vice President Jorge Glas, who was later imprisoned on highly dubious charges.

Pareja testified that the federal agents also coerced him into making false accusations against a US citizen, so they could justify their involvement in the Ecuadorian case. This led to the US citizen being arrested and imprisoned for three-and-a-half years.

Lasso ended up losing the 2017 election (before going on to win the 2021 election), but his victorious opponent, Lenín Moreno, later betrayed Assange anyway, letting British authorities raid the embassy, imprison the WikiLeaks journalist, and prepare to extradite him to the United States.

The revelation of this extraordinary example of Washington meddling in another country’s election came from one of the top officials in Ecuador’s oil industry……………………………………………………………

US intelligence-linked right-wing Ecuadorian politician uses corrupt US asset to accuse Correa of corruption……………………………………………..

Ecuador’s ex energy minister details US-backed campaign to help the right wing in the 2017 elections………………………………………………………..

it was widely assumed, even by Correa himself, that Correa’s former Vice President Lenín Moreno would continue his socialist political program.

Moreno did run on a left-wing presidential campaign, but after entering office, he did a political 180. Moreno turned hard to the right, repressing, imprisoning, and exiling Correísta politicians.

He also stabbed Julian Assange in the back, reversing Correa’s pledge to protect the WikiLeaks publisher and renouncing the Ecuadorian citizenship that had been given to the journalist. In order to arrest Assange, Moreno even let British authorities violate his own country’s sovereignty by storming the embassy, which constitutes Ecuadorian territory under the Vienna Convention in international law.

Correísta politicians have alleged that Moreno was bribed and/or blackmailed by the US government, as he obediently fulfilled all of Washington’s foreign-policy goals, collaborating closely with the Donald Trump administration, removing Ecuador from the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA) and Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and even recognizing US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó in Venezuela.

…………………………………………………………….. Corrupt Ecuadorian official conspired with Miami-based oligarchs who stole millions from their people……………………………………………. more https://multipolarista.com/2022/11/11/capaya-us-meddled-ecuador-election-assange/

November 13, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

Why is Bill Gates investing in nuclear power?

Such forms of corruption are also widespread in the nuclear industry, with groups like the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), devising marketing campaigns that benefit nuclear power plant owning companies, including influencing the appointment of officials to oversight bodies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

In this pursuit, the public also gets to foot the bill; in the case of TerraPower, taxpayers have put up tens of millions of dollars into this venture without ever being given an opportunity to provide or deny their informed consent for this technology.

Beyond Nuclear By M.V. Ramana and Cassandra Jeffery 14 Nov 22

………………………………………………………………………….Systemic Problems

Why is Bill Gates investing in nuclear power? This question comes up a lot, although fre­quently as a rhetorical excuse to wax eloquently about the virtues of nuclear technology. The answer is by no means straightforward.

Nuclear energy is only one lottery ticket among many for Bill Gates. He’s invested into dozens of companies, especially through Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Breakthrough’s investments range from companies that focus on energy storage — examples are Form Energy and Malta — to ones making new kinds of concrete, developing geothermal energy, and producing steel.

Gates has also secured a stake in the future of agriculture; in 2021, he was dubbed America’s largest private farmland owner.

Clearly, Gates’ strategy is to diversify his investments. If the Natrium reactor — TerraPower’s leading offering at this point — turns out to be a nuclear lemon, which is quite likely for the reasons discussed above, Gates will have a suite of investments to fall back on.

This tactic — diversifying assets and investments to increase the probability that at least one stake will pay off big time — is standard practice among venture capitalists. Other fellow billionaires investing in nuclear power have similarly diversified strategies.

Gates and fellow oligarchs have other strategies to maintain their wealth. They devote enormous financial resources and time to nurture their economic positions by political campaign financing and lobbying for favorable policies and regulations.

Such tactics are legal but amount to a form of corruption and facilitate the extraction of what economists call rents (for example, through the imposition of intellectual property protections), which are going to come in the way of climate mitigation as well.

Such forms of corruption are also widespread in the nuclear industry, with groups like the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), devising marketing campaigns that benefit nuclear power plant owning companies, including influencing the appointment of officials to oversight bodies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Among the recent pieces of legislation that NEI lobbied for was the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernisation Act. Publicly endorsed by Gates, the law makes it easier for “next-generation advanced reactors,” the kind that TerraPower is developing, to be licensed for construction by the NRC.

Such behaviors, unfortunately, are standard for the large organizations that dominate today’s economy.

People like Bill Gates are billionaires because they hit the jackpot on a lottery ticket and then lobbied rule-makers to extract as much money as possible from that lottery ticket. These gains allow them to reinvest into a diversified portfolio to increase the odds of another windfall prize.

In this pursuit, the public also gets to foot the bill; in the case of TerraPower, taxpayers have put up tens of millions of dollars into this venture without ever being given an opportunity to provide or deny their informed consent for this technology.

The public — especially those who live near one of the sites targeted for new reactor deployment, the areas where uranium will be mined and processed, and wherever the long-lived nuclear waste will go — will be subject to environmental contamination, paying far more than just a financial cost.

Given the experimental technologies involved in these new nuclear reactor designs, the risks to such communities are considerable. Many of these risks will only become greater with climate change as extreme weather events become more frequent and challenge operations at nuclear plants.

The risks and wasted investments are mounting. Further, this obsession with nuclear power and other untested technologies diverts the public’s attention from the larger systemic drivers of the climate crisis: unabated capitalism and its need for never-ending economic growth.

Pushing the nuclear agenda furthers the falsehood that growth can continue indefinitely with no limits, and the pretense that climate change can be solved using one more technology from the same toolbox that caused the problem in the first place.

“Those most responsible for creating the problem [of climate change] will see to it that they profit from the solution that they propose,” observed Indian writer Arundhati Roy in 2019. People like Gates exemplify that observation. Not only do they create the conditions for accelerating global warming but they also see to it that they are amply rewarded when they claim to know how to solve climate change.

Bill Gates might well be interested in finding a solution to climate change but he seems far more devoted to maintaining the current system for as long as it is feasible. Protecting this system requires, among other things, selling people the idea that the system is capable of solving climate change. Selling nuclear power is part of that larger sales job.

M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarma­ment, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and the author of The Power Of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy In India. Cassandra Jeffery holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Global Affairs from the University of British Columbia and is the recipient of a Simons Award in Nuclear Disarmament and Global Security for research into the political economy of nuclear energy.  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2022/11/13/bill-gates-and-techno-fix-delusions/

November 12, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

A Father Fights for His Son & What’s Left of Democracy

The film Ithaka, about the quest of Julian Assange’s father to save his son, makes its U.S. premiere on Sunday in New York City. It is reviewed by Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

To the extent that the media has covered the tragedy of Julian Assange at all, the focus has been on politics and the law.

Consortium News, which has provided perhaps the most comprehensive coverage of the prosecution under the Espionage Act of the WikiLeaks publisher, has also focused more on the case and less on the man.

The great issues involved transcend the individual: war, diplomacy, official deception, high crimes, an assault on press freedom and on the core of what little democracy is left in a militarized and money-corrupted system.

Assange supporters sometimes also overlook the person and concentrate instead on the larger issues at stake. Ironically, it has been Assange’s enemies and detractors who’ve long focused on the person in the worst tradition of ad hominem assaults.

He has been attacked to deflect public attention from what WikiLeaks has revealed, from what the state is doing to him and to hide the impact on freedom in the media and standards in the courtroom.

There has been a steady and organized stream of smears against Assange, from ridiculous stories about him smearing feces on Ecuadoran Embassy walls to the widely reported falsehood that he was charged with rape. That case was dropped three times before any charges were filed, but the “rape” smear persists.

These personal attacks were planned as far back as March 8, 2008 when a secret, 32-page document from the Cyber Counterintelligence Assessment branch of the Pentagon described in detail the importance of destroying the “feeling of trust that is WikiLeaks’ center of gravity.” The leaked document, which was published by WikiLeaks itself, said: “This would be achieved with threats of exposure and criminal prosecution and an unrelenting assault on reputation.”

An answer to these slurs and the missing focus on Assange as a man is Ithaka. The film, which makes its U.S. premiere Sunday night in New York, focuses on the struggle of Assange’s father, John Shipton, and his wife, Stella Assange, to free him.

f you are looking for a film more fully explaining the legal and political complexities of the case and its background, this is not the movie to see. The Spanish film, Hacking Justice, will give you that, as well as the more concise exposition in the brilliant documentary, The War on Journalism, by Juan Passarelli.

Ithaka, directed by Ben Lawrence and produced by Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, humanizes Assange and reveals the impact his ordeal has had on the people closest to him.

The title comes from the poem of that name by C.P. Cavafy (read here by Sean Connery) about the pathos of an uncertain journey. It reflects Shipton’s travels throughout Europe and the U.S. in defense of his son, arguably the most consequential journalist of his generation.

The story begins with Shipton arriving in London to see his son for the first time behind bars after the publisher’s rights of asylum were lifted by a new Ecuadoran government leading to him being carried out of the embassy by London police in April 2019.

“The story is that I am attempting in my own … modest way to get Julian out of the shit,” Shipton says. “What does it involve? Traipsing around Europe, building up coalitions of friendship.” He meets with parliamentarians, the media and supporters across the continent. Shipton describes the journey as the “difficulty of destiny over the ease of narrative.”……………………………

We learn that Julian Assange’s frustration with the inability to stop the 2003 Iraq invasion, despite the largest, worldwide anti-war protests in history, motivated him to start WikiLeaks.

The releases he published about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, leaked by Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, were published not only by WikiLeaks but by its partners at The New York Times, Die Spiegel and The Guardian, yet only Assange has been prosecuted.

The main focus of the film is the extradition hearing in Westminster Magistrate’s Court that began in February 2020 and ended in September of that year…………………………

One of several scenes that drives home the personal side of the story is audio of Assange speaking from Belmarsh Prison to Stella about what children’s books to read to their two sons. The toll it is taking on her is seen as she breaks down emotionally during the recording of a BBC interview that has to be paused.

“Extraditions are 99 percent politics and one percent law,” Stella says. “It is entirely the political climate around the case that decides the outcome. And that is shaped by the media. For many years there was a climate that was deliberately created through false stories, smears; through a kind of relentless character attack on Julian to reduce that support and make it more likely to successfully extradite him to the United States.”

“This is the public narrative that has been spread in the media for ten years,’ Nils Melzer, the now former U.N. Special rapporteur on torture, says in the film.


“No one has been able to see how much deception there is. Why is this being done? For ten years all of us were focused only on Julian Assange, when he never wanted it to be about him. It never was about him. It was about the States and their war crimes and their corruption. That’s what he wanted to put a spotlight on – and he did. And that’s what made them angry. So they put the spotlight on him.”

“He just needs to be treated like a human being,” says Stella, “and be allowed to be a human being and not denied his dignity and his humanity, which is what has been done to him.”

Ithaka makes its first theatrical showing in the U.S. at the SVA Cinema, 333 W. 23rd St, New York, N.Y., on Sunday, Nov. 13, at 7:45 pm. There will be a Q&A following the first screening with Ben Lawrence, Gabriel Shipton, Adrian Devant, cinematographer Niels Ladefoged, and John Shipton.

For ticket information: https://docnyc.net/film/ithaka/  https://consortiumnews.com/2022/11/11/a-father-fights-for-his-son-whats-left-of-democracy/

November 11, 2022 Posted by | civil liberties, legal, media | Leave a comment

U.S. House Intelligence Committee questioned about alleged surveillance of WikiLeaks founder

A Spanish judge has asked the US House Intelligence Committee to provide information regarding the alleged surveillance of Julian Assange and his visitors during his seven-year-long stay in the Ecuadorian embassy in London

El Pais, JOSÉ MARÍA IRUJO, Madrid – NOV 05, 2022  Judge Santiago Pedraz of Spain’s National High Court has filed a request for judicial assistance with the United States House Intelligence Committee. He is asking the committee – charged with overseeing the US intelligence community – to provide his office with information pertaining to a Spanish firm that may have surveilled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

While Assange was protected by the Ecuadorian embassy in London – in an attempt to avoid extradition to the United States to face charges over leaking thousands of classified documents – he was allegedly subjected to espionage by the Spanish security firm Undercover Global SL. Pedraz has pointed out that the CIA may have been a possible recipient of the material that was collected on Assange.

In October of 2021, Adam Schiff – a Democratic congressman and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee – demanded that all American security agencies inform him about espionage activity that took place concerning Assange during his seven-year-long stay (2012-19) in the Ecuadorian embassy, before he was turned over to British police. Schiff’s initiative came after Yahoo News published a report, in which unnamed former US officials acknowledged the existence of a plan to kidnap Assange from the embassy in 2017. They also claimed that US spies had been monitoring the communications and movements of numerous WikiLeaks personnel.

Undercover Global SL is a Cádiz-based security firm, owned by retired Spanish military officer David Morales. It was hired by the Ecuadorian embassy to the United Kingdom to provide security.

An investigation by EL PAÍS revealed that, in 2019, Morales and his employees may have recorded several months worth of private conversations between Assange and his lawyers, while spying on dozens of his visitors, including medical personnel, politicians and journalists.

The publication in this newspaper of the audios and videos of the alleged espionage led to the arrest of Morales. Since 2019, Spain’s National High Court has been investigating him for crimes against privacy and for violating the confidentiality of attorney-client privilege. Morales is currently out on bail……………………….

In his formal legal request for information, Pedraz describes, in detail, the espionage to which he believes Assange was subjected to at the Ecuadorian embassy. He notes that some of the alleged victims of espionage include former US congressman Dana Rohrabacher and former-president Correa.

Pedraz has also previously requested the testimony of Mike Pompeo. A Trump appointee, Pompeo was the Director of the CIA from 2017 until 2018, before being appointed Secretary of State. William Evanina’s testimony has also been requested: he was the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center from 2014 until 2021, serving under a portion of the Obama administration and the entirety of the Trump administration.

This is not the first time that the National High Court of Spain has requested judicial assistance from the US government to investigate this case. Retired judge José de la Mata – Pedraz’s predecessor – previously asked American authorities to provide him with the IP addresses from which the UC Global SL server had been accessed. But the US Justice Department demanded that De la Mata first reveal the identities of the whistleblowers within UC Global SL, who gave him the details about the alleged espionage……………….

Pedraz continues to ask US authorities for the same data and testimonies that De la Mata requested. He has explained to the House Intelligence Committee that, after three years of investigations, all signs point to US intelligence agencies having been the recipients of whatever UC Global SL gathered while surveilling Assange.

This past August, a group of US citizens who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy sued former CIA director Mike Pompeo for alleged espionage. The lawsuit was filed by lawyers Margaret Ratner Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, as well as journalists John Goetz and Charles Glass, both specialists in national security issues.

The suit claims that all four plaintiffs – along with dozens of other individuals – were spied on while visiting Assange during Pompeo’s tenure at the CIA. It cites statements made by Pompeo, in which he said that the WikiLeaks founder was a “target.”

The lawyers and journalists suing Pompeo believe that the CIA hired David Morales and his company to spy on Assange, his communications and his visitors, in order to learn his defense strategy in the face of the US extradition request. https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-11-05/house-intelligence-committee-questioned-about-alleged-surveillance-of-wikileaks-founder.html

November 9, 2022 Posted by | election USA 2020, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

At COP27 Climate Summit the International Atomic Energy Agency joins all those paid nuclear lobbyists in pushing the lie that “nuclear solves the climate problem”

At COP27, nuclear power industry vies for bigger role in decarbonizing planet

 https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/cop27-nuclear-power-industry-vies-role-decarbonizing-planet-2022-11-09/ By Richard Valdmanis,  Sarah Mcfarlane and Valerie Volcovici

HARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Nuclear energy supporters including politicians and activists sought to polish the industry’s spotty image on Wednesday, using the COP27 climate summit in Egypt to argue that atomic power offers a safe and cost-efficient way to decarbonize the world.

Rising concerns about the swift pace of climate change and tight power supplies around the globe have softened some policy makers view of nuclear energy, an industry that has struggled for years to draw investment because of worries about safety, radioactive waste, and huge costs for building a reactor.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote nuclear power, opened an exhibit at the U.N. climate gathering of global leaders in Egypt – its first time doing so in 27 years of the annual international climate negotiations. The showcase expounded the technology’s potential in the fight against climate change.

When you talk about nuclear, you’re talking about a confirmed energy producer which is not part of the problem, but rather part of the solution,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi told Reuters in an interview.

“You will see that that nuclear energy has a really solid, very consistent safety record,” he added.

U.S. Special Climate Envoy John Kerry, meanwhile, pumped up the industry on Tuesday at a news conference at the summit announcing the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM)’s formal interest in providing $3 billion in financial support for a nuclear plant in Romania.

“We have a viable alternative in nuclear … This is one of the ways in which we can achieve net-zero,” he told reporters, referring to an international target of cutting net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. “We don’t get to net zero by 2050 without nuclear power in the mix.”

The United States has already earmarked billions of dollars toward keeping existing nuclear power plants open as part of a broader strategy to decarbonize the economy and is hoping to encourage new projects.

The nuclear power industry has had trouble raising money in recent years, having taken a huge public relations hit following the 2011 reactor meltdown at the Fukushima power plant in Japan. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further raised concerns about nuclear safety with sporadic fighting and power cuts at the site of the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Oleksii Riabchyn, advisor to the Ukraine government on green energy, told Reuters at the summit that he thought the country’s reactors required a missile shield to protect them.

AEA’s Grossi said the security concerns in Ukraine should not dissuade countries from building nuclear plants: “The big problem is war, is not nuclear energy or any other industrial activity.”

He added he was in the midst of “very complex” negotiations with Russia and Ukraine over a proposed no-combat zone around the plant and hoped for an agreement soon.

Hannah Fenwick, the co-lead of Nuclear for Climate which represents a network of 150 associations advocating for governments to embrace nuclear power, said her organization was lobbying policy-makers at COP27 to consider nuclear energy investments and was getting decent feedback.

“We have been saying that nuclear is a solution for climate for many years and the geopolitical climate has changed and people are now listening,” she said.

Reporting by Richard Valdmanis, Sarah McFarlane and Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Katy Daigle, Frank Jack Daniel and Deepa Babington

November 9, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

How the CIA Front group National Endowment for Democracy Laid Foundations for Ukraine War

In the hours following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NED hurried to remove any and all trace of its funding for organizations in Ukraine from its website.

A search of the NED grants database today for Ukraine returns “no results,” but a snapshot of the page captured February 25th reveals that since 2014, a total of 334 projects in the country have been awarded a staggering $22.4 million. By NED President Duane Wilson’s reckoning, Kiev is the organization’s fourth-largest funding recipient worldwide.

NED’s expurgation of records exposing its role in fomenting and precipitating the horror now unfolding in southeast Ukraine not only protects de facto CIA agents on the ground. It also reinforces and legitimizes the Biden administration’s fraudulent narrative, endlessly and uncritically reiterated in Western media, that Russia’s invasion was entirely unprovoked and groundless.

Substack, Kit Klarenberg, Jul 2, 22

Obvious examples of Central Intelligence Agency covert action abroad are difficult to identify today, save for occasional acknowledged calamities, such as the long-running $1 billion effort to overthrow the government of Syria, via funding, training and arming barbarous jihadist groups.

In part, this stems from many of the CIA’s traditional responsibilities and activities being farmed out to “overt” organizations, most significantly the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Founded in November 1983, then-CIA director William Casey was at the heart of NED’s creation. He sought to construct a public mechanism to support opposition groups, activist movements and media outlets overseas that would engage in propaganda and political activism to disrupt, destabilize, and ultimately displace ‘enemy’ regimes. Subterfuge with a human face, to coin a phrase.

Underlining the Endowment’s insidious true nature, in a 1991 Washington Post article boasting of its prowess in overthrowing Communism in Eastern Europe, senior NED official Allen Weinstein acknowledged, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

It Begins…

Fast forward to September 2013, and Carl Gershman, NED chief from its launch until summer 2021, authored an op-ed for The Washington Post, outlining how his organization was hard at work wresting countries in Russia’s near abroad – the constellation of former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact states – away from Moscow’s orbit.

Along the way, he described Ukraine as “the biggest prize” in the region, suggesting Kiev joining Europe would “accelerate the demise” of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Six months later, Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in a violent coup.

Writing in Consortium News not long before that fateful day, investigative legend Robert Parry recorded how, over the previous year, NED had funded 65 projects in Ukraine totaling over $20 million. This amounted to what the late journalist dubbed “a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired.”

NED’s pivotal role in unseating Yanukovych can thus be considered beyond dispute, an unambiguous matter of record – yet not only is this never acknowledged in the mainstream press, but Western journalists aggressively rubbish the idea, viciously attacking those few who dare challenge the established orthodoxy of US innocence.

As if to assist in this deceit, NED has removed many entries from its website in the years since the coup, which amply underline its role in Yanukovych’s overthrow.

Read more: How the CIA Front group National Endowment for Democracy Laid Foundations for Ukraine War

For example, on February 3rd 2014, less than three weeks before police withdrew from Kiev, effectively handing the city to armed protesters and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country, NED convened an event, Ukraine’s lessons learned: from the Orange Revolution to the Euromaidan.

It was led by Ukrainian journalist Sergii Leshchenko, who at the time was finishing up an NED-sponsored Reagan–Fascell Democracy Fellowship in Washington DC.

Alongside him was Nadia Diuk, NED’s then-senior adviser for Europe and Eurasia, and graduate of St. Antony’s College Oxford, a renowned recruiting pool for British intelligence founded by former spies. Just before her death in January 2019, she was bestowed the Order of Princess Olga, one of Kiev’s highest honors, a particularly palpable example of the intimate, enduring ties between NED and the Ukrainian government.

While the event’s online listing remains extant today, linked supporting documents – including Powerpoint slides that accompanied Leshchenko’s talk, and a summary of “event highlights” – have been deleted.

What prompted the purge isn’t clear, although it could well be significant that Leshchenko’s oratory offered a very clear blueprint for guaranteeing the failure of 2004’s Orange Revolution – another NED-orchestrated putsch – wasn’t repeated, and the country remained captured by Western financial, political and ideological interests post-Maidan. It was a roadmap NED subsequently followed to the letter.

Along the way, Leshchenko highlighted the importance of funding NGOs, exploiting the internet and social media as “alternative [sources] of information,” and the danger of “unreformed state television.”

So it was that on March 19th, representatives of the far-right Svoboda party – which has been linked to a false flag massacre of protesters on February 20th, an event that made the downfall of Yanukovych’s government a fait accompli – broke into the office of Oleksandr Panteleymonov, chief of Ukraine’s state broadcaster, and beat him over the head until he signed a resignation letter.

That shocking incident, motivated by the station broadcasting a Kremlin ceremony at which Vladimir Putin signed a bill formalizing Crimea as part of Russia, was one of many livestreamed by protesters that traveled far and wide online.

Panteleymonov’s savage defenestration notwithstanding, much of this livestreamed output served to present foreign audiences with a highly romantic narrative of the demonstrations, and their participants, which bore no relation to reality.

The Revolution Will Be Televised

Writing in NED’s quarterly academic publication Journal of Democracy in July that year, Leshchenko discussed in detail the media’s fundamental role in the Maidan coup’s success, drawing particular attention to the work of “online journalist” Mustafa Nayyem.

Nayyem personally kickstarted the protests the previous November, rallying hundreds of his Facebook followers to protest in Kiev’s Independence – now Maidan – Square, after Yanukovych scrapped the Ukrainian-European Association Agreement in favor of a more agreeable deal with Moscow.

Nayyem was no ordinary “online journalist”. He had by that point worked alongside Leshchenko for many years at Ukrainska Pravda, an opposition media outlet funded by NED, and also USAID, another CIA front, which likewise played a key role in the Maidan coup.

This may account for why, in October 2012, Nayyem was one of six Ukrainians whisked to Washington DC by Meridian International, a State Department-connected organization that identifies and grooms future overseas leaders, to “observe and experience” that year’s Presidential election………………………………………….

only 40 – 45 percent of Ukrainians were in favor of European integration, Yanukovych remained “the most popular political figure in the country,” and no poll conducted to date had ever indicated mass support for the uprising.

In fact, “quite large majorities” opposed “takeover of regional governments by the opposition,” and the population remained bitterly divided on the future of Ukraine, Darden and Way wrote. Such hostility stemmed from “anti-Russian rhetoric and the iconography of western Ukrainian nationalism,” rife among demonstrators, “not [playing] well among the Ukrainian majority.”

…….. “Anti-Russian forms of Ukrainian nationalism expressed on the Maidan are certainly not representative of the general view of Ukrainians. Electoral support for these views and for the political parties who espouse them has always been limited,” Darden and Way concluded. “Their presence and influence in the protest movement far outstrip their role in Ukrainian politics and their support barely extends geographically beyond a few Western provinces.”

‘Pro-Ukrainian Agenda’……………………………. an objective analysis of what actually happened and why, in which NED is completely central. Still, the organization didn’t need to rely purely on Leshchenko to keep the Minsk Accords moribund. Its extensive network of assets in the country, and Washington’s dark alliance with Ukraine’s far-right, was more than sufficient to ensure that Zelensky’s overwhelmingly popular mission of restoring relations with Russia would and could never be fulfilled.

‘In Solidarity’

In the hours following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NED hurried to remove any and all trace of its funding for organizations in Ukraine from its website.

A search of the NED grants database today for Ukraine returns “no results,” but a snapshot of the page captured February 25th reveals that since 2014, a total of 334 projects in the country have been awarded a staggering $22.4 million. By NED President Duane Wilson’s reckoning, Kiev is the organization’s fourth-largest funding recipient worldwide.


An archive of NED funding in Ukraine over 2021 – which has now been replaced with a statement “in solidarity” with Kiev – offers extensive detail on the precise projects backed by the CIA front over that fateful 12-month period.

It points to a preponderant focus on purported Russian misdeeds in eastern Ukraine. One grant, of $58,000, was provided to the NGO Truth Hounds to “monitor, document, and spotlight human rights violations” and “war crimes” in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Another, of $48,000, was provided to Ukraine’s War Childhood Museum to “educate the Ukrainian public about the consequences of the war through a series of public events.” Yet another received by charity East-SOS aimed to “raise public awareness” of “Russia’s policies of persecution and colonization in the region, and document illustrative cases,” its findings circulated to the UN Human Rights Council, European Courts of Human Rights, and International Court of Justice.

There was no suggestion this wellspring would be used to document any abuses by Ukrainian government forces. UN research indicates 2018 – 2021, over 80 percent of civilian casualties were recorded on the Donbas side. Meanwhile, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reports show that shelling of civilian areas in the breakaway regions intensified dramatically in the weeks leading up to February 24th, potentially the precursor of a full-blown military offensive.

As such, NED’s expurgation of records exposing its role in fomenting and precipitating the horror now unfolding in southeast Ukraine not only protects de facto CIA agents on the ground. It also reinforces and legitimizes the Biden administration’s fraudulent narrative, endlessly and uncritically reiterated in Western media, that Russia’s invasion was entirely unprovoked and groundless.

Ukrainians now live with the mephitic legacy of that reckless, unadmitted meddling in the most brutal manner imaginable. They may well do for many years to come. Meanwhile, the men and women who orchestrated it rest comfortably in Washington DC, insulated from any scrutiny or consequence whatsoever, every day cooking up fresh schemes to undermine and topple troublesome foreign leaders, hailed as champions of liberty by the mainstream press every step of the way.  https://kitklarenberg.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-coup-how-cia-front-laid

November 9, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Azov Nazi speaks to school kids across America

 http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2022/11/azov-nazi-speaks-to-school-kids-across.html Bruce Gagnon, 7 Nov 22, I know this is hard to imagine – to believe. An Azov death squad member – a Nazi being paraded across the US to speak to school students. As we like to say – this takes the cake!

And to top it off he gets interviewed on MSNBC TV. The so-called ‘liberal’ channel.

This is how the minds of American youth are being contaminated with trash – filth – pure evil.

This is how fascism is being introduced to young people across our land.

This is a total disgrace.

This is being supported/organized by the neo-con run Democratic Party that a high percentage of American ‘peaceniks’ will be voting for on November 8.

Can we say that most Americans are blind and confused? Yes for sure.

This makes me sick.

Remember WW II Italian leader Benito Mussolini’s definition of fascism – the ‘wedding of corporations and government’. 

This is what we have in the USA today.

November 7, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Ukrainian First Lady Zelenska ordered The Grayzone’s Web Summit cancellation

The Grayzone, MAX BLUMENTHAL·NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Irish media and sources close to Web Summit’s CEO confirm The Grayzone was banned from the gathering as the result of a personal campaign waged by Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Grayzone was disinvited from Web Summit, a tech industry mega-event in Lisbon, Portugal this November, following a personal lobbying campaign spearheaded by Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska. Zelenska was the surprise keynote speaker at Web Summit, addressing conference attendees on November 1.

This outlet learned of Zelenska’s role in our cancellation from several sources close to Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave. Their accounts were confirmed in a November 3 report by the Irish Examiner, which noted that The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate “had been cancelled from the event at the insistence of the first lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska…”

According to a source privy to internal communications among Web Summit organizers, Zelenska “and the highest levels of the Ukrainian government” threatened to “apply significant influence on sponsors” if the summit did not cancel The Grayzone and academic Noam Chomsky, who had also been invited to speak.

She basically said she was gonna yank the whole tablecloth off of the table and break everything,” the source said.

The source explained that in order to prevent the possible sabotage of his event, Web Summit chief executive Paddy Cosgrave decided to “give up” Blumenthal and Mate in exchange for “keeping” Chomsky.

Additionally, The Grayzone’s Anya Parampil was unable to access her Web Summit ticket upon arriving in Lisbon despite having been granted a press credential for the event.

A second source close to Web Summit organizing discussions emphasized the Ukrainian First Lady’s influence over the event, explaining Zelenska “would have been able to get quite a number of people to pull out, big companies or whatever, I would say that was a strong possibility.”

“The bottom line is you were dropped because that’s what she [Zelenska] wanted,” the source stated.

Yet Zelenska demands did not end with her call to cancel The Grayzone.

Zelenska cancels nuclear button memes………..

The Ukrainian first lady is due to remain in Lisbon throughout the week to lobby government officials and tech bigwigs to support the Ukrainian war effort.

A Web Summit source said their colleagues were well aware that “a small group of Atlantic Council people and Bellingcat people” helped coordinate the social media campaign to disinvite The Grayzone.

The Atlantic Council and Bellingcat are NATO-related lobbying groups which rely on funding from the US and British governments, as well as assorted pro-NATO oligarchs. The former organization, a DC-based think tank which has hosted Bellingcat founder Elliot Higgins as a resident fellow, has also received funding from the corruption-stained Ukrainian gas company, Burisma.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation and Ukrainian embassy in Portugal also participated in the censorship blitzkreig, delivering a letter to Web Summit organizers which demanded The Grayzone’s staff be banished from the conference.

Since the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014, Kiev has maintained an iron grip on the flow of information. All opposition media has been effectively banned under the watch of Zelensky, and of the 400-some journalists listed on the Ukrainian government’s semi-official “hit list,” known as Myrotvorets, at least a dozen have been murdered. Now, Zelensky and his wife have brought their government’s war on the press and free exchange of ideas well into the heart of Western Europe.

The Grayzone attends private dinner with Web Summit organizers

On the evening of November 2, The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, and Anya Parampil attended a private dinner in Lisbon organized by Web Summit chief executive Paddy Cosgrave. There, they and other guests discussed the proxy war in Ukraine, the dangers of NATO expansion, and the upcoming US midterm elections.

The Grayzone’s presence at the private dinner generated headlines the following day in the Irish Examiner and the Business Post, the latter of which tasked two reporters with covering the story.

more https://thegrayzone.com/2022/11/03/ukrainian-zelenska-grayzones-web-summit/

November 6, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Australia’s ongoing nuclear submarine debacle – ‘A tangle of overlapping interests’

 https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/a-tangle-of-overlapping-interests?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=82059669&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email Michelle Fahy 5 Nov 22

The federal government’s secret hiring from 2015 of numerous former US Navy officials to advise on Australia’s submarine procurement was exposed by The Washington Post a fortnight ago. “Some of the retired admirals have worked for the Australian government while simultaneously consulting for US shipbuilders and the US Navy, including on classified programs,” the Post said. The US officials benefited financially from “a tangle of overlapping interests”. The Post revealed that one former US admiral had been consulting to Australia while also occupying a full time position as chairman of the board of Huntington Ingalls Industries, a US company that builds US nuclear-powered submarines. That arrangement was abandoned in April this year due to conflict of interest concerns.

Australian defence experts Mike Scrafton and Richard Tanter have outlined the implications of these revelations in John Menadue’s public policy journal, Pearls and Irritations.

Mike Scrafton said, “What remains unclear now is the extent to which the abandonment of the French submarine and the decision to pursue a nuclear powered version was influenced by the Americans. The dramatic shift to the AUKUS project casts the role of the ex-US officials in a different light.”

Red flags have been a feature of Australia’s submarine procurement process since the original deal with France’s Naval Group in 2016. Concerns there included the government’s selection of Naval Group despite it being under investigation for corruption in three earlier shipbuilding contracts, with a fourth investigation added after Australia handed Naval Group the deal. Neither this alarming fact, nor other questionable aspects of the deal, triggered a rethink to find a more suitable contractor. The Washington Post revelations now raise even more questions about the backroom dealings in this disastrous extended procurement process.

November 4, 2022 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

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