The United States has now, on the face of it, produced the Diplomatic Note giving the two assurances required by the High Court to allow the extradition of Julian Assange to proceed. The assurance that Julian Assange will be allowed to rely on the First Amendment in his defence is a blatantly weak piece of sophistry.
You can read my analysis on the High Court judgment of Assange’s right to an appeal here.
Let me dispense with the assurance against the death penalty. I am sure it will be accepted by the court. The USA does not need to execute Julian, it can incarcerate him in a tiny concrete tomb for life, under extreme sensory deprivation, as a terrible half living warning to any journalist who might reveal their crimes.
Should that ever become inconvenient, he can be Epsteined or Seth Riched at any moment. Remember this is a government that plotted to kidnap and/or assassinate him, as pled and not denied in court.
The assurance required on First Amendment protection is being misunderstood by almost everybody reporting it, and the US Diplomatic Note seeks to take advantage of the confusion.
The High Court took the view that the First Amendment provides the same protections as Article X of the European Convention on Human Rights, and therefore Assange’s Convention rights will be protected if he is allowed to plead the First Amendment as a defence before a US court. The court did not ask for an assurance that such a plea would succeed. Article X of the ECHR is itself absolutely shot through with authoritarian national security and other exceptions.
The assurance on which the High Court did insist was that such a plea could not be struck down on the grounds of Assange’s nationality. That would contradict the separate ECHR provision against discrimination by nationality. The US Diplomatic Note has failed genuinely to address this point: but it pretends to do so.
The US prosecutor in an affidavit to the UK court had already stated that Assange may be barred from First Amendment protection because he was a foreign national who had acted abroad. Mike Pompeo had also stated this officially. The principle is plainly articulated by the Supreme Court in the case of USAID vs Open Society:
THE CRUCIAL “SEEK TO”
The United States was therefore simply unable to state that Julian Assange will be able to make a First Amendment defence, because the judge, following the Supreme Court precedent, is almost certainly going to disallow it on grounds of nationality.
The Diplomatic Note therefore states that Assange may seek to raise a First Amendment defence without prohibition on grounds of nationality. This means precisely that his lawyers are permitted to say:
“My client wishes to claim the protection of the First Amendment for freedom of speech”
This is “seeking to raise” it.
The judge will immediately reply:
“The First Amendment does not apply to your client as a foreign national acting abroad, as established by the US Supreme Court in USAID vs Open Society”.
That is consistent with the actual operative phrase in the US Diplomatic Note: “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is entirely within the purview of the US Courts”.
On 20 May there will be a hearing to determine whether this non-assurance is adequate to protect Julian Assange from discrimination on grounds of nationality and permit the extradition to proceed.
Now being a reasonable person, you doubtless are thinking that it is impossible that such a flimsy confection of legal sleight of hand could ever be accepted. But if so, dear reader, you have no idea of the corruption of the stool pigeons disguised as British judges.
Who would think that they could have ruled that the UK/US Treaty has legal force to extradite Julian Assange, but that Article IV of the Treaty excluding political offences strangely does not have legal force?
Who would have thought that they could have ruled that the US government spying on his attorney/client legal conferences and seizing his legal papers did not invalidate the proceedings?
Who would have thought they could have ruled that the US government plot to kidnap or murder him is irrelevant, because if he is extradited the US government will have no further need to kidnap or murder him?
I could go on. I shall be very surprised if the High Court judges following the 20 May hearing do not rule that the right to ask not to be discriminated against on grounds of nationality (and be denied) is sufficient protection against discrimination by nationality.
They really are that shameless.
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It may well be that I will be turned on by people from across the political spectrum like the person in the,centre of a Bateman picture, but surely it might be the best course with regard to the US” diplomatic assurances that Julian be allowed to petition the court of his proposed trial in America in absentia to establish whether he will or will not be enfranchised with the relevant constitutional rights that a native would enjoy, and then for the British,and perhaps European courts, to base their decisions on the outcome
I mentioned last year I think that Biden in the US and Scholz in Germany, incidentally, both are facing investigations. And that in both cases behind the scenes everything is done to stop those.
Now in Germany Anne Brorhilker, the highly respected DA from Cologne specialized in finances and corruption, who had been leading and digging ever deeper – some say getting into territory dangerous for Scholz – after being hampered before, now has resigned, i.e. left her position as a state employee. I assume more will be reported.
I don´t know of course but I guess she was told that life for her would become miserable if she carried on endangering Scholz. There is no other explanation. Her public statement was of course very general, only criticizing how weak the state authorities were acting against this kind of tax evasion/corruption cases. So even though I hope that our domestic German situation as law is concerned is still not as bad as on your English island it isn´t getting any better.
It will be interesting to hear the arguments to bury Nordstream investigations.
p.s. thinking of the officials leaving the Biden admin. or Craig Mokhiber´s case, I wonder whether this over the decades has been usual or whether we do experience an unusual high in high-level quitting.
Is there any fear of the US still as an occupying power in Germany? I’ve been having a hard time understanding the absolute domination of US propaganda in the German press.
There is no fear anywhere.
And as the major media go neither would anyone there speak of occupying power as a problem for reporting. That´s obvious.
This is not a single case of sudden madness but a question of culture long overdue. Russophobia that is.
Only on the principles that vilify Russians (chaos, corruption, mafia, authoritarian, likes to drink, fuck, curse and rape, listen to classical music, place ice-hockey, conquer other nations,… should I go on?) it was not that difficult for the Americans/NATO + many senior editors are part of American- affiliated NGOs or programs like Atlantic Bridge and Marshall Fund etc., especially in the newspaper sections on foreign policy + the cleansing of German scholarship and academia off East German scholars who might have brought in expertise on Russia.
But, often not without justification, were not regarded as free of involvement with the East German Secret Service. But those suspicions very often were as much only abused of course.
If you want to trace back the current hysteria you may well go back to around 2008. When this all was slowly set up. But that again was merely confirming prejudice – “Told you so. Never trust those Russians.”
So despite unification what has persisted is an academic tradition of the Cold War era. And naturally scholars in that time who spoke the languages in the FRG were anti-Russian. And as scholarly traditional lines are concerned those develope over decades.
Gilbert Doctorow wrote a good text on the same problem in the US:
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/02/08/responding-to-the-call-for-de-centering-russian-studies-the-field-was-de-centered-from-its-earliest-days/
AG I read somewhere in one of Chomsky’s books that 30-40% of the funds of the Marshall Plan was to be spent on propaganda
You pay for what you get – a new “Europe” with the “right”attitude is what they got
will moon
That does sound like a lot. Doesn´t it?!
(I assume you don´t remember the exact source)
p.s. they had a couple of exhibitions in the past years, well actually untill UKR war started, about the CIA-sponsored leftwing West-German cultural groups and their output. Which was a neat income for many and it offered considerable liberties (the artists most likely were not aware of this). Smartly devised understanding the mind of those artists. “Crititical Theory” was in part involved with that. Which doesn´t make an argument against Adorno e.g. or Marcuse but it does give Marcuse´s notion of “even philosophy being ideology” a certain taste. Or his essay about the “affirmative nature of culture.” (Latter of which he originally wrote as an essay even before WWII, in 1937). Worthwhile a read btw.
“Über den affirmativen Charakter der Kultur”.
If I have an English link I might post it.
I’ll find it for you. I remember he also discussed the political situation in Greece immediately after WW2 in some detail in the same volume
It does sound rather a lot – I can even remember when I first read it, my utter shock at the notion – but if I remember rightly it was sourced with strong, credible sources (Maybe something to do with the way the Plan’s budget and the accounting of that budget was classified which allowed the allocation to be masked? – just speculating, I’ll check lol)
Whatever Biden does is applauded bei den Deutschen. They are unable to let go of the Ami’s and are pickled by their own Angst of what the US might do if they are not whistling Dixie.
German politics is controlled by the wishes of past and present US administrations and their military demands.
All parties that got elected to lead Germany are careful not to step out of line. They are haunted by their distant past, and the media, as well as the worldwide Shoa business has continually worked on the media, political parties in power and future politicians.
Analena Baerbrock is a great example what can happen if the wrong kind of people are feted, as is Joshka Fischer, both have been exemplary NATO whores that play the anti Russia game at all levels, the last G7 meeting showed of her schmoozing ways as she was sideling up to Cameron and others.
When radicals such as Fischer can be integrated into mainline political power games, the Germany will never be able to raise their own economic prowess again.
Maybe that was the plan all the way.
Im sad to have been born there.
But you have to also keep in mind that media, academia and what we call public opinion would or will crush you if you e.g. suggest to counter the Americans. Anti-Americanism is a term you surely are familiar with and how it has been slowly demonized as another way of putting someone in the right-wing corner.
With the BSW and the few honest left with DIE LINKE and other parties too (since what we see is the leadership, which is often not really in line with the ordinary party members) there is a substance of people who connect anti-NATO stance and criticism of the US. At least to a certain extent. (I don´t want to idealize it. But the cause is not entirely lost I think – public opnion is not equal published opnion).
pretzelattack, take a look at the immediate postwar period in West Germany.
The integration of the Nazi Deep State into the newly formed West German Republic is the key. Reinhard Gehlen formerly head of Fremde Heere Ost (military intelligence Eastern Front) gave his extensive info, and more importantly his human assets (particularly his extensive Ukrainian assets) over to CIA in return for a piece of the pie – he became head of the BND, the foreign intelligence service of W Germany – no de-Baathification here.
West Germany was created by Anglo-American spooks and staffed by Nazi spooks. It was a spook state par excellence. It is no suprise to me that Germany sqwawks like a flustered cuck.
It took two World Wars to cure the German elites of their assertiveness but they were never cured of their love of the “dynastic spirit”, they simply swapped a Prussian Emperor for an American “Emperor” and carried on regardless.
Denazification was a wonderful idea, pity it never happened.
Just like the deRussification of the territory of the former DDR would have been a good idea.
Exactly the same happened with Japan. These were not accidents.
JK redux
There is a fundamental difference between US occupation and RU occupation of Germany – former was probably 90% welcome, latter not. Thus a DeRussification of the the former GDR as such wasn´t necessary.
On the other hand, a little cultural surplus of Russian presence could be saved.
But today altogether you get the impression the Russians were never there.
The collective public mind I would guess today due to the media has still stronger associations with WWII and less with the time of the GDR and Russians being part of that.
But to believe that a De-Russification was/is necessary to make the process complete is a POV like the one of today’s right-wing nationalist/Nazis in UKR. Because that kind of De-xyz you get only with e.g. destruction of books (which has already been carried out in Ukraine) or banning of Russian cultural goods and institutions in general.
The historian AJP Taylor wrote of Germany’s historical Sonderweg in his 1945 book The Course of German History. It was pooh poohed in post-war Britain and forgotten about in Cold War Europe. Lately I have been thinking a lot about that. I think the old bugger was onto something. I am sure he wished he hadn’t been.
Taylor wrote that the Nazi regime “represented the deepest wishes of the German people”, and that it was the first and only German government created by the Germans themselves as the Holy Roman Empire had been created by France and Austria, the German Confederation by Austria and Prussia and the Weimar Republic by the Allies. In contrast, Taylor argued, “The Third Reich rested solely on German force and impulse; it owed nothing to alien forces. It was a tyranny imposed upon the German people by themselves”. Taylor argued that Nazism was inevitable because the Germans wanted “to repudiate the equality with the peoples of eastern Europe which had then been forced upon them” after 1918.T
“During the preceding eighty years the Germans had sacrificed to the Reich all their liberties; they demanded as a reward the enslavement of others. No German recognized the Czechs or Poles as equals. Therefore, every German desired the achievement which only total war could give. By no other means could the Reich be held together. It had been made by conquest and for conquest; if it ever gave up its career of conquest, it would dissolve.”
It was imperative for Cold War/ EU purposes that everyone forget the essential nature of the beast. And everybody had forgotten until Gaza. (Everybody that is except the Bear. The Bear knows better than anyone Germany’s essential nature and cannot afford to ever forget).
Greg, I am not sure in Taylor’s time several factors were clearly appreciated
The assistance of transnational corporations – Germany was self-sufficient in only three of the twenty or so commodities required for industrialised warfare, the rest had to come from import or domestic substitution. Technology transfers enacted in the 30’s saw aero engines patents, industrial production techniques and management know-how from Detroit being introduced into German industry. Armstrong-Vickers supplied vast amounts of armour plate. Agreement with Standard Oil, ITT, IBM, International Harvester Machines etc, etc were signed. Some of these corporations traded with the Nazis after war broke out. IBM was supplying data processing until 1944! Switzerland was used to facilitate the two way link
Nazism itself owed a considerable debt to the Russian Whites – based in Munich, the “Aufbau” was a band of counter-revolutionaries with their own magazine and strong links to German elites. The volkisch current that had been running awhile in Imperial Germany met and fused with the Aufbau’s extreme authoritarianism and provided the “ideology”
Also Germany never voted in majority for the Nazis – something like 37-40% of the electorate at the high watermark. The baronial cabinet tipped the scales.
As SleepingDog mentions above the treatment of non-whites in the British Empire is a story that is only being begun to be told today – the deep racism allowed for mutilation and elimination of more or less anyone. That is how I explain Taylor’s contention – the racism in these imperial peoples was eliminatory and endemic – some felt like this in Germany and more joined them as the Nazi bandwagon rolled on. Rohm and the SA wanted a “Second Revolution” to take control of banking and credit creation – surely if Taylor is right this would have happened?
Instead they ended up starring in their own snuff movies – hanging on meat hooks and whatnot. Known to history as “Night of the Long Knives” the purge of the SA took Gregor Strasser’s influence out of the Nazis – he was the one who spoke of “credit creation” and of loans to “the people”
If all Germans were like Ursula Von der Linden, that oh-so-Wilheimine politician maybe I could go for it The people making the decisions back then and now? The out-of-sight rich or their representatives
Greg Park / will moon
Taylor way underappreciates #1 the significance of the labour / Catholic element in German society. #2 Germans did not want to go to war. If they had wanted to the NSDAP had not needed the use of force to destroy, in fact kill, political resistance. Remember KZs were initially meant for labour and union leaders. Because they were the main armed civilian force. If people like you, you don´t need SA and SS to beat them up and intimidate them.
And yes, voter outcome for the NSDAP was another difficulty. NSDAP was of little importance before 1932. Then a major surge. Pushed by the biggest companies in Germany. On the other hand also by a good voter base among low-level employees, small business owners and non-organized labour.
As a response to the signs fo economic recovery (which was bad for the NSDAP) in the summer of 1932 the Keppler-circle was founded.
A group of 14 major industrialists and bankers to push the NSDAP, led by the owner of major chemical companies, Wilhelm Keppler.
Some members of the Keppler circle:
-August Rosterg, CEO of the Wintershall AG, the world´s largest factory of Potash production
-Ewald Hecker, CEO of “Elseder Hütte”, one of the biggest ore producers world-wide, and board member of a dozen companies and banks
-Albert Vögler, CEO of the world´s second largest steel producer, Vereinigte Stahlwerke, (producing 40% of German steel, 20% coal, 250.000 workers)
-Emil Helferrich, Chairman of the Board of HAPAG, fomerly the world´s largest, and Germany´s biggest shipping company
Certainly via various personal affiliations of the other members, one may count Krupp steel company and the entire West German ore and coal mines in.
A second group, one of bankers, was founded by economist Hjalmar Schacht, frm. President of the German FED, who would later become director of Nazi Germany´s FED.
(Schacht was acquitted by the Nuremberg Court but convicted by a German court to 8 years forced labour camp. He appealed and won, wrote several books and died peacefully 1970 in Munich.)
However after the failed 1932 Nov. elections did not bring about the wished result (no absolute majority, instead SPD, Communists and Catholics still bigger) these 2 groups – the Keppler and Schacht lobbyists – organized an emergency committee to urge the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, to appoint Hitler as new chancellor argueing that only Hitler´s NSDAP would secure the old social order which Hindenburg was of course part of.
Within this complex the NSDAP nomenklatura had to decide who to side with socialist-nationalist Greorg Strasser (see “will moon” comment), or Hitler.
However the most important NSDAP-people were already siding with Hitler.
Since the Strasser brothers (Gregor + Otto Strasser who owned newspapers) were opposed to the capitalist groups like the above, they eventually lost out.
A Strasser-led NSDAP would have made NSDAP a no-go for Hindenburg and his governing people.
And of course for the major party backers.
So to secure the necessary support NSDAP had to eliminate the Strasser bothers.
First the Hitler thugs threatened Otto Strasser who would leave the party and flee to Prague.
Otto´s political demise left Gregor without the public support of the papers which Otto had been publishing.
Without those papers however Gregor Strasser had no voice and was on the losing end.
Gregor had no choice but to vow not to interfere with Hitler. However he was killed in 1934 in the Night of the Long Knives when the last remaining NSDAP opponents of Hitler were assassinated.
After this internal struggle was resolved by Jan. 1933 the above Keppler group provided NSDAP with new funding, around 3 Mio. Reichmark for the upcoming election (around 25Mio. $ today), because the 1932 Nov. failure had nearly ruined the Nazis. In fact German papers by Dec. 1932 were full of articles predicting the end of the NSDAP. So Hitler had to prove to his funders that he indeed was a thug.
btw it needs an Englishman like Adam Tooze to articulate this:
“The meeting of 20 February and its aftermath are the most notorious instances of the willingness of German big business to assist Hitler in establishing his dictatorial regime. The evidence cannot be dodged.”
“During the preceding eighty years the Germans had sacrificed to the Reich all their liberties; they demanded as a reward the enslavement of others. No German recognized the Czechs or Poles as equals. Therefore, every German desired the achievement which only total war could give. By no other means could the Reich be held together. It had been made by conquest and for conquest; if it ever gave up its career of conquest, it would dissolve.”
Much the same can be said of the Imperial US today.
.
During the course of the genocide Germany has increased its arm sales to Israel by 1000%. They now virtually match the quantity being supplied by the USA. That is why Nicaragua is waging a genocide case against Germany itself at the Hague and why I fear AJP Taylor was very much onto something. The mainstream in Germany is supporting genocide with its whole chest. Many analysts are also saying Germany is using Ukraine and Gaza to rearm and reassert. If that happens even the squirrels in the trees will be keeping a low profile.
will moon
p.s. however one should keep in mind that Gehlen was a fraud. The early West-German secret intelligence a catastrophe in terms of intelligence on the USSR which was supposedly Gehlen´s forte. Fact is during the war itself Fremde Heere Ost had almost not intelligence assets on RU territory or useful intelligence about RU. Something CIA needed a little time to realize. Gehlen had good post-war Nazi connections but that was not much help against the RU enemy outside. Only for domestic struggles.
p.p.s there is a fiction series on this issue on Netflix. Typically clumsy as often with German productions. In terms of entertainment. Politically they are trying to convey a bit about that struggle between Gehlen and Otto John.
Yea, AG, I know an awful lot about the military aspects of the Russo-German conflict and noticed early Gehlen’s tenure at Fremde Heers Ost was a bust. Soviet military intelligence was good, and he proved no better – and I believe considerably less able – than his predecessor, Colonel Kinzel, whom I rate highly. It was Gehlen’s relationship with the peoples of Russia’s “near abroad” that was being traded, not his limited Soviet knowledge, IMO.
…I have to look into Kinzel, since you mention him here…
Kinzel came over to me as a “non-political” military intelligence specialist. As WW2 proceeded Hitler shed many top Wehrmacht officers eg when sacking Guderian, the Fuhrer made reference to the changing the nature of the war and it’s differing demands requiring a different type of general (read obedient lol!), saying something about easy victories and vast distances, now he needed fighters who would not retreat, contest every foot of ground – reaching it’s apogee in General’s Schorner, Rendulic et al
Consider historical accounts of Fuhrer conferences concerning the Eastern Front prior to mid 1942 when Kinzel left office, he was appointed in 1938 I think. At these conferences, Kinzel’s estimates are in use and though one does not often see them quoted directly, if you look at enough of these accounts I believe they show this officer’s abilities clearly. While he is not always right, he does seem to pick out the “why” of it with remarkable monotony – his estimates cover the early period of the campaign in the East and Germany had great success in this period – Poland, Czechia, Barbarossa etc
will moon
on strategy – Andrei Martyanov – who might be exaggerating sometimes, he has expertise, but not on every single field – mentioned Gen. Patton as negative example for Western arrogance. Martyanov was speaking about Patton´s memoirs (“War as I Knew It”) and in those about some notes by editor Paul Harkins which are extremely critical of Patton´s military perfomance, i.e. that Patton basically has been overvalued in his accomplishments, because the German Army had in essence already been beaten by the Russians (I haven´t checked on those notes yet).
Martyanov argues that Patton as an alleged all-time legend of the Western Armies would have made a much worse figura pre-1943 when the Wehrmacht was better in shape. (However I myself doubt the in-depth quality of the Wehrmacht. I found Mearsheimer to concure with my views. After all our popular narratives are shaped by Western Allies´ interpretations – the victors – and those naturally exaggerate the enemy. But this is only an odd private sentiment of mine. I am no military historian.)
Since you mention Barbarossa and being confronted with this fact today – considering that every major war produces tons of info and possible new knowledge, I wonder if German scholarship on military strategy has salvaged all that knowledge adequately, in the wake of the chaos at the Eastern Front. The same way the Red Army has drawn from those years of experience. This also due to the fact that the FRG as defeated nation became much less militarized than others, be it GB, F, US or RU. In all those countries, military and militarism have played a much bigger role in popular and academic culture. And therefore in Germany there was never a comparable demand of that kind of knowledge. Which doesn´t necessarily mean that research and writing about these issues in Germany are worse but certainly much scarcer.
Something I frankly am not unthankful for. But in times like these this can turn into a disadvantage when discussing truth and fiction about the Ukraine War e.g. Expertise being limited.
Thanks again, will moon. I had never even heard of Kinzel.
The knowledge went into NATO, AG. I can’t make a blanket case for any particular items of data but German military records existed in several duplicates and though some sets were destroyed in the varying exigencies of the collapse of the Third Reich, precluding a full set, the duplicate system has left a lot behind, e.g. I think German Army Groups received a much wider set of communications than their remit might suggest and it is this built-in data redundancy which has preserved what is extant of the historical record.
Various Generals assisted in the data collection process – von Manteuffel and von Mellenthin amongst a wide tranche of German General Staff officers.
Hasso von Manteuffel – described as a “martinette” in the literature – emphasised mobility over armour protection and the importance of the AFV’s silhouette being unobtrusive as possible. The T-34’s broad tracks and excellent cross-country mobility made a lasting impression on him as indeed it did with many of his fellow compatriots who contributed to the American-led NATO documentation project. Looking at the Abrams tank, with it’s clunky silhouette and great weight leading to a tendency for the AFV to bog one can see the Americans didn’t listen lol!
Overall though NATO got the data, it just didn’t run in civilian academic channels
The Patton issue is meaningless. The scale on the Eastern Front makes comparisons nonsensical. The large numbers of little-known German Generals who were of high quality, in the military sense, was eventually matched by the Soviets and then surpassed. Nothing in the rest of the entirety of global conflict matches the slaughter, the frenzy, the unheard of logistical scale, the baffling organisational demands of multiple different “Directions” (movements backed by full logistical support) – waging main force war on a continental scale.
Patton didn’t operate in this environment – though if Truman had listened to his demand to use the few American Atom Bombs on the Soviets and fight it out against them on the steppe – probably assisted by a rebuilt “German Army”, we might be in a position to make such a judgement. Lol!
Well said, Will Moon; the ex-Nazis quietly re-entered town halls as they were able to run affairs in the Allied Zones.
Today the middle classes have too much salt on their butter and got politically lazy, a danger in any system that rather makes do with radicals than to have a civil service that is trained.
Geany is a hopeless US Vasal that says yes and Amen to everything.
Fear and loathing is ripe, the tool to get hardline behaviour against legit political opinion stamped out.
It’s Corbyn here and it’s Sarah Wagenknecht, and the AFD over in klein Deutschland.
thanks for your reply. I remember reading about Gehlen. I have read elsewhere of the general inefficiency of the CIA in actual espionage, and in particular penetrating the USSR, and my impression was that Gehlen helped them remedy that deficit, although replies below suggest otherwise. I know Germany was never really denazified. I guess Operation Paperclip was just part of a broader project of exploiting Germany, some of the knowledge workers imported into the US while the German phase of the operation was designed to ensure a reliably compliant tool in Europe..
Yes, one could wonder.
Perhaps a comparison, if in order, with Blightystan might reveal some strange parallels.
Including the orthography used in the extradition “legislation”.
Some might call it a “rabbit”hole.
“It will be interesting to hear the arguments to bury Nordstream investigations”.
Judging by Germany’s acquiescence in the US domination of Germany with its Industrial base cratering with 2 in every 3 German Industries going abroad due to having to pay exorbitant high prices for US gas. The German elite know full well the consequences of a fall-out with their US masters and will sacrifice the German people in order not to let that happen. It’s called having no self-respect.
Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), reportedly observed that the purpose of the Alliance was to keep the Americans in Europe, the Russians out, and the Germans down.
I don’t remember anybody quitting over the war in Libya, or really any of the war/interventions/ between Iraq 2 and the proxy war between Ukraine and Russia. There have been a few resignations over the war in Ukraine, but not very many that I recall. I think the genocide in Gaza is shifting things, though. I’m not sure how much, but it feels somewhere, deep underground, tectonic plates are shifting. “What rough beast is shuffling toward Bethlehem to be born”—that line is more apposite than ever. Thanks for you detailed reply about conditions in Germany.
It has been obvious for ages now that the judgements in this case are not on the level. The case should have been thrown out years ago after the discrediting of the main prosecution testimony and all the gross violations outside court by the USA. Instead it has been kept alive in a tedious charade that they have determined to endlessly spin out. Julian’s extradition hearing is the kind of crude hoax in which the British establishment now specialises. Elsewhere they are resuscitating the long antisemitism hoax from the Corbyn years in order to discredit protest against the genocide in Gaza (a genocide in which they are fully complicit). They have learned that as long as everyone who matters keeps singing from the same songsheet they will keep getting away with it.
A good take down of the methods used by zionist fifth columnists in the UK in attempting to stop legitimate protests against genocide in Gaza is given by Jonathan Cook, at:
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-04-22/outlaw-march-israel-genocide-gaza/
What Jonathan Cook says is perfectly correct and is an entirely accurate picture of a propaganda smear in action. Clearly the BBC failed to notice this manipulation of the facts – unless they realised what was happening and chose to give it air time because they hope to discredit the genocide in Gaza narrative. In other news the flow of data into Israel remains unrestricted, see:
https://edri.org/our-work/open-letter-european-commissions-decision-to-allow-data-flows-to-israel-alarms-privacy-experts/
What could be the harm in allowing data to flow into a genocidal, fundamentalist theocracy?
The BBC would have been fully aware of the staged managed incident. As Craig Murray stated in an interview last week, on GB News I think, the Gaza genocide has opened up a gap between the political class in Europe (plus its media cheerleaders) and the citizenry that has become quite alarming.
In the UK they attempted to ban any anti-genocide marches (remember Braverman was issuing edicts about what flags could be displayed and what chants were permissible) but the police have so far adopted a policy of managing demonstrations which have been peaceful. Hence the need for this cynical stunt.
Has Starmer commented on it yet?
….the world being so agog!
There was a most reverential interview on The World at One, Radio 4, on Sunday.
Falter was allowed to give, completely unchallenged, his staged version of events. Without need of evidence, he said he was spat at, called ‘scum’ etc just on account of being a Jew.
In hushed tones, the interviewer gingerly asked if he thought it might have been somewhat unwise to appear as he did. Because _some_ people might have wondered about that.
With feigned shock at the question, Falter gave the completely unrehearsed response that, “… if it had been a EDF/BNP or white power march and I (Falter) was a black man, would you even be asking me that question?”
(A far more accurate analogy would be if a bald-headed swastika-tattoo adorned white EDF/NF supporter showed up at a BLM march, but the interviewer was too polite to suggest that).
No question about whether the entire thing had been staged, what they were clearly hoping to get out of it, why was there no evidence of this alleged spitting/ cursing, how come there were plenty of Jews Against Genocide there without a problem, not a bit of it.
Thanks, Stevie. I agree with Jonathan Cook. The British media know it’s a crude hoax. They are only amplifying it because it demonizes anybody who dares protest the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinian children. A noble cause in which the British establishment are heavily involved.
Greg Park
It was a bit shocking to realize that the antisemitism hoax re: Corbyn in Germany really has gained long-term credibility. Alas, with the very same group of people who usually are skeptics and good people to talk to, until… you get to the topic of antisemitism…
(AARRRGGHHH!)
Similar things happened in 1950’s America, then the Un-American Affairs committee was asked to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties and to blacklist suspects (and their friends). Today the Western political elites and MSM, are asked to target and blacklist Anti-Zionists. Zionists are now dancing on Corbyn’s political grave and anyone else who dares speak out. Craig Murray included.
Rick Allen Republican Congressman brings The Old Testament In Biblical Grilling Of Columbia University President:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cringe/comments/1c6tnp8/rick_allen_brings_the_old_testament_in_biblical/?rdt=44853
These people are nuts, and much worse than McCarthyism in the US.
I would not say worse, not yet. But it is certainly trending that way. “Do you want to be cursed by God?” if you don’t back the genocide, Jahwah will smite your ass, verily.
The West’s paranoia about the ‘enemy within’ is devouring free speech. A constant theme here and the origins of it are sketchy as hell:
After Trump’s shock win in 2016, Govts in the West and Nato were susceptible to the Clinton campaign’s scattergun defensive excuses for that defeat: Be it James Comey investigating her use of a private email server to conduct official govt business, or claims foreign meddling played a huge role in that upset – a narrative pushed by parts of the security establishment – likely to bolster extra funding demands? Politicians sympathetic to Clinton’s claims found the foreign meddling narrative most compelling. They commissioned various studies and set up academic outfits tasked with investigating, having already convinced themselves – via groupthink reinforcement – that said meddling MUST have been a huge factor in her defeat. Since then, the anti-disinfo industry has grown substantially. Today, there are too many researchers chasing anything online that looks vaguely pro-Russia, China, N. Korean or Iranian, or any other stuff online that’s deemed critical of Western institutions. They’ve created a make-believe world in which all four countries are aligned in an attempt to sow division. It’s an accusatory environment reminiscent of the McCarthyite-era bollocks. Anyone knows, if you give a bunch of academic researchers, armed with PhDs in the social sciences (i.e. qualifications with very limited practical application outside their chosen academic research field) and, furthermore, make continued funding conditional on finding supporting evidence of mass mis/disinfo – well, they’re gonna come up with some ‘evidence’, even if they have to create it themselves! When pressed the anti-disinfo people typically end up citing the output of some random Twitter account, in say Latvia, with a tiny follower reach. They’ll dress it up as ‘significant’, even though, in the greater scheme of things it amounts to bugger all compared what a serious state operation could quite overtly rain down on the fragile, unpopular West’s leaders.
Look at what journalist Matt Taibbi found after Musk gave access to the Twitter files. Most of those accounts accused of peddling foreign disinfo were – after he digged deeper – alt-right, Trump/MAGA-supporting American citizens’ accounts. And Twitter’s own senior staff had cast internal doubts as to the justification for take-down and censorship requests. Hence why these anti-mis/disinfo outfits never reveal methodology; parameters, criteria etc. or, most importantly, jealously guard the online IDs of those they assume to be bot accounts. They know people everywhere would challenge them on whether cited content is actually mis/disinfo, and not just simply the truth or honestly expressed, albeit misguided, opinion. And they know they could be sued by those falsely accused.
This piece:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/04/22/russian-hackers-fuelled-princess-of-wales-conspiracies/
in yesterday’s Telegraph, illustrates how politicians and authorities are seeking to close down domestic debate by presenting all dissent as something alien or foreign.
People in the UK have campaigned to abolish the monarchy ever since it was restored (1660-85) following Oliver Cromwell’s death. Yet now, mockery is some dastardly attempt by foreign adversaries to undermine UK institutions. Be it reforming the unelected House of Lords, or demanding PR for Westminster. Even the very authentic desire for Scottish independence has been warped by authorities, into a plot by those acting at the behest of foreign powers (typically Russia & China) to weaken the UK. It’s an obnoxious accusatory environment.
Who dares criticise the EU’s unelected officialdom or NATO; or the US’s dominant role in deciding European foreign policies? When motivations are questioned in such a regular sinister fashion and the West has so little confidence in its ability to withstand dissent, you do wonder if there is any future for free speech?
Goose
All your criticism of the European democratic deficit is fair.
But surely an occasional comment on the splendid Russian state system would be appropriate?
Even if only for the sake of balance?
JK Redux
I imagine as Russia is pro-capitalist country (they gave up Communism a while back – it was on television so it’s true) that they too will have all the blessings of that particular system.
• A bad health Service.
• University Fees.
• Food banks.
• Not much Social care.
• Lots of homeless people.
• A lot of people in ‘Absolute Poverty’, whatever that means?
Under the Drunk Yeltsin it was a lot worse than what Putin presides over now. He has ‘raised’ living standards whereas the invitation by Yeltsin to their fellow capitalists to take what they wanted of the Soviet People’s assets lowered them to below the floor.
Gorbachev is a hero in the West for a reason. Because he facilitated all the robbery, and of course this led to the rapacious Oligarchs to fall out – Putin being one of them, and his favoured Oligarchs and the whingeing ex-Oligarchs who were ‘robbed’ by Putin’s Oligarchs and were left with none of the spoils. Representatives of these distressed Oligarchs pop up on TV from time to time. One who did alright owns a UK newspaper.
So all good across the Neo-liberal capitalist world (possibly including Russia).
Sounds like the sceptics need to wean themselves off ruling-class media.
On the 9th October 2023, Iran’s Defence Minister Mohammad Ashtiani said on behalf of the Iranian government:
“I have ordered a complete siege on Tel aviv. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.”
In addition, according to Bloomberg television, 9th October 2023, he said “We are fighting human animals.”
During an interview with Nick Ferarri, of LBC News on 11th October 2023 at the Labour party conference in Albert dock Liverpool, Mr Ferarri posed questions to Keir Starmer regarding Iran’s intention to commit grave war crimes, including collective punishment and the withholding of food, water and energy to approximately 4 million men, women and children in Tel Aviv.
Mr Ferarri asked Mr Starmer “A siege is appropriate. Cutting off power, cutting off water?” To which Mr Starmer replied “I think that Iran does have, that right. It is an ongoing situation.”
The Jewish community, worldwide would call [rightly] for Starmer to be sent to the Hague, instead he is lauded by the political elite and MSM. Disgusting, Starmer does not even try to disguise his racism.
An interesting contrast with the intention to extradite Julian Assange:
“UK tribunal blocks deportation of convicted child rapist.
“A criminal migrant has won an appeal arguing that being sent back to Eritrea would jeopardize his mental health”.
https://swentr.site/news/596429-uk-blocks-deportation-of-child-rapist/
Further from the article:
“A judge ruled last year that an illegal migrant from Gambia who attacked a woman in Scotland couldn’t be deported because he might not be given proper medical treatment back in West Africa. In another recent case, an Afghan migrant convicted of intentionally exposing his penis in public was granted refugee status in the UK after lawyers successfully argued that such behavior would “put him at high risk of physical violence” in his home nation.
“Anicet Mayela, an illegal Congolese migrant whose deportation was blocked by an airline cabin crew, pled guilty last week to raping a 15-year-old girl in Oxford, England. Mayela was reportedly a “poster boy” for anti-deportation activists and demonstrated outside a detention center wearing a sign saying, “Migrants are not criminals””.
So migrants and child rapists should not be deported in case they are ill treated in their own countries.
But a journalist and editor can be extradited in order that he can be ill treated in a foreign country.
See, Hear and Speak.
There are some humans who existed and exist now who aim to raise the whole of humanity not just preserve the delusion of a Golden Billion Master Race of the Collective West. The fantasyland of complacent, smug, saviours of the World from the ignorance and exploitation by the rising masses! As they struggle to raise themselves from poverty.
We are to keep them down for the benefit of the forever very Few who forge these fascist lies we live by!
In the C20th amongst many who changed the lives of their Peoples are of course Gandhi and Mandela. Not so well known is Gramsci, imprisoned at a young age as well for being a challenge to the rise of Fascism as the next stage of AngloEuropean Imperialism and self deluding superiority over all other Humans and ancient Civilisations.
Julian Assange is in my opinion in the ranks of those Great Men.
In ancient history and religion, apocryphally perhaps amongst other Great Humans is the Gautama, the Princeling who went beyond his ‘Garden’ to raise the masses from their personal servitude.
For Gramsci, try this primer by a regular commentator at MoonofAlabama.com, with whom you may not always agree – which its host claims to have shut for a few days while he ails (let’s hope that it reopens soon as it’s the greatest geopolitical analysis site I know of):
https://rogerboyd.substack.com/p/why-gramsci-is-so-relevant-today
There are plenty of links in there that speak to the censorship and daily more fascism we are being boiled into through the xenophobic propaganda against the Global South and the current great leaders who have changed the trajectory that the Old Imperialists had long planned and thought was in their hands.
As so-called journalists avert their gaze, hearing, and dare not speak, whilst still claiming to be saintly Global leaders of reporters who are too busy padding their cages for their media masters to worry about real journalists being censored, arrested and daily murdered.
In the C21st, Assange is one of the greats too, and is assured his place in history when all who have worked causing his suffering and silencing have long been forgotten or are just infamous footnotes in history for their Fascist Murderous deeds – such as Hitler, and our own Great Knight Dope SurkeerStarmztrooper and their cowardly ignorant cheerleaders, as most of us in the Collective Waste have been made, by our complicity.
As the face of the Buddha is the freer of the Mind from Worldliness – Gandhi and Mandela are the clear-sighted Opened Eyes of Freedom – Assange is the caged Voice that will free us from our complicity.
The elites tell us there is some great battle underway: Democracy vs Autocracy. There isn’t, as no one is advocating for a theocracy (Iran), or an autocracy (China), in the West as far as I can tell.
There is, however, a great deal of frustration and disillusionment in the West, with managed, unrepresentative, rigged democracy, and its media enablers. If democracy dies in the West it won’t be due to some bizarre amalgam of Russia, China, Iran and N. Korea waging some ‘ideological war’; it’ll be due to more and more people detecting and losing interest in the false choices they’re being presented with. Western elites in the US & UK hate true democracy in its rawest, purest, organic form probably more than the Chinese or Iranian leadership do. Because were we to have that kind of democracy, they’d lose their narrow, elitist self-serving control.
While China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other nations may well appear hostile to the US and other Western governments, their posture is unmistakably defensive. There is absolutely no intent to make trouble with the West. Fortunately, Asia constitutes a huge naturally defensible position with admirable internal lines of communication. The Western attempts to harm it appear in the light of a swarm of midges trying to hurt a big animal – a bear or a panda, maybe.
Meanwhile the West, thanks entirely to the efforts of its ruling and creditor classes, is steadily collapsing into a mound of stinking toxic sludge. In this respect Ukraine gives us an accurate preview of where the USA and UK are headed.
We keep hearing about the need to counter China’s ‘increased assertiveness’. China has performed miracles to become the second largest economy in the world and lift the standard of living for its 1.4 billion population. Why on earth shouldn’t they want a regional sphere of influence to go with that status? And why is it the UK’s business?
The assumptions underpinning the Anglo world, betray a residual arrogance and racism, that underpinned colonial attitudes too.
The UK elite will probably never fully accept our status as a mid-ranking power. I actually believe most of the problems in the world today, are caused by one, or a combination of the US, UK and Israel. There is no consistency/ even-handedness or compromise/flexibility in our diplomacy, It’s all very much a top-down here are our terms, now obey.
Jeebus H Crispy.
Why shouldn’t India have a “regional sphere of influence” then?
Or Brazil?
Or the African giants Nigeria and South Africa?
Mebbe Germany gets Denmark and the Netherlands?
Britain gets Ireland and France gets Belgium.
Spain gets Portugal back after (?) 500 years.
.
In other words, back to the 19th Century….
FFS
Goose,
Why don’t we – as a species – simply work co-operatively for the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ ?
Now wouldn’t that be both a sensible and helpful approach for all?
Are we sensible – so far as observing circumstances on the ground can answer?
” Why on earth shouldn’t they want a regional sphere of influence to go with that status? ”
You don’t think the people living in that ‘sphere of influence’ might not have an opinion on losing their sovereignty to an autocracy with an appalling human rights record?
“We keep hearing about the need to counter China’s ‘increased assertiveness’”.
All that really means is that the USA – or rather a tiny handful of very rich people, mostly owning US corporations – is entitled in some metaphysical way to own everything and control everyone. For China to ask for a share is like Oliver Twist asking for a second helping of soup – insufferable impertinence.
In fact the wealthy elite is as contemptuous of the great majority of US citizens as it is of the Chinese.
Courtenay, your question – sensible and fair as it will appear to most of us, including me – is really a matter of values. I agree that we should be prepared to share the world’s resources in a reasonable way, and that all people deserve respect and consideration.
But there are people who utterly reject such ideas, and would insist that only the strong and ruthless deserve to prosper. That it is every person’s moral duty to grab as much as they can, and let the weakest go to the wall. There are even some whose minds are so perverse that they try to justify their selfishness by an appeal – utterly unjustified – to Darwinism.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his “Essay on Man”,
“On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale”.
That is, we can orient ourselves and our choices through reason (the card or compass); but if it weren’t for instinct and emotion (passion) we wouldn’t do anything at all. Passion dictates what we want, mostly unconsciously; reason only helps work out how best to get what we want.
And passion is very much genetically determined. Most of us are born social, but there are always a few tigers – solitary predators.
Tom Welsh
You are serious about China, Russia, Iran, North Korea having absolutely no intent to make trouble with the West?
A one party regime, an authoritarian kleptocracy, a theocracy and a lunatic hereditary dictatorship are united in their desire for peace and harmony?
Aye right.
What unites that gangsters’ league is their determination to stay in power, whatever the cost to their own people and incidentally to the rest of the world.
“What unites that gangsters’ league is their determination to stay in power, whatever the cost to their own people and incidentally to the rest of the world.”
You realise the above perfectly describes the US duopoly, don’t you?
“What unites that gangsters’ league is their determination to stay in power, whatever the cost to their own people and incidentally to the rest of the world.”
Sounds like the America Empire, where Gates, Bezos, the Kochs, Musk, Murdoch and the rest of the oligarchs maintain their totalitarian grip on the political process.
Soz Mart just seen your post lol
JK Redux
in western democracies opposing a genocide is considered infinitely worse than participating in one.
Matt & Will Moon
The strength of the dislike (hate?) expressed here for the US and by extension the West is remarkable.
Perhaps I may pose the classic riposte, “where would you prefer to make a life as a middle income person, N Korea/Iran/Russia or France/Netherlands/Italy”?
(Ignoring linguistic difficulties of course.)
China is more debatable as a person willing to keep their head down and suppress any political views could probably have a decent life, though I wouldn’t like it.
JK redux
Who designates which countries are our allies or our adversaries? Remember, relatively recently, China was very much presented as a partner and friend, wth the then PM Cameron sharing a pint at his local pub in Buckinghamshire with Xi Jinping, as recently as 2015. In under ten years China has supposedly become our major adversary?
Are these designations debated in parliament? the answer is no. Are they debated in election campaigns? Nope. Both big parties are in lockstep. The power to decide is delegated to a small coterie of like-minded permanent officials (often extremists eg. the ultra obnoxious Stuart Seldowitz) in the US at the State Dept and UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office – they decide for everyone. Acting without any reference to voters or any debate among our elected representatives. And if you don’t support their designations, well, you’re disloyal and unpatriotic. Hmm? Is that democratic?
As atrocious a politician as Liz Truss was/is, she’s on to something in repeatedly calling out the UK permanent officialdom as an unelected ‘deep state’ or shadow govt pulling the strings, foisting Sunak on us. To be perfectly clear: I want more democracy and debate, not less.
goose
I find it difficult to believe that it’s permanent officialdom who are running Rishi Sunak. It’s the nutter right-wing of the Tory party. He doesn’t care or understand personally himself; he just reacts to daily pressures on him. He’ll return to his life of extreme wealth and comfort, when he’s ousted.
JKredux
“The strength of the dislike (hate?) expressed here for the US and by extension the West is remarkable.”
You have to attribute the source of the endless wars (and consequently refugee problem) to its real source: game-playing by US neocons, who are, or think they are, unaffected themselves personally by the consequences of what they do. Those denominated enemies by the US, are not in fact planning to take over the world, just survive. The wars come from Washington. We, the European sheep, just follow our master.
Laguerre
Upon defeat, Sunak will almost certainly go join the tech bros in California.
According to reports the Sunaks already have a home valued at £5m in Santa Monica. The Sunaks are effectively a billionaire couple, imho this makes Rishi wholly unsuited to address UK citizens’ everyday struggles.
We never found out why the US made special arrangements allowing him to keep his green card for years and years? Both Rishi Sunak his wife Akshata Murty held green cards, permitting US residence, until more than a year into his time in No.11. He seems to have broken the US’s own rules. In this clip(link), when quizzed by a reporter, the then White House press secretary Jen Psaki says, ‘I would point you to the State Dept or the Department for Homeland Security’:
https://news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunak-white-house-asked-about-chancellors-green-card-which-he-held-until-october-2021-12585777
Laguerre
Some confuse dislike for Western foreign policy, with dislike for the West per se. People who take this view are saying, those who decide our foreign policies are basically infallible.
This is the psychological straw man trick Neocons and their press facilitators pull: Don’t support our wars of choice; our unquestioning defence of Israel, and our hatred those we designate as our adversaries? Well, then you must hate the West!
It’s nonsense, and should be challenged in any democracy worth the name.
“ Perhaps I may pose the classic riposte, “where would you prefer to make a life as a middle income person,..” – jk redux
I am a low income person, I have always been a low income person and I always will be. To imagine the complex consummations and the peculiar shame of a middle income person is beyond my experience. The consummations I experience and the shame I feel are of a distinctly simpler order – you will have to clarify what you mean here. Recast your question in a form that is accessible to me, if you wish a response.
As for hatred or dislike, is it not possible to recognise that this empire, and it’s imperial lickspittles are merely a polychrome crew of pirates whose only outstanding feature is their unbridled rapacity? One can still feel love for one’s people – love for people, if one holds this view. You appear to have a very dark vision if your logic is anything to go by. That is your right but your vision is not one I share.
I agree with Adam Smith when he puts these words in their mouths – he called them “the Masters of Mankind” and suggested the following as their “vile maxim”.
“All for ourselves, nothing for anyone else”
”Perhaps I may pose the classic riposte, “where would you prefer to make a life as a middle income person, N Korea/Iran/Russia or France/Netherlands/Italy”?”
As a middle income earner (teacher) I worked in Russia for the last 10 years of my working life. I have since retired here in Moscow, in my 21 storey apartment block, since I prefer the style of life to what I experienced in the UK. The social behaviour and cleanliness in Moscow is far superior to what I observe on my occasional visits to UK cities. I have yet to encounter a Brit who has come to this city and not been astonished by how misled he/she was by the negative image of Russia relentlessly portrayed in the Anglosphere MSM.
In terms of political and historical understanding the average Russian is streets ahead of his UK counterpart. I have had discussions with shop workers who were well versed in what was happening in Scottish politics at Holyrood, and supported the idea of Scottish independence. Putin commands wide support since he is viewed as the man who chased out the western backed oligarchs and is now forcing NATO to retreat from its Ukraine proxy.
Piers Morgan
” an autocracy with an appalling human rights record?”
Such as the USA.
Whataboutery teaches us that it is humbug for the West to claim moral superiority in these matters, so we should not support the West’s efforts to conquer Russia, Iran or China as the outcome would be worse than the present conditions.
The ideas of the enlightenment have been rebranded as ‘Western Values’ to give the impression that western governments are their champions when historically those governments have always been the enemies of those values because thoase values are an obstacle to profit.
Pears has seen every day for the last 6 months that all their talk about human rights, the rule of law, the importance of truth, free speech and the sanctity of human life is bollocks.
he’s just pretending he hasn’t seen what the whole world has seen.
“there are none so blind as those who will not see”
So I’m guessing you wouldn’t accept direct rule from the US being forced on you. You might already think it already is so why would it be acceptable for China to impose in pursuit of a ‘sphere of influence’ some believe it has a right to?
China carries out more executions than anywhere else. The exact number is a state secret but is reckoned to be about 8,000. They have taken some small steps in the right direction, the number of capital offences was reduced to 55 from 68 a few years ago. North Korea is similarly secretive but is known to execute for trivial reasons such as watching K-Pop, Iran has the worst record for executions in the Middle East – far exceeding the ‘head choppers’ of Saudi Arabia – yet the autocratic state has its cheerleaders.
Russia declared a moratorium on capital punishment in 1996, although it still remains on the statute books. It does however openly engage in torture as reports from Ukraine and the treatment of the Crocus shooting suspects have shown.
“North Korea is similarly secretive but is known to execute”: if it is so secretive, how is it known and by whom? But no doubt the citizens would just love to be “”democraticised” like last time by the US and UK, when some two million were exterminated and the country flattened. And they weren’t even allowed a democratic referendum to ascertain if they agreed to being so exterminated.
North Korea admits it carries out public executions, secrecy surrounds the number.
As with the the worldwide executions carried out by the US and its puppets!
The genocide continues, thousands of aid trucks are deliberately kept from entering Gaza, while starving Gazan women are holding ‘paper thin’ infants. All brought to you by genocide Joe and his rich Zionist donors, and enabled by the scum of the UK leadership led by Sunak, Cameron, and Starmer. The students in the US are doing a wonderful job. If only students in our Universities could summon up the courage to occupy our Universities, maybe they will. These Zionist whores, as well as the Zionist project are finished, the sooner the better. Below are quotes from Netanyahu and Lapid showing the vile nature of Zionists.
“What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities,” Netanyahu said. His comments echoed President Biden, who labeled the demonstrations “antisemitic protests.”
Israeli Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid also called for a crackdown on the protests. “What’s happening on American college campuses is unforgivable,” he wrote on X. “It is antisemitism, it is support for terrorism, it is support for Hamas which murders LGBT people and oppresses women. The administration cannot stand by, it has to intervene.” https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/24/netanyahu-calls-for-crackdown-on-pro-palestine-protesters-in-the-us/
Harry, UK students have been occupying campuses and blockading Israeli weapons manufacturing sites since the genocide began. It just isn’t being reported by MSM, like the involvement in the genocide of the British Army.
Thanks Greg, Al Jazeera, the Canary are not included in my daily news roundups; maybe they should be. However, some Universities like Leeds are showing the way. I hope others show the same commitments to opposing genocide as students in Leeds do.
Unfortunately the powers that be in the Western Empire of “the Rules Based Order” aka the US Empire believe they need Israel as an occupied beachhead in the Middle East to exert control over the resources thereof. This belief forces them to accept Israel’s Final Solution to the Palestinian Question and that the Palestinians are both inconvenient and victims and as all practical tough-minded people know are the contemptible sources of their own victimization.
I am sure that if Julian was able to communicate, he would cheer on and support the massive protest shaking almost all American universities in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, dis-investment in weapons and munitions suppliers across the US and Europe.
He would speak out against the billions in support of the Zelenski regime, the brazen lies that create fear in Poland of ‘being overrun once Ukraine falls’ and that Putin plans a much wider war together with China, Iran and North Korea.
The impetus for these lies comes from the White House and NATOs attack dogs.
The situation in Israel is slowly escalating into Lebanon and Syria, with academics such as Benny Morris fanning the media and public into ever-increasing fear of a nuclear war.
Our PM Richie Sunak is spending taxpayers money without a mandate for his Rwanda escapade. He should personally pay for this flag-waving shiner of a stupid idea, from his own ill gotten gains. Put him in the Tower until he pays up for this pre-election policy aimed at right-wingers.
My apologies for putting ideas out of what Julian Assange might have said. He does not have to say anything, just be with his family and, most important, his children and wife.
It may be that the spook services of the Western Empire of “The Rules Based Order” aka the US, its NATO lackeys and all other non-US/UK anglophone nations, the CIA and MI6 were so incompetent before the collapse of the Soviet Union that they didn’t realize that the great and feared Red Army threatening Europe was a paper tiger but after the fall they have no such excuse. The idea that Russia with a GDP comparable to that of Italy could overrun the Baltic states, Finland, Poland and and Sweden and Switzerland is absurd.
Now NATO is definitely an offensive alliance aimed at regime changing Russia so that Western kleptoplutocrats can grab all its resources. I do not believe that the evil Putin had any other choice than to invade Eastern Ukraine to stop the US Backed paleo-Nazi followers of Stepan Bandera who provided muscle for the 2014 protests and subsequent coup from raining shells on the Russian speakers in the East.
As far as TPTB in the US are concerned the fact that Ukraine’s defeat is inevitable because it is a fifth the size of Russia and has already run out of military age males to use the shiny new weaponry does not matter because the beautiful profits that the war industries will reap and if the weapons are loan financed Ukraine will have to turn over all its assets at fire-sale prices to pay back.
The Western Empire of The Rules Based Order is in truth a kleptoplutocratic oligararchy!!!
The ponzi scheme that is western economics is all based on the USA, UK, etc. printing more and more ‘virtual’ money to lend to their pet projects. The fortunes are built on the foundations of extremely dodgy QE. When/if this all collapses there will be a huge economic vacuum with nothing to fill it, apart from the blood of the oppressors.
National debts: USA – $34.6 Trillion; UK – $3.7 Trillion.
Go figure, best to buy gold now.
So Carlyle, is Ukraine a threat to Russia?
Or was it in February 2022?
If not, why did Russia invade Ukraine in February 2022?
You don’t think that having a hostile country, filled with Nazi sympathisers, joining NATO and thus allowing weapons to be lined up right on your boarders, constitutes a threat?
Ukraine was never hostile to Russia, right up until 2014 Russia was its biggest trading partner. Neither is it ‘filled with Nazi sympathisers’, the far right has less support than it does inside Russia. Russia already had NATO states on its borders now as a direct result of this illegal invasion it has another, with Finland, 830 miles of it. So when will Putin invade to remove this ‘existential threat’? He won’t because he’s not stupid enough to go to pick a fight with NATO.
Ukraine has, and is still being used by the West to settle scores with Russia.
I’m not reading many claims in our news reports these days, that Ukraine has some viable path to victory. Just talk of it being a bloody stalemate lasting years, and that’s if Ukraine’s luck holds out. Some luck?
The Russians are now mass producing very scary weapons indeed, like the FAB-3000, 5000 and a ‘holy shit’ 9000 version. Read this report from the front on what these things do:
Features of the use of high-explosive bombs FAB-3000 were described by military journalist Alexei Borzenko.
“Well, they were treated with these bombs. We came, there is no return fire. We entered, those who remained alive are sitting, holding a machine gun in their hands, deaf, blind, severely shell-shocked, not thinking at all. We approach, take the machine gun out of our hands, raise it (the soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – ed.), and he goes to the prisoners,”
Borzenko retold the words of our fighters in a comment for the 360 TV channel.
After the “work” of the FAB-3000, there is practically no retaliatory strike from the enemy, as our fighters note.
——
Would any of these armchair generals in the West, some on here; our politicians, or the pro-war trolls on social media, want to send their 20 year old raw recruit son or daughter to face that kind of fate? Horrific.
Two anti-zionists – Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté – discuss the US Universities’ Gaza protests, and also the way Zionists try to infiltrate Palestinian groups in order to smear them. They talk about the US bill to send billions of dollars to Ukraine and Israel and how this is all a scam, with the assistance of so called progressives like AOC. A fascinating glimpse into the machinations of US politics; and as the title suggests, it will all come back home: i.e. it will be a long hot summer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9QbINUwGy4
thx
and on that note, from my side a very good interview by Turkish TRT with Norm Finkelstein:
Palestine Talks | Norman Finkelstein
April 20, 2024
40 min.
https://www.normanfinkelstein.com/palestine-talks-norman-finkelstein/
Finkelstein speaks about his parents and their past´s significance for him. Stories some of us already know.
But at about 20 min. into he starts to speak about the beginning (and the end incidentally I would say, in some way) of his career, the time of his dissertation. And how he was studying a bestseller about the Palestine case. And one night realized that that bestseller was a fraud and was able to prove it. After that he became a public persona.
That moment in my life, he said, made me a forensic scholar.
He later speaks about the Holocaust instrumentalisation e.g. in Germany and much more.
I recommend this as well, because he talks about the topic but with new focus from his not uneventful life.
And besides he is very enjoyable to listen too, not least because he never looses his humour even though he mostly talks about the most horrific things.
Yes, the weekly discussion between those two on Grayzone Live is always top notch. Two very bright minds taking apart all the dim bulb pro-genocide propaganda.
Here’s Media Lens’s latest on the Dark Age of propaganda we are living through. (Includes a commendation for Mr Murray for his assessment of George Galloway on this ‘ere blog).
https://www.medialens.org/2024/the-media-lens-chamber-of-propaganda-horrors-an-appeal-for-support/
Greg Park,
Don’t these few sentences sum it up for Craig Murray’s views on George Galloway:-
” ‘I have known George Galloway my entire adult life, although we largely lost touch in the middle bit while I was off diplomating. I know George too well to mistake him for Jesus Christ, but he has been on the right side against appalling wars which the entire political class has cheer-led. His natural gifts of mellifluence and loquacity are unsurpassed, with an added talent for punchy phrase making.
‘… But outwith the public gaze George is humorous, kind and self-aware. He has been deeply involved in politics his entire life, and is a great believer in the democratic process as the ultimate way by which the working classes will ultimately take control of the means of production. He is a very old-fashioned and courteous form of socialist.’ “
Galloway is not on the “right side against appalling wars” if you include Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine.
I do.
Sad to say, many here see Vlad the Bad as a hero.
I don’t.
@ JK
Sad!?
Getting no traction with the Russophobia eh? Think you can just demand that we must accept your blinkered nonsense? That is the real SAD delusional narrative of calling a leader of a sovereign land ‘Vlad the bad’ ? Do you think we are supposed to accept the ‘bad’ because you declare it?
A ‘hero’ too you declare. You really want to live with the concept that nearly 8 billion people will buy into the narrative of Hollywood infantilism of good and bad, hero and villain. I’m glad you are worried we aren’t buying into it.
Sometimes it just makes me laugh out loud at such desperate nonsense. Like your attempt did.
DunGroanin
Yes Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is the “leader of a sovereign land” as are the leaders of woman-hating Iran and people-hating NKorea.
I hope that you are not suggesting that he derives some entitlement to respect for this?
After all that would imply that Hitler, Stalin and Mao are similarly entitled.
“Vlad the Bad”
Your obsession with this man is mildly disturbing – you do know he doesn’t live in Britain don’t you, nor does he serve as a Brit Pol and he is, therefore, a priori, not directly responsible for your current condition? My granny always said it is a thin line between love and hate. (Assuming you live in Britain)
Things aren’t what they used to – back in 70’s we had Ted the Ped then Mag the Hag, followed by Tony the Phoney, then Gord the Fraud and Dave the Knave, oh yet then we had……
Will Moon
I don’t live in Britain, nor am I British, so your comments are moot.
It’s not Russophobia that’s blinkered but Russophilia, the delusional belief that because the west is evil any regime that opposes the west must be beyond reproach; no matter how murderous and oppressive.
Maybe so, but your obsession with this one terrible feature of a world so full of such features, arrayed in landscapes of horror seems significant – pregnant even.
Your feelings concerning Mr Putin are noted for posterity so please give it a rest. He is not that interesting, he’s Putin and we all know what that means and even those who have been paying fine attention to his origins and development as a phenomenon know no more than that – but he is over there, not over here and he is not profiteering off my energy costs. In fact he sells cheap gas, some five times cheaper than US “fracked” gas
The Western countries need reform – ckuf Putin
An interesting interview with Sophie Scott-Brown, on the history of anarchism and its relevance today. Listen, or read with an open mind:
https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area/23997329/anarchism-politics-sophie-scott-brown-the-gray-area
So much that I’m sure many can identify with in the desire to move away from ‘permanent authority’ structures and towards democratically empowering the masses, by cutting out the corrupt middlemen and women (the politicians and officials). And technologically, that may become a feasible proposition with Swiss-style referenda already deciding major policies. I’ve never considered my own views to be anarchistic, mainly because of the negative connotations associated with that word.
Will moon
You said
“Your feelings concerning Mr Putin are noted for posterity so please give it a rest. He is not that interesting, he’s Putin and we all know what that means and even those who have been paying fine attention to his origins and development as a phenomenon know no more than that – but he is over there, not over here and he is not profiteering off my energy costs. In fact he sells cheap gas, some five times cheaper than US “fracked” gas”
That sounds like an attempt to limit the discussion to topics with which you are comfortable.
Putin is, like him or loath him, a major actor on the Eurasian stage.
To ignore him would be absurd.
Not if you live in Britain – Putin is well down the list – bought political parties, justice system buckling under political/corporate assault – I could go on but the list is too long before I get to him
My point is that political energy should go into domestic issues in Britain – not foreign bogey persons. Your talking to a person who remembers many foreign leaders being called the new “Hitler”. Most of that talk is mere boilerplate – in hindsight the mere braying of educated beasts of burden, carrying water for the Bond Traders and the Merchants of Death – it don’t impress me much.
Because you don’t live in Britain you are unaware that most here see through this charade of foreign bogey people and the country cries out for reform, for rejuvenation. The Pols are trying to give the NHS to the oligarchs, which highlights the pervasive nature of the political corruption is this country, the media owned by a couple people – year on year the super rich get their rewards for owning the Pols – record dividends. You talk about what you like, Putin if you want and I will point out that you have overemphasised this issue in a British context – he just ain’t relevant, sorry
My host and yours, Mr Murray stands for election. He has given his views on Putin. I just don’t have any because of the huge domestic problems we face – ckuf Putin