Tag Archives: Human Rights Watch

Why is the media ignoring evidence of Israel’s own actions on 7 October?

Posted on by
2

The BBC and others keep revisiting Hamas crimes that day, but fail to report on growing evidence that Israel killed its own citizens, often in grotesque fashion

By Jonathan Cook

Source: Jonathan Cook Blog

Barely a day has passed since the 7 October attack by Hamas when the western media has not revisited those events, often to reveal what it claims are new details of astonishing atrocities carried out by the Palestinian group.

These disclosures have served to sustain public indignation in the West, and kept Palestinian solidarity activists on the back foot. 

In turn, the outrage has smoothed Israel’s path as it has levelled vast swaths of Gaza; killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, most of them women and children; and denied the enclave’s population of 2.3 million access to food, water and fuel. 

Critically, it has also made it far easier for western governments to throw their weight behind Israel – and arm it – even as Israeli leaders have repeatedly engaged in genocidal talk and carried out ethnic cleansing operations.

Israel’s intense bombing campaigns have herded nearly two million Palestinians into a small section of Gaza, pressed up against its short border with Egypt, while starvation and fatal disease start to take their toll.

Many of the claims about 7 October have been shocking beyond belief, such as stories that Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked another in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother’s womb.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even described in graphic detail – and wholly falsely – a Hamas attack on an Israeli family: “The father’s eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off before they were executed.”

Little evidence

Atrocities were undoubtedly committed that day by Hamas and other gunmen in Israel, as groups like Human Rights Watch have been documenting.

They have continued to occur in Gaza every day since, not least through Israel’s continuing and relentless bombing of civilians, and through Hamas’ refusal to free the remaining Israeli hostages without an exchange of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. 

But in respect of the more shocking allegations against Hamas promoted by the western media – which have bolstered the case for Israel’s two-month rampage in Gaza – often little or no evidence has been forthcoming beyond claims made by Israeli officials and highly partisan and unreliable first responders.

Last week the BBC and others led again with stories of systematic Hamas mass rapes on 7 October. Efforts by the United Nations to investigate these claims are being obstructed by Israel.

Nonetheless, once more, coverage of the growing devastation in Gaza was sidelined. 

Media readiness to re-examine 7 October long after those events took place has operated within strict limits, however. Only claims that support Israel’s narrative about what happened that day are being aired. 

A growing body of evidence suggesting a far more complex reality, one that paints Israel’s own actions in a far more troubling light, is being ignored or suppressed.

This deeply dishonest approach from the western media indicates that they are not, as they declare, fearlessly pursuing the truth. Rather, they are regurgitating talking points being fed to them by Israel. 

That is not only unconscionable – particularly given Israel’s long track record of promoting lies, both small and large – but it violates all basic journalistic codes.

What did Hamas have to gain from expending so much energy and ammunition on horror-show theatrics rather than its plan to seize hostages?

For many western leaders and journalists, it appears no rational answer is needed. Hamas – and possibly all Palestinians – are simply barbarians for whom murdering Israelis, Jews or maybe all non-Muslims comes as second nature.

But for those whose minds are less bent by racist assumptions, an alternative picture of events has been steadily cohering, prompted by the testimonies of Israeli survivors and officials, as well as reporting from the Israeli media. Much of the evidence has been collected by the independent journalist Max Blumenthal and the Electronic Intifada website.

Because they contradict Israel’s official story, these testimonies have been studiously ignored by the western media. 

Burned alive

Surprisingly, the person whose statements have most confounded the official narrative is Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In an interview on MSNBC on 16 November, Regev noted that Israel had reduced the official death toll by 200 after its investigations had shown that the charred remains it had counted included not just Israelis but Hamas fighters too. The fighters, burned alive, had been too disfigured to easily identify.

Regev told MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan: “There were actually bodies that were so badly burned we thought they were ours. In the end, apparently, they were Hamas terrorists.”

There was an obvious problem with Regev’s disclosure that went unchallenged by the MSNBC interviewer, and has been ignored by the media since. How did so many Hamas fighters end up burned – and in exactly the same locations as Israelis, meaning their remains could not be identified separately for many weeks?

Did Hamas fighters carry out some strange ritual, self-immolating in cars and homes alongside their hostages? And if so, why?

There is a likely explanation, confirmed by an Israeli survivor of the 7 October events, as well as by a security guard, and a variety of military personnel. But these accounts starkly undermine the official narrative.

Shelled by Israel

Yasmin Porat, who fled the Nova festival and ended up hiding in Be’eri, was one of the few to survive that day. Her partner, Tal Katz, was killed. 

She has repeatedly explained to the Israeli media what happened. 

According to Porat’s account to Kan radio on 15 November, the Hamas fighters in Be’eri barricaded themselves into a house with a group of a dozen or so Israeli hostages – either planning to use them as human shields or as bargaining chips for an exit.

The Israeli military, however, was in no mood for bargaining. Porat escaped only because one of the Hamas fighters vacated the house early on, using her as a human shield, before giving himself up. 

Porat describes Israeli soldiers engaging in a four-hour firefight with the Hamas gunmen, despite the presence of Israeli civilians. But not all of the hostages were killed in the crossfire. Israel ended the clash with an Israeli tank firing two shells into the house. 

In Porat’s account, when she asked why this had been done, “they explained to me that it was to break the walls, in order to help purify the house”.

The only other survivor, Hadas Dagan, who was lying face down on the lawn in front of the house during the firefight, reported to Porat what happened after the two shells hit the house. Dagan saw both of their partners lying near her, killed by shrapnel from the explosions. 

A 12-year-old girl, Liel Hatsroni, who had been screaming inside the house throughout the firefight, also fell silent. 

Hatsroni and her aunt, Ayalan, were both incinerated. It took weeks to identify their bodies.

Notably, Liel Hatsroni’s charred remains have been one of the emotive pieces of evidence cited by Israel for accusing Hamas of killing and burning Israelis.

In reporting the deaths of Liel, her aunt, her twin brother and her grandfather, the Israeli news website Ynet stated that Hamas fighters “murdered them all. Afterwards, they set the house alight”.

Confused pilots

Porat’s testimony is far from the only source showing that Israel is likely to have been responsible for a significant proportion of the civilian deaths that day – and for the burned bodies. 

The security coordinator at Be’eri, Tuval Escapa, effectively confirmed Porat’s account to the Haaretz newspaper. He said: “Commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

The burnt-out cars at the Nova festival and their occupants appear to have suffered a similar fate. Worried that Hamas gunmen were fleeing the area with hostages in cars, it seems, helicopter pilots were told to open fire, incinerating the cars and all the occupants.

There is a likely explanation for this. The Israeli army has long had a secret protocol – known as the Hannibal directive – in which soldiers are instructed to kill any captured comrades to avoid their being taken hostage. It is less clear how this directive applies to Israeli civilians, though it appears to have been used in the past. 

The goal is to prevent Israel from facing demands to release prisoners.

In at least one case, an Israeli military official, Col Nof Erez, has stated that “the Hannibal directive was apparently applied”. He called the Israeli air strikes on 7 October “a mass Hannibal”.

Haaretz has reported that police investigators concluded that “an IDF combat helicopter that arrived at the scene and fired at terrorists there apparently also hit some festival participants”.

In a video released by the Israeli military, Apache helicopters are shown randomly firing missiles at cars leaving the area, presumably on the assumption that they contained Hamas fighters trying to smuggle hostages back into Gaza.

The Ynet news website cited an Israeli air force assessment of its two dozen attack helicopters in the skies above the Nova festival: “It was very difficult to distinguish between terrorists and [Israeli] soldiers or civilians.” Nonetheless, pilots were instructed “to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence” with Gaza.

“Only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow their attacks and carefully choose the targets,” the outlet reported.

Another Israeli publication, Mako, noted that “there was almost no intelligence to assist in making fateful decisions”, adding that the pilots “emptied the ‘belly of the helicopter’ in minutes, flew to re-arm and returned to the air, again and again”.

In another Mako report, the commander of an Apache unit is quoted stating: “Shooting at people in our territory – this is something I never thought I would do.” Another pilot recalled of the attack: “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at.” 

Secrets to the grave

Quite extraordinarily, in reporting the devastation of ravaged houses and burnt and crumpled cars, reporters have completely ignored the visual evidence staring them in the face, and simply amplified the official Israeli narrative.

There are plenty of more-than-obvious questions no one is asking – and for which no answers are ever likely to be forthcoming.

How did Hamas wreak such widescale and intense devastation when its fighters’ own videos show them mostly bearing light arms? 

Were those carrying basic RPGs capable of accurately tracking and hitting hundreds of fast-moving vehicles fleeing the festival – and doing so from ground level? 

Video footage from Hamas body-cams shows cars leaving the Nova festival with both gunmen and hostages inside. Why would Hamas risk incinerating its own people?

Given Hamas’ keenness to film its triumphs, why is there no footage of such actions? And why would Hamas waste its most prized ammunition on random attacks on cars rather than save it for the far more difficult task of attacking Israeli military bases?

Israel appears not to be interested in investigating the burnt-out cars and wrecked homes, possibly because it already knows the answers and fears that others may one day find out the truth too.

With religious organisations demanding that the cars be hurriedly buried to preserve the sanctity of the dead, the metal skeletons will take their secrets to the grave.

Grotesque fables

What seems certain from this growing body of evidence – and from the trail of visual clues – is that on 7 October many Israeli civilians were killed either in the crossfire of gun battles between Israel and Hamas or by Israeli military directives to stop Hamas fighters returning to Gaza and taking hostages with them. 

This week, an Israeli commentator in the Haaretz newspaper called the testimonies “earth-shattering”, and added: “Was the Hannibal directive applied to civilians? An investigation and public debate need to happen now, no matter how difficult they are.” 

But as the army has made clear, it has no intention to investigate when its whole genocidal campaign against Gaza is premised on lurid claims that appear to bear a limited relationship to reality. 

None of that justifies Hamas’ atrocities, especially the killing and taking hostage of civilians. But it does paint a very different picture of that day’s events.

Remember, Israel and its supporters have sought to compare the Hamas attack on 7 October with the Nazi Holocaust. They have concocted grotesque fables to present Palestinians as bloodthirsty savages deserving of any fate that befalls them. 

And those fables have served as the basis for western indulgence and sympathy for Israel as it has carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. 

The truth is it would have been much harder for western governments to sell Israel’s rampage in Gaza to their publics had Hamas’ crimes been seen, sadly, as all too typical of modern militarised confrontations in which civilians become collateral damage. 

What western governments and institutions should have done is demand an independent investigation to clarify the extent of Hamas atrocities that day rather than echo Israeli officials who wanted an excuse to trash Gaza and drive its inhabitants into neighbouring Sinai.

The western media’s performance has been even more dismal – and dangerous. It professes to be a watchdog on power. But it has repeatedly amplified the Israeli occupier’s evidence-free claims, peddled libels against Palestinians with little or no scrutiny, and actively suppressed evidence challenging Israel’s official narrative.

For that reason alone, western journalists are entirely complicit in the crimes against humanity currently being perpetrated in Gaza – crimes being committed right now, not two months ago.

A Fed-Issued Digital Currency: The Mark of the Beast

Posted on by
1

A Fed-issued digital currency would be no more in our interests than the current dollar system.

By Jeremy R. Hammond

Source: Jeremy R. Hammond Blog

China’s ‘Social Credit’ System

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” — Revelation 13:16-17

In China, as you have likely heard, the government has been experimenting with a “social credit” system aimed at giving politicians even greater control over people’s behavior. China was, of course, also the country whose authoritarian “lockdown” response to the outbreak of SARS‑CoV‑2—the coronavirus that causes COVID‑19 and was likely engineered in a Chinese lab with US government funding—was pointed to as a model for the rest of the world to follow by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO has since been aiming to acquire even more centralized global authority to issue diktats in the event of another pandemic, such as implementation of “lockdown” measures that might include travel restrictions, prevention of employment, and vaccine mandates or passport systems.

As of December 2020, around the time of the initial outbreak of the virus in Wuhan, China, social credit laws and regulations had been implemented in an estimated 80 percent of the country.

Naturally, the system is characterized by its proponents as a benevolent means to reward socially responsible people while denying privileges to unsavory and untrustworthy characters and businesses. But you and I both recognize the grave threat posed by politicians wielding this type of power and control over the population. It is an obvious threat to privacy and liberty.

The people of China regrettably but unsurprisingly appear to have welcomed this system, although the perception of public approval might be largely an artifact of people being afraid to publicly criticize the system lest their names be placed on one of the government’s “blacklists”.

As with any law or government policy, we should view it through the lens of how such power could be used as opposed to how politicians say they intend to use it.

A glimpse of how it could be used is the city of Rongcheng’s prohibition on “spreading harmful information”, violations of which could result in subtraction of points off residents’ social credit scores.

Such prohibitions must be seen in light of how governments are in the habit of interpreting “harmful information” as any information that does not align with the adopted political agenda. In the US during the COVID‑19 pandemic, there has been no greater purveyor of misinformation than the US government itself.

According to MIT Technology Review, the central government actually pressed the city to scale back the threat to individual liberty posed by its social credit system, such as enabling residents to opt-out. “The Chinese government did emphasize that all social-credit-related punishment has to adhere to existing laws,” the Review states, “but laws themselves can be unjust in the first place.”

The takeaway from that article is that “the social credit system does not (yet) exemplify abuse of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence”. But that’s no reason for the citizenry to consent to the implementation of systems that are conducive to extreme governmental abuses of authority.

A July 2019 article in Wired magazine related the example of Liu Hu, a journalist who was arrested, fined, and blacklisted, reportedly for writing about censorship and government corruption. He found himself on a “List of Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement by the Supreme People’s Court as ‘not qualified’ to buy a plane ticket, and banned from travelling some train lines, buying property, or taking out a loan.”

A more recent Newsweek article appropriately describes the system this way:

On an individual level, the government seeks to instill in the public an increased sense of morality to discourage everything from fraud and plagiarism to counterfeit goods and petty crime. But a system to make individual actions more transparent would necessitate the creation of tools to monitor all aspects of life. Social control, if not the original aim, could be an inevitable consequence, researchers say.

. . . While China’s vision of the system has yet to emerge as a dystopian tool for control driven by big data, there are real concerns about the way personal information is to be collected and processed to create social credit profiles, which could have lasting implications for individuals.

An untrustworthy government has no place dictating to its citizens what types of behaviors should be regarded as creating or breaking trust.

Human Rights Watch provides the example of lawyer Li Xioaolin, who was denied a plane ticket home while away on a work trip inside China because his name was on a blacklist of “untrustworthy” people in relation to a years-old court-related issue that he thought he had resolved.

According to Human Rights Watch, journalist Liu Hu was punished not for criticizing the government and exposing corruption but for having offered an apology that the government deemed “insincere” after losing a defamation case for publishing an article alleging that someone was an extortionist. Still, the organization notes, in both cases, “penalties were exacted in wildly arbitrary and unaccountable manners.” Additionally, “the courts failed to notify them, leaving them no chance to contest their treatment.”

According to the human rights organization, between 2013 and 2017, the Chinese government imposed more than seven million punishments to people for failing to carry out local court orders, which punishments have included publicly naming and shaming individuals and barring them from flights and trains.

After experiencing the totalitarianism of the disastrously harmful lockdown regimes and the accompanying efforts to coerce the population into accepting COVID‑19 vaccines and to censor truths countering the government’s incessant lies (I was permanently banned from LinkedIn, for example, for accurately reporting that the CDC’s claim that COVID‑19 vaccines provide greater protection against SARS‑CoV‑2 infection than natural immunity was a bald-faced lie), it should not be too difficult to imagine such a system being dangerously used to silence critics and punish dissenters so that whatever ruling regime can continue its crimes against humanity unobstructed.

The idea of a “social credit” score, of course, is inherently tied to the idea of central banking. In the US, the central bank is the Federal Reserve, a government-legislated private monopoly over the supply of currency. Increasingly, there is talk of a central bank digital currency, heightening concerns about the government having the means to exercise power over us and control our behavior.

“Project Hamilton”

As an example of how the Fed is exploring the idea of adopting a digital currency, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has teamed up with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston under the appropriately named “Project Hamilton”.

Alexander Hamilton, of course, was instrumental in the adoption of central banking by the US government, famously at odds with Thomas Jefferson, who rightly opposed the idea and warned about the dangers inherent in such an institution. Jefferson appeared to hold the view that the means of exchange and interest rates ought to be determined by the market as opposed to being determined by fiat by a roomful of central planners.

Jefferson accurately foresaw how the government would use the central bank to pay for its spending as an alternative to raising taxes directly, and how the debt that would consequently be incurred by this uncontrolled spending would ultimately be borne by future generations.

In a letter to John Wayles Eppes in 1813, for example, Jefferson wrote:

I have said that the taxes should be continued by annual or biennial re-enactments; because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse, is a salutary restraint, from which an honest government ought not to wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free. No tax should ever be yielded for longer than that of the Congress granting it, except when pledged for the reimbursement of a loan.

. . . Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs. . . . Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing, or not bearing interest, as may be found necessary, thrown into circulation, will take the place of so much gold & silver, which last, when crouded, will find an efflux into other countries, and thus keep the quantum of medium at its salutary level.

In a letter to John Taylor in 1816, Jefferson described central banking as rightly “reprobated” and as “a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction”. He wrote, “And I sincerely believe with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; & that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale”.

Jefferson viewed the federal government as having no authority to institute a central banking system. As he wrote in 1791, “The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the Constitution.”

The stated aim of Project Hamilton “is to investigate the technical feasibility of a general purpose central bank digital currency (CBDC) that could be used by an economy the size of the United States and to gain a hands-on understanding of a CBDC’s technical challenges, opportunities, risks, and tradeoffs.”

The project is part of MIT’s “Digital Currency Initiative”, which is aimed at bringing minds together “to conduct the research necessary to support the development of digital currency and blockchain technology.”

The aim of the collaboration with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has been “to develop a hypothetical CBDC.” MIT describes the possibility of a “central-bank-issued digital currency” as “a unique opportunity to address challenges in our existing payments system and design an economy that is more resilient, participatory, and open.”

We can reasonably assume that Thomas Jefferson, were he alive today, would disagree and view the idea as anathema to both a sound economy and a free society.

Noting that it was Alexander Hamilton “who laid the foundation for a U.S. central bank”, a project white paper published in February 2022 concluded that it is “critical” for research to continue for “achieving goals for a CBDC.” That is, it is not a question of whether the Fed should adopt a digital currency but how and when.

Biden’s Executive Order and Project Lithium

In January 2022, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors similarly published a paper titled “Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation”, the aim of which was “to foster a broad and transparent public dialogue about CBDCs in general, and about the potential benefits and risks of a U.S. CBDC.”

Then in March 2022 President Joe Biden signed an “Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets”, which declares the supposed need for the US government to “regulate” digital assets, including for the purpose of preventing circumvention of its sanctions regimes—in which context we might remember the US government’s criminal sanctions regime against Iraq in the 1990s and how Secretary of State Madeleine Albright insisted that the “price” of half-a-million dead Iraqi children was “worth it”.

The executive order, number 14067, describes how the government has an interest in maintaining the US dollar’s “central role” in “the global financial system”, which refers to the use of the dollar as a reserve currency. To that end, the order states, the Biden administration “places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC.”

The White House is intent on determining what actions would be required to launch such a currency “if doing so is deemed to be in the national interest”. Of course, as the example of half a million excess childhood deaths in Iraq due to sanctions once again illustrates, determining just what is in the “national interest” is not a task that government policymakers seem particularly good at.

The lockdown measures, which utterly failed to project those at highest risk from COVID-19 while causing devastating harms globally, are another useful example of the ineptitude of policymakers when it comes to making decision that are in our best interests.

Following Biden’s executive order, in April 2022, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced “the development of the first prototype to explore how a CBDC might operate”. This endeavor was given the name “Project Lithium”, on which the DTCC is collaborating with The Digital Dollar Project (DDP), an organization that advocates US leadership “in advancing a CBDC” and encourages the executive branch of government “to support appropriate legislation” to authorize further research and development of such a currency.

The DDP published a white paper in May 2020 concluding that the US government “should, and must, take a leadership role in this new wave of digital innovation” and preserve the dollar’s role as “the world’s primary reserve currency” by working toward “the launch of a tokenized digital dollar”.

End the Fed!

Naturally, advocates of a central bank digital currency describe the aims of such a development as benign, just as the Federal Reserve system was originally established on the pretext that having a more centrally controlled economy would benefit all.

In truth, the Federal Reserve system serves the interests of the financially and political elite at the expense of the rest of us. Central banking itself, whatever the form of currency issued, is harmful to the economy because central banks essentially exist to effect a transfer of wealth upward. Schools of economic thought like Keynesianism and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which I like to refer to as “Keynesianism 2.0”, exist to justify the existence of central banks.

The Fed, a government-legislated private monopoly over the currency supply, enables the government to spend on whatever, including endless wars (euphemistically called “defense” spending), but the means of paying for it all, the creation of “money” out of thin air, results in upward wealth transfer. The elite classes who receive the newly created dollars first are able to spend it for purchasing assets prior to the resulting devaluation that manifests in the form of higher prices for goods and services.

Monetary inflation robs us of our purchasing power and so serves as a hidden tax. It also causes widespread malinvestment and major economic distortions like the housing bubble that burst in 2007 and precipitated the 2008 financial crisis, not to mention the current housing bubble and general asset inflation. (For more on that, see my book Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian Economics in the Financial Crisis.)

We are meant to believe we need centralized control over the currency supply for economic growth, but central banks instead serve to impede real economic growth in favor of enabling the government’s endlessly wasteful and harmful spending.

The chief appeal of a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is that it is a decentralized medium of exchange that serves to compete with central-bank-issued currency and potentially enables people to opt-out of the exploitative dollar system. The idea of a “legal tender” digital currency in the hands of the bankers and politicians is anathema to the whole concept of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

One might argue that the replacement of print dollars with a centrally controlled cryptocurrency is just a natural evolution from the current system, in which exchange of actual cash is becoming less frequent and most transactions occur digitally anyway. We should keep up with the times and adapt to advancements in technology, the argument goes.

However, this overlooks the more fundamental issue that we should not have central banks in the first place. The way I see it, the movement towards replacing the US dollar with a Fed-issued cryptocurrency is far from benign. We have seen in the past few years just how far government policymakers are willing to go to exercise authoritarian control over us.

To illustrate, remember how businesses deemed “non-essential” were shut down by clueless bureaucrats under threat of punishment, and how coercive measures including mandates and travel restrictions were used to get people to accept COVID‑19 vaccinations?

With the World Economic Forum (WEF) having announced its “Great Reset” agenda, which ties directly into the global mass vaccination agenda, the advocates of greater centralized control over society do not deserve the benefit of our doubt about their intentions. It would be naïve to think that if the authoritarians in government had even greater means to penalize citizens for disobedience to the regime that they would not attempt to use it. It is safer to assume that if they can utilize a digital currency to control our behavior, they will.

It seems therefore imperative to oppose a centralized digital currency, but we also need to go further than that and oppose the existence of the Federal Reserve altogether. Whatever the form of currency, centralized economic planning is an abomination and anathema to the principle of a free market.

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” — Revelation 18:4

The Government’s War on Free Speech: Protest Laws Undermine the First Amendment

Posted on by
Reply

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”— George Washington

It’s a given that the government is corrupt, unaccountable, and has exceeded its authority.

So what can we do about it?

The first remedy involves speech (protest, assembly, speech, prayer, and publicity), and lots of it, in order to speak truth to power.

The First Amendment, which is the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights, affirms the right of “we the people” to pray freely about our grievances regarding the government. We can gather together peacefully to protest those grievances. We can publicize those grievances. And we can express our displeasure (peacefully) in word and deed.

Unfortunately, tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.

The American Police State has shown itself to be particularly intolerant of free speech activities that challenge its authority, stand up to its power grabs, and force it to operate according to the rules of the Constitution.

Cue the rise of protest laws, the police state’s go-to methods for muzzling discontent.

These protest laws, some of which appear to encourage violence against peaceful protesters by providing immunity to individuals who drive their car into protesters impeding traffic and use preemptive deadly force against protesters who might be involved in a riot, take intolerance for speech with which one might disagree to a whole new level.

Ever since the Capitol protests on Jan. 6, 2021, state legislatures have introduced a broad array of these laws aimed at criminalizing protest activities. Yet while the growing numbers of protest laws cropping up across the country are being marketed as necessary to protect private property, public roads or national security, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a thinly disguised plot to discourage anyone from challenging government authority at the expense of our First Amendment rights.

It doesn’t matter what the source of that discontent might be (police brutality, election outcomes, COVID-19 mandates, the environment, etc.): protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, etc., aim to muzzle every last one of us.

However, as Human Rights Watch points out, these assaults on free speech are nothing new. “Various states have long-tried to curtail the right to protest. They do so by legislating wide definitions of what constitutes an ‘unlawful assembly’ or a ‘riot’ as well as increasing punishments. They also allow police to use catch-all public offenses, such as trespassing, obstructing traffic, or disrupting the peace, as a pretext for ordering dispersals, using force, and making arrests. Finally, they make it easier for corporations and others to bring lawsuits against protest organizers.”

Make no mistake: while many of these laws claim to be in the interest of “public safety and limiting economic damage,” these legislative attempts to redefine and criminalize speech are a backdoor attempt to rewrite the Constitution and render the First Amendment’s robust safeguards null and void.

For instance, there are at least 205 proposed laws being considered in 45 states that would curtail the right to peacefully assemble and protest by expanding the definition of rioting, heightening penalties for existing offenses, or creating new crimes associated with assembly.

No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.

In Alabama, lawmakers are pushing to allow individuals to use deadly force near a riot. Kentucky, Missouri and New Hampshire are also considering similar stand your ground laws to justify the use of lethal force in relation to riots.

In Arizona, legislators want to classify protests involving seven or more people as felonies punishable by up to two years in jail. Under such a law, traditional, nonviolent forms of civil disobedience—sit-ins, boycotts and marches—would be illegal.

In Arkansas, peaceful protesters who engage in civil disobedience by occupying any government property after being told to leave could face six months in jail and a $1000 fine.

In Minnesota, where activists continue to protest the death of George Floyd, who was killed after police knelt on his neck for eight minutes, individuals who are found guilty of any kind of offense in connection with a peaceful protest could be denied a range of benefits, including food assistance, education loans and grants, and unemployment assistance.

Oregon lawmakers wanted to “require public community colleges and universities to expel any student convicted of participating in a violent riot.” In Illinois, students who twice infringe the rights of others to engage in expressive activities could be suspended for at least a year.

Proposed laws in at least 25 states, including Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Florida, would give drivers the green light to “accidentally” run over protesters who are preventing them from fleeing a riot. Washington wants to levy steeper penalties against protesters who “swarm” a vehicle, punishing them for a repeat offense with up to 40 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Responding to protests over the Keystone Pipeline, South Dakota enabled its governor and sheriffs to prohibit gatherings of 20 or more people on public land if the gathering might damage the land. At least 15 other states have also adopted or are considering legislation that would levy harsher penalties for environmental protests near oil and gas pipelines.

In Iowa, all it takes is for one person in a group of three of more people to use force or cause property damage, and the whole group can be punished with up to 5 years in prison and a $7,500 fine.

Obstruct access to critical infrastructure in Mississippi and you could be facing a $10,000 fine and a seven-year prison sentence.

A North Carolina law would have made it a crime to heckle state officials. Under this law, shouting at a former governor would constitute a crime.

In Connecticut, you could be sentenced to five years behind bars and a $5,000 fine for disrupting the state legislature by making noise or using disturbing language.

Indiana lawmakers wanted to authorize police to use “any means necessary” to breakup mass gatherings that block traffic. Lawmakers have since focused their efforts on expanding the definition of a “riot” and punishing anyone who wears a mask to a peaceful protest, even a medical mask, with 2.5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Georgia wants to ban all spontaneous, First Amendment-protected assemblies and deny anyone convicted of violating the ban from receiving state or local employment benefits.

Virginia wants to subject protesters who engage in an “unlawful assembly” after “having been lawfully warned to disperse” with up to a year of jail time and a fine of up to $2,500.

Missouri made it illegal for public employees to take part in strikes and picketing, only to have the law ruled unconstitutional in its entirety.

Oklahoma created a sliding scale for protesters whose actions impact or impede critical infrastructure (including a telephone pole). The penalties range from $1,000 and six months in a county jail to $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. And if you’re part of an organization, that fine goes as high as $1,000,000.

Talk about intimidation tactics.

Ask yourself: if there are already laws on the books in all of the states that address criminal or illegal behavior such as blocking public roadways, trespassing on private property or vandalizing property—because such laws are already on the books—then why does the government need to pass laws criminalizing activities that are already outlawed?

What’s really going on here?

No matter what the politicians might say, the government doesn’t care about our rights, our welfare or our safety.

Every despotic measure used to control us and make us cower and comply with the government’s dictates has been packaged as being for our benefit, while in truth benefiting only those who stand to profit, financially or otherwise, from the government’s transformation of the citizenry into a criminal class.

In this way, the government conspires to corrode our core freedoms purportedly for our own good but really for its own benefit.

Remember, the USA Patriot Act didn’t make us safer. It simply turned American citizens into suspects and, in the process, gave rise to an entire industry—private and governmental—whose profit depends on its ability to undermine our Fourth Amendment rights.

In much the same way that the Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect, the government’s anti-extremism program criminalizes otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities such as peaceful protesting.

Clearly, freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from soldiers invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

Yet the unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

In other words, if we no longer have the right to voice concerns about COVID-19 mandates, if we no longer have the right to tell a Census Worker to get off our property, if we no longer have the right to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before they dare to walk through our door, if we no longer have the right to stand in front of the Supreme Court wearing a protest sign or approach an elected representative to share our views, if we no longer have the right to protest unjust laws or government policies by voicing our opinions in public or on social media or before a legislative body—no matter how politically incorrect or socially unacceptable those views might be—then we do not have free speech.

What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and that’s what those who founded America called tyranny.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

As the great George Carlin rightly observed: “Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government … doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety… It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.”

In other words, we only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

Remember: if the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

NPR Mocks Cancer Survivor in Drumbeat of Syria Propaganda

Posted on by
Reply

Asma al-Assad, First Lady of Syria (from released Syrian Presidency Facebook page)

By Rick Sterling

Source: Dissident Voice

It may be a new low in propaganda. National Public Radio (NPR) used the news that Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad had overcome breast cancer to mock her and continue the information war against Syria. They interviewed a Human Rights Watch staffer named Lama Fakih who is an American from Michigan now based in Beirut.

Do you believe Ms. Fakih in Beirut or do you believe people who live in Syria who say we are being lied to?  Lilly Martin is such a person. Although she is American from Fresno California, Lilly has lived in Syria for nearly 25 years. She is married to a Syrian and has two Syrian sons.  Dr. Nabil Antaki is another such person. He is a medical doctor in Aleppo, fluent in English and French as well as his native Arabic.

While NPR snorts about Asma al-Assad “sporting a chic blonde pixie cut”, Lilly Martin points out that she was recently bald while fighting for her life.

While Ms. Fakir in Beirut says that there is “quite a lot of anger” because Asma al-Assad has conquered cancer, Dr. Antaki says that Syrians are happy at the news.  Asma al-Assad is First Lady, mother to three children, and known for her compassion. Lilly Martin says that even while she battled cancer Mrs. al-Assad continued her charitable work.

While Ms. Fakih says that the “Assad government has been systematically targeting medical facilities and medical personnel”,  Dr. Antaki, who has remained in Aleppo throughout the conflict, says this is not true. While there are many western accusations that the Syrian government attacks hospitals, the evidence is remarkably thin.  One of the most highly publicized cases was regarding “Al Quds Hospital” in east Aleppo. In April 2016 there was a media blitz about this hospital having been destroyed by the Syrian Army. Following  the departure of the “rebels”, it was discovered that “Al Quds Hospital” was an unmarked portion of an apartment building, that it had NOT been bombed and was the LEAST damaged building in the area. It was determined that the nearby Nusra (Al Qaeda) headquarters and ammunition depot was the Syrian army target.  Accusations that “Al Quds Hospital” was bombed were false. It was a media stunt.

Ms. Fakih says that “Syrians have not been able to benefit from medical care in Syria since the beginning of the uprising in 2012”.   Lilly Martin simply says “This is factually untrue. The Syrian system of national hospitals, free services to the public, are in every area of Syria and have run continuously throughout the war.”  Dr. Antaki is an example; he is one of THOUSANDS of doctors working at HUNDREDS of hospitals throughout Syria. But you would never know it from NPR or Ms. Fakih.

It is true that there have been disruption and damage to many hospitals, as demonstrated in this jihadi assault on Al Kindi Hospital.  These are the “rebels” supported by Ms. Fakih and Human Rights Watch. They effectively supported them in east Aleppo until they were expelled from the city. Now Ms. Fakih and HRW are supporting the “rebels” in their last redoubt in Idlib.  There are countless videos demonstrating the cruelty and fanaticism of the “rebels”.  For example, the aftermath of the above assault on Kindi Hospital and the execution of the Syrian soldiers who defended the hospital.  Those who are cheerleading for the “rebels” and trying to prevent the Syrians reclaiming Idlib should look at the execution video to see what they are supporting.

The West has provided weapons and other support to the “rebels”. In parallel, there has been a campaign to whitewash the “rebels” and demonize the Syrian government.  On top of this, the USA has imposed crushing sanctions on Syria which make it difficult or impossible to get critical medicines and replacement parts for western medical equipment. Dr. Antaki says it took him 1.5 years to obtain a replacement part for a Japanese medical instrument.  I had my own experience with the draconian and inhumane sanctions. It took one year and endless hassle to send hearing aid batteries to help a deaf child in Syria.

This is one among hundreds of Syria “regime change” propaganda pieces broadcast on NPR. Behind a facade of authority and objectivity, there is bias and misinformation along with crocodile tears.  As Lilly Martin says, “While the Syrian government medical system has tried to meet all the needs of Syrian civilians during 8 years of armed conflict, still there are numerous cases where the needs were not met and Syrians have suffered, and that blame must be shouldered by every person who held a gun against Syria and their foreign supporters who have succeeded in bringing the Syrian people into the depths of destruction and despair.”

As to Asma al-Assad and her integrity, it is best to listen and judge for yourself.  At about 5:30 of the interview she speaks of the families of 100 thousand Syrian martyrs who died defending their country. “On a personal level, I am humbled by their determination, by their resilience, and by their love of Syria. They are my biggest source of strength and hope for the future.”

The sneers, misinformation, unverified accusations and de facto defense of Nusra/Al Qaeda by NPR and Lama Fakih stand in stark contrast.

Coup Attempt in Venezuela: What You’re Not Being Told

Posted on by
Reply

By Derrick Broze

Source: The Conscious Resistance

As self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaidó attempted to stage a military coup in Venezuela, the country’s U.N. ambassador declared President Nicolas Maduro victorious and called the United States a “rogue nation.”

The turbulent situation that has been unfolding in Venezuela for the last few years reached new heights on Tuesday as opposition leader and self-declared “Interim President” Juan Guaidó attempted to wrangle power away from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in what many are calling an attempted coup. Early Tuesday morning, Guaidó gave a press conference declaring that he has the support of the Venezuelan people and military, and demanded that Maduro step down. Guaidó also called on Venezuelans to take to the streets and call for an end to Maduro’s reign as president.

During the day’s events, cameras caught armored vehicles, reportedly belonging to the Bolivian military, running into crowds of protesters. Human Rights Watch (HRW) tweeted that 25 peopled were detained and dozens were wounded. HRW also noted that Venezuelan authorities shut down two international television channels and censored one radio station. “The regime should know that it will be held accountable for these abuses,” tweeted José Miguel Vivanco, Executive Director of HRW’s America Division.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s U.N. ambassador Samuel Moncada held a press conference stating that President Maduro has “defeated” opposition leader Juan Guaidó and his supporters. Moncada stated “the country is right now in a situation of perfect normality.” Moncada criticized U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for not supporting Maduro’s government against Guaidó.

Moncada also attacked the United States for what he said was another example of their interventionist policies, singling out President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for their support of Guaidó. “This is one of the most strange and weird situations we are in now, which the superpower of the world is the main rogue state going around, without care, destroying countries, invading countries, and threatening with the use of force,” Moncada stated.

The Ambassador to the UN also noted that the United States’ use of sanctions amounts to an act of war and only hurts the Venezuelan people. “Sanctions kill, as simple as that. Sanctions are criminal sanctions, are weapons of mass destruction. You don’t see the smoke, but you see the effect, you see the deleterious effect of killing and suffering,” Moncada said. “The sanctions use banks sanction, sanctions use ships, sanctions use insurance companies, and financial blockades. They cannot just say that they are concerned about liberty or freedom or the children in Venezuela, and then exercise a ghastly, nasty policy of calculated cruelty. They are acting like torturers, it is a collective punishment.”

Indeed, the Washington D.C.-based Center for Economic Policy Research published a reportlast week which determined that U.S. sanctions against Venezuela were likely responsible for 40,000 deaths in 2017-2018.

The harsh reality is that Maduro is by no means a perfect leader and his support of censoring media, use of the military to suppress protests (whether engineered or authentic), his suppression of the opposition, and other despicable acts do need to be called out. However, Ambassador Moncada is also correct that the United States does act as an imperialist “rogue” nation, using force on any nation that does not follow the Western Imperialist agenda. Unfortunately, it seems that the Venezuelan people are caught between a leader who is unpopular in some circles and an even more unpopular self-proclaimed “Interim President” with multiple connections to the Western Empire.

Of course, if our readers are unaware of these connections, it is because the corporate media (CNN, WaPo, The Hill, and others) have been running non-stop coverage of why Guaidó should be accepted as the leader of Venezuela while ignoring any bit of evidence that the “uprising” might be less than genuine.

Despite the round the clock support of Guaidó, on April 13 the Grayzone exclusively reportedthat a who’s who of Trump advisors, right-wing Latin American officials, and Venezuelan opposition figures met to discuss “Assessing the Use of Military Force in Venezuela.” The meeting was hosted on April 10 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank. This meeting included current and former State Department, National Intelligence Council, and National Security Council officials, along with Admiral Kurt Tidd, who was until recently the commander of the US Naval Forces Southern Command, overseeing operations in Central and South America.

The truth is that the Western Empire has been attempting to use Guaidó to install a puppet government in Venezuela. There is also evidence that the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies have attempted to take advantage of electricity blackouts in order to dethrone Maduro. In addition, there are a number of corporations and special interests who stand to benefit from the overthrow of Maduro and the crowning of Guaidó.

Although the American media has failed to report any of the above conflicts, there are still some Americans who are standing against the Venezuelan coup. A group calling itself the Embassy Protection Collective was invited by Venezuela’s government to protect the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C. from illegal seizure by the U.S. government or opposition supporters. The group—which includes members of CODEPINK, Popular Resistance, the Answer Coalition, MintPress News and more—has been working to raise awareness on the attempts by the Western oligarchy to install another puppet government in Venezuela.

The reality of the situation in Venezuela is much more complicated than the likes of CNNwould have the American people believe. Only by dissecting the lies from the American media, the Maduro government, and the Guaidó contingent can we hope to get to the truth and support the people who really matter: The Venezuelan People.

Blood Money: Four More Years of Drug War Horror with HRC

Posted on by
2

hillary-clinton-winking-AP-640x480

By Chris Floyd

(Empire Burlesque)

The Drug War, like the Terror War, is essentially a vast machine for profiteering by the purveyors of weapons and tools of repression. Like the Terror War, the Drug War demonstrably exacerbates the problems it purports to address, and has led to widespread chaos, death and state corruption of almost unfathomable levels. And Hillary Clinton, almost certain to be the next president, is deeply complicit in both of these malevolent enterprises.

Clinton’s extensive and eager involvement in the genuinely insane hyper-militarizataion of American policy in the so-called War on Terror is well-attested. Indeed, she boasts of it, trumpeting how she urged a reluctant Obama into destroying Libya, for example: a “great victory” which she famously celebrated by crowing over the rape and murder of Libyan leader Moamar Gaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died!” The neocons who pressed for the war of aggression against Iraq — which Clinton supported — are now flocking to her banner, as are the war profiteers and their Wall Street allies. And why not? Clinton is the most hawkish Democratic candidate since Henry Jackson. The blood money will continue to flow like the Nile in flood under her watch.

But Clinton’s role in the Drug War is perhaps less well-known. Jesse Franzblau remedies this with an excellent article at CounterPunch, noting her instrumental role in the slaughterfest and corruption feast that the Drug War has spawned in Mexico. Franzblau writes of the $2.5 billion Merida Initiative:

Negotiated behind closed doors in the last years of the Bush administration, the plan was originally proposed as a three-year program. Yet Hillary Clinton’s State Department pushed aggressively to extend it, overseeing a drastic increase of the initiative that continues today.

Much of this aid goes to U.S.-based security, information, and technology contracting firms, who make millions peddling everything from helicopter training to communications equipment to night-vision goggles, surveillance aircrafts, and satellites.

This aid comes in addition to the direct sales of arms and other equipment to Mexico authorized by the State Department, as Christy Thorton pointed out in a 2014 New York Times op-ed. Those sales reached $1.2 billion in 2012 alone, the last full year of Clinton’s tenure. Indeed, as the Mérida Initiative has grown, Mexico has become one of the world’s biggest purchasers of U.S. military arms and equipment.

But while sales have boomed for U.S.-based contractors, the situation in Mexico has badly deteriorated. The escalation of U.S. counter-drug assistance in the country has paralleled a drastic increase in violence, fueling a drug war that’s killed more than 100,000 people since 2006.

Turning Mexico into a major fountain of war profits: quite another accomplishment for a secretary of state whose skills have been lavishly praised by no less than Henry Kissinger, her close friend and advisor. Franzblau goes on to lay out, in grim detail, how Clinton’s State Department, openly flouting U.S. law, increased its cooperation with Mexican military and law enforcement units known to be perpetrating horrific human rights abuses:

Human Rights Watch reported in 2011, for example, on widespread cases of torture in Guerrero going back to 1994. The group noted regular abuses by police and military forces, including “cases of homicide, torture, and extortion” overseen by the judicial police chief in the northern part of the state. The same report highlighted strong evidence of the involvement of military officials from Chilpancingo in cases of kidnapping and disappearances in 2010, as the U.S. embassy was clearing officials for training from the same military base.

The payoff for these illegalities has been sweet for the future president:

Notably, several of the contractors that profited from U.S. security assistance in Mexico — such as General Electric, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies Corporation, which owns Sikorsky — reportedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation. And according to the transparency group Open Secrets, Clinton currently tops the list of all 2016 presidential candidates in campaign contributions from the military contracting industry.

By the end of Clinton’s first term in 2021, we will be in the 20th year of the Terror War — and the 50th year of the Drug War. How many more lives, how many more communities, how many more countries will be laid waste by these inhuman engines of greed and power — and their “progressive” champions — in that time?