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Housing prices are exploding and the EU is going to make it worse, warns Polish MEP

Remix News | October 10, 2024

Housing prices are exploding, warns Polish MEP Anna Zalewska, and EU policy backed by commission President Ursula von der Leyen will lead to disaster.

“In the European Parliament, we have recently been discussing crises themselves — the automotive industry, the competitiveness of the EU economy and yesterday, the housing crisis,” said MEP Anna Zalewska. “There is one conclusion from all these debates. Ursula von der Leyen is leading the European Union to the edge of the abyss.”

Zalewska claims that the reason for the housing crisis is EU climate regulations during the 10th session of the EU parliament, according to Polish news outlet Do Rzeczy. She cites the energy efficiency directives, as well as the regulation on eco-design, on construction products, and the certification of CO2 emissions. All of these factors are rapidly driving up the cost of not only modernizing homes, but also the cost of building new ones.

“This will make housing not only a luxury good, but also an unattainable good. What is the European Commission proposing? If someone does not comply with these documents, they will pay fines on how their apartment is heated, among other things. These documents should be thrown in the trash,” Zalewska.

Even left-wing organizations and news outlets have acknowledged that “green renovations” are driving up housing and apartment prices. In many cases, any renovations landlords will need to make to meet energy efficiency and carbon goals will be passed on to tenants.

“With their sights set on energy efficiency, policy-makers neglect that green renovations are driving up rents for the most vulnerable. Only with strong social protections and a shift away from financialization can the basic right to housing be made compatible with curbing emissions,” writes the Green European Journal.

Housing costs across Europe have already soared over the last 10 years, but in many countries, such as Germany, new-build construction has slowed dramatically. Builders cite high building material costs, high costs for labor, and a shortage of labor. In addition, national regulations have placed serious cost burdens on developers and construction companies. Now, EU regulations are expected to cost €1 trillion to bring buildings up to code in Europe in terms of energy efficiency.

However, EU regulations are not the only factors. Mass immigration is also driving up rental and even housing prices in Europe, especially in migrant-heavy countries such as Germany. Many newcomers want to live in the cities, where competition for housing is intense.

For instance, in 2002, Remix News reported that Germany’s apartment vacancy rate has seen its biggest decline in more than 20 years, falling to just 2.5 percent nationwide at the end of 2022, and migration is being fingered as one of the primary causes behind the crisis.

The data, published by consulting institute Empirica and the real estate specialist CBRE, shows that the “market-active vacancy rate,” apartments that can be rented out immediately or offered for rent over the medium term, fell 2.5 percent to about 554,000 residential units at the end of 2022.

“The (drop) in vacancies in 2022 was characterized by the immigration of around 1 million people from Ukraine,” said Empirica CEO Reiner Braun at the time.

Poland, on the other hand, has not seen an influx of foreigners at the same rate as Germany, although hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have arrived in the country in recent years. Other factors at work are internal migration patterns to larger cities away from rural areas, international investment and speculation, and gentrification trends.

Although housing prices dipped in many countries shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic — which sent asset prices, including real estate, to sky-high prices — real estate prices are already recovering and marching higher, according to a new report from ING.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Democrat Congresswomen Tell Social Media Platforms to “Quickly and Decisively” Censor Hurricane “Misinformation”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 11, 2024

Despite recent pushback for politicians encouraging social media platforms to increase censorship online, in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, a cadre of Democratic House representatives from the affected regions have appealed to major social media platforms to intensify their efforts to censor alleged “misinformation” related to the storms.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

“We write to your platforms with an urgent request on behalf of states affected by the devastation of Hurricane Helene and those currently being impacted by Hurricane Milton,” the letter states. “In the aftermath of Helene, we have witnessed a troubling surge in misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and scams that are hindering recovery efforts and exploiting vulnerable individuals and families.”

The representatives say that they are concerned about the proliferation of false claims and blame these reportedly false claims for the hindering of recovery efforts. The congresswomen also say that social media posts are undermining public confidence in institutions.

The call for a crackdown on misinformation was articulated in a letter addressed to seven major social media entities, including Meta, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, Snap, and Instagram. Authored by Representatives Deborah Ross (D-N.C.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), and Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.), the letter alleges that misinformation is having a dire impact.

The letter doesn’t directly demand censorship of alleged misinformation, but it does put pressure on platforms to police speech, saying that they have the “power and the responsibility” to “improve the digital spaces.”

The congresswomen say that they “strongly encourage” platforms to act “quickly and decisively.”

In a press conference today, President Biden dismissed some of the criticism of the response to the hurricane as “lies” and said, “Those who have been spreading these lies to try to undermine the opposition, they are going to pay a price for it.”

The political pressure on social media platforms to step in regarding a major event echoes what happened during the Covid pandemic.

During the pandemic, the call for online censorship by politicians and health authorities under the guise of combating misinformation became a contentious issue. This initiative, aimed at preventing the spread of allegedly harmful or misleading information about the virus, its transmission, and treatments, led to a wide array of interventions by social media platforms and tech companies.

As part of these efforts, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube introduced policies to flag, remove, or demote content that contradicted the evolving understanding of health authorities such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The intent was supposedly to protect public health; however, the execution of these policies often resulted in the suppression of legitimate discourse and the removal of content that later proved to be accurate.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Adversarial Process or Oppo Research? Judge Agrees To Release More Trump Material Before the Election

By Jonathan Turley | October 11, 2024

It appears that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan and Special Counsel Jack Smith are not done yet in releasing material in advance of the election. In a previous column, I criticized the release of Smith’s  180-page brief before the election as procedurally irregular and politically biased, a criticism shared by  CNN’s senior legal analyst and other law professors. Nevertheless, on Thursday, Judge Chutkan agreed to a request from Smith to unseal exhibits and evidence in advance of the election.

The brief clearly contains damning allegations, including witness accounts, for Trump. The objection to the release of the brief was not a defense of any actions taken on January 6th by the former president or others, but rather an objection to what even the court admitted was an “irregular” process.

As discussed earlier, Smith has been unrelenting in his demands for a trial before the election. He has even demanded that Donald Trump be barred from standard appellate options in order to expedite his trial.

Smith never fully explained the necessity of holding a trial before the election beyond suggesting that voters should see the trial and the results — assaulting the very premise of the Justice Department’s rule against such actions just before elections.

To avoid allegations of political manipulation of cases, the Justice Department has long followed a policy against making potentially influential filings within 60 or 90 days of an election. One section of the Justice Department manual states “Federal prosecutors… may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election.”

Even if one argues that this provision is not directly controlling or purely discretionary, the spirit of the policy is to avoid precisely the appearance in this case: the effort to manipulate or influence an election through court filings.

With no trial date for 2025, there is no reason why Smith or Chutkan would adopt such an irregular process. The court could have slightly delayed these filings until after the approaching election or it could have sealed the filings.

If there is one time where a court should err on the side of avoiding an “irregular” process, it is before a national election. What may look like simply an adversarial process to some looks like oppo research to others.  Delaying the release would have avoided any appearance of such bias.

For Smith, the election has long been the focus of his filings and demands for an expedited process. Smith knows that this election is developing into the largest jury verdict in history. Many citizens, even those who do not like Trump, want to see an end to the weaponization of the legal system, including Smith’s D.C. prosecution. Trump has to lose the election for Smith to be guaranteed a trial in the case.

Chutkan has given the Trump team just seven days to oppose her order. That would still allow the material to make it into the public (and be immediately employed by the media and Harris campaign) just days before the election. The move will only increase criticism that this looks like a docket in the pocket of the DNC.

It is telling that, once again, the timing just works out to the way that is most politically impactful. Many are left with a Ned Flanders moment of “well, if that don’t put the “dink” in co-inky-dink.”

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | 1 Comment

The US House of Representatives, where Only the Ending of the Afghanistan War is Condemned

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | October 11, 2024

A majority of United States House of Representatives members voted on September 25 to approve a resolution (H.Res. 1469) condemning 15 members of the executive branch “for their role in the Biden-Harris administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and noncombatant evacuation operation, which led to the injury and death of United States servicemembers, injury and death of Afghan civilians, abandonment of American civilians and our Afghan allies, and harm to the national security and international stature of the United States.”

Sure, the withdrawal of the US from its war in Afghanistan could have been done better. But, where is the similar condemnatory resolution regarding the people in the US government who started, ramped up, and pursued year after year this long US war? The resolution focuses on deaths in the withdrawal. Yet, those deaths were a small fraction of the overall deaths from the war. The Costs of War project at the Watson Institute for international & Public Affairs tallies 176,000 people were killed directly in the violence of the Afghanistan War, plus several times that many more “killed as a reverberating effect of the wars — because, for example, of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural issues, and war-related disease.” Of course, had there not been a withdrawal, the war deaths total would have increased.

The resolution complains of “a chaotic, precipitous withdrawal that resulted in the death of 13 servicemembers.” But, included in those 176,000 deaths from the Afghanistan War that the Costs of War project reports there were the deaths of 2,324 US military members. If you want to condemn people for deaths of American military members in the Afghanistan War, focusing on the withdrawal seems a peculiar choice.

Of course, death and destruction of the Afghanistan war was mainly inflicted on the people of Afghanistan. That is in line with the usual outcome with US wars abroad.

Americans, though, did pay a large bill via taxes and inflation for the expedition of destruction that redounded no net benefit to the public. For the military-industrial complex, in contrast, the gains were grand.

The failure to condemn the Afghanistan War itself should be no surprise. The US House funded it year after year. Then, it has proceeded to fund the ongoing Ukraine and Israel wars with their combined death toll far exceeding that or the Afghanistan War. War is a big part of the legislative agenda.

Maybe years after the Ukraine and Israel wars finally end, a majority of House members will vote to approve resolutions criticizing how peace was achieved. That will call for some backslapping and other expressions of mutual approval.

The US House of Representatives is sometimes referred to by the nickname of the People’s House. A more appropriate nickname is the War House.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Rights group files ICC complaint against 1,000 Israel soldiers for war crimes in Gaza

MEMO | October 11, 2024

A European rights group has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against 1,000 Israeli occupation soldiers for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza.

In a statement released on its website on Tuesday, the Hind Rajab Foundation, a branch of the March 30 Movement,  said the complaint is “supported by over 8,000 pieces of verifiable evidence – including videos, audio recordings, forensic reports, and social media documentation – demonstrates the soldiers’ direct involvement in these atrocities.”

It added that soldiers were named and were all “located in Gaza during the genocidal assault, and the evidence reveals their participation in violations of international law.”

It added that it provided evidence that they had taken part in the “destruction of civilian infrastructure … Illegal occupation and looting … Participation in the Gaza blockade … Targeting civilians … Use of inhumane warfare tactics,” which are violations under international law.

The soldiers named include “high-ranking officers and commanders responsible for planning and executing military operations in Gaza,” individuals with dual citizenship, “including 12 from France, 12 from the United States, 4 from Canada, 3 from the United Kingdom, and 2 from the Netherlands,” and soldiers “who have openly boasted about their war crimes on social media,” the statement explained.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 2 Comments

Iran condemns strike on makeshift hospital on Syria-Lebanon border

Press TV – October 11, 2024

Iran has strongly condemned Israel’s strike on a medical facility on the Syria-Lebanon border, calling it “a clear example of war crimes.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Thursday that frequent Israeli attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria show the regime’s disregard for all international rules and regulations.

Baghaei called for unequivocal condemnation of Israel’s attack by all relevant international bodies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

He also highlighted the need for global action to help thousands of Lebanese people who have been displaced in the past two weeks following Israel’s aggression against Lebanon.

The Israeli strike on Iran’s 56-bed field hospital on Wednesday destroyed ambulances and all medical equipment inside the facility.

The hospital was established to aid Lebanese displaced people on the Syrian-Lebanese border.

The hospital housed food supplies, medical equipment, and medicines.

The hospital was clearly marked with the flag and symbols of the Red Crescent. The ambulances, the field hospital, and all the hospital’s supplies were destroyed in the attack by Israel.

Since the start of the offensive on October 7 last year Israeli occupation forces have particularly targeted Gaza’s education and health sectors. It has bombed most of the hospitals, schools, colleges and universities.

Hundreds of educational institutions, including 65 run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), were also bombed and vandalized.

Despite the UN Security Council demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli regime continues its genocidal war against the Palestinian people trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip, aiming for the complete eradication of its people.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Entrenched impunity’: Pezeshkian slams US, Europe supports as Israel continues to kill

Press TV – October 11, 2024

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian considers the impunity with which the Israeli regime has been carrying out deadly atrocities across the region to be down to the unstinting support provided for the regime by the US and Europe.

The regime “has trampled on all the international laws, human rights, and whatever [instance of] humanity,” the chief executive told Russia’s Rossiya 1 state television channel on the sidelines of a forum in Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat on Friday.

Pezeshkian was referring to the regime’s bloodletting spree throughout the region, including its October 7, 2023-present genocidal war on the Gaza Strip that has so far killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, as well as its escalated attacks on Lebanon, which have claimed thousands of other lives.

“No one [however] can say anything to the regime because the United States and Europe are supporting it,” he added.

The regime’s Western supporters, most importantly its biggest ally, the United States, have, throughout the course of the atrocities, been providing it with billions of dollars’ worth of military support. They have also been shielding Tel Aviv against punitive international measures, including those taken by the United Nations, with their negative votes or abstentions.

Pezeshkian’s remarks echoed those that he had made earlier during a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladmir Putin in the Turkmen capital.

In those remarks, the Iranian president had regretted that the regime’s atrocities had caused the regional situation to become “critical,” and denounced the US and European countries for refusing to let relations among the regional countries to continue on a peaceful footing.

Elsewhere in his remarks to the Russian television, Pezeshkian asserted that Iran’s attitude towards all regional countries was based on the values that have been underscored by the United Nations, namely peace, security, and human dignity.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel targets internationals to facilitate ongoing crimes against Palestinians​​​​​​​

Israeli forces arbitrarily arrested 78 year old US citizen

Photo: Portrait of Michael Jacobsen provided to the ISM
International Solidarity Movement | October 10, 2024

Masafer Yatta – Veteran Michael Jacobsen was accompanying a Palestinian farmer this morning in the village At-Tuwani in Masafer Yatta (South Hebron Hills), in occupied Palestine, as part of the international delegation Meta Peace Team, which joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

When Israeli reservist soldiers came to demand IDs from the activists and Palestinian landowners, Jacobsen complied with the soldiers’ requests. The soldiers called the Israeli police, who arrested him and took him to the Israeli Central Unit for Investigation, which is near the Ma’ale Adumim colonial settlement in the occupied West Bank. This interrogation center is home to the special task force created by the notorious Israeli Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. The task force was created as a response to some states, including the U.S., sanctioning violent settlers. Since international activists were reporting settler violence that they witnessed to their governments, an Israeli governmental committee was created in March 2024 for the purpose of getting rid of the activists.

Jacobsen’s lawyer was told that he was suspected of “endangering the public due to provocation of disturbances” and of “entering the country illegally”; this absurd suspicion was based on the police’s assertion that Jacobsen supported the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanction movement (BDS). The police could not explain to Mr. Jacobsen’s attorney how this was a criminal offense. Mr. Jacobsen was threatened with imprisonment and deportation if he did not leave the country immediately. Michael opted to leave, and the police transferred him directly from the interrogation center to the border with Jordan.

Israeli forces have intensified their crackdown on international activists and journalists: two German activists were arrested in the same garden in At-Tuwani in similar circumstances and de-facto deported last Sunday October 6th, after being imprisoned since October 2nd. This effort aims to isolate Palestinians from international solidarity, and is part of the ongoing barrage of harassment by Israeli settlers and soldiers of Palestinians and of human rights activists in the area. The effort also includes the murder of American and Turkish ISM volunteer Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the village of Beita during a peaceful protest against settlement expansion on the village’s land on September 6th.

It is worth mentioning that the Palestinian farmer whom the activists were accompanying faces daily harassment, attacks, and invasions of his private land by Israeli settlers and occupation forces, which all make it difficult for him to access his land, to cultivate it, and even to remain in his home.

This onslaught of harassment against Palestinian residents of the region of Masafer Yatta extends beyond At-Tuwani. Every village in the area is affected. In the village of Zanuta in this same region, residents have been forcibly displaced multiple times despite a court ruling in their favor. Residents of Um Durit have had their livestock and property stolen and destroyed, and their land abused by settlers. Last July, around 200 settlers launched a coordinated attack in which they destroyed vehicles, burned fruit trees and beat up residents in Khalet Al Daba’a and Um Fagarah. In the past year, at least 19 Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank have been forcefully displaced and wiped off the map by Israeli settlers, with the support of the Israeli occupation forces.

The nonsensical allegations aimed at International Human Rights Defenders would be laughable if they were not lethal. For similar vague and unsubstantiated accusations, Palestinians are frequently arrested and tortured in the West Bank, and in Gaza the accused are murdered along with their families.

Photo: Moments before Michael Jacobsen’s arrest, At-Tuwani, Masafer Yatta, October 10.​​​​​​​
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October 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | 1 Comment

Israel’s war on journalism continues: American Jeremy Loffredo arrested, faces severe punishment for accurate reporting

By Iara Modarelli | 21st Century Wire | October 11, 2024 

Israeli authorities have arrested American journalist Jeremy Loffredo, intensifying their assault on press freedom and extending their war on journalism by targeting independent American reporters working in Israel.

Loffredo, 28, is an investigative journalist known for his work with The Grayzone, and was arrested shortly after publishing his recent report on the Iranian missile retaliation which reportedly struck several Israeli military and intelligence sites, including one missile landing next to the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, as well as multiple impacts in and around Israel’s most important air operations sites located at Nevatim Air Base.

According to colleagues, Loffredo was with a group of four other journalists when they were blindfolded, beaten, and detained by the Israel security forces, allegedly for exposing the Israeli regime’s military activities, according to Russian-Jewish reporter Andrey X.

Jeremy is currently the only journalist still being detained from the group, and his arrest is sparking widespread concerns of a potential diplomatic catastrophe between the U.S. and Israel after representatives from the U.S. Embassy attended court hearings in Jerusalem regarding his continued detention. Loffredo’s lawyer, Leah Tsemel, has argued that Loffredo had acted transparently and publicly and challenged the claim put against the journalist. claims that he was aiding the enemy.

Overall, his on-the-ground reporting shed light on the comprehensive damage caused by Iran’s Operation True Promise II, a retaliatory strike following a series of high-profile assassinations carried out by Israel which targeted key leaders in Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC. The Grayzone journalist was arrested on charges of endangering national security with allegations that he was “aiding the enemy during wartime” by disclosing sensitive information.

Loffredo also explains how airstrikes on Gaza were launched from the Nevatim base, information which had largely been omitted from western mainstream coverage of the event. He also reported how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private jet may also have been located at the base.

A campaign on X has gone viral under the hashtag #FreeJeremyLoffredo, with thousands of people seeking to bring attention to Jeremy’s arrest and intensify pressure on the U.S. State Department, as the Israeli charges against Loffredo intensify, where he faces the potential of life behind bars, or even the death penalty – all for the crime of doing journalism.

Interestingly, Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal revealed on X how US mainstream media outlet PBS had already reported from one of the same ‘sensitive’ locations as Loffredo – with no repercussions whatsoever from Israeli authorities.

UPDATE: Blumenthal broadcast this morning that the Israel authorities have now released Jeremy Loffredo from custody, but he is forbidden from leaving the country for the time being.

Israel’s crackdown on the free press and journalism has escalated dramatically over the past 12 months, with the killer of over 180 journalists, many of them Palestinian, including a number of targeted murders in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon since hostilities increased October 2023. This unprecedented death toll marks the highest number of journalists killed over a 12 month period of any war zone in history.

Currently, dozens of other reporters remain imprisoned without official charges as Israel intensifies its efforts to suppress any media coverage which exposes a mounting list of warcrimes carried out in the occupied territories.

To date, there has been no official statement by the U.S. government regarding the status of Jeremy Loffredo.

VIDEO: View Jeremy Loffredo’s most recent video report from Israel.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 1 Comment

Israel hopes to put American on death row for doing journalism

He must be punished for telling the truth about Israel

Laura and Normal Island News | October 11, 2024

This is going to come as upsetting news, but I must inform you a number of terrorists have been attempting to do journalism in Israel. This has prompted fears the truth might reach the public and they might be informed about what is really going on. I know, it doesn’t bear thinking about…

Following the recent rocket attack by Iran that was the most terrifying thing in history, but also embarrassingly pathetic and a massive failure, Israel sensibly decided no one is allowed to report the truth. Unfortunately, several individuals decided it was their right to pollute your mind with facts and evidence.

The officially authorised version of events is that almost all of those Iranian rockets were intercepted by the iron dome, the ones that exploded did no damage, and Iran embarrassed itself by even trying to attack Israel, but it’s also such a massive threat that it must be nuked out of existence. Only an idiot would see a contradiction here.

Sadly, several so-called journalists decided to visit the sites of the rocket impacts and show you what really happened. These people had the audacity to tell you to believe your own eyes and ears, instead of letting smart people like myself program your brain.

Jeremy Loffredo and his terrorist friends found an unexploded rocket near Mossad HQ and showed it just sitting on the road. Disgustingly, Loffredo pointed out Mossad embedded its HQ among civilian infrastructure as though this is somehow relevant. Just imagine if a rocket landed near MI5 HQ and journalists decided you had a right to know. Obviously, we would have to bring back the death penalty for journalists like that.

Somehow, Loffredo managed to make things even worse. He mentioned that Mossad HQ is located near a hospital, implying any potential victims could be considered human shields. What kind of monster would use language like this? Does Loffredo not know Israelis are human beings?

Thankfully, Loffredo and his accomplices were caught by the IDF, and naturally, they were beaten up and blindfolded before being taken to a military base. How else would the Middle East’s only democracy arrest someone? While most of the terrorists have inexplicably been released without charge, Loffredo is thankfully being detained. I understand there is a campaign in Israel to send him to that rapey place in the Negev desert.

The country that has murdered 128 journalists in the past year demonstrated it’s better than all those Arab countries by charging a man with journalism, leaving him facing a life sentence, or even the death penalty, for the crime of reporting the truth.

Loffredo’s reporting was mirrored by outlets like PBS, however, only Loffredo is getting punished because we don’t like the Grayzone, and finally, we have an excuse to execute its journalists. I yearn for the day we can do this in the west. Until we’ve taken care of Declassified UK, we can’t sensibly call ourselves a democracy, can we?

Personally, I don’t understand why any journalist would feel uncomfortable repeating Israel’s authorised version of events. It’s so much better for your career to gloss over the build up to World War III and the possible extinction of the human race. All you have to say is “Yup, that school was definitely exploded by a stray Hamas rocket” or “Sure, Israel sniped that toddler, but it has a right to defend itself”. You see how easy that was? Anyone who can’t lie for Israel gets no sympathy from me.

If Israel doesn’t want people to know that rockets are reaching Tel Aviv, it’s because that information is not in the public interest. You’re not allowed to know the truth about Israel because the truth would make Israel look bad.

I’m sure you will agree that journalists who don’t comply with Israeli censorship demands should be jailed for the rest of their lives, or even sent to death row. Jeremy Loffredo must be punished in the strongest way possible for telling the truth about Israel. It’s time to make an example of him so no one ever makes this mistake again.

If you’re American, do not under any circumstances call the US embassy in Israel on +011-972-2-630-4000 or email them at [email protected] to demand Loffredo’s release because this would make you a decent person who cares about journalistic freedom and human rights and we don’t do those things anymore, do we?

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Kamala Harris Isn’t Listening to U.S. Intelligence on Iran

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | October 10, 2024

Who is “America’s greatest adversary?”

That is the question 60 Minutes asked Vice President Kamala Harris. “I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran,” was her answer. She gave two reasons for her verdict: “Iran has American blood on their hands” and “what we need to do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power, that is one of my highest priorities.” All three claims are strange.

That Iran is America’s greatest adversary comes as a surprise after the United States has spent the past two and a half years comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler and painting him as bent on the conquest of Europe. The U.S. has spent in the neighborhood of $175 billion helping Ukraine fight Russia.

As early as 2018, the U.S. National Defense Strategy ranked China as the “primary concern in US national strategy.” Throughout the Biden-Harris administration, the focus has been on “growing rivalry with China [and] Russia,” as the Interim National Security Guidance of 2021 put it. It was China, and not Iran, that was considered “the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge” to the American-led system. In 2021, it was Russia and China that the National Intelligence Council flagged as “rising revisionist powers,” while the 2022 National Defense Strategy named China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security” and called Russia an “acute threat.”

Up until the moment Harris answered the question, the United States had seen Russia and China as America’s greatest adversaries.

Harris did not specify the American blood Iran had on its hands. But her quick description erases the historical record of the second partner in the bloody dance. The history of Iranian blood on American hands traces from the 1953 coup in Iran, which the CIA has formally acknowledged it helped plan and execute, to cyber attacks on Iran’s civilian Natanz nuclear enrichment site, and the 2020 assassination of  Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

Harris’ third, and strangest, claim is that one of her highest priorities is to “ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power.” But Harris knows that Iran is not pursuing the ability to be a nuclear power. At the same time the vice president was prioritizing blocking Iran from building a nuclear bomb, CIA Director William Burns was telling a security conference, “No, we do not see evidence today that the supreme leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program.”

Burns added, “We don’t see evidence today that such a decision [to build a bomb] has been made. We watch it very carefully.” He said that, if Iran were to make such a decision, “I think we are reasonably confident that–working with our friends and allies–we will be able to see it relatively early on.”

This is not the first time Burns has made this intelligence assessment clear. In February 2023, Burns said, “To the best of our knowledge, we don’t believe that the supreme leader in Iran has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program that we judge they suspended or stopped at the end of 2003.”

And, as Harris knows, it is not Burns or the CIA alone that assesses that Iran is not in pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The 2022 U.S. Department of Defense’s Nuclear Posture Review concludes that “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.”

Iran never was pursuing one. The founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, consistently ruled that nuclear weapons go against Islamic morality. The current supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has consistently reiterated that ruling. Khamenei has insisted that “from an ideological and fiqhi [Islamic jurisprudence] perspective, we consider developing nuclear weapons as unlawful. We consider using such weapons as a big sin.” In 2003, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa that declared nuclear weapons to be forbidden by Islam.

And Khamenei was neither going rogue nor the exception. “There is complete consensus on this issue,” Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei, one of the highest-ranking clerics in Iran, has said. “It is self- evident in Islam that it is prohibited to have nuclear bombs. It is eternal law, because the basic function of these weapons is to kill innocent people. This cannot be reversed.”

In 2015, Iran agreed to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. Eleven consecutive International Atomic Energy Agency reports verified that Iran was completely and consistently in compliance with their commitments under the agreement prior to the United States illegally and unilaterally pulling out of the agreement in 2018. Despite promises by the Biden-Harris administration to return to diplomacy with Iran, they never have. Instead, despite Iran’s expressions of willingness to return to diplomatic negotiations, the State Department has said that negotiations with Iran are “not our focus right now” and that “It is not on our agenda… we are not going to waste our time on it.”

In July 2024, Masoud Pezeshkian was elected president of Iran. Pezeshkian is a reformist who has called for direct negotiations with the United States on improving relations and returning to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. But, in a July 8 press briefing, when National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby was asked if “the U.S. is now ready to resume nuclear talks, other talks, or make any diplomatic moves with Iran in light of this new president,” he answered, “No, we’re—we’re not in a position where we’re willing to get back to the negotiating table with Iran just based on the fact that they’ve elected a new president.”

Unphased, in his September 24 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Pezeshkian said that “we have the opportunity…to enter a new era” and declared that Iran is “ready to engage with JCPOA participants” and that “[i]f JCPOA commitments are implemented fully and in good faith, dialogue on other issues can follow.”

Contrary to the vice president’s assertion that “ensur[ing] that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power… is one of [her] highest priorities,” the Biden-Harris administration has stubbornly refused to take the easiest and surest road to that end by honoring its promise to “offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy.”

It is strange and concerning that after encouraging and supporting two and a half years of war with Russia in Ukraine, that Harris considers, not Russia, but Iran to be America’s “greatest adversary.” It is also disturbing that Harris deletes America’s role in coups, sabotage, and assassinations in Iran from history. And it is alarming that Harris wants to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, seemingly unaware that her military-intelligence community is telling her that they are not attempting to acquire a bomb, while showing no inclination for returning to the nuclear diplomacy with Iran that was already working.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

A Resurrection of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? – Part 21 of the Anglo-American War on Russia

Tales of the American Empire | October 10, 2024

After Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2022, the United States pressured its European vassals to end all trade with Russia, and later China to slow its economic growth that outperforms the United States. This has led to three years of economic decline in European Union economic bloc, known as the EU, as energy prices to tripled.

Europeans are angry, so if victorious Russian troops arrive on Ukraine’s western border, several EU nations may leave the dying EU to relink to prospering Asia and access to cheap Russian energy.

Leaders of some EU nations are openly critical of mandates banning trade and allowing mass immigration. Leaders of Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, and Croatia are quietly discussing the advantages of leaving the EU. These nations were once united into the powerful Austro-Hungarian empire until it was dissolved by victorious France and Britain in 1919. Political, business, and cultural ties remain, so they may form their own economic block. Serbia never joined NATO nor the EU and remains friendly with Russia, so would join this union.

A new Balkan economic block would prosper by allowing trade with Russia, China, Russian controlled Ukraine, and could join forces to guard borders from mass illegal immigration.

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“Resurgent far-right conjures Austria-Hungary headache for EU on Ukraine”; Francois Murphy; Reuters; August 4, 2024; https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/…

Related Tale: “The Destruction of Yugoslavia”;    • The Destruction of Yugoslavia  

“A Rumored Resurrection of Austria-Hungary”; Matthew Karnitschnig; Politico; December 13, 2023; https://www.politico.eu/article/vikto…

“Austrian Right-Wing Freedom Party Scores Historic Victory In National Elections”; Tyler Durden; Zero Hedge; September 30, 2024; https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/aus…

“Ukraine to end gas transit agreement with Russia, PM Shmyhal”; Energy pipelines to central Europe may shutdown soon; Remix; Oct. 7, 2024; https://rmx.news/article/ukraine-to-e…

Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”;    • The Anglo-American War on Russia  

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment