Germany joins Israel in dock for genocide… Western imperialism’s perverse evolution

April 12, 2024

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Germany and the United States along with other Western powers are continuing deep-seated historical crimes by way of their proxy war against Russia.

The repeating of history might seem tragic, even farcical. One may wonder how such apparent madness can be repeated. But the explanation is straightforward when it is understood that the motive force is the same.

The charge against Germany at the International Court of Justice this week of aiding genocide in Gaza is truly shameful. Germany was brought to court by Nicaragua for facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza in breach of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

That convention was created in the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s mass murder of six million Jews during World War Two. Only 79 years after the end of that war, the German state is again in the dock for complicity in an ongoing genocide in Gaza committed by a self-declared Jewish state of Israel.

It seems a shocking and deplorable twist in history. Within living memory, Germany stands accused again of abominable crimes against humanity.

What is even more disgraceful, the German authorities are denying that Israel is committing genocide and that Germany is nobly defending Israel’s security out of a special obligation owing to its heinous World War Two holocaust.

Germany’s supposed rationale for supporting Israel is an astounding perversion of history.

The case against Germany this week is incontestable as was the earlier case brought against Israel by South Africa in January before the same United Nations court at The Hague. A definitive ruling by the court on both cases is pending.

Nevertheless, already world public opinion is in concurrence with numerous international legal and human rights experts that Israel’s military siege of the Gaza Strip amounts to genocide and incorporates multiple violations of international law. Ergo, Germany’s culpability.

Over the past six months, Israel’s wanton destruction of the Palestinian territory has resulted in over 33,000 deaths, including more than 14,000 children and 10,000 women among the victims. The actual death toll is probably more than 46,000 given that 13,000 people are missing under rubble or buried in unmarked graves. It is feared that there will be up to 100,000 dead in the coming months as famine and disease intensify.

Germany is the second biggest supplier of weapons to Israel after the United States. Germany accounts for nearly one-third of all Israeli arms imports.

Israel’s murderous, indiscriminate siege of Gaza involving a deliberate policy of mass starvation of more than two million people would not be happening if it were not for crucial military support from the United States and Germany.

But just as important as the killing machines and ammunition is the unwavering political support provided by Germany, the United States, and all of their Western allies. Unbelievably, Berlin, Washington, London, Paris, and other Western capitals continue to assert that Israel is not committing genocide. Like U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz repeats the cynical and mendacious mantra about Israel’s right to self-defense.

What is going on in Gaza is a bloodbath enabled by Western imperialist powers. The U.S. and all its Western allies are accomplices in egregious war crimes. Live on television every day, and yet the contemptible Western media assiduously sanitize and mitigate the horror. In any sane world, the Western governments and their corporate-controlled “news media” should be irredeemably condemned for their complicity.

However, Germany’s culpability takes on a profoundly disturbing and disgraceful significance, as does the Zionist regime’s. In the name of millions of victims of Nazi Germany, the genocide in Gaza is being perpetrated with a truculence and self-righteousness that is despicable beyond words. It is utterly diabolical that the historic mass murder of Jews by Germany is now being repeated on others by a state that claims to be Jewish – and enabled by Germany. You could hardly make this obscenity up.

It should be understood too that the horror being perpetrated in Gaza is but one element in a toxic eruption of imperialist crimes currently underway across the globe.

In Ukraine, the Western imperialists in the NATO axis are waging a proxy war against Russia utilizing a corrupt NeoNazi regime headed up by a nominally Jewish puppet president who is up to his eyes in money laundering, fraud, and swindling. Germany is the second biggest supplier of weapons to the Ukrainian regime after the United States.

Eight decades ago, Nazi Germany deployed Ukrainian fascists to exterminate Jews and Slavs with a death toll of up to 30 million Soviet citizens. The contemporary Ukrainian regime glorifies these Nazi collaborators. The United States deployed the same Ukrainian fascists after the Second World War to wage covert war against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Thus, Germany and the United States along with other Western powers are continuing deep-seated historical crimes by way of their proxy war against Russia.

The same imperialist rogue states are enabling Israeli aggression against Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Israel’s deadly bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus earlier this month was a particularly brazen violation of international law. The barbarity of the Israeli fascist regime is fully enabled and incentivized by its Western patrons. The bitter irony is Washington and Berlin remonstrating with Iran to exercise “maximum restraint” while Israel openly attacks its sovereignty and assassinates its citizens.

Meanwhile, the United States, Australia and Britain are cajoling Japan to join their military alliance to provoke China. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was feted in Washington this week where he signed bellicose new military measures aimed at China and Russia. Kishida linked Ukraine with Asia, claiming that if Russia were to win the war in Ukraine, then China would take over East Asia. The Japanese minion gets its half right. The regions are indeed linked, not by alleged Russian and Chinese misconduct, but by the U.S.-led imperialism that Japan is cravenly serving.

Western imperialism and fascism have come full circle in a staggeringly short span of history. Nearly 80 years after Japan was defeated in the Pacific War in which it was responsible for up to 20 million deaths in China, Tokyo is at the forefront of new plans to wage a potential nuclear war on China. The perversion of Japan joining with the United States in this venture after the latter dropped two atomic bombs on its people in 1945 is yet another sickening twist in history.

The monstrous crimes of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan are today rehabilitated because the same forces serve the imperialist geopolitical interests of today.

The twists and contradictions of history are, however, crystallized in one historical force. All the crimes, barbarity, bloodshed and danger of catastrophic world war are the cause of imperialist powers – chief among them the United States and its insatiable quest for hegemonic domination.

Historic failure and systemic collapse of Western capitalism is the motive engine driving the world to war again, as it was in previous periods of the modern age. Colonialist genocide, World War One, World War Two, and now the abyss of World War Three.

Germany in the dock for genocide with Israel is not as incongruous as it might seem. Because imperialism and fascism are on the rampage again across the world. Both Germany and Israel are gang members in the crime syndicate, each with their specific justifying myths and alibis.

Russia and China are arguably the two nations that suffered the most in history from fascism. It is entirely consistent – if not lamentable – that Russia and China today are once again confronted by the same forces.

Germany is once again on the wrong side of history. And so too are the United States and all its Western vassals. Eternal shame on them.

The Mechanism: How the “Order” Based on Made-Up Rules Is Descending Into Savagery

APRIL 5, 2024

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Pepe Escobar

The Europeans will never be able to replicate the time-tested Hegemon money laundering machine

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats tho’ unseen amongst us, -visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.-
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,-
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,-
Like memory of music fled,-
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

As the de facto North Atlantic Terror Organization celebrates its 75th birthday, taking Lord Ismay’s motto to ever soaring heights (“keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”), that thick slab of Norwegian wood posing as Secretary-General came up with a merry “initiative” to create a 100 billion euro fund to weaponize Ukraine for the next five years.

Translation, regarding the crucial money front in the NATO-Russia clash: partial exit of the Hegemon – already obsessing with The Next Forever War, against China; enter the motley crew of ragged, de-industrialized European chihuahuas, all in deep debt and most mired in recession.

A few IQs over average room temperature at NATO’s HQ in Haren, in Brussels, had the temerity to wonder how to come up with such a fortune, as NATO has zero leverage to raise money among member states.

After all, the Europeans will never be able to replicate the time-tested Hegemon money laundering machine. For instance, assuming the White House-proposed $60 billion package to Ukraine would be approved by the U.S. Congress – and it won’t – no less than 64% of the total will never reach Kiev: it will be laundered within the industrial-military complex.

Yet it gets even more dystopic: Norwegian Wood, robotic stare, arms flailing, actually believes his proposed move will not imply a direct NATO military presence in Ukraine – or country 404; something that is already a fact on the ground for quite a while, irrespective of the warmongering hissy fits by Le Petit Roi in Paris (Peskov: “Russia-NATO relations have descended into direct confrontation”).

Now couple the Lethal Looney Tunes spectacle along the NATOstan front with the Hegemon’s aircraft carrier performance in West Asia, consistently taking its industrial-scale slaughter/starvation Genocide Project in Gaza to indescribable heights – the meticulously documented holocaust watched in contorted silence by the “leaders” of the Global North.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese correctly summed it all up: the biblical psychopathology entity “intentionally killed the WCK workers so that donors would pull out and civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly. Israel knows Western countries and most Arab countries won’t move a finger for the Palestinians.”

The “logic” behind the deliberate three tap strike on the clearly signed humanitarian convoy of famine-alleviating workers in Gaza was to eviscerate from the news an even more horrendous episode: the genocide-within-a-genocide of al-Shifa hospital, responsible for at least 30% of all health services in Gaza. Al-Shifa was bombed, incinerated and had over 400 civilians killed in cold blood, in several cases literally smashed by bulldozers, including medical doctors, patients and dozens of children.

Nearly simultaneously, the biblical psychopathology gang completely eviscerated the Vienna convention – something that even the historical Nazis never did – striking Iran’s consular mission/ambassador’s residence in Damascus.

This was a missile attack on a diplomatic mission, enjoying immunity, on the territory of a third country, against which the gang is not at war. And on top of it, killing General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, his deputy Mohammad Hadi Hajizadeh, another five officers, and a total of 10 people.

Translation: an act of terror, against two sovereign states, Syria and Iran. Equivalent to the recent terror attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow.

The inevitable question rings around all corners of the lands of the Global Majority: how can these de facto terrorists possibly get away with all this, over and over again?

The sinews of Liberal Totalitarianism

Four years ago, at the start of what I later qualified as the Raging Twenties, we were beginning to watch the consolidation of an intertwined series of concepts defining a new paradigm. We were becoming familiar with notions such as circuit breaker; negative feedback loop; state of exception; necropolitics; and hybrid neofascism.

As the decade marches on, our plight may at least have been alleviated by a twin glimmer of hope: the drive towards multipolarity, led by the Russia-China strategic partnership, with Iran playing a key part, and all that coupled with the total breakdown, live, of the “rules-based international order”.

Yet to affirm there will be a long and winding road ahead is the Mother of All Euphemisms.

So, to quote Bowie, the ultimate late, great aesthete: Where Are We Now? Let’s take this very sharp analysis by the always engaging Fabio Vighi at Cardiff University and tweak it a little further.

Anyone applying critical thinking to the world around us can feel the collapse of the system. It’s a closed system alright, easily definable as Liberal Totalitarianism. Cui bono? The 0.0001%.

Nothing ideological about that. Follow the money. The defining negative feedback loop is actually the debt loop. A criminally anti-social mechanism kept in place by – what else – a psychopathology, as acute as the one exhibited by the biblical genocidals in West Asia.

The Mechanism is enforced by a triad.

  1. The transnational financial elite, the superstars of the 0.0001%.
  2. Right beneath it, the politico-institutional layer, from the U.S. Congress to the European Commission (EC) in Brussels, as well as comprador elite “leaders” across the Global North and South.
  3. The former “intelligentsia”, now essentially hacks for hire from media to academia.

This institutionalized hyper-mediatization of reality is (italics mine), in fact, The Mechanism.

It’s this mechanism that controlled the merging of the pre-fabricated “pandemic” – complete with hardcore social engineering sold as “humanitarian lockdowns” – into, once again, Forever Wars, from Project Genocide in Gaza to the Russophobia/cancel culture obsession inbuilt in Project Proxy War in Ukraine.

That’s the essence of Totalitarian Normality: the Project for Humanity by the appallingly mediocre, self-appointed Great Reset “elites” of the collective West.

Killing them softly with AI

A key vector of the whole mechanism is the direct, vicious interconnection between a tecno-military euphoria and the hyper-inflationary financial sector, now in thrall with AI.

Enter, for instance, AI models such as ‘Lavender’, tested on the ground in the Gaza killing field lab. Literally: artificial intelligence programming the extermination of humans. And it’s happening, in real time. Call it Project AI Genocide.

Another vector, already experimented, is inbuilt in the indirect assertion by toxic EC Medusa Ursula von der Lugen: essentially, the need to produce weapons as Covid vaccines.

That’s at the core of a plan to use funding of the EU by European taxpayers to “increase financing” of “joint contracts for weapons”. That’s an offspring of von der Lugen’s push to roll out Covid vaccines – a gigantic Pfizer-linked scam for which she is about to be investigated and arguably exposed by the EU’s Public Prosecutor Office. In her own words, addressing the proposed weapons scam: “We did this for vaccines and gas.”

Call it Weaponization of Social Engineering 2.0.

Amidst all the action in this vast corruption swamp, the Hegemon agenda remains quite blatant: to keep its – dwindling – predominantly thalassocratic, military hegemony, no matter what, as the basis for its financial hegemony; protect the U.S. dollar; and protect those unmeasurable, unpayable debts in U.S. dollars.

And that brings us to the tawdry economic model of turbo-capitalism, as sold by collective West media hacks: the debt loop, virtual money, borrowed non-stop to deal with “autocrat” Putin and “Russian aggression”. That’s a key by-product of Michael Hudson’s searing analysis of the FIRE (Finance-Insurance-Real Estate) syndrome.

Ouroboros intervenes: the serpent bites its own tail. Now the inherent folly of The Mechanism is inevitably leading casino capitalism to resort to barbarism. Undiluted savagery – of the Crocus City Hall kind and of the Project Gaza Genocide kind.

And that’s how The Mechanism engenders institutions – from Washington to Brussels to hubs across the Global North to genocidal Tel Aviv – stripped down to the status of psychotic killers, at the mercy of Big Finance/FIRE (oh, such fabulous seafront real estate opportunities available in “vacant” Gaza.)

How can we possibly escape such folly? Will we have the will and the discipline to follow Shelley’s vision and, in “this dim vast vale of tears”, summon the transcending Spirit of Beauty – and harmony, equanimity and justice?

THE US AND ISIS: IT’S COMPLICATED

APRIL 2ND, 2024

Source

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

ALAN MACLEOD

While ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the Moscow shooting, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that the United States might have been behind the attack.

Although he provided no evidence for his claim, it is true that ISIS and the United States government have a long and complicated relationship, with Washington using the group for its own geopolitical purposes and that former ISIS fighters are active in Ukraine, as MintPress News explores.

A BRUTAL ATTACK

On March 22, gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, killing at least 143 people. Authorities apprehended four suspects who they claim were fleeing towards Ukraine. The attack was only one of a number planned. After receiving international tip-offs, Russian police foiled several other operations.

ISIS-K, the Islamic State’s Afghanistan and Pakistan division, immediately took responsibility for the shooting, with Western powers – especially the United States – treating the matter as an open and shut case. Vladimir Putin, however, felt differently, implying that Ukraine or even the United States might have been somehow involved. “We know who carried out the attack. But we are interested in knowing who ordered the attack,” he said, adding: “The question immediately arises: who benefits from this?”

Moscow has long accused Ukrainian intelligence services of recruiting ISIS fighters to join forces against their common enemy. Far-right paramilitary group Right Sektor is believed to have trained and absorbed a number of ex-ISIS soldiers from the Caucuses region, and Ukrainian militias have been seen sporting ISIS patches. However, there are no clear and official links between the Ukrainian government and ISIS, and the suspects – all Tajiks – have no publicly known connections to Ukraine.

This is not the first time that ISIS has targeted Russia. In 2015, the group took responsibility for the attack on Metrojet Flight 9268, which killed 224 people. It was also reportedly behind the January 2024 attacks on Iran that killed more than 100 people, commemorating the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general responsible for crushing ISIS as a force in Iraq and Syria.

GIVING BIRTH TO A MONSTER

A host of U.S. adversaries have claimed that ISIS enjoys an extremely close working relationship with the U.S. government, sometimes acting as a virtual cat’s-paw of Washington. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, for instance, has accused the U.S. of ferrying ISIS fighters around the Middle East, from battle zone to battle zone. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated that he considers ISIS to be a “tool” of the United States, saying:

I do not differentiate at all between ISIS and America.”

And just this week, the Syrian Foreign Ministry demanded:

the U.S. should end its illegitimate presence on Syrian territory, and end its open support and fund for Daesh [ISIS] and other terrorist organizations.”

It was in Syria that the goals of ISIS and the United States most closely aligned. In 2015, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), lamented that ISIS arose out of a “willful decision” by the U.S. government. A declassified D.I.A. report says as much, noting that the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” were ISIS and Al-Qaeda. “There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria,” the report noted excitedly, adding that “[T]his is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition [i.e., the U.S. and its allies] want.”

Throughout the 2010s, images of ISIS’ brutality consistently went viral and led to news bulletins around the world, providing the United States with a convenient enemy to justify keeping its troops in Iraq and Syria. And yet, throughout the decade, the U.S. and its allies were also using ISIS to weaken the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As then-Vice President Joe Biden said, Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were:

 [S]o determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tonnes of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.”

This included ISIS, Biden said. He later apologized for his remarks after they went viral. Nevertheless, the U.S. also supported a wide range of radical groups against Assad. Operation Timber Sycamore was the most extensive and most expensive C.I.A. project in the agency’s history. Costing more than $1 billion, the agency attempted to raise, train, equip and pay for a standing army of rebels to overthrow the government.

It is now widely acknowledged that large numbers of those trained by the C.I.A. were radical extremists. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an email published by WikiLeaks:

AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”

Clinton herself was well aware of the situation in Syria, noting that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were:

providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

While ISIS regularly attacked a wide range of enemies in the Middle East, it actually apologized to Israel in 2017 after its fighters mistakenly launched a mortar attack on the IDF in the occupied Golan Heights region of Syria.

That same year, the United States launched a significant attack on ISIS-K in Afghanistan, dropping the GBU-43/B MOAB bomb on a network of tunnels in Nangarhar Province. The bomb was the largest non-nuclear strike ever recorded and reportedly killed at least 96 ISIS operatives. Yet ISIS did not appear particularly interested in striking back at the U.S. Instead, it waited until the American departure from Afghanistan to launch a series of devastating attacks on the new Taliban government. This included a bombing at Kabul International Airport, killing more than 180 people, and the Kunduz Mosque Bombing two months later. The Taliban accused ISIS of carrying out a U.S.-ordered campaign of destabilization.

GLOBAL TERROR NETWORK

While the precise relationship between ISIS and the United States will surely never be known, what is clear is that, for decades, Washington has armed and trained terrorist groups around the world. In Libya, the U.S. joined forces with jihadist militias to topple the secular leader Muammar Gaddafi. Not only was Libya transformed from North Africa’s most prosperous country into a political and economic basket case, but the fighting unleashed a wave of destabilization across the entire region – something which continues to this day.

In Nicaragua, the U.S. sponsored far-right death squads in an attempt to overthrow the leftist Sandinistas. Those forces killed and tortured vast numbers of men, women and children; U.S.-trained groups are thought to have killed around 2% of the Nicaraguan population. The Reagan administration justified their intervention in Nicaragua by stating that the country represented a “mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States.” Oxfam retorted that the real “threat” Nicaragua posed was that it was a “good example” for other nations to follow.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, successive administrations helped to arm and train conservative paramilitary forces that prosecuted a brutal war against not only leftist guerilla forces but the civilian population as a whole. The extraordinary violence led to the internal displacement of more than 7.4 million Colombians.

Donald Trump once quipped that Barack Obama was “the founder of ISIS.” While this is not true, there is no doubt that the United States did indeed nurture the group, watching it expand into the force it is today. It has, at the very least, turned a blind eye to its operations and abetted it in its attack against their common enemies. In this sense, at least, with every ISIS attack, there is some blood on Washington’s hands.

Feature photo | A US-backed anti-government fighter mans a heavy machine gun next to a US soldier in al Tanf. Hammurabi’s Justice News | AP | Modification: MintPress News

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

Former CIA analyst suspects Washington knew about Russia terror attack

23 Mar 2024 

Source: Agencies

Traffic on the highway is visible near the Crocus City Hall with a warning message on a billboard that reads “We mourn 03.22.2024” on the Western edge of Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 22, 2024. (AP)

By Al Mayadeen English

Larry Johnson, former CIA and US State Department analyst, says the US was quick to acquit Ukraine of any ties to the terrorist attack in Russia’s capital.

“We still don’t know how many shooters there were. We don’t know what the weapons were. We don’t know what the firearms were. We don’t know what the explosives were. We don’t know how many were actually killed, how many wounded, but yet the US State Department knows that it was not Ukraine,” stated former CIA and State Department analyst Larry Johnson, according to Sputnik.

This indicates that the US government has no grounds to declare that there is no Ukrainian connection to the terrorist attack that claimed the lives of innocent Russians in Moscow.

The former analyst then highlighted another significant point stating that the statement “comes on a day that one of the CIA propaganda outlets came out and said that the Biden administration and the intelligence community were very concerned about what they call ‘brazen’, unwarranted attacks by Ukraine.”

Based on these premises, the former CIA and US State Department analyst announced that he suspected that Washington had information regarding the attack, yet withheld this information from Moscow.

Related News

Russian officials call out Washington, warn Kiev

In turn, the Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova, on her Telegram channel, questioned the US statement saying “On what basis do officials in Washington draw any conclusions in the midst of the tragedy about anyone’s innocence? If the United States has or had reliable information in this regard, then it must be immediately transferred to the Russian side.”

Zakharova then stressed that “if there is no such data, then the White House has no right to issue indulgences to anyone,” adding “All those involved, as stated by the Russian leadership, will be identified by the competent authorities.”

As for the Deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, he underscored that “Terrorists understand only retaliatory terror.”

Medvedev further emphasized that “If it is established that these are terrorists of the Kiev regime, it is impossible to do otherwise with them and their ideological inspirers. All of them must be found and ruthlessly destroyed as terrorists. Including officials of the state that committed such an atrocity.”

Read more: NATO ready for war with Russia: NATO Military Committee

Russia & NATO

As the Draconian Western-led sanctions on Russia exacerbate the economic crisis worldwide, and as Russian troops gain more ground despite the influx of military aid into Ukraine, exposing US direct involvement in bio-labs spread across Eastern Europe and the insurgence of neo-Nazi groups… How will things unfold?

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Putin Gives New Statement on Crocus Massacre, Says the Ukraine Most Likely Behind It

MARCH 26, 2024

ANDREW ANGLIN

The terrorists fled the site of the attack in the same car as they arrived in. It was a very obvious car, white with a black roof. Russian forces followed the car, not immediately stopping it, as they wanted to see where it was going. Eventually, they stopped the car in the forest, where they knew the terrorists couldn’t get out and kill more people or take hostages. But they only stopped the car after it was clear that it was headed for the Ukraine border.

This Crocus massacre was different than virtually every terrorist attack we’ve seen in the past, as the attackers did not plan to die during the attack. Usually, the entire purpose of a terrorist attack is that the attackers die as “martyrs.” These people are claiming they were paid money, and they obviously intended to survive.

The fact that they were driving to the Ukraine means that someone told them the Ukraine would let them in. They clearly believed that. These guys have all been tortured, which was obviously going to happen, and it would have been much more logical to simply die during the attack, especially if they are true “Islamic terrorists” who believe they get 72 virgins in paradise if they die killing random people.

Russia says that the Ukraine was opening up a border crossing for them. It seems to me that the issue is solved.

RT:

The deadly terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall was a clear attempt to intimidate Russia and serves the interests of the Ukrainian government, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday.

More than 130 people were killed at the concert venue northwest of Moscow on Friday evening, when several armed men began shooting into the crowd and set the hall on fire. Speaking with law enforcement and regional officials on Monday evening, Putin argued the atrocity fit the pattern of actions by Kiev.

This atrocity may be only a link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been fighting our country since 2014, using the neo-Nazi Kievregime as their hand,” Putin said.

The US and the EU swiftly insisted that Ukraine had nothing to do with the attack and that ISIS-K, a shadowy group allegedly operating in Afghanistan and Central Asia, was the sole culprit.

The US announced “Ukraine didn’t do it” exactly 55 minutes after the attack ended.

How would they know?

That announcement is just more proof not only that the Ukraine did do it, but that the US knew that the Ukraine did it.

Russian security services have apprehended a dozen suspects, including seven alleged perpetrators, intercepted as they drove towards the border with Ukraine. They were identified as Tajik nationals. Speaking on Monday evening, Putin described them as “radical Islamists.”

A question that needs answering is why the terrorists headed for Ukraine after carrying out the attack, Putin said.

“Who was waiting for them there? It is clear that those who support the Kiev regime do not want to be accomplices and sponsors of terrorism. But a lot of questions remain,” he added.

While Russia knows who pulled the trigger, the president said, Moscow still needs to find who gave the order. He made it clear that Kiev is his primary suspect, however.

With Ukraine’s military losing on the frontline, Kiev has attempted to breach the Russian border, shelled civilians in Belgorod and launched missiles at Crimea, Putin noted at the meeting. All of these actions “create a logical sequence to a terrorist attack,” seeking both to intimidate Russia and fortify domestic morale, so that Ukrainians would continue “obeying orders” from Washington and keep fighting, he added.

This is exactly what I said yesterday. I noted that Victoria Nuland, when visiting Kiev at the end of January, talked about “nice surprises” for Russia. As it happens, she repeated this on February 22, this time saying it would be “nasty surprises.”

It’s possible that many in the US are concerned about the direction this is going. In the days before the Crocus attack, the Americans were begging the Ukrainians to stop attacking Russian oil refineries. The Ukraine said no.

This is likely related to the Victoria Nuland firing from the State Department earlier this month: the Ukraine situation was getting out of control, and she was the main figure behind pushing for constant escalations.

The Crocus attack could have been something that Nuland planned before getting fired. In fact, she could have gotten caught planning it by others in Washington, and been fired because she was planning it, and then the Ukraine could have gone ahead with it. That’s obviously speculation, but it certainly fits with what we know right now, and fits with these statements by Nuland that she was planning a “surprise” for Russia.

Regardless of the details: the killers were driving to the Ukraine. The Ukraine was opening a border crossing. The Kiev regime is responsible.

If these people were seriously Islamic, they would be attacking Israel. They would also want to die during their attack instead of getting tortured and sent to prison and then still die (Russia is going to bring back the death penalty for these faggots).

“ISIS-K” is not even a real thing. It’s just a codename for CIA-controlled terrorists currently harassing the Taliban. When the US comes out and says “it’s not the Ukraine, it’s ISIS-K,” they’re saying “it’s not our asset #1, it’s our asset #2.”

This attack is too outrageous, too intolerable. The Ukrainians must be made to pay for it.

(Republished from The Daily Stormer by permission of author or representative)

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Victoria Nuland in January Warned Russia of “Nice Surprises” in 2024

ANDREW ANGLIN

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“Putin Gives New Statement on Crocus Massacre, Says the Ukraine Most Likely Behind It”

It’s War: The Real Meat Grinder Starts Now

MARCH 23, 2024

PEPE ESCOBAR

No more shadow play. It’s now in the open. No holds barred.

Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.

The money quote:

“Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it, not to mention the territory of new regions.”

Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.

Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.

Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes, this is a NATO force.

That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.

Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing, all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.

And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least five strikes.

Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan next October.

Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total political support from Beijing and Moscow.

The sponsors remain the same

Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers. A massive investigation is in progress.

The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.

Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.

That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in: ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the commando killers did not look like Slavs.

It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.

The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…

… Donald Trump.

Talk about a Deep State-pinpointed target.

ISIS spin-off or banderistas – the sponsors remain the same. The clownish secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, was dumb enough to virtually, indirectly confirm they did it, saying on Ukrainian TV, “we will give them [Russians] this kind of fun more often.”

But it was up to Sergei Goncharov, a veteran of the elite Russia Alpha anti-terrorism unit, to get closer to unwrapping the enigma: he told Sputnik the most feasible mastermind is Kyrylo Budanov – the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

The “spy chief” who happens to be the top CIA asset in Kiev.

It’s got to go till the last Ukrainian

The three exhibits above complement what the head of NATO’s

military committee, Rob Bauer, previously told a security forum in Kiev: “You need more than just grenades – you need people to replace the dead and wounded. And this means mobilization.”

Translation: NATO spelling out this is a war until the last Ukrainian.

And the “leadership” in Kiev still does not get it. Former Minister of Infrastructure Omelyan: “If we win, we will pay back with Russian oil, gas, diamonds and fur. If we lose, there will be no talk of money – the West will think about how to survive.”

In parallel, puny “garden-and jungle” Borrell admitted that it would be “difficult” for the EU to find an extra 50 billion euros for Kiev if Washington pulls the plug. The cocaine-fueled sweaty sweatshirt leadership actually believes that Washington is not “helping” in the form of loans, but in the form of free gifts. And the same applies for the EU.

The Theater of the Absurd is unmatchable. The German Liver Sausage Chancellor actually believes that proceeds from stolen Russian assets “do not belong to anyone”, so they can be used to finance extra Kiev weaponizing.

Everyone with a brain knows that using interest from “frozen”, actually stolen Russian assets to weaponize Ukraine is a dead end – unless they steal all of Russia’s assets, roughly $200 billion, mostly parked in Belgium and Switzerland: that would tank the Euro for good, and the whole EU economy for that matter.

Eurocrats better listen to Russian Central Bank major “disrupter” (American terminology) Elvira Nabiullina: The Bank of Russia will take “appropriate measures” if the EU does anything on the “frozen”/stolen Russian assets.

It goes without saying that the three exhibits above completely nullify the “La Cage aux Folles” circus promoted by the puny Petit Roi, now known across his French domains as Macronapoleon.

Virtually the whole planet, including the English-speaking Global North, had already been mocking the “exploits” of his Can Can Moulin Rouge Army.

So French, German and Polish soldiers, as part of NATO, are already in the south of Kiev. The most possible scenario is that they will stay far, far away from the frontlines – although traceable by Mr. Khinzal’s business activities.

Even before this new NATO batch arriving in the south of Kiev, Poland – which happens to serve as prime transit corridor for Kiev’s troops – had confirmed that Western troops are already on the ground.

So this is not about mercenaries anymore. France, by the way, is only 7th in terms of mercenaries on the ground, largely trailing Poland, the US and Georgia, for instance. The Russian Ministry of Defense has all the precise records.

In a nutshell: now war has morphed from Donetsk, Avdeyevka and Belgorod to Moscow. Further on down the road, it may not just stop in Kiev. It may only stop in Lviv. Mr. 87%, enjoying massive national near-unanimity, now has the mandate to go all the way. Especially after Crocus.

There’s every possibility the terror tactics by Kiev goons will finally drive Russia to return Ukraine to its original 17th century landlocked borders: Black Sea-deprived, and with Poland, Romania, and Hungary reclaiming their former territories.

Remaining Ukrainians will start to ask serious questions about what led them to fight – literally to their death – on behalf of the US Deep State, the military complex and BlackRock.

As it stands, the Highway to Hell meat grinder is bound to reach maximum velocity.

(Republished from Strategic Culture Foundation by permission of author or representative)

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Terrorist attack in Moscow Crocus City Hall leaves dozens dead

22 Mar 2024

Source: Agencies

A massive blaze is seen over the Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow, Russia, March 22, 2024 (AP)

By Al Mayadeen English

A terrorist mass shooting takes place in the Russian capital of Moscow, wounding and killing dozens of Russian civilians.

Crocus City Hall in Moscow fell victim to a horrifying shooting and fire, resulting in numerous casualties and injuries, Russian authorities confirmed on Friday. 

The incident has sparked global condemnation, with officials terming it a “bloody terrorist attack.”

[GRAPHIC]

The moment tеrrоrists entered the Crocus City Hall in Moscow pic.twitter.com/kwgGglvjiV— What the media hides. (@narrative_hole) March 22, 2024

Gunshots were heard in the concert hall shortly before flames engulfed it. The Federal Security Service (FSB) reported fatalities and injuries in the wake of the assault. Preliminary figures reported by TASS estimate that 40 were killed and over 100 others were wounded as a result of the terrorist attack.

Several explosions were heard in the aftermath, and while it is unclear if there were any bombings involved, it is speculated that the explosions were as a result of the fire that broke out.

Related News

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova took to Telegram to express outrage, urging the international community to denounce the “despicable crime.”

Emergency services swiftly mobilized to rescue attendees trapped within city hall. Approximately 100 individuals were evacuated from the basement, with ongoing efforts to reach those seeking refuge on the roof.

“Around 100 people have been evacuated from the basement by the firefighters. Work is ongoing to save people from the roof of the building with lifting equipment,” the Moscow region’s emergency situations ministry wrote on Telegram.

The ministry continues making updates via Telegram, underscoring the relentless endeavor to save lives amidst the turmoil.

Meanwhile, amidst speculations about Ukrainian involvement in the attack, the White House extended condolences to the victims of what they termed a “terrible” incident, absolving Ukraine from preliminary accusations.

John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council clarified that there was no evidence linking Ukraine to the attack, despite ongoing war. “I would disabuse you at this early hour of any connection to Ukraine,” he told reporters.

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Where Does Israel-Gaza Go from Here?

MARCH 22, 2024

Source

Philip Giraldi

I had an interesting discussion last week with a Washington-based political pundit who expressed some what I thought to be eccentric views on possible developments in the presidential campaign over the next six months. He said that that strange little man Jared Kushner is at it again engaged in secret meetings, but this time he is being promoted as a possible Vice-Presidential candidate to run alongside his father-in-law ex-president Donald Trump. Reportedly, he is being pushed by a number of hard right ardently pro-Israel Republican Senators, to include folks like Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz, who are arguing that it would solve the loyalty issue for his father-in-law, a major concern for Trump given the perceived betrayal by ex-VP Mike Pence. Kushner would also be on the right side of a number of issues that Republican conservatives feel strongly about, most certainly including Israel. And, bear in mind, if a seventy-eight year old Donald Trump were to be re-elected and not finish his full term of office, Kushner would be his successor and the first Jewish president of the United States. You can bet that there are some people out there with long memories and deep pockets who might be longing for just that.

Now, given the fact that Kushner was Trump’s Senior Adviser and the one thing that nearly everyone agrees about the Donald was that his judgement on picking senior staff was flawed – one recalls names like Bolton and Pompeo – and would hardly be a credential for moving onward and upward, but it does nevertheless seem that some might actually be considering the possibility. And it is also true that Kushner brings almost nothing beyond name recognition to the ticket, but that is also the case for a number of other possible candidates for the position. Unlike most identified VP candidates, however, Kushner also would arrive with a considerable quantity of baggage. It is reported that when he was first named by Trump it proved to be difficult for him to get a security clearance, even with the president’s highly aggressive endorsement. This was possibly due to the activities of Jared’s father Charles Kushner who was a felon imprisoned in 2005-7 for business fraud to include illegal political contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. The prosecuting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey who handled the case was Chris Christie, later the governor of New Jersey and himself a presidential candidate. The witness tampering charge arose from Kushner’s retaliation against William Schulder, his sister Esther’s husband, who was cooperating with federal investigators against Kushner. Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, arranged to record a sexual encounter between the two, and had the tape sent to his sister. Donald Trump controversially pardoned Charles after the fact at the end of his term of office in 2020 together with a number of other Jewish businessmen who were on a list compiled by Jared.

Or, alternatively, the bad security review might have related to Jared’s family’s the Kushner Foundation which was funding completely illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine among its other activities. Since 2020, Kushner has also reportedly been heavily involved with Saudi Arabia, which has apparently benefited Kushner’s equity firm business interests to the tune of $2 billion.

Kushner and his wife might well be considered a footnote to history, minor players, but for the possibility that Jared might somehow connive his way into a position with real power if Donald Trump is re-elected, but he is in the news right now for other reasons. People forget that quite a lot of what goes on vis-à-vis Israel is driven by what might be called the “profit motive,” which admittedly might be considered a play on the word “prophet.” It all comes down to how much money will be generated once the Palestinians are kicked out of Gaza and the West Bank, just for starters. Kushner has recently revealed his own vision of successful conclusion of the war for Israel in an interview on February 15th plus additional comments and it goes like this: the Gazans should be removed from their homes and those who are still alive and who have not been repatriated to other countries including Sinai in Egypt, might be allowed to reside in a suitable refugee camp style location in the Negev desert, inside southern Israel. How exactly they will survive in a desert is not clear as Israel has no excess water resources to “make the desert bloom” as the expression goes. As Kushner explains how “… getting civilians out of Rafah and potentially into Egypt, might be possible ‘with the right diplomacy,’” suggesting that he “would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” adding “I know that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that’s a better option to do, so you can go in and finish the job.” In his comments Kushner also demonstrated that he is delusional, commenting that “I think Israel’s gone way more out of their way than a lot of other countries would, to try to protect civilians from casualties.” More to the point, one has to suspect that Kushner’s views might well reflect those of Trump, who has called on Israel to “finish it up [in Gaza] and do it quickly.”

Israel meanwhile, one supposes, can get international donors like the US to pay for the cleanup of Gaza and it could be developed to provide luxurious seafront properties for Israeli and international Jewish buyers, which would produce substantial income for the government and also for investors like Kushner. He said that “Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable, if people would focus on building up livelihoods.. If you think about all the money that’s gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done? It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”

It might seem like a screwy idea but it is certainly not beyond the rapaciousness and cruelty that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is certainly capable of. And it would be a substantial step towards getting completely rid of the pesky Palestinians. There have been independent reports that real estate dealers in Israel are already framing tentative offers for dividing up the more desirable bits of Gaza land, particularly along the Mediterranean Sea. The sales would be for Jews only since part of the desirability of the ethnic cleansing would be to turn Israel into as close as possible an all-Jewish state, which is favored by most Israelis, including expectation of an influx of presumably wealthy diaspora Jews who opt to make their “Aliyah” in a more substantive way.

It is interesting to note how the thinking of Jared Kushner is possibly in sync with the intentions of many Israelis and foreign Jews, but there is also additional evidence that more stolen Palestinian land and houses will soon be up on the auction block for purchase by Jews only worldwide. In early March there was held a so-called “Israeli Real Estate Event” at synagogues and Jewish community centers in Canada, New York state and New Jersey. Though one event was canceled due to fear of demonstrators, the Israeli brokers were selling houses and building lots in Israel, to include the West Bank, most of which were “acquired” by force or through illegal contrivance from their original Arab owners. The advertising for the sales stated boldly that “In a world where uncertainty looms and antisemitism shows its ugly face more boldly than ever, the decision to invest in a home in Israel is not just wise—it’s exhilarating!” The “Events” took place even though it is illegal in the US and Canada to restrict house or land sales to one particular religion or ethnic group.

Finally, the suggestion that a lot of the thinking about whither Gaza is possibly being driven by money comes from the tale of the Ben Gurion Canal Project and the reports of multi-billion dollar oil and gas reserves offshore of Gaza in the Mediterranean Sea. The Ben Gurion project has long been mooted as a way to create an Israel controlled alternative to the existing Suez Canal. It would be a navigable canal connecting the Mediterranean and Red Sea that would run through Gaza and down Israel, ending at the Gulf of Aqaba near Eilat. The oil and gas reserves have been verified though they have been inaccessible as long as Gaza has been in Palestinian hands even though the Israelis control the waters, regularly shooting Palestinian fisherman who venture too far from shore. Both the energy resources and total control of a ship canal would be enormous economic assets for Israel. Putting all of that together with the Kushner plan and those business ventures by other Israelis one would be remiss if dismissing the possibility that future development in those areas is really all about money.

Democracy, Russian Style. Scott Ritter

March 21, 2024

Global Research,

By Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter Extra

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Global Research Fundraising: Stop the Pentagon’s Ides of March

***

Russia just wrapped up three days of electoral processes which will define the internal direction of that nation for the next six years and, in doing so, serve as the driving force of global transformation for decades to come. Russia has some 112.3 million registered voters. From March 15 through March 17, a little more than 77% of them came out and cast their vote for who would be their president for the next six years. An overwhelming percentage—over 88%—cast their vote for the incumbent, Vladimir Putin.

Let there be no doubt—there was no question as to what the outcome would be in this election: Vladimir Putin was always going to win reelection.

Let there also be no doubt—the 2024 presidential election in Russia is the most important political event of the post-Cold War era, the byproduct of one of the greatest expressions of democratic will that the world will see in modern times.

The election was far more than a vote of confidence in an individual—Vladimir Putin has been the dominant political force in Russia since the turn of the century, a man who has, through sheer force of will, led Russia out of the dark catastrophe of the 1990’s, positioning Russia as one of the most powerful and influential nations of the modern era.

The election was not a mandate on the war in Ukraine—that issue had been decided in the fall of 2022, when Russia was compelled to mobilize its manpower and military industrial capacity as what had been envisioned as a short military campaign against Ukraine transformed into a larger, longer military struggle against the collective West.

Simply put, the Ukraine conflict was not on the ballot in 2024.

What was on the ballot was the future of Russia.

Vladimir Putin is 71 years old. His victory secures him another six-year term in office. When this term ends, in 2030, Putin will be 77 years old.

Russians are students of history, and they know too well the sad legacy of the period of Soviet stagnation, which began in the mid-1960’s under the leadership of Leonid collective West. Brezhnev was 75 years old when he died in office, a mentally and physically feeble man. He was replaced by Yuri Andropov, who died two years later at the age of 69, only to be replaced by Konstantin Chernenko, who died in 1985 at the age of 73.

There is no reason to believe that Vladimir Putin will not maintain his current level of physical health and mental acuity for the remainder of his new term in office. But all men are, in the end, created equal, and the ravages of time weigh heavily on everyone, even someone as exceptional as Vladimir Putin.

March 2024 Russia Presidential Election: Russia and “Putin 3.0”

For the past quarter of a century, Vladimir Putin has relied upon a core team of advisors and officials to help him lead Russia on its path of recovery. While this team has proven to be very capable, it, too, is subject to the same laws of nature that govern human existence as everyone else—ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

No man can live forever.

Russia, however, is in the minds of the people who constitute the Russian nation, eternal.

Having saved Russia from the deprivations of the 1990’s, when the collective West, led by the United States, conspired to keep Russia down by tearing it apart, Vladimir Putin is cognizant of the lessons of history which saw what happens when a ruling elite holds on to power for too long without any thought as to who will take their place.

Mikhail Gorbachev tried to lead Russia (the Soviet Union) out of the period of Soviet stagnation. He did so in a reactive fashion, without a well-thought-out plan, and the result was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the horrible decade of the 1990’s.

If Vladimir Putin were to approach the next six years as merely a continuation of his impressive tenure in office, he would be leading Russia down a path where it would collide with the harsh mistress that is historical precedent—an aging man, at the head of an aging system of government, with no clear plan on how to proceed when the inevitable appointment with destiny arrives.

In short, should the situation arise where Vladimir Putin feels compelled to seek an additional six-year term as Russia’s president in 2030, then Russia would more than likely find itself in danger of sinking into a new period of stagnation where the gains that have been made over the course of three decades of Putin rule will be squandered, and the potential of a societal collapse on par with the 1990’s a distinct reality.

This is why the important statistic to emerge from the 2024 Russian presidential election is not the 88% of the voters who marked their ballots in support of Vladimir Putin, but instead the 77% of the eligible voters who came out to express their support for the Russian state. Voter participation levels have always been seen as a reflection of the confidence a particular electorate had that the system of government they were sustaining through their vote best reflected the vision they themselves had of the nation they lived in.

By way of comparison, the 2020 presidential election in the United States saw a record-level 66% participation rate by eligible voters.

The 2024 presidential election in Russia beat that mark by 11 percentage points.

This means that the Russian people are confident that the 71-year-old Vladimir Putin will not be leading them down a path of historical inevitability where they are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Rather, the Russian people, confident in where Vladimir Putin has taken them to date, believe that he is the man who will best position Russia to be able to sustain these gains, and continue to prosper, in an eventual post-Putin Russia.

The 2024 Russian presidential election was a not a vote to maintain the status quo.

It was a vote for change.

The man that will oversee this change is Vladimir Putin.

Post-election rally in Red Square following Vladimir Putin’s victory in the 2024 presidential election

In the coming months, one can expect to see the beginning of a changing of the guard. The Russian leaders who helped Putin get Russia to where it is today will be set aside, to be replaced by a younger generation of Russian leaders who will, under the guidance and leadership of Vladmir Putin, prepare Russia for whatever challenges that await it once Vladimir Putin is no longer president.

How this change will manifest itself—perhaps a transition from a Moscow-centric political elite to one derived from the various regions of Russia—is as yet unknown. But there will be change, because there must be change.

And this change was on the ballot.

The West derided the 2024 Russian presidential election as a sham.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The 2024 Russian presidential election was the manifestation of a thriving democracy, but a democracy defined by Russians.

The West focuses on the 88% of the Russians who voted for Vladimir Putin and derides the result as little more than a foregone conclusion in a system that offered the people only one real choice.

Russian democracy, however, is defined by the 77% level of electoral participation, and reflects the confidence of the people in the Russian state’s ability to take them from the strong position that Vladimir Putin has brought them and sustain this strength in a post-Putin era.

It was not a vote defined by recertifying the past, but rather a vote which empowered the government to undertake the critical changes needed for the future of the Russian nation.

It was the perfect expression of democracy, Russian style.

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90K+ cyberattacks from Ukraine, N. America on elections portal: Russia

16 Mar 2024

The head of Solar Group Igor Lyapunov stated that yesterday at 12:47 Moscow time an unprecedented large-scale cyberattack targeted the electronic voting platform.

Photo by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on March 15, 2024, a Russian serviceman is with his child as his wife casts her ballot at a polling station during the presidential election at an undisclosed location in Russia. (AP)

By Al Mayadeen English

The head of Solar Group, a subsidiary of Rostelecom, Igor Lyapunov, revealed today that on the first day of the Russian elections, more than 90,000 cyber attacks targeted the elections portals originating from Ukraine and North America. 

Lyapunov stated that such an unprecedented number of cyber attacks indicates that the collective West is fighting against Russia adding that attacks originated from “Ukraine and other locations in Western Europe as well as North America.”

He added that an unprecedented major cyber attack took place yesterday at 12:47 Moscow time targeting the electronic voting platform peaking at more than 2.5 million clicks per second, a load that has caused a delay in the portal. 

Russian officials react to the attacks

Russia’s ruling United Russia Party said earlier today that it was hit by a large-scale cyberattack that disrupted internet use and services. 

It added that it suspended non-essential services to combat the attack. 

Russia Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador for Special Tasks Gennady Askaldovich announced that electronic voting for the presidential elections is not available abroad due to cybersecurity threats. 

Earlier today, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova revealed that Washington is using hackers and compiled a package of misleading information to be published on the eve and during the election day to influence the voting process in the Russian presidential elections.

Related News

Zakharova stressed that Washington put lots of effort into scaring the people by spreading its political views alongside fake information about the candidates, political parties, and figures. 

40.05% of people voted in the Russian elections

The Russian Central Election Commission announced that the participation rate in the presidential elections has reached 40.05% as of 13:32 Moscow time. 

In addition, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media revealed that the participation rate in electronic voting in these elections has reached 82% so far as of 11:00 PM Moscow time. 

What you need to know 

The voting will span three days from March 15 until March 17, and this will mark the first Russian presidential election since the 2020 constitutional reform. The reform had imposed a limit of two terms for any president. This also nullified Putin’s former terms, enabling him to run again.

In this election, four candidates vie for the six-year presidential term. Putin, running independently, competes against Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party, and Vladislav Davankov representing the New People party.

It is noteworthy that the Russian President Vladimir Putin has voted electronically this morning from his office in Moscow.

US assigns new mission to NGOs: Reducing Russian elections turnout

Joe Biden’s administration has entrusted US NGOs with the mission of diminishing the turnout in the Russian presidential elections, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) revealed on March 11.

“According to information received by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the administration of Joe Biden sets the task for US NGOs to achieve a decrease in the turnout in the upcoming March 15-17 presidential elections in the Russian Federation,” the message read.

The SVR stated that the Russian opposition’s Internet resources distributed messages to Russian citizens to neglect the presidential election as per Washington’s wish. 

“With the participation of leading US IT specialists, it is planned to carry out cyberattacks on the remote electronic voting system, which will make it impossible to count the votes of a significant proportion of Russian voters,” the statement added.

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FREEMASONRY & ZIONISM – 1. Apocalyptic “Cataclysms” by Synagogue of Satan

March 9, 2024

Genocides in Palestine & Plotted Pandemic for Lethal Vaccines

Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio, born on 24/2/1967 in Borgosesia, started working as a reporter when he was only 19 years old in the alpine area of Valsesia, Piedmont, his birth region in Italy. After studying literature and history at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, he became director of the local newspaper Notizia Oggi Vercelli and specialized in judicial reporting.
For about 15 years he is a correspondent from Northern Italy for the Italian newspapers Libero and Il Giornale, also writing important revelations on the Ustica massacre, a report on Freemasonry and organized crime.
With independent investigations, he collaborates with Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza in important investigations that conclude with the arrest of Camorra entrepreneurs or corrupt politicians.
In July 2018 he found the counter-information web media Gospa News focused on geopolitics, terrorism, Middle East, and military intelligence.
In 2020 published the book, in Italian only, WUHAN-GATES – The New World Order Plot on SARS-Cov-2 manmade focused on the cycle of investigations Wuhan-Gates
His investigations was quoted also by The Gateway Pundit, Tasnim and others
He worked for many years for the magazine Art & Wine as an art critic and curator.

By Fabio G. C. Carisio

“To the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan”.
Saint John Apostle and Evangelist – Book of the Revelation (Rev. 2, 8-10)


In the cover image the prime minister of the Israeli Zionist Regime Benjamin Nethanyau and the “Pope of Freemasonry” Albert Pike

NB – some quotes of American persons have been translated from sources in Italian so forgive any stylistic errors or differences with the original ones

By Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio

VERSIONE IN ITAIANO

«The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,  who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near».

This Prologue to the Book of the Revelation (Apocalypse) of Saint John the Evangelist, the only Apostle who died without martyrdom as a reward for his loyalty to Jesus under the cross of Golgotha, reread in recent days, after almost a million deaths caused in recent years by the wars in Ukraine, Syria. Iraq and Libya (to name the best known) and after the genocide of the Israeli army in Palestine in which over 8 thousand children were massacred by bombs in a few weeks together with around 22 thousand adults, we should be inspired by a profound spiritual reflection also by virtue of the prophecy on Armageddon, the final battle of the armies foretold in the Holy Land in the same text on the Apocalypse which in Greek, it is good to remember it only means “revelation”, “prophecy” and not “catastrophe”.

They take on an equally tragic meaning if we think of the holocaust of millions of victims caused both by the pandemic triggered by a SARS-Cov-2 built in the laboratory and by the killer vaccines with which unscrupulous Big Pharma is testing the world population like a massive human guinea-pig to reach the transhumanist goal of eugenic health culture: denial of Nature and the Almighty God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which has survived 7 thousand years of attempts at annihilation.

THE GENOCIDE OF THE PALESTINIANS AND THE HOLOCAUST OF THE VACCINATED

Faced with this extraordinary “pande-medic holocaust” made invisible by the denialism of those who govern politics and science in obedience to the powers of the New World Order clearly theorized as an evolution of NATO by the Hungarian-American plutarch George Soros in 1993, the Palestinian victims , Ukrainian, Syrian conflicts caused precisely by military conflicts plotted by the Atlantic Alliance and by Anglo-Saxon intelligence appear as the ordinary, inevitable consequence of the hatred and ferocity that has plagued human history since the time of Cain. This name will come back later…

Therefore, the biblical reference in the Book of Revelation to “those who proclaim themselves Jews and are not, but belong to the synagogue of Satan” does not appear in vain in the case of the Zionist leader Netanyahu who is carrying out a genocide of Palestinians after having mass vaccinated his fellow Israelis for a gigantic transversal business between the Weapons Lobby and Big Pharma with American President Joesph Biden.

Modern telecommunications means – where not blocked as in Gaza to prevent reckless reporters from documenting the war crimes ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already renamed “the Hitler of the 21st Century” by Turkish lawyers who demand his indictment – have made the bloody genocide tacitly legalized by the West and carried out in the churches and hospitals of Palestine terrifying, bringing before the eyes and ears cries that implore revenge and make the sense of forgiveness waver even in Christians, all this satanic torment appears comparable screams from the silence imploded in the hearts of children torn by lethal myocarditis or in the brains devoured by turbo-cancer of the victims of adverse reactions to the mRNA Covid vaccines.

Precisely because their roar against death is silent, broken in the throat by a sudden illness of which political, health and judicial authorities too often do not want to detect and reveal traces of the FAILURE OF A SYSTEM. Precisely that of the New World Order which is seeking God’s mercy with the merciless human reason capable of killing an 8-month-old baby girl, Indi Gregory, although she had a concrete hope of being assisted.

THE CATACLYSM FORECAST BY THE “POPE” OF AMERICAN FREEMASONRY

If all this happening is not a coincidence but appears to be an international and historical conspiracy foreseen in very remote times by the American “Pope of Freemasonry”, a Southern general, about whom we have already written, who was among the Confederate supporters of the Civil War but also among the founders of the KuKluxKlan and among the followers of satanic ritesAlbert Pike.

We have already mentioned his extensive correspondence with the 33rd degree Freemason of the Supreme Council of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite Giuseppe Mazzini who, thanks to the financing of the hooded friends of the London lodges ready to host him even though he was a fugitive terrorist in Europe, planned the Expedition of the Thousand of Masonic guerrilla Giuseppe Garibaldi with whom the Kingdom of Italy wrested a part of Rome from the Papal State in the gigantic and crude plot against Christianity and the Catholic Church, partly attenuated only by the faith of the Ruling Savoy Dynasty.

But we had missed some passages which in the light of today’s events take on monstrous relevance, furthermore proving the imprint of Freemasonry, like a Mark of the Beast, in every religious and political conflictual drift, prodigiously foreseen in detail by General Pike.

In these first episodes we will analyze the conspiratorial complicity of Freemasonry with Zionism. In the next one with Nazism and Jihadist Islamism, where in a previous investigation we have analyzed the role of hooded men between Capitalism and Communism.

«The Third World War will have to be fomented by taking advantage of the differences stirred up by the agents of the Illuminati between political Zionism and the leaders of the Islamic world. The war will have to be oriented so that Islam (including the State of Israel) destroy each other, while at the same time the remaining nations, once again divided and opposed to each other, will then be forced to fight each other until to complete physical, mental, spiritual and economic exhaustion».

This is what Pike wrote to Mazzini on 15 August 1871 in a letter according to the revelations made by the commodore of the Canadian navy William Guy Carr which he later reported in his famous 1954 book Pawns in the Game. He stated that he learned about the letter from the anti-Mason, Cardinal José María Caro Rodríguez of Santiago, Chile, the author of The Mystery of Freemasonry Unveiled (Hawthorne, California, Christian Book Club of America, 1971).

The Navy official can be considered very reliable as worked also for the Canadian Intelligence Service during World War II, and in 1944 he published Checkmate in the North, a book about an invasion by the Axis forces to take place in the area of the CFB Goose Bay (Canadian Forces Base Goose Bay).

Carr’s books often discuss a Luciferian conspiracy by what he called the “World Revolutionary Movement,” but he later attributed the conspiracy more specifically to the “Synagogue of Satan.”

The term was not a reference to Judaism as he wrote: “I wish to make it clearly and emphatically known that I do not believe the Synagogue of Satan (S.O.S.) is Jewish, but, as Christ told us for a definite purpose, it is comprised of ‘I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.’ (Rev. 2:9 and 3:9)

Albert Pike, the Pope of American Freemasonry

The Canadian commodore reported what we had already mentioned in the previous investigation on Pike and which we will try to contextualize both in the biblical, esoteric and historical context in the following lines.

«The First World War had to be fought to allow the “Illuminati” to overthrow the power of the czars in Russia and transform this country into the fortress of atheist communism. The differences stirred up by “Illuminati” agents between the British and German Empires were used to foment this war. After the war was over, communism had to be built and used to destroy other governments and weaken religions».

Citing Confederate General Pike who was Grand Master of the Mother Lodge of Charleston (but also, in all probability, the only Southerner to have had, until recently, a statue in his memory in the USA sculpted by an Italian but recently destroyed by vandals), the commodore added:

«The Second World War had to be fomented by taking advantage of the difference between fascists and political Zionists. The war had to be fought in order to destroy Nazism and increase the power of political Zionism, in order to allow the establishment of the sovereign state of Israel in Palestine. During the Second World War, a Communist International had to be established as strong as the whole of Christianity. At this point the latter had to be contained and kept under control until required for the final social cataclysm».

Rereading these sentences after having published an investigation into the recent Israeli military plan for the genocide and forced exodus of Palestinians in Egypt and Europe represents a disturbing and burning confirmation but is not enough to understand the deepest motivations of the diabolical NWO conspiracy.

On 15 August 1871, as revealed by Carr, the Pope of American Freemasonry Pike revealed to Mazzini that at the end of the Third World War those who aspire to World Government would cause the greatest social cataclysm ever seen.

«We will unleash the nihilists and atheists and provoke a formidable social cataclysm which will clearly show, in all its horror, to the nations, the effect of absolute atheism, the origin of barbarism and bloody subversion».

And then again:

«Then everywhere citizens, forced to defend themselves against a world minority of revolutionaries, these destroyers of civilization, and the multitude disillusioned by Christianity, whose worshipers will be devoid of orientation in search of an ideal, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of pure doctrine of Lucifer finally revealed to the public eye, a manifestation which will be followed by the destruction of Christianity and atheism conquered and crushed at the same time».

GEOPOLITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE THIRD WORLD WAR IN FRAGMENTS

If we carefully analyze what has happened in the last twenty years, rereading them with the lens of a geopolitical intelligence analysis, we can put together these dramatic events that prove the gradual increase of the Third World War “in a patchy pattern, in fragments, or in small pieces” as defined several times by Pope Francis.

September 11, 2001 – From the World Trade Center to the War in Afghanistan

Avoidable massacre of the attacks on the Twin Towers facilitated by the obstacles posed by the American counter-espionage of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the investigations of the director of anti-terrorism of the FBI John O’Neill (who died in the World Trade Center where he was hired after being fired following sabotage of his professional activity). The hidden role of the Israeli counter-intelligence Mossad came to light immediately, recently with the disconcerting confirmation that two of the hijackers were collaborating with the CIA.

Thanks to that event, the USA, led by the Weapons Lobby controlled by investment funds of Zionist financiers such as Larry Fink, began the terrible and unsuccessful war in Afghanistan

July 18, 2007 – Hamas conquers Gaza

Palestinian President Abbas issued a decree outlawing the Hamas militias who defeated Fatah (a Palestinian political and paramilitary organization, part of the PLO, of which Yasser Arafat was leader) and therefore removed the Gaza Strip from the control of the Authority Palestinian national authority.

According to various intelligence experts including a former CIA director, Hamas, linked to the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood (sons of another Masonic history…), was financed by the USA and Israel precisely to lead to the Palestinian exodus plan that was configured in recent days after the attacks of 7 October which took the highly expert Israeli secret services (Shin Bet, Mossad and the military Aman) by surprise.

March 15, 2011 – Civil War in Syria

The Syrian Civil War begins thanks to the Color Revolution financed by Soros and armed by the CIA’s MOM operation with the supply of TOW anti-tank missiles to extremist jihadist factions related to Al Qaeda.

In 2014, ISIS founded by Caliph Al Baghdadi entered the war shortly after his liberation from Camp Bucca where he was detained by the US Army for terrorist activity in Iraq. He was believed to be a Mossad and CIA agent

February 20, 2014 – Start of the War in Ukraine

The second Orange Revolution financed by the Zionist Soros in Kiev explodes in all its violence due to the shooting of mysterious mercenary snipers on Ukrainian policemen and the crowd. It seems like a repeat of what the CIA hatched in 2002 in Caracas. The coup financed by NATO countries materializes with the escape of the legitimately elected president Viktor Fedorovyč Yanukovych to friendly Russia.

From there begins the Donbass Civil War which became a Global Conflict after the start of Moscow’s military operation to protect the pro-Russian victims of genocide by the neo-Nazi guerrillas of the Azov Battalion led by the Kiev Regime and also armed by Israel in an apparent, crazy paradox …

April 2014 – “Sabotaged” elections in Palestine

Fatah and Hamas sign agreements in Gaza for the return to voting in all PNA territories, foreseeing elections for the following October.

In July, however, the Israelis launched Operation Protective Edge to destroy clandestine tunnels into their country, triggering a resurgence of military clashes. Only on 28 August was a ceasefire declared by both sides but the electoral consultations were postponed and never agreed upon again.

October 2023 – Genocide Planned and Legalized in Gaza

Hamas captures hostages from an Israeli Rave Party and several kibbutz settlers in the illegally occupied territories. Israel responds disproportionately by bombing everyone, women, children, hospitals, churches, UN officials. Few Western politicians denounce a GENOCIDE which instead appears LEGALIZED by almost all NATO countries.

If we correlate the recurring subjects of these events it is easy to deduce that the Third World War in fragments has already been implemented for at least two decades with an enormous occult direction of that NATO evoked by Soros to embody the New World Order.

ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL CATALYSM: MANMADE VIRUS PANDEMIC

Let’s go back to the tired “forecasts” of the Freemason Albert Pike and reread a significant phrase:

«We will unleash the nihilists and atheists and provoke a formidable social cataclysm which will clearly show, in all its horror, to the nations, the effect of absolute atheism, the origin of barbarism and bloody subversion».

Since 2001, the American virologist Anthony Fauci began playing with dangerous viruses manipulated in the laboratory as biological weapons thanks to enormous funding provided by both the Department of Health and Defense, including through Pentagon agencies such as DARPA.

In 2004 the European Commission chaired by Romano Prodi, a Soros associate, financed the Wuhan Institute of Virology strengthened by the son of President Jiang Zemin, the Executioner of Tiananmen, also in light of an agreement on collaborations for research in the bacteriological field signed with the American president Bill Clinton in 1999.

In December 2019 the first outbreak of SARS-Cov-2 was discovered in Wuhan and for over 2 years the USA blamed the Chinese while the scientific community of Fauci & Co. tried to cover up the artificial orgone ascertained by the Senate Health Commission and the House Investigation Committee of the US Congress only in 2023.

Now even many US politicians admit their nation’s role in building the laboratory virus. This is denied by the National Intelligence Directorate led by Avril Haines who was deputy CIA director expert in bio-weapons when Fauci was carrying out experiments on Coronaviruses on behalf of the Obama-Biden administration together in Wuhan.

European Union politicians continue to ignore or deny the artificial origin of the virus. While almost everyone has welcomed, so much so as to impose them as mandatory even for many professional categories, the experimental mRNA genetic serums based on the toxic Spike protein and promoted by a swirl of billionaire interests of Big Pharma with governments and the usual Zionist lobbies who also invest in Warlord corporations.

Even the Catholic Church genuflects to the Vaccine GOD.

Let’s reread Pike’s prophecy again, a truly disturbing name when associated with the almost homonymous Covid-19 protein.

«Then everywhere citizens, forced to defend themselves against a world minority of revolutionaries, these destroyers of civilization, and the multitude disillusioned by Christianity, whose worshipers will be devoid of orientation in search of an ideal, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of pure doctrine of Lucifer finally revealed to the public eye, a manifestation which will be followed by the destruction of Christianity and atheism conquered and crushed at the same Time»

HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FREEMASONRY AND ZIONISM

The detractors of the military geopolitical analyst and writer William Guy Carr who refers to the diabolical plan of the Pope of American Freemasonry are based on the fact that Albert Pike in 1871 could not have known about the birth of Communism, nor of Nazism, nor of Zionism.

Nor even knowing about the two world wars. Unless you were among those who designed them.

This observation can easily be refuted by citing some historical references already mentioned and which we will highlight.

«In July 1782 the Order of the Illuminati allied itself with Freemasonry during the Congress of Wilhelmsbad, which the historian Freemason Albert Mackey defined as ‘the most important Masonic Congress of the eighteenth century’ – we read on the website Freemasonry Unmasked, full of anecdotes and authoritative historical sources – The participants in that Congress had to swear not to reveal the decisions they had made to anyone (see Nesta H. Webster, World Revolution, 1921, page 31)».

Wilhelmsbad Castle was owned by the Ashkenazi Jewish banker (of Khazar-European origins) Mayer Amschel Rothschild who, according to various historians, in 1777 brought together twelve of his most influential friends and convinced them that if they pooled their resources they could dominate the world: this is how the Bavarian Illuminati was born.

The French Revolution confirms their success with the annihilation of the first important Catholic Monarchy. It will be the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, the regurgitation of the regime of terror, that will inspire Lenin in his plan for the subsequent Bolshevik and Communist revolution.

So Pike was not only still alive at the time but knew the details.

The Independent Order B’nai B’rith or Bené Berith (Hebrew: בני ברית, “sons of the covenant”) is a Jewish lodge founded in 1843 during the presidency of John Tyler and still existing and active. It was founded at the Sinsheimer Café, in the Wall Street neighborhood of New York, by Henry Jones and eleven other people on October 13, 1843. The original name was in German “Bundes-Brueder” (which means “League of Brothers”), in the current one which retains the initials (“BB”).

Most of the founders were German-Jews: that is, Ashkenazi like Mayer Amschel Rothschild but also like his descendant Walter Rothschild, eldest son and heir of the banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the first Jewish baron of England.

Walter Rothschild was among the promoters of the declaration for the formation of the Jewish state in Palestine, later earning the merit of becoming president of the Council of Deputies of British Jews from 1925 to 1926.

From these seeds we arrived at 1917 when a letter from the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, addressed to the “Dear Lord Rothschild”, sanctioned Balfour’s declaration which committed the British government to supporting the creation in Palestine of a home for the Jews in respect for the rights of other resident minorities.

How did Albert Pike know all these things before they happened?

Very simple because he was among those who concerted them in 1860 when the Southern general through Young America planned the American Civil War to defend the right to slavery, Mazzini with Young Italy committed himself to the Expedition of the Thousand and Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount of Palmerston, British Secretary of State and exponent of the Grand Lodge of England guaranteed all financial and political support.

The first expressions of proto-Zionism took shape, for example, in the foundation of the Universal Israelite Alliance in 1860, an organization aimed at the emancipation of the Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa, and in the publication of various works, including Rome and Jerusalem, written in 1862 by the German Jewish philosopher Moses Hess, Derishat Zion by the Polish-Prussian rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, and the hymn Hatikvah, whose lyrics were written by Naftali Herz Imber and which later became the anthem of the State of Israel.

Zionism draws its roots from the new cultural environment generated in the context of the emancipation of European Jews starting from the French Revolution and throughout the 19th century and from the Haskalah.

The haskalah, with a small delay compared to other Enlightenment movements, arose in Germany and then spread throughout much of Europe and to a small extent also across the Atlantic. The father and inspirer of the movement was Moses Mendelssohn, close to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a free thinker of Protestant extraction and an energetic defender of the Jews in Germany. The latter introduced Mendelssohn into the world of Berlin intellectuals where he dedicated himself to the composition of philosophical essays and dissertations.

https://www.gospanews.net/en/2023/11/06/the-conflation-of-antisemitism-and-anti-zionism-is-a-propagandistic-lie/embed/#?secret=OVZhaXya72#?secret=8JINj3nJ2S

A varied and open movement, the haskalah probably did not close its doors even to exponents of the Frankist heresy, a sort of tail of the messianic movement of Shabatai Zevi which had long been in opposition to official Judaism, perhaps linked to lodges of freemasonry, another force of the times, definitely in relation to the Enlightenment philosophy.

Many Jews influenced by the haskalah and the closeness it brought with European culture were seduced by the possibility of assimilation by embracing Christianity. Just think of the family of Karl Marx, descended from rabbis who converted to Protestantism, as did Mendelssohn’s own daughters. Others, however, laid the foundations of the new science of Judaism, the Wissenschaft des Judentums.

THE LODGES INSPIRED BY THE SON OF THE BIBLICAL MURDERER CAIN

In the previous investigation we highlighted how Marx received the task of writing Capital from British Freemasonry. In other reports we have highlighted the fundamental role played by the Protestants in the birth of the Grand Lodge of London on 24 June 1717.

Today we add another detail by recalling the figure of John Theophilus Desaguliers (La Rochelle, 12 March 1683 – Covent Garden, 29 February 1744) who was an English scientist, religious and Freemason of French origins.

Desaguliers emigrated to England in 1694, due to the Edict of Fontainebleau, which revoked the freedom of worship of Protestants. He approached Freemasonry, becoming Grand Master of the First Grand Lodge of England in 1718, and Deputy Grand Master in 1723 and 1725. Under his leadership, the Grand Lodge of London and Freemasonry developed in an “astonishing” way in the islands British, to the point that «in 1740 there were already more than 180 lodges».

https://www.gospanews.net/2019/06/22/summit-di-massoni-in-sfregio-al-papa-per-celare-i-complotti-di-mazzini/embed/#?secret=9KxSXRzVwy#?secret=S4sX0SxP9g

Each of the earliest Masonic texts contains some sort of history of the craft, or guild, of Freemasonry. The oldest work of this type, the Royal Manuscript, dating from 1390 to 1425, has a brief history in the introduction, which states that the “craft of Freemasonry” began with Euclid in Egypt, and arrived in England during the reign of ruler Æðelstan.

A little later, the Cooke Manuscript traces Freemasonry to Jabal, son of Lamech (Genesis 4, 20-22), and tells how this knowledge reached Euclid, from him to the children of Israel when they were in Egypt, and so on for an elaborate route to Æðelstan. This myth formed the basis for later manuscript foundations, all of which claim that Freemasonry dates back to Biblical times, and pegs its institutional consolidation in England during the reign of Æðelstan (927-939).

Shortly after the formation of the first Grand Lodge of England, James Anderson was commissioned to summarize these “Gothic constitutions” into a pleasing modern form. The constitutions produced by his work have a more widespread historical introduction than any previous one, and once again connect the history of what Freemasonry had become to its biblical roots, always inserting Euclid into the chain of narrative.

The first question that a connoisseur of Judeo-Christian history should ask is almost banal.

Why do the Freemasons, due to fabulous legendary and historical beliefs, trace Freemasonry to one of the descendants of the murderer Cain and not to the third son of Adam named Set from whom the Semitic culture was born?

In this, the manipulation carried out over the centuries by Rabbinic Taldumist Judaism, well described by the Judaism expert Professor Paola Persichetti in the previous investigations in which she highlights the correlations of this Jewish regurgitation following the Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, seems evident.

In France, Chevalier (Knight) Ramsay’s 1737 conference added Crusader Freemasons to the family tree claiming that they had revived the craft with secrets recovered in the Holy Land, under the patronage of the Knights Hospitaller. At this point, the “history” of the profession of continental Freemasonry separated from that of Freemasonry in England which in the meantime had published its “charter”.

THE SCHSM ON THE GREAT ARCHITECT OF THE UNIVERSE

The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, “for the use of the lodges” in London and Westminster, was published in 1723. It was edited by the Presbyterian clergyman James Anderson, by order of John Theophilus Desaguliers, and approved by a committee of the grand lodge under its control. The work was reprinted in Philadelphia in 1734 by Benjamin Franklin, who in that year became Grand Master of the Pennsylvania Freemasons. It was also translated into Dutch (1736), German (1741) and French (1745).

Anderson was minister of the Presbyterian church in Swallow Street, London, which had formerly been a Huguenot church, and whose pastor in the 1690s was Desaguliers’ father. At the time of his meeting with Desaguliers, he appears to have presented himself as a Talmudic scholar.

In various historical testimonies that we summarize for brevity, Anderson himself seems to imply the existence of an Italian Grand Lodge.

In Naples in 1728 he saw the light of the first regular Masonic lodge established in Italy, La Perfetta Unione. Raised by the will of the Prince of San Severo, it had Egyptian symbols such as the pyramid, the Sphinx and the radiant sun in its emblem. Subsequently, the English lodge (“La Loggia degli Inglesi”) was established in Florence, founded in 1731 and Freemasonry spread rapidly, despite a series of papal prohibitions.

But already ahead the so-called Great Schism occurred. According to a widespread opinion, the schism between French and English Freemasonry originates from the general assembly of the Grand Orient of France in September 1877. Accepting the recommendation contained in a report by the Protestant pastor (and Freemason) Frédéric Desmons, the assembly decided by a majority of amend its constitutions by inserting the formula “its principles are absolute freedom of conscience and human solidarity”. This replaced the previous statement “its principles are the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and human solidarity”.

The reaction of the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) was the resolution of March 1878 which reiterated “That the Grand Lodge, while anxious to welcome in the most fraternal spirit the Brethren of any foreign Grand Lodge whose proceedings are conducted according to the Ancient cornerstones of the Order, among which the first and most important is the faith in T. G. A. O. T. U. [“the great Architect of the universe”, in English acronym], cannot recognize as ‘true and genuine’ Brothers all those who have been initiated in lodges that deny or ignore that faith.”

FREEMASONRY SIMILAR TO THE BEAST OF THE APOCALYPSE

Having concluded this long but necessary historical digression on Freemasonry implemented with various Wikipedia sources, let’s return to the beginning. To the book of the Apocalypse of Saint John and the disturbing esoteric symbolisms.

If we summarize the historical notes above we can easily conclude that the first promoters of Zionism in the USA were the founders of the B’nai B’rith Lodge composed of Ashkenazi Jews (as Adolph Hitler is also believed to be) that the historians of Jewish culture they define the “13th Tribe of Israel” as they derive from the diaspora of the Khazars who had converted to Judaism

While in Europe it spread thanks to the Rothschild Dynasty (Red Shield) which was the first to weave subversive plots with an anti-Catholic vocation from the birth of the Bavarian Illuminati up to the pact of terror for the French Revolution from which the liberation of the proto- Zionism together with that Masonic concept of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” imposed by guillotining even the elderly nobles of the Catholic Vendée French region.

In light of all this, the words of the Satanist Albert Pike, Pope of American Freemasonry, take on an iconic relevance in the common project between Masonic and Zionist Lodges for the New World Order:

«Then everywhere citizens, forced to defend themselves against a world minority of revolutionaries, these destroyers of civilization, and the multitude disillusioned by Christianity, whose worshipers will be devoid of orientation in search of an ideal, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of pure doctrine of Lucifer finally revealed to the public eye, a manifestation which will be followed by the destruction of Christianity and atheism conquered and crushed at the same time».

https://www.gospanews.net/en/2023/03/29/nwo-zionist-lobby-aims-to-persecute-christians-netanyahu-in-jerusalem-like-zelensky-in-kiev/embed/#?secret=1w4Qk5Mz2J#?secret=CQUO3hzovm

But following this hermeneutical path to the Book of the Apocalypse, one of the most important allegories comes to mind with disconcerting and terrifying impetus:

«The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.  One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?» (Rev. 13, 1-4)

The prophet Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist delves into the concept with an aura vision

«Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed» (Rev. 13, 11-12)

It is not really scary to note how traditional esoteric Freemasonry became manifest thanks to the Anglican political schism of the Protestants and allowed Pharisaic Judaism, defeated by the Diaspora after the Crucifixion of the Messiah awaited by the Jews, to be reborn in its Talmudic form with Judaism then became with Zionism the most powerful component of the New World Order?

We have historical clues that help identify Freemasonry as one of the two apocalyptic Beasts. But this theme will be explored in greater depth if and when we receive from the Holy Spirit the gift of the wisdom necessary to interpret it. Therefore today we cannot help but insinuate doubt…

POWER OF CHRIST IN THE PROPHECY OF SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE

But it is precisely Chapter 12 of the Book of the Apocalypse (Rev. 12, 7-12) which comes to illuminate with a radiant dawn of hope the dangers of all of us Christians who strive to be among those “who listen to the words of this prophecy and put into practice the things that are written in it”:

«Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him».

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”

Since Saint John was the only Apostle who died without martyrdom for his loyalty to Jesus Christ under the cross and also survived the hell of imprisonment on Patmos (where he received the visions and locutions collected in the Apocalypse), it is probably very useful to start believing him…

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Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio
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MAIN SOURCES

BOOK OF REVELATION (APOCALYPSE) – HOLY BIBLE

Epiphanius – Massoneria e sette segrete, Controcorrente Edizioni, pag. 163, 164, 165, 166. – Citazioni da I Nuovi Vespri

STORIA DELLA MASSONERIA – WIKIPEDIA

GOSPA NEWS – CONSPIRACY – FREEMASONRY – NWO

GOSPA NEWS – CHRISTIANS PERSECUTED

GOSPA NEWS – WUHAN-GATES DOSSIER

GOSPA NEWS – PALESTINE

GOSPA NEWS – WAR ZONE

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GOSPA NEWS – COVID-19, VACCINES & BIG PHARMA DOSSIER

Most popolar investigation on VT is:

Rumsfeld Shady Heritage in Pandemic: GILEAD’s Intrigues with WHO & Wuhan Lab. Bio-Weapons’ Tests with CIA & Pentagon

Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio, born on 24/2/1967 in Borgosesia, started working as a reporter when he was only 19 years old in the alpine area of Valsesia, Piedmont, his birth region in Italy. After studying literature and history at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, he became director of the local newspaper Notizia Oggi Vercelli and specialized in judicial reporting.

For about 15 years he is a correspondent from Northern Italy for the Italian newspapers Libero and Il Giornale, also writing important revelations on the Ustica massacre, a report on Freemasonry and organized crime.

With independent investigations, he collaborates with Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza in important investigations that conclude with the arrest of Camorra entrepreneurs or corrupt politicians.

In July 2018 he found the counter-information web media Gospa News focused on geopolitics, terrorism, Middle East, and military intelligence.

In 2020 published the book, in Italian only, WUHAN-GATES – The New World Order Plot on SARS-Cov-2 manmade focused on the cycle of investigations Wuhan-Gates

His investigations was quoted also by The Gateway Pundit, Tasnim and others

He worked for many years for the magazine Art & Wine as an art critic and curator.

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www.gospanews.net/

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Full spectrum warfare: Israel’s weaponization of words against Palestine

MAR 7, 2024

Source

Photo Credit: The Cradle
Although winning the social media information battle since 7 October, Palestinians and their supporters must work to gut the persistent language parameters that Israel has long cultivated to establish itself as victim, terrorized, and righteous.

Ali Choukeir

He mobilized English language and sent it to the field.

So declared British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax about British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s speech in the House of Commons at the time, after he managed to convince his Conservative Party opposition to enter the war against Hitler.

In a multipolar world where great powers are vying to influence global public opinion, language is paramount. “Words, after all, are the building blocks of our psychology“and shape our perception of good and evil, right and wrong. 

The information warfare at play, for decades dominated by the western axis and its vast, global media reach, seeks to shape our opinions of the geopolitical chess board. It is a fight that became visible to all in the battlefields of Syria, then intensified over Ukraine, and is now collapsing over Israel’s stunningly brutal military assault on Gaza and its 2.4 million civilians.

Israel has the right to defend itself.

This ubiquitous phrase used by Israel during its 75+ years of oppression and occupation of Palestine often serves as a thinly veiled justification for its indefensible actions. This shield against accountability for human rights abuses has not only been wielded by the Israeli government but has also found resonance among western leaders.

This rhetoric gained renewed traction following the Hamas-led resistance operation, Al-Aqsa Flood, on 7 October 2023. In its immediate aftermath, US President Joe Biden promised to ensure that Israel has “what it needs to defend itself,” declaring from his highly visible White House pulpit that he has assured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.”

Similar sentiments were parroted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after 7 October, who posted on X that Israel has “an absolute right” to defend itself, followed by a spate of EU leaders clambering to assure “their support for Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with humanitarian and international law.”

During his visit to the occupation state in November, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken not only reiterated Washington’s support for “Israel’s right to self-defense” but went as far as to say, “It is obligated to do so.”

The right to commit genocide 

This assertion of the “right to defend itself” serves as a key component of the linguistic and conceptual arsenal employed by the US-backed Israeli government within occupied Palestine and the broader West Asian region.

In a world where narratives vie for dominance in shaping public opinion, the significance of terminology cannot be overstated. Israel has adeptly utilized linguistic nuances and strategic ambiguity to advance its narrative on the Palestinian issue, whether through historical revisionism, past conflicts, or contemporary events like the Al-Aqsa Flood.

The Cradle columnist Sharmine Narwani wrote about this in 2012, emphasizing the significance of “public diplomacy” as a crucial tool in geopolitics. “Anything that invokes the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and the myths about historic Jewish rights to the land bequeathed to them by the Almighty” all serve to preserve Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. 

However, such narratives obscure the reality of the situation: a powerful occupying force supported by a superpower pitted against an indigenous population without a conventional army to defend them. 

A war of words

Gustave Le Bon, the founder of mass psychology, begins in his book The Psychology of the Masses, what he calls “images, words and phrases” as one of the direct factors that contribute to the formation of the opinions of the masses: 

The masses fascinate their imagination and are aroused by the intelligent and correct use of appropriate words and phrases, and if we use them artistically and tactfully, then they can possess secret power. It evokes in the soul of many masses the most powerful hurricane, but it also knows how to calm them. Words whose meanings are difficult to determine precisely are the ones that sometimes have the greatest ability to influence and act.

Following the 2008 Israeli offensive on Gaza, Republican pollster and political strategist Dr Frank Luntz authored a study titled “The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary,” commissioned by a group called The Israel Project for use by those “who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel.”

In the second chapter, titled “Glossary of Words That Work,” Luntz presents “For the first time in our communication effort … an A–Z glossary of specific words, phrases, and concepts that should form the core of any pro-Israeli communication effort.” The following are just a few examples from his glossary of terms:

Humanize Rockets: Paint a vivid picture of what life is like in Israeli communities that are vulnerable to attack. Yes, cite the number of rocket attacks that have occurred. But immediately follow that up with what it is like to make the nightly trek to the bomb shelter.

‘Peace before political boundaries’: This is the best phrase for talking about why a two-state solution isn’t realistic right now. First the rockets and the war need to stop. Then both peoples can talk about political boundaries.

‘The RIGHT to’: This is a stronger phrase than ‘deserves.’ Use the phrase frequently, including: the rights that both Israelis and Arabs enjoy in Israel, the right to peace that Israelis and Palestinians are entitled to, and Israel’s right to defend its civilians against rocket attacks.

Narrative manipulation and linguistic tactics

Understanding the historical efforts to control the narrative surrounding the ‘Arab–Israeli conflict’ begins with the absence of a clear definition or identification of its parties. This ambiguity allows for manipulation and flexibility in defining the issue. Consequently, a selection of vocabulary and terms has been identified that shapes the discourse surrounding the Palestinian cause.

Major international media outlets and political leaders have progressively framed the resistance against the occupation from its historical portrayal as an Arab–Israeli conflict to a Palestinian–Israeli one, then further narrowing it to a confrontation between Hamas/Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel. The western press and major media outlets also favor the usage of terms like “clash” rather than “Israeli aggression” and seek to frame the murder of Palestinians as people who “died” rather than “killed” by Israel.

This reductionist approach diminishes the complexity of the conflict and emphasizes Israel’s role while minimizing the opposing side’s agency. Additionally, overused terminology such as “conflict” replaces more nuanced terms, further simplifying the narrative.

In line with Israel’s perpetual portrayal of itself as a victim, it garners sympathy by weaponizing the Holocaust and gains support globally by positioning itself as such and asserting its “legitimate right to self-defense.” 

Israel and the US have also conflated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, equating criticism of its policies with bigotry against Jews. This conflation has led to accusations of anti-Semitism against individuals who critique Israel, such as university presidents, perpetuating a narrative that stifles intellectual dissent.

Israeli media employs “harrowing” terms like “neutralization” to describe the killing of resistance fighters in Gaza and the West Bank, employing language that minimizes the emotional impact on Palestinians and presents a sanitized version of events while also dehumanizing them. 

Writing and fighting back 

It is crucial to recognize that the lexicon surrounding the Palestinian issue and the wider resistance in the West Asian region against Israel plays a significant role in shaping narratives and collective consciousness. This linguistic battleground, often overlooked, is integral to understanding the current war’s dynamics and the framing of events.

For instance, in the aftermath of Al-Aqsa Flood, Israel strategically utilized its Hasbara apparatus to propagate a specific narrative. This narrative included the assertion of Israel’s “right of self-defense,” which framed Israel as a victim justifying its actions. 

Additionally, Israel referred to individuals held by Hamas as “hostages” rather than “detainees” or “prisoners,” implying their potential use as human shields and justifying lethal responses. The forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza was labeled as “repositioning” or “transfer,” a euphemism aimed at downplaying the severity of the situation. 

While Israel initially referred to its military actions as “ground maneuvers” to mitigate media and legal ramifications, it later framed its indiscriminate aggression as a “war on terror” to garner international support. This framing aimed to portray Hamas as a terrorist entity akin to ISIS, appealing to western sentiments and seeking to eliminate the notion that there were innocents in Gaza.

As the Axis of Resistance has often repeated, this war is being fought on multiple fronts – not just in the physical realm but prominently in the online realm of propaganda. Redressing the imbalance of power in the information war, however, is no easy task. The battle of words and ideas is an essential one for Palestinian resistance movements and pro-Palestine voices to fight. The opportunity to completely flip the narrative – now that Israel has revealed Zionism’s ugliest face in Gaza – has fully arrived, and the myth of Israeli victimhood must be put to rest forever.

Secretary Blinken Announces Warhawk Nuland’s Resignation

March 06, 2024

Global Research,

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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In a surprise statement this morning Secretary of State Blinken announced the resignation of Under Secretary Victoria Nuland to take place “in the coming weeks.” 

Over the past three years, Toria has led this Department on everything from addressing complex crises in the Sahel, Haiti, and the Middle East, to broadening and strengthening America’s alliances and partnerships across Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

But it’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come. Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily.

—Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Department of State, March 5, 2024

Read More: Leading Provider of Financial Research Says US Is Headed for Third World Status

Blinken’s Statement on the Retirement of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland (Source: US Department of State)

The announcement is a surprise for many reasons. Nuland is the primary and best-placed operative of the neoconservatives’ control over US Foreign Policy. Moreover, things are going well for her war agenda. For a year of longer she has been advocating for supplying Ukraine with long range missiles, and now German generals are recorded talking about doing so. She has pushed for NATO troops for Ukraine, and Washington’s French puppet has called for this step to be taken. 

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Nuland has seen the opportunity to expand the conflict to an attack on Iran, long a neoconservative agenda. The war has already expanded into Yemen, and there are reports that Israel intends to expand the war into Lebanon against Hezbollah, an Iranian ally.  

Why would a neoconservative in an influential and powerful position on the verge of achieving neoconservative goals resign?

Another puzzle is Blinken’s resignation announcement. No reason is given. The announce is full of praise for Nuland, but there is no expression of regret of her leaving. Instead, there is only this: “We are so grateful for Toria’s service” (Toria is Victoria’s nickname).

My quarter century experience in Washington tells me that Blinken has just told Nuland that she is fired.  

I have seen no US news reports of Nuland’s resignation/firing. This is amazing. The principle architect of Washington’s aggressive foreign policy toward Russia and Iran is removing herself, or is being removed, from a powerful office without explanation, and the presstitutes are silent?

I think it is too much to hope that the Democrats, a collection of bird brains, realized that Nuland was the face of the war party and that the Democrats could not survive that face in the upcoming elections. After the many years of demonization of Putin, Russia, and Iran, how can the effects of such demonization suddenly be called off?

Another puzzle is the absence of reporting in the presstitute media of Blinken’s announcement of Nuland’s resignation. RT mentioned it and Gilbert Doctorow on his personal site. Apparently, the official narrative hasn’t yet been prepared and handed to the presstitutes. 

It will be interesting to see what the official narrative is.

*

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research, 2024


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Two Years After the Start of the SMO, the West is Totally Paralyzed

February 24, 2024

Pepe Escobar

February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21st century geopolitics forever, Pepe Escobar writes.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Exactly two years ago this Saturday, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced the launching – and described the objectives – of a Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. That was the inevitable follow-up to what happened three days before, on February 21 – exactly 8 years after Maidan 2014 in Kiev – when Putin officially recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

During this – pregnant with meaning – short space of only three days, everyone expected that the Russian Armed Forces would intervene, militarily, to end the massive bombing and shelling that had been going on for three weeks across the frontline – which even forced the Kremlin to evacuate populations at risk to Russia. Russian intel had conclusive proof that the NATO-backed Kiev forces were ready to execute an ethnic cleansing of Russophone Donbass.

February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21st century geopolitics forever, in several complex ways. Above all, it marked the beginning of a vicious, all-out confrontation, “military-technical” as the Russians call it, between the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder, its easily pliable NATOstan vassals, and Russia – with Ukraine as the battleground.

There is hardly any question Putin had calculated, before and during these three fateful days, that his decisions would unleash the unbounded fury of the collective West – complete with a tsunami of sanctions.

Ay, there’s the rub; it’s all about Sovereignty. And a true sovereign power simply cannot live under permanent threats. It’s even feasible that Putin had wanted (italics mine) Russia to get sanctioned to death. After all, Russia is so naturally wealthy that without a serious challenge from abroad, the temptation is enormous to live off its rents while importing what it could easily produce.

Exceptionalists always gloated that Russia is “a gas station with nuclear weapons”. That’s ridiculous. Oil and gas, in Russia, account for roughly 15% of GDP, 30% of the government budget, and 45% of exports. Oil and gas add power to the Russian economy – not a drag. Putin shaking Russia’s complacency generated a gas station producing everything it needs, complete with unrivalled nuclear and hypersonic weapons. Beat that.

Ukraine has “never been less than a nation”

Xavier Moreau is a French politico-strategic analyst based in Russia for 24 years now. Graduated from the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy and with a Sorbonne diploma, he hosts two shows on RT France.

His latest book, Ukraine: Pourquoi La Russie a Gagné (“Ukraine: Why Russia has Won”), just out, is an essential manual for European audiences on the realities of the war, not those childish fantasies concocted across the NATOstan sphere by instant “experts” with less than zero combined arms military experience.

Moreau makes it very clear what every impartial, realist analyst was aware of from the beginning: the devastating Russian military superiority, which would condition the endgame. The problem, still, is how this endgame – “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, as established by Moscow – will be achieved.

What is already clear is that “demilitarization”, of Ukraine and NATO, is a howling success that no new wunderwaffen – like F-16s – will be able to change.

Moreau perfectly understands how Ukraine, nearly 10 years after Maidan, is not a nation; “and has never been less than a nation”. It’s a territory where populations that everything separates are jumbled up. Moreover, it has been a – “grotesque” – failed state ever since its independence. Moreau spends several highly entertaining pages going through the corruption grotesquerie in Ukraine, under a regime that “gets its ideological references simultaneously via admirers of Stepan Bandera and Lady Gaga.”

None of the above, of course, is reported by oligarch-controlled European mainstream media.

Watch out for Deng Xiao Putin

The book offers an extremely helpful analysis of those deranged Polish elites who bear “a heavy responsibility in the strategic catastrophe that awaits Washington and Brussels in Ukraine”. The Poles actually believed that Russia would crumble from the inside, complete with a color revolution against Putin. That barely qualifies as Brzezinski on crack.

Moreau shows how 2022 was the year when NATOstan, especially the Anglo-Saxons – historically racist Russophobes –   were self-convinced thar Russia would fold because it is a “poor power”. Obviously, none of these luminaries understood how Putin strengthened the Russian economy very much like Deng Xiaoping on the Chinese economy. This “self-intoxication”, as Moreau qualifies it, did wonders for the Kremlin.

By now it’s clear even for the deaf, dumb, and blind that the destruction of the European economy has been a massive tactic, historic victory for the Hegemon – as much as the blitzkrieg against the Russian economy has been an abysmal failure.

All of the above brings us to the meeting of G20 Foreign Ministers this week in Rio. That was not exactly a breakthrough. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it very clear that the collective West at the G20 tried by all means to “Ukrainize” the agenda – with less than zero success. They were outnumbered and counterpunched by BRICS and Global South members.

At his press conference, Lavrov could not be more stark on the prospects of the war of the collective West against Russia. These are the highlights:

  • Western countries categorically do not want serious dialogue on Ukraine.
  • There were no serious proposals from the United States to begin contacts with the Russian Federation on strategic stability; trust cannot be restored now while Russia is declared an enemy.
  • There were no contacts on the sidelines of the G20 with either Blinken or the British Foreign Secretary.
  • The Russian Federation will respond to new Western sanctions with practical actions that relate to the self-sufficient development of the Russian economy.
  • If Europe tries to restore ties with the Russian Federation, making it dependent on their whims, then such contacts are not needed.

In a nutshell – diplomatically: you are irrelevant, and we don’t care.

That was complementing Lavrov’s intervention during the summit, which defined once again a clear, auspicious path towards multipolarity. Here are the highlights:

  • The forming of a fair multipolar world order without a definite center and periphery has become much more intensive in the past few years. Asian, African and Latin American countries are becoming important parts of the global economy. Not infrequently, they are setting the tone and the dynamics.
  • Many Western economies, especially in Europe, are actually stagnating against this background. These statistics are from Western-supervised institutions – the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD.
  • These institutions are becoming relics from the past. Western domination is already affecting their ability to meet the requirements of the times. Meanwhile, it is perfectly obvious today that the current problems of humanity can only be resolved through a concerted effort and with due consideration for the interests of the Global South and, generally, all global economic realities.
  • Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the EBRD, and the EIB are prioritizing Kiev’s military and other needs. The West allocated over $250 billion to tide over its underling thus creating funding shortages in other parts of the world. Ukraine is taking up the bulk of the funds, relegating Africa and other regions of the Global South to rationing.
  • Countries that have discredited themselves by using unlawful acts ranging from unilateral sanctions and the seizure of sovereign assets and private property to blockades, embargoes, and discrimination against economic operators based on nationality to settle scores with their geopolitical opponents cannot be considered guarantors of financial stability.
  • Without a doubt, new institutions that focus on consensus and mutual benefit are needed to democratize the global economic governance system. Today, we are seeing positive dynamics for strengthening various alliances, including BRICS, the SCO, ASEAN, the African Union, LAS, CELAC, and the EAEU.
  • This year, Russia chairs BRICS, which saw several new members join it. We will do our best to reinforce the potential of this association and its ties with the G20.
  • Considering that 6 out of 15 UN Security Council members represent the Western bloc, we will support the expansion of this body solely through the accession of countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Call it the real state of things, geopolitically, two years after the start of the SMO.

The Axis of Asymmetry takes on the ‘rules-based order’

FEB 23, 2024

Photo Credit: The Cradle

World War III is here, playing out asymmetrically in military, financial, and institutional battlefields, and the fight is an existential one. The western Hegemon, in truth, is at war against international law, and only ‘kinetic military action’ can bring it to heel.

Pepe Escobar

The Axis of Asymmetry is in full swing. These are the state and non-state actors employing asymmetrical moves on the global chessboard to sideline the US-led western rules-based order. And its vanguard is the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah. 

Ansarallah is absolutely relentless. They have downeda $30 million MQ-9 Reaper drone with just a $10k indigenous missile.

They are the first in the Global South ever to use anti-ship ballistic missiles against Israel-bound and/or -protecting commercial and US Navy ships. 

For all practical purposes, Ansarallah is at war with no less than the US Navy.

Ansarallah has captured one of the US Navy’s ultra-sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), the $1.3 million Remus 600, a torpedo-shaped underwater drone able to carry a massive payload of sensors. 

Next stop: reverse engineering in Iran? The Global South eagerly awaits, ready to pay in currencies bypassing the US dollar. 

All of the above – a maritime 21st-century remix of the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War – spells out that the Hegemon may not even qualify as a paper tiger, but rather as a paper leech.

Lula tells it as the Global South sees it 

Into the Big Picture – linked to the relentless ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza – steps a true leader of the Global South, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

Lula spoke in the name of Brazil, Latin America, Africa, BRICS 10, and the overwhelming majority of the Global South when he cut to the chase and defined the Gaza tragedy for what it is: a genocide. No wonder the Zionist tentacles across the Global North – plus its Global South vassals – went bonkers. 

The genocidals in Tel Aviv declared Lula as persona non grata in Israel. Yet Lula did not assassinate 29,000+ Palestinians – the overwhelming majority of whom were women and children.

History will be unforgiving: it’s the genocidals that will eventually be judged as personae non grata to all of humanity.

What Lula said represented BRICS 10 in action: this was obviously cleared before with Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and, of course, the African Union. Lula spoke in Addis Ababa, and Ethiopia is now a BRICS 10 member.

The Brazilian president was extremely smart in timing his Gaza fact-check to be on the table during the G20 meeting of Foreign Ministers in Rio. Way beyond BRICS 10, what’s happening in Gaza is a consensus among the non-Western G20 partners – who are actually a majority. No one, though, should expect any serious follow-up inside a divided G20. The heart of the matter remains in the facts on the ground. 

Yemen’s fight for “our people” in Gaza is a matter of humanistic, moral, and religious solidarity – these are foundational tenets of the rising eastern “civilizational” powers, both domestically and in international affairs. This convergence of principles has now created a direct link – extrapolating to the moral and spiritual spheres – between the Axis of Resistance in West Asia and the Slavic Axis of Resistance in Donbass. 

Extreme attention should be paid to the timescale. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) forces and Russia have spent two hard-fought years in Novorossiya just to arrive at the stage where it becomes clear – based on the battlefield and cumulative facts on the ground – that “negotiations” mean only the terms of Kiev’s surrender.

In contrast, the job of the Axis of Resistance in West Asia has not even started. It’s fair to argue that its strength and full sovereign involvement have not been deployed yet (think Hezbollah and Iran). 

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, with his proverbial subtlety, has hinted there’s, in fact, nothing to negotiate on Palestine. And if there would be a return to any borders, these would be the 1948 borders. The Axis of Resistance understands that the whole Zionist Project is unlawful and immoral. But the question remains how to throw it, in practice, into the dustbin of History?

Possible – avowedly optimistic – scenarios ahead would include Hezbollah taking possession of the Galilee as a step toward the eventual retaking of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Yet the fact remains that even a united Palestine does not have the military capability to reconquer stolen Palestinian lands. 

So the questions posed by the overwhelming majority of the Global South that stands with Lula may be: Who else, apart from Ansarallah, Hezbollah, Hashd al-Shaabi, will join the Axis of Asymmetry in the fight for Palestine? Who would be willing to come to the Holy Land and die? (After all, in Donbass, it’s only Russians and Russophones who are dying for historically Russian lands)

And that brings us to the way towards the endgame: only a West Asian Special Military Operation (SMO), to the bitter end, will settle the Palestinian tragedy. A translation of what happens across the Slavic Axis of Resistance: “Those who refuse to negotiate with Lavrov, deal with Shoigu.”

The menu, the table, and the guests

That out-of-his-depth closet neocon, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, let the cat out of the bag when he actually defined his much cherished “rules-based international order”: “If you’re not on the table, you are on the menu.”

Following his own hegemonic logic, it’s clear that Russia and the US/NATO are on the table while Ukraine is on the menu. What about the Red Sea? The Houthis defending Palestine against US–UK–Israel are clearly on the table, while Western vassals supporting Israel in a maritime way are clearly on the menu. 

And that’s the problem: the Hegemon – or, in Chinese scholarly terminology, “the crusaders” – have lost the power to place the name cards on the table. The main reason for this authority collapse is the build-up of serious international meetings sponsored by the Russia–China strategic partnership during the past two years since the start of the SMO. It’s all about sequential planning, with long-term targets clearly outlined. 

Only civilizational states can do that – not plutocratic neoliberal casinos.   

Negotiating with the Hegemon is impossible because the Hegemon itself prevents negotiations (see the serial blocking of ceasefire resolutions at the UN). Additionally, the Hegemon excels in instrumentalizing its client elites across the Global South via threats or kompromat: see the hysterical reaction of Brazilian mainstream media to Lula’s verdict on Gaza. 

What Russia is showing the Global South, two years after the start of the SMO, is that the only path to teach a lesson to the Hegemon has to be kinetic, or “military-technical.”

The problem is no nation-state can compare to nuclear/hypersonic/military superpower Russia, in which 7.5 percent of the government’s budget is dedicated to military production. Russia is and will remain on a permanent war footing until Hegemon’s elites come to their senses – and that may never happen.

Meanwhile, West Asia’s Axis of Resistance is watching and learning, day after day. It’s always crucial to keep in mind that for all the resistance movements across the Global South – and that also includes, for instance, West Africans against French neo-colonialism – the geopolitical fault lines could not be starker.

It’s a matter of the collective West versus Islam; the collective West versus Russia; and sooner rather than later, a substantial part of the West, even reluctantly, versus China.

The fact is we are already immersed in a World War that is both existential and civilizational. As we stand at the crossroads, there is a bifurcation: either escalation towards overt “kinetic military action,” or a multiplication of Hybrid Wars across several latitudes. 

So it’s up to the Axis of Asymmetry, cool, calm, and collected, to forge the underground corridors, passages, and trails capable of undermining and subverting the US-led, unipolar, rules-based international order. 

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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Axis of Resistance: from Donbass to Gaza

FEB 16, 2024

Pepe Escobar

The resistance in Donbas and Gaza share an essential common vision: overthrowing the unipolar hegemon that has quashed their national aspirations.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The resistance in Donbas and Gaza share an essential common vision: overthrowing the unipolar hegemon that has quashed their national aspirations.

During my recent vertiginous journey in Donbass tracking Orthodox Christian battalions defending their land, Novorossiya, it became starkly evident that the resistance in these newly liberated Russian republics is fighting much the same battle as their counterparts in West Asia.

Nearly 10 years after Maidan in Kiev, and two years after the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the resolve of the resistance has only deepened.

It’s impossible to do full justice to the strength, resilience, and faith of the people of Donbass, who stand on the front line of a US proxy war against Russia. The battle they have been fighting since 2014 has now visibly shed its cover and revealed itself to be, at its core, a cosmic war of the collective West against Russian civilization.  

As Russian President Vladimir Putin made very clear during his Tucker Carlson interview seen by one billion people worldwide, Ukraine is part of Russian civilization – even if it is not part of the Russian Federation. So shelling ethnic Russian civilians in Donbass – still ongoing – translates as attacks on Russia. 

He shares the same reasoning as Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, which describes the Israeli genocide in Gaza as one launched against “our people”: people of the lands of Islam.

Just as the rich black soil of Novorossiya is where the “rules-based international order” came to die; the Gaza Strip in West Asia – an ancestral land, Palestine – may ultimately be the site where Zionism will perish. Both the rules-based order and Zionism, after all, are essential constructs of the western unipolar world and key to advancing its global economic and military interests.

Today’s incandescent geopolitical fault lines are already configured: the collective west versus Islam, the collective west versus Russia, and soon a substantial part of the west, even reluctantly, versus China. 

Yet a serious counterpunch is at play. 

As much as the Axis of Resistance in West Asia will keep boosting their “swarm” strategy, those Orthodox Christian battalions in Donbass cannot but be regarded as the vanguard of the Slavic Axis of Resistance.

When mentioning this Shia–Orthodox Christianity connection to two top commanders in Donetsk, only 2 kilometers away from the front line, they smiled, bemused, but definitely got the message.

After all, more than anyone else in Europe, these soldiers are able to grasp this unifying theme: on the two top imperial fronts – Donbass and West Asia – the crisis of the western hegemon is deepening and fast accelerating collapse. 

NATO’s cosmic humiliation-in-progress in the steppes of Novorossiya is mirrored by the Anglo–American–Zionist combo sleepwalking into a larger conflagration throughout West Asia – frantically insisting they don’t want war while bombing every Axis of Resistance vector except Iran (they can’t, because the Pentagon gamed all scenarios, and they all spell out doom).

Scratch the veneer of who’s in power in Kiev and Tel Aviv, and who pulls their strings, and you will find the same puppet masters controlling Ukraine, Israel, the US, the UK, and nearly all NATO members.        

Lavrov: ‘No perspectives’ on Israel–Palestine

Russia’s role in West Asia is quite complex – and nuanced. On the surface, Moscow’s corridors of power make it very clear that Israel–Palestine “is not our war: Our war is in Ukraine.”

At the same time, the Kremlin continues to advance itself as a mediator and trusted peacemaker in West Asia. Russia is perhaps uniquely situated for that role – it is a major global power, highly vested in the region’s energy politics, a leader of the world’s emerging economic and security institutions, and enjoys robust relations with all key regional states. 

A multipolar Russia – with its large population of moderate Muslims – instinctively connects with the plight of the Palestinians. Then there’s the BRICS+ factor, where the current Russian presidency can draw full attention from new members Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt to advance fresh solutions to the Palestine conundrum. 

This week in Moscow, at the 13th Middle East Conference of the Valdai ClubForeign Minister Sergey Lavrov went straight to the point, stressing cause, the Hegemon’s policies; and effect, pushing Israel–Palestine toward catastrophe.

He played the role of Peacemaker Russia: we are proposing “holding an inter-Palestinian meeting to overcome internal divisions.” And he also delivered the face of Realpolitik Russia: There are “no perspectives for an Israel–Palestine settlement at the moment.”

detailed Valdai report opened a crucial window for understanding the Russian position, which links Gaza and Yemen as “epicenters of pain.”

For context, it is important to remember that late last month, Putin’s special representative for West Asian affairs, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs ML Bogdanov, received an Ansarallah delegation in Moscow led by Mohammed Abdelsalam. 

Diplomatic sources confirm they talked in-depth about everything: the fate of a comprehensive settlement for the military-political crisis in Yemen, Gaza, and the Red Sea. No wonder Washington and London lost their marbles.

‘Disappearing the Palestine question’

Arguably, the most critical round table at Valdai was on Palestine – and how to unify the Palestinians. 

Nasser al-Kidwa, a member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) and former minister of foreign affairs of the Palestinian Authority (PA) (2005–2006), stressed Israel’s three strategic positions, all of which are aimed at maintaining a dangerous status quo: 

First, Tel Aviv seeks to maintain the split between Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Second, per Kidwa, is to “weaken and strengthen one or the other, preventing national leadership, using force and only force to suppress Palestinian national rights and prevent a political solution.”

Third on Israel’s agenda is to actively pursue normalization with a number of Arab countries without dealing with the Palestinian issue, that is, “disappearing the Palestinian question.”

Kidwa then stressed the “demise” of these three strategic positions – essentially because Netanyahu is trying to prolong the war “to save himself” – which leads to other likely outcomes: a new Israeli government; a new Palestinian leadership, “whether we like it or not”; and a new Hamas. 

Implied then are four vast fields of discussion, according to Kidwa: the state of Palestine; Gaza and the Israeli withdrawal; changing the Palestinian situation, a process that should be domestic-based, “peaceful,” and harboring “no revenge”; and the overall mechanism ahead. 

What is clear, says Kidwa, is that there will be no “two-state solution” in the offing. It will be back to the very basics, which is affirming “the right of national independence for Palestine” – an issue already ostensibly agreed on three decades ago in Oslo.

On the mechanism ahead, Kidwa makes no bones about the fact that “the Quartet is dysfunctional.” He pins his hopes on the Spanish idea, endorsed by the EU, “that we modified.” It is, broadly, an international peace conference in several rounds based on the situation on the ground in Gaza.

That will imply several rounds, “with a new Israeli government,” forced to develop a “peace framework.” The end result must be the minimum acceptable to the international community, based on UNSC resolutions galore: 1967 borders, mutual recognition, and a specific timeline, which could be 2027. And crucially, it must establish “commitments respected from the beginning,” something the Oslo crowd couldn’t possibly fathom.

It is fairly obvious that none of the above will be possible under Netanyahu and the current dysfunctional White House.

But Kidwa also admits that on the Palestinian side, “we don’t have a maestro that puts these elements together, Gaza and West Bank together.” This, of course, is a strategic policy success of the Israelis, who have long toiled to keep the two Palestinian territories at odds and have assassinated any Palestinian leader able to surmount the divide.

At Valdai, Amal Abou Zeid, an advisor to the former Lebanese president General Michel Aoun (2016–2022), noted that “as much as the war in Ukraine, the Gaza war disrupted the foundations of the regional order.”  

The previous order was “economic-centric, as the pathway to stability.” Then came Hamas’ 7 October operation against Israel, which triggered a radical transformation. It “suspended the normalization between Israel and the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia,” and revived the political resolution of the Palestine crisis. “Without such a resolution,” Zeid stressed, the threat to stability is “regional and global.” 

So we’re back to the coexistence of two states along the 1967 borders – the impossible dream. Zeid, though, is correct that without closing the Palestinian chapter, it’s “unattainable for the Europeans to have normal relations with Mediterranean nations. The EU must advance the peace process.” 

No one, from West Asia to Russia, is holding their breath, especially as “Israel extremism prevails,” the PA has a “leadership vacuum,” and there’s an “absence of American mediation.” 

Old ideas vs new players

Zaid Eyadat, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The University of Jordan, tried to adopt a contrarian “rationalist perspective.” There are “new dynamics” at play, he argued, saying “the war is much bigger than Hamas and beyond Gaza.”

But Eyadat’s outlook is bleak. “Israel is winning,” he insists, contradicting the region’s entire Axis of Resistance and even the Arab street.

Eyadat makes the point that “the Palestinian question is back on the stage – but without the desire for a comprehensive solution. So Palestinians will lose.” 

Why? Because of a “bankruptcy of ideas.” As in “how to transform something from untenable to more reasonable.” And it is the “rules-based order” which is at the heart of this “moral deficit.”

These are the kinds of yesteryear statements that are at odds with today’s resistance-minded, mutlipolar visionaries. While Eyadat frets about Israel and Iran competition, an extremist and uncontrolled Tel Aviv, splits between Hamas and the PA, and the US pursuing its own interests, what’s missing in this analysis is the ground arena and the surge in multipolarism globally.

The Axis of Resistance “swarm” in West Asia has barely started and still carries a slew of military and economic cards yet to come into play. The Slavic Axis of Resistance has been fighting nonstop for two years – and only now are they starting to glimpse a possible light, linked to the fall of Adveevka, at the end of the (muddy) tunnel. 

The resistance war is a global one, played out – so far – in only two battlefields. But their state supporters are formidable players on today’s global chessboard and are slowly racking up victories in their respective domains. All while the enemy, the Hegemon, is in economic free-fall, lacks domestic mandates for its wars, and offers zero solutions.

Whether in the muddy black soil of Donbass, the Mediterranean shores of Gaza, or the world’s essential shipping waterways, Hamas, Hezbollah, Hashd al-Shaabi, and Ansarallah will take all the time they need to turn “epicenters of pain” into “epicenters of hope.”

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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The people’s Prime Minister: Imran Khan’s triumph against the odds

FEB 12, 2024

Despite facing the collective opposition of Washington and its local allies, Pakistan’s incarcerated, charismatic leader has scored a stunning electoral victory against his detractors – though the military still holds the power play.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

F.M. Shakil

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s jailed 71-year-old former cricketer-turned-politician, surprised the US and its allies in Islamabad with his party’s stunning victory in the 8 February parliamentary elections.

Locked behind bars and serving a cumulative 30-year sentence over three corruption cases, the triumph of Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) party defied all odds, snapping up most of the seats, “humiliating the country’s military rulers, and creating a political crisis” in the process.  

His ousting from office in April 2022 following a parliamentary no-confidence motion, which he claimed was orchestrated by the US, seemed like a temporary setback. Khan’s bold decision to visit Moscow on 23 February, 2022, on the eve of Russia’s Ukraine invasion and its deteriorating ties with the west, further ruffled feathers within Washington and the Pakistani military establishment.

The country’s de-facto military rulers, panicked by Khan’s ‘unexpected’ electoral victory, are presently planning to establish a unity government without Khan’s PTI, seeking to diminish its parliamentary influence through a combination of defections – both coerced and voluntary – leveraging various political factions to achieve their aims.

PTI’s comeback in a rigged game 

According to the country’s Election Commission (ECP), which announced the preliminary results more than 60 hours after polling ended, the independent candidates – fielded by the PTI – bagged 93 seats in the National Assembly (NA). Earlier, the ECP tally showed the PTI clinched 100 seats, but later, those independent members who were not part of the PTI were listed separately. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) got 75, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) secured 54, Muthahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) got 17, and other smaller and regional parties and non-PTI independent members clinched 26 seats. The NA has a total of 266 seats, excluding 60 reserved for women and non-Muslims.

Barrister Gohar Ali, who assumed the position of PTI Chairman after Khan’s incarceration for ethical and financial transgressions, tells The Cradle: “We secured 170 seats in the National Assembly and are ready to set up a government in the center as well as in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.” 

He adds that the PTI’s symbolic cricket bat emblem has been withdrawn by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in a petulant move that underscores how silly electoral machinations have become. 

Out of these seats, 100 are those that the ECP has admitted and issued provisional results for, but 70 seats, including three in Islamabad, four in Sindh, and the rest in Punjab, are being converted into defeated ones even though the PTI had won them.

According to Ali, the PTI was able to demonstrate such a tremendous achievement despite that its election campaign was not allowed. PTI candidates were harassed, arrested, and barred from holding public meetings. 

“Mobile networks were stopped statewide on Thursday, hindering party officials’ ability to inform supporters about their selected independent candidate in each constituency. Our workers were unable to monitor polling locations. The level of manipulation occurring in the poll was excessively absurd,” he declares.

Partisan maneuvering and manipulation

On 10 February, the Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR), the official communication channel of the army, released a statement from the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Syed Asim Munir, outlining a policy-driven vision for the country’s governance. 

General Munir emphasized the imperative of establishing a “unity government” to ensure the stability needed to propel Pakistan’s economic progress forward.

A day earlier, Khan’s political rival, PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif echoed similar sentiments in his speech, tasking his brother, former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, with reaching out to key parties like the PPP and MQM-P to explore alliances.

Subsequently, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto and Vice Chairman Asif Ali Zardari engaged in discussions with PML-N’s Shahbaz Sharif, with Zardari entrusted to liaise with other parliamentary factions – including independents – to consolidate support for their envisioned coalition. Additionally, a delegation from MQM-P conferred with Nawaz Sharif to strategize for the future.

The hectic political activities in Islamabad aim to thwart the PTI’s chances of coming to power by reducing its parliamentary strength through forced or bribed defections. Before the poll, there were widespread speculations about a power-sharing arrangement between the PML-N and PPP, in which Sharif would take on the position of prime minister and Zardari would accept the post of president. The likelihood of a coalition being formed between the two parties is very high.

Since the PTI lawmakers are officially categorized as independents, they are not obligated to vote by party affiliation. This gives rise to the potential for coerced defections. Furthermore, without joining a political party, the PTI cannot secure its share of the National Assembly’s 70 “reserved seats” designated for women and minorities, which are distributed proportionally according to a party’s overall vote. It is also important to note that Khan is presently imprisoned and disqualified from seeking political candidacy.

Erosion of Pakistan’s electoral integrity

Despite these challenges, PTI emerged as the largest single party post-election, a formidable force poised to play a pivotal role in shaping Pakistan’s political future. However, a notable consequence of these elections has been the marginalization of religious and nationalist parties, particularly evident in regions like Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the Awami National Party (ANP) faced significant setbacks.

Speaking to The Cradle, Zahid Khan, the ANP central spokesperson says:

Once again, the people of smaller provinces have been denied their rightful representation, not as an act of revenge from voters, but as part of a preplanned strategy … The political forces in Punjab and Sindh are not willing to let them govern despite the PTI having sufficient seats in the Punjab provincial assembly and the national assembly.

In the lead-up to the national elections, efforts were underway to undermine Imran Khan’s chances of returning to power, orchestrated by influential elements within the state apparatus. The Election Commission, responsible for overseeing fair elections, dealt a blow to the PTI by invalidating its intra-party election on 22 December. 

However, PTI swiftly challenged this decision in the Peshawar High Court, securing a temporary suspension of the ruling on 26 December. However, this respite was short-lived as the court ultimately sided with the ECP, reinstating the decision to nullify PTI’s internal election and revoke its electoral symbol.

Prosecution or political persecution? 

Meanwhile, the legal machinery accelerated its proceedings, seemingly aimed at barring Khan from participating in the upcoming election. In a controversial ruling on 30 January, Khan was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a trial court for allegedly unlawfully disclosing sensitive information.

Notably, the hearings took place within the confines of Rawalpindi prison, where Khan was detained, deviating from the norm of a public courtroom setting. His legal team protested against this unconventional procedure, citing constitutional violations.

Khan’s incarceration since August stemmed from his vocal criticism of the military, with this particular case revolving around a diplomatic cable that went missing while under his purview. Khan, while denying direct involvement, had referenced the memo as evidence of foreign interference in his removal from office in 2022.

On 31 January, the next day, an anti-corruption court in Pakistan sentenced the former prime minister and his wife, Bushra Khan, to 14 years in prison each, on the charge of unlawfully selling state articles. This occurred just one day after Khan was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a separate case. Following the third conviction recently imposed on the beleaguered former cricket star, the conditions also entail a 10-year ban on holding public and party offices.

In another instance, a local court imposed a seven-year sentence on Khan and his spouse for engaging in a marriage that the court deemed “un-Islamic” – a ruling declared earlier this month in a case initiated by the ex-husband of Bushra Bibi.

If there were any lingering doubts regarding Khan’s allegations of US interference in Pakistan’s delicate democratic processes, recent events seem to validate his claims. This wouldn’t be the first instance of Washington and its intelligence networks undermining a populist, democratically-elected leader in the region, echoing historical precedents such as the 1953 coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Humanity vs. ‘Israel’; an illegal occupation tried legally

11 Jan 2024

Source: Al Mayadeen English

An illustration showing Netanyahu covered in the blood of Palestinians (Illustrated by Arwa Makki; Al Mayadeen English)

By Qamar Taleb

It seems like the law is finally catching up with the Israeli occupation as its atrocities are so flagrant that they cannot be ignored anymore.

For the first time since “Israel” occupied Palestine in 1948, the world is witnessing a historical legal event. South Africa, supported by many countries around the world, from Ireland to Venezuela, has filed a lawsuit against “Israel” before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. “Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza,” states the lawsuit of 84 pages and a variety of evidence; to be accurate, strong incriminating evidence the least of which are 200 statements made by Israeli officials from both political and military levels. Right now, the first hearing is taking place in the presence of a South African legal team led by John Dugard, a former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, on the one hand, and a legal team for the occupation, on the other, represented by Malcolm Shaw, a 76-year-old British-Zionist legal expert, who is considered one of the world’s leading experts on international law and has appeared before the ICJ in the past.

Meet the International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the UN established in 1945 by the Charter of the United Nations. Its role is to settle legal disputes submitted by states and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred by authorized UN organs and specialized agencies. The court settles two types of legal disputes: Contentious cases and advisory proceedings.

It is important to note that the rulings of the ICJ are final and legally binding as they aren’t subject to appeal.

Can ‘Israel’ be tried before the ICJ?

Contentious cases, as per the ICJ Statute, are “cases limited to States.” The Statute of the Court defines States as State Members of the UN, other States that have become parties to the Statute of the Court, or States that have accepted its jurisdiction under certain conditions. These conditions are met either by entering into a special agreement to submit the dispute to the Court, including a jurisdiction clause that permits the parties or one of them to refer to the Court, or through declarations made by the two states involved under the Statute accepting the jurisdiction of the court as compulsory. 

To answer the question, we need to look into how proceedings may be instituted before the Court in one of these two ways: either through the notification of a special agreement, a bilateral document lodged to the Court by either or both State parties to the proceedings or using a unilateral application, submitted by an applicant State against a respondent State.

To begin with, South Africa and “Israel” are both members of the United Nations, which makes them both bound by the Statute of the Court specifically Article 36(1), stating that the Court’s jurisdiction “comprises…. all matters specially provided for…. In treaties and conventions in force.”

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To avoid any legal loopholes, South Africa is building its lawsuit on the 1948 UN Genocide Convention as a jurisdictional basis. Article 9 of the Convention states: “Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.

Hence, as both South Africa and “Israel” are signatories to the mentioned convention, article 9 serves as the provision that allows either party to refer to the court.

Provisional measures vs. a state’s right to self-defense 

Knowing that the ruling of the lawsuit might take several years, South Africa requested the Court to order provisional measures to “order Israel to cease killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinian people in Gaza, to cease the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group, to prevent and punish direct and public incitement to genocide, and to rescind related policies and practices, including regarding the restriction on aid and the issuing of evacuation directives.”

The Court can take provisional measures without determining whether any Israeli violation of obligations under the Genocide Convention has occurred. Thus, there is no need to wait for the ruling of the lawsuit. What the court is required to do at the stage of making an order on provisional measures is to establish whether the acts complained of are capable of falling within the provisions of the Genocide Convention without the need to determine that all such acts are capable of falling under it, thus making South Africa’s claim a solid one for at least some of the acts South Africa says are capable of falling under the Convention. This is known as “prima facie”; a Latin expression meaning “at first sight,” “at first view,” or “based on first impression.” It denotes that, upon initial examination, a legal claim has sufficient evidence to proceed to trial or judgment. It is important to note that the claim presented to the Court extensively and accurately backed the argument of the Court’s jurisdiction on the provisional measures.

Unfortunately, once again, those who happen to support occupation and genocide in this world are using “a state’s right to self-defense” as a counter-argument to hinder the one presented regarding provisional measures. But how?

Article 51 of the UN Charter states: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.

They are claiming that the jurisdiction basis for the provisional measures by South Africa does not rise from the Genocide Convention itself but rather from what South Africa stated regarding the “prima facie” above. In that case, it only has to appear that a “jurisdiction could be founded,” prompting pro-occupation and genocide advocates to claim that the Court may act based on the possibility of jurisdiction that violates “Israel’s” right to “self-defense”.

In 2004, an advisory opinion from the ICJ itself denied that Article 51 was relevant to “Israel’s” construction of a wall in the West Bank allegedly meant to stop what ‘Israel” dubbed “terror attacks”. The Court declared that the attacks against “Israel” did not come from a foreign state as it exercises control in that territory and the threat “Israel” claimed originated from within the territory occupied by “Israel”. In addition, it is highly important to shed light on the fact that the right to “self-defense” only works against states, and Hamas is not a state. Some legal scholars have been trying to argue differently, but as of today, no court or legal precedent has ever given a contradictory opinion.

He who digs a pit for his brother falls into it

Recently in Ukraine v. Russia (2022) and under the same Convention in the South Africa v. “Israel” case, the ICJ approved provisional measures and ordered Russia to “immediately suspend the military operations that commenced on 24 February 2022 in the territory of Ukraine.” This will serve as a very important precedent that can be used in the lawsuit by South Africa cornering the Court into accepting the claim or showing the world that the most important court in the world is biased if it refuses to. Who would actually still respect the law after that?

The oppressed of the world unite 

South Africa stated in its case presented to the ICJ that “Israel” is built on a “background of apartheid, expulsion, ethnic cleansing, annexation, occupation, discrimination and the ongoing denial of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.”

Twenty- five countries and an organization of 57 states have shown support for South Africa in this case, several of which had to deal with the terror of imperialism. We can’t know where this case will lead us or if history is going to be made, but one thing is for sure, none of what is happening looks good for the occupation or its allies.

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Operation Al Aqsa Flood

Trickery, Humiliation, Death – and the Timeless Hunger for ‘Honour and Glory’

 DECEMBER 30, 2023

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ALASTAIR CROOKE

One major theme of Homer’s Iliad – which somehow seems as fresh and as vivid today as when first written – is its description of how even the greatest of states in Western civilization fail to reclaim what they lose. “Attempts to repair one loss lead only to more losses”, Emily Wilson writes in her introduction to the Iliad (2023). “Loss can never be recouped.”

As Wilson sets out her story, one cannot escape the analogy to today – to a Biden seeking to recoup the American ‘reputation’ (Kleos in Greek ). In the case of leaders of the ancient world too, the goal of achieving undying kleos runs through the poem.

Today, we might refer to it as one’s ‘legacy’. In the Iliad it is definitional and gives mortal leaders the chance to live on after death with honour and glory. For Team Biden, Ukraine was supposed to be their Troy. Russia, like Hector, was tricked into a fight and (and as Team Biden had hoped) is killed under Troy’s walls.

But in today’s world, it didn’t work out that way. And now the U.S. faces the humiliation of a clear Russian victory in Ukraine, and a collective Russian leadership that says it intends to retrieve all lands and cities that were culturally Russian. Western Ukraine, they say, can go ‘wherever it likes’.

The military facts on the ground are relentless and cannot be undone. But the White House hopes to keep a morsel of kleos by simply having Ukrainian forces ceasing to fight, falling back onto defensive lines – yet never saying ‘defeat’. The kinetic component to the conflict barely would ‘tick over’ at low revs. And, as Gideon Rachman has written in the Financial Times, to “flip the narrative to one of [repeatedly insisting] that Putin has failed”. The aim being that Washington quietly can ‘steal away’.

Well, there are two big problems: First, Russia doesn’t agree; it doesn’t agree at all. And secondly, Zelensky and his associates were grievously tricked. Not in this case, by the goddess Athena, but by the mortal Messrs Johnson and Blinken.

In March 2022 in Istanbul, Zelensky and his negotiators had reached an accord with Russia. But that agreement ‘was killed’ by Boris Johnson urging Zelensky to fight on, and to gain his portion of the ‘honour and glory’ by participating in the slaying of the Russian aggressor.

“As long as it takes – and whatever it takes” was the solemn ‘oath’. That is, so to speak, Zelensky was promised an open cheque and whatever weaponry would be needed …

So, what happened to that which is now gone?

If this were the Iliad, the storyline would at least, in part, focus on Zelensky’s disappointment at his tiny ‘portion of life’. Wilson writes:

“Many of the words in the Iliad are often translated as fortune or fate – literally, these suggest we get a portion or share … It’s as if there is a whole side of beef that is a quantity of human life and each of us gets a particular portion of it, both how long we get to be alive and also our portion of honor and glory”.

Zelensky will have wanted a portion of honour to compensate him for fate having dealt-out his present portion of life in an unfair way (i.e. by having been tricked by British and U.S. assurances).

The public humiliation Zelensky now suffers will no longer be balanced by a large share of glory gained through a vanquished Moscow. In the Homeric vein, this lays the ground for an act of revenge on Biden – publication of the ‘deal’.

When these details emerge – as surely they will (echoing perhaps, the mysterious and reputationally explosive war-time Churchill letters hinting to Mussolini at some ultimate kleos-esque outcome) – then the ‘victory narrative’ may become soured by the insistent question: Tens of thousands of Ukrainian young men had to die between March and now – for what?

The other theme in the Iliad is that of the prized facility of mêtis. It could be thought to be the ‘wiliness’ (or long-experienced cleverness) on which Biden is known to so pride himself: Should something unexpected happen and you react (subconsciously) just right in the moment, then by displaying mêtis, you receive a special kind of glory, as compared to that gained from the trudge of geo-political campaigning.

On 7 October, Hamas exploded out from its’ Gaza enclosure.

Biden reportedly regards himself as having ‘the smarts’ over Netanyahu. He knows Netanyahu thinks to manipulate Biden, but the latter believes he both is containing Netanyahu and pre-empting his plans by keeping them under close U.S. surveillance.

But a ‘green light’ is a green light.

And in essence the Biden embrace ends by giving the Israeli Cabinet a conditional ‘green-light’ for almost all its projects, bar the Settler arsonists in the West Bank.

Israel’s Gaza military operation is visibly failing, though the aerial bombardment is set to continue through the coming weeks. It never had a military logic, and this is becoming evident to many Israelis. Gaza is already a monument to callous inhumanity and suffering. It will get worse – yet the Gazans will endure and remain defiant.

And the Israeli military operation against Hizbullah also stands ‘green-lighted’, albeit only when Hochstein’s diplomatic effort to push a disarmed Hizbullah back behind the Litani River (predictably) fails. What is the White House thinking? Do they recall the 2006 war? Do they understand how formidable an adversary Hizbullah has become? Do they not see how Israel is provoking Hizbullah and Iran?

Can Biden recoup America’s standing in this way – with the ‘cleansing’ in Gaza; eruptions in the West Bank; and war brewing with Hizbullah? Biden clearly wants some portion of honour to accrue to him that compensates for the humiliation he suffers from Netanyahu. So he has to keep going.

Emily Wilson reminds us: “Attempts to repair one loss (such as Ukraine), historically lead to more losses: Loss can never fully be recouped”.

U.S. policy of ‘embrace and question’ nonetheless is driving Israel towards a binary choice: three internal military wars in which Israel risks humiliation, or a resort to population displacement (the Naqba option – one favoured by increasing numbers of Israelis). The two-state ‘solution’ is not an option for the present (or ever).

As for the Naqba option, the moral enormity of such a policy would require the Jewish nation to be absolutely sure of its ground. Is it? In spite of raised levels of anger, works such as The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand, Emeritus Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, must at least raise a current of unease and debate.

The situation however is not one of ratiocination, but of all-consuming irrationality.

VISEGRÁD 24: THE POLISH GOVERNMENT-FUNDED FAKE NEWS FACTORY DRIVING THE ONLINE ISRAEL-PALESTINE NEWS CYCLE

NOVEMBER 30TH, 2023

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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

Alan Macleod

Named by Gizmodo as the most influential source of news on Israel/Palestine on Twitter/X, Visegrád 24 has shot to prominence, amassing more than one million followers across social media platforms. Yet it has consistently shared blatantly false information in an attempt to ramp up support for the state of Israel’s crimes in Gaza. Worse still, the semi-anonymous account pushing a far-right agenda worldwide is known to be funded by the deeply conservative Polish government.

A VIRAL SENSATION

If you have spent any amount of time on social media following the Israeli attack on Gaza, you are sure to have come across Visegrád 24 and its ultra-viral content. The Polish news aggregator is perhaps an unlikely candidate to become a key player in the information war. But in just a few short weeks, it has gained hundreds of thousands of followers across its platforms, especially Twitter/ and TikTok (currently at 843,000 and 183,000 followers, respectively).

A study published by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, titled “The New Elites of X,” identified Visegrád 24 as the most influential account engaged in Israel/Palestine discourse. One measure of its reach is that, in the first three days following Hamas’ surprise attack, the six traditional media outlets with the most followers on Twitter/X (CNN Breaking News, CNN, the New York Times, BBC Breaking News, BBC World News and Reuters) who collectively have nearly 300 million followers, received 112 million views on Israel/Palestine related content. Visegrád 24, by comparison, received 370 million views over the same period. Since then, its influence has only grown.

Its massive reach has led many to equate it with reliability, and the account is regularly cited in establishment media such as Newsweek or Fox News. But this is far from the case. Indeed, its accounts appear to exist to lionize Israel and its supporters, demonize Palestine and its supporters, fearmonger about refugees, and promote ultra-conservative politics in general.

FAKE NEWS FACTORY

Part of what makes Visegrád 24’s rise problematic is its propensity to publish blatantly fake news. Earlier this month, for example, it posted footage of Israeli satirist Yoni Sharon playing a character mocking Palestinians, telling its audience he was a real Palestinian.

“A Palestinian man thanks Hamas for making sure that all the Palestinian people who used to commute into Israel to work will now be unemployed. He also thanks Hamas for making sure Palestinian kids will no longer receive surgeries in Israel Great job!” it wrote.

Perhaps most shamelessly, however, Visegrád 24 has, on multiple occasions, taken footage from Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian photographer who has worked with MintPress News and twisted the images of Israeli crimes to present the apartheid state in a good light. Azaiza’s video showing Israeli forces shooting at a large caravan of fleeing refugees was repackaged with the caption, “Hamas terrorists shooting at a large group of Palestinians trying to flee south along the humanitarian corridors set up by Israel.”

Another time, Visegrád 24 reposted an Azaiza video claiming that it showed a merciful Israeli Air Force dropping leaflets urging Gazans that the area was not safe and asking them to move southwards for their own well-being. “Stop the lies,” Azaiza replied, “I’m the one who filmed this. The leaflets [were] saying if you have any information about the kidnapped [Israelis], call us.”

In addition to this, it has repeated and amplified the beheaded babies hoax, called to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, described climate activist Greta Thunberg as a “Hamas propagandist,” and labeled pro-Palestine demonstrators as “thugs” and “mobs.”

It has also not been above sharing racially insensitive content depicting Palestine supporters as clueless liberals who would be executed in a second if they set foot in Gaza or asking highly-charged questions such as “Without Googling, name something that was invented, discovered or created by Muslims over the centuries.” The clear implication in the question is that Muslims have never contributed anything to society, which can perhaps explain why Visegrád 24 spends so much of its energy fearmongering about a wave of Muslim immigrants to Europe.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Visegrád 24 began as a Twitter account in early 2020. But for the longest time, its funding and the identities of its key staff remained shrouded in mystery. The news aggregator does not even have a website; instead, it directs readers to a crowdfunding platform that shows they have received only 723 donations.

For an operation believed to be around 12 people, this is clearly not sufficient to be financially viable. There is another source of confirmed funding, however: the ultra-conservative government of Poland. Last October, the Polish chancellery gave 1.4 million PLN (roughly U.S.$350,000) to Visegrád 24, a decision approved by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. It is not known whether Visegrád 24 has received any subsequent government funding.

Around the same time it was receiving government money, Polish media identified some of the key figures running the operation. One is Adam Starzynski, a Swedish-born Polish journalist who formerly worked at the English-language program Poland Daily, produced by TV Republika. Starzynski has experience in running conservative social media, as he operated the ultra-conservative @BasedPoland Twitter account. @BasedPoland spread nationalistic propaganda and anti-Muslim content, gaining more than 150,000 followers before it was banned.

Starzynski is a key figure in the resurgent Eastern European conservative movement. This “Make Europe Great Again” movement supports far-right populists like Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

A second key figure in what Visegrád 24 calls its group of conservative friends is Stefan Tompson, a Polish-South African PR strategist. Tompson grew up in London and cut his teeth working for the “Leave” campaign during the Brexit referendum, a vote marred by widespread fake news and disinformation. He has his own YouTube channel about Polish history and is a contributor to the Polish government-owned TV channel Telewizja Polska. He is reportedly preparing to launch a brand new media company to capitalize on Visegrád 24’s success.

UKRAINE BRAIN

Visegrád 24 established its brand and built a following, posting content strongly supportive of the Ukrainian military and their attempts to repel the Russian invasion. Poland and the other Eastern European NATO states have been particularly vocal opponents of Russia. While it now focuses on Israel/Palestine content, it continues to post content calling for greater European involvement in the war. For example, last week, it shared a video of a dying Ukrainian soldier and demanded to know “why the West is holding back crucial weapon systems from Ukraine?” and “Why they aren’t allowed to strike Russia?”

Unfortunately, the news aggregator displayed the same propensity to publish incorrect information on Ukraine as it does with Israel. Among the fake stories it has promoted include:

  • Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio donating $10 million to Ukraine
  • Polish politicians supporting a Polish-Ukrainian union
  • PornHub being blocked in Russia.

In their haste to drum up support for the Ukrainian cause, media in the West often overlooked or whitewashed the fascist or Neo-Nazi elements active within the Ukrainian armed forces. Chief among these is the Azov Battalion, a group whose insignia was directly lifted from the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division, a unit responsible for carrying out some of the worst crimes of Hitler’s holocaust. Andriy Biletsky, the Azov Battalion’s founder, said in 2010 that he believes Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen” – the word Hitler used to describe Jews, Poles, Ukrainians and other peoples he designated for extermination.

“It’s possible to both support Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression and be critical of neo-Nazis elements in Ukraine’s army,” Visegrád 24 once posted on Twitter. Yet analyzing all Visegrád 24 content containing the word “Azov”, it is difficult to find any posts that even take a neutral tone, let alone a critical one.

As such, they often appeared to act like an unofficial press agency for the group. Many posts humanize the soldiers, showing their mothers and wives or presenting them as brave defenders of the motherland. Others are glowing obituaries of heroic Azov fighters who lost their lives.

“Every year, the soldiers of the Azov Regiment gather on the shortest night of the year to honor their fallen brothers-in-arms. This year, especially after [the battle of] Azovstal, they had more men to honor than ever. Through new recruits, the group has grown significantly in size since Azovstal,” they wrote in December.

While the European far-right is consistently and often virulently anti-Semitic, they regularly display strong support for the State of Israel and its policies, seeing the ethnostate Israel is creating as a blueprint for their own designs. Thus, an unlikely alliance now exists between fascist movements in Europe and the state where the descendants of the people those groups failed to kill just 80 years ago now live.

INFORMATION WAR

“Israel is losing the information war,” lamented Visegrád 24’s Stefan Tompson on Twitter. “Social media is dominated by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, if not overtly pro-Hamas and/or antisemitic content. If things are not turned around, the Hamas lobby will successfully not only appropriate but also redefine the ‘Holocaust,’” he added.

Putting aside the dramatic prediction, Tompson is correct that Israel is experiencing difficulty influencing worldwide public opinion. The genocidal destruction has brought millions of people around the world out into the streets to attend marches, lectures, protests and demonstrations. An estimated one million people filled the streets of London on November 11, despite direct instructions from the government not to do so.

In the United States, too, the situation in Gaza has ignited a massive reaction, with hundreds of large demonstrations taking place across virtually every major city. Pro-Israel demonstrations, meanwhile, have been comparatively poorly attended. President Biden’s support for Israel is a significant reason for his dwindling polling numbers.

The Biden administration continues to back Israel at the United Nations. But it is increasingly isolated. In October, the U.S. voted against a UN resolution calling for a cessation of the violence, one of only a handful of countries to do so.

Israel’s once rock-solid support among Americans is also floundering. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that overall sympathy for Israel has dropped seven points since October to 54% of Americans, with 24% saying they sympathized more with Palestine.

Most concerning for Israel supporters is that they appear to be losing the next generation. The same Quinnipiac poll found a huge generational gap in understanding of the conflict. While older voters stood solidly behind Israel, a majority of Americans aged between 18-34 said their sympathies lay with the Palestinians, while only 29% said they supported Israel.

Much of this chasm can be explained as a result of how the different generations get their news. Older Americans continue to rely on established legacy media, such as cable news and print, which continue to display extraordinary bias in favor of Israel. Younger generations, however, primarily use social media. While hardly free of restrictions, platforms like Twitter or TikTok allow a far more comprehensive range of news and views to circulate, including opinions from ordinary people.

Israel has attempted to game this system, spending heavily on ads targeted at Western audiences. Between October 7 and October 19, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spent more than $7 million on YouTube advertisements, equating to nearly one billion pairs of eyeballs. The top five countries targeted were France, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States. The MOFA also ran ad campaigns on Instagram, Facebook, mobile games and apps like language trainer Duolingo.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, pro-Israel trolls attempted to hijack the Community Notes function, attaching argumentative notes and warning labels undermining any post showing Israel in a negative light. And several prominent TikTok creators revealed they were offered large sums of money to record simple videos endorsing Israeli actions.

Despite this, there has been an unprecedented outpouring of sympathy for the people of Palestine. On TikTok, for example, between October 23 and October 30, 87,000 posts were using the #StandWithPalestine hashtag, garnering 285 million views. The equivalent pro-Israel #StandWithIsrael hashtag, meanwhile, generated only 9,000 posts and 64 million views.

In response to the news that their citizens are not receiving the preferred message on Israel/Palestine, U.S. government officials are pushing to simply ban TikTok altogether as a solution to the problem. GOP presidential candidates Chris Christie and Nikki Haley have repeatedly called for the total prohibition of the popular app. Senator Marco Rubio (R—FL) demanded that it was “time for TikTok to go,” accusing the company of “downplaying Hamas terrorism.”

Democrats have proven that censorship is a bipartisan issue. Senator Chris Murphy (D—NJ), for example, described TikTok as a Chinese-controlled platform that is “turning America against each other” through its promotion of “virulent pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic material.”

These calls were echoed by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who complained that users were being “brainwashed” by pro-Palestine content. TikTok has defended itself, claiming that its algorithms do not take sides and that young people are simply more sympathetic to Palestine.

Unlike TikTok, there have been no official calls to ban Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or other social media sites, perhaps because they are cooperating with authorities to censor dissenting voices. Twitter recently announced it had deleted more than 325,000 tweets relating to the violence and had removed more than 3,000 accounts, many linked to Hamas. It has not deleted any accounts affiliated with the Israeli government. Instagram locked a number of the most prominent pro-Palestine accounts, including Eye On Palestine (with 9.2 million followers).

Meanwhile, the Israeli Attorney General’s Office revealed that approximately 94% of the 9,500 requests it has made to Meta (the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram) to delete content had been granted.

Just as important as the troops on the ground is the information war playing out in cyberspace. Israel could not carry out its actions without support from the Western public. On this front, it has found a key ally in Visegrád 24, a news aggregator that has exploded in popularity and influence of late. Unfortunately, the shadowy, Polish government-funded organization not only reports facts from a pro-Israel perspective but also consistently publishes blatantly false or misleading content. This, however, is far from unusual. In war, truth is always the first casualty. Visegrád 24’s rapid rise to prominence is a testament to this.