rick rozoff

US embassy, Pentagon, EU, NATO: Azerbaijan to knock Russia, Iran out of European, Asian energy markets
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 10 2021

Advanced regional energy security symposium wraps up
Azer News, Sep 9 2021

The Closing ceremony of the Advanced Regional Energy Security Symposium 2021 Caucasus was held on Sep 10 by the Center of Excellence in EU Studies at ADA University in partnership with the NATO Energy Security Center of Excellence, the Naval Postgraduate School, BP Azerbaijan, and State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR). HE Mr Lee Litzenberger, Ambassador of the USA to the Republic of Azerbaijan addressed the attendees and delivered a keynote speech:

Azerbaijan’s energy sector has been transformative for the country and for European energy security. By growing its renewable energy potential, Azerbaijan can build upon its role as an important player in energy security in the region and beyond.

The next speaker, Dr Brenda Shaffer, Naval Postgraduate School, said that traditional geopolitics of energy is still alive and well. With the aim of rendering the Symposium more interactive, over 20 participants representing ministries, public agencies, and companies participated in a wide array of presentations, discussions, group works, case studies, and exercises delivered by distinguished local and international experts from the USA, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Azerbaijan’s energy infrastructure to make it future supplier of hydrogen to Europe – US Ambassador
Azer News, Sep 9 2021

The energy infrastructure that Azerbaijan built will make the country a future supplier of hydrogen to the European market, the US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Lee Litzenberger said during the closing ceremony of the Advanced Regional Energy Security Symposium 2021 the Caucasus. The Ambassador noted that the transformation of the Azerbaijan energy sector has been beneficial not only for the country but also for European energy security. By growing its renewable energy potential, Azerbaijan can become an important player in energy security in the region and beyond. He added:

Let me end by saying that the US is staying ready to continue supporting Azerbaijan in developing security sector and in its important contributions to energy security.

Southern Gas Corridor to support Europe’s energy security for decades to come – US ambassador
Azer News, Sep 9 2021

Litzenberger said:

I want to reaffirm the US support for SGC and for Azerbaijan’s efforts to expand deliveries to many European countries. It’s good for Europe and its good for Azerbaijan.

Advanced Regional Energy Security Symposium 2021 Caucasus, was held Sep 6-10, by the Center of Excellence in EU Studies at ADA University (Azerbaijan), in partnership with the NATO Energy Security Center of Excellence, the Naval Postgraduate School, BP Azerbaijan, and State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).

Kyrgyzstan interested in buying Azerbaijani oil – minister
Azer News, Sep 9 2021

[Kyrgyz Economy and Finance Minister Akylbek] Zhaparov noted:

Our country is interested in buying Azerbaijani oil and fuel. Azerbaijan has sufficient potential to supply Kyrgyzstan with oil products. We want Azerbaijan to become an exporter of petrochemicals not only for Kyrgyzstan, but also for the region as a whole.

The meeting is being held under the joint chairmanship of the Turkic Council’s Secretary General Baghdad Amreyev and the Azerbaijani Economy Minister Jabbarov and with the participation of the ministers of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Hungary and Turkey.

Turkish, Azerbaijani combat aircraft practice destroying “hypothetical enemy’s air defense systems”
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 10 2021

Azerbaijani-Turkish fighter jets perform operational flights
Azer News, Sep 9 2021

Azerbaijani and Turkish fighter jets have performed operational flights as part of the TurAz Falcon 2021. The exercises were aimed at improving interoperability and communication in joint operations between the fighter jets of the two countries. Along with the destruction of a hypothetical enemy’s air defence systems and strategic military targets, the fighter aircraft also successfully fulfilled close-range air combat and other tasks during the exercises. The Shusha Declaration on Allied Relations that President Ilham Aliyev and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed during the first official visit to Shusha eight months after Azerbaijan’s victory in the war with Armenia, also focuses on defence cooperation. It affirms joint efforts by the two armies in the face of foreign threats. The declaration also pledges joint efforts for the restructuring and modernization of the armed forces.

Turkic Council: Turco-Azerbaijani war created “new investment environment in liberated territories”
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 10 2021

Turkey says meeting of Turkic Council in Baku – big step for mutual investments
Trend.az, Sep 9 2021

The holding of the 10th meeting of the ministers of economy of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States (Turkic Council) in Baku is an important step for mutual investments, the Turkish Chamber of Commerce and Industry told TurkicWorld. The message said: “The Baku meeting will strengthen the existing great interest of Turkish investors in Azerbaijan. The victory of Azerbaijan in the 44-day Second Karabakh War created a new investment environment in the liberated territories (from Armenian occupation).”

Companies from Turkic states ready to implement various projects in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh
Trend.az, Sep 9 2021

Companies of the Turkic Council member states are ready to implement various projects in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region, the Secretary General of the Turkic Council Baghdad Amreyev said at the 10th Meeting of the Turkic Council’s Economy Ministers in Baku. Amreyev noted: “We are confident that we’ll be able to implement projects in Karabakh in all areas. These projects will bring benefits to not only Azerbaijan, but also the entire Turkic world.”

Armenia should understand that occupation of neighboring countries will not achieve anything – Turkish FM
Trend.az, SEp 9 2021

Since 30-year negotiations were unsuccessful, Azerbaijan liberated its occupied lands by force, and Armenia should draw a conclusion from this, the minister stressed.

Georgian schoolchildren indoctrinated on NATO integration
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 10 2021

Teacher Preparatory Training for the “Defense and Security” textbook was held
Georgian Ministry of Defense, Sep 9 2021

The Deputy Minister of Defense of Georgia, Grigol Giorgadze, opened the “Defense and Security” textbook for teachers. The training was held remotely. Its aim is to train 17 teachers for the school textbook pilot program. Employees of the Ministry of Defense, as well as the Emergency Management Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs participated in the training. During the training, modern school teaching methodology and textbook topics such as international security, national security system were discussed; Threats to Georgia, NATO and EU integration, natural disasters and security of the population, civilian security, military service and military education, etc.

With eye on Belarus: Poland, France, Germany hold Weimar Triangle talks
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 10 2021

Polish, German, French FMs to hold Weimar Triangle talks
PolskieRadio,Sep 9 2021

The meeting, marking 30 years since the trilateral cooperation platform was established, is set to be held at the invitation of German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. Topics up for discussion include “the most up-to-date international issues,” according to officials. The previous Weimar Triangle summit took place in Paris, with the heads of state discussing tensions in Poland’s eastern neighbor Belarus. The Weimar Triangle group was set up by Poland, Germany and France in the early 1990s. It was aimed at integrating Poland with European and Euro-Atlantic structures. This goal was achieved through Poland’s accession to NATO, and then to the EU.

Czech Republic: US deploys Reapers for NATO air combat exercise
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 10 2021

Multinational Aircraft Support JTAC Training During Ample Strike 2021
NATO, Sep 9 2021

The multinational Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) exercise Ample Strike started with Allied aircraft taking off from bases in the Czech Republic and abroad. Colonel Aleš Cápal, Exercise Director during Ample Strike, said: “The US MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial system’s (UAS) participation in this year’s Czech-led exercise Ample Strike 2021 is the result of a two-year effort by a team whose goal was to enable Czech and international participants to become acquainted with and practice state-of-the-art combat technology.” German Eurofighters and Hungarian JAS-39 Gripen flew in from their respective home bases. MQ-9 Reapers and the German Learjet, also stationed at Namest, as well as two Czech L-159 fighters out of Čáslav took off to enable the training. A Czech Mi-24/35 attack helicopter launched from a forward arming and refuelling point to conduct live firing at the Ondřejov air shooting range. “We are also receiving support from USAF F-15s flying out of Lakenheath Air Base in the UK.

Black Sea: US, NATO ally Bulgaria complete airdrop exercise
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 10 2021

Allies Bulgaria and USA Practice Airdrop Drills
NATO, Sep 9 2021

Bulgarian and American service members participated in the air exercise Thracian Summer 2021, Aug 17 – Sep 7. The exercise allowed both Allies to test their interoperability and demonstrate their capability. Thracian Summer 21 conducted in Bulgaria saw C-27J Spartan aircraft from the Bulgarian Air Force working alongside USAF C-130J Hercules conducted tactical flights at low altitude, transportation of troops and cargo, training and combat parachute jumps day and night from low and high altitudes. This exercise saw forces operating from prepared to temporary landing sites within Bulgaria. Simultaneously Bulgarian surface based air defence forces deployed with the task of providing anti-aircraft missile coverage of strategic sites of the critical infrastructure within the country. These bilateral training exercises and deployments of NATO Allies are designed to enhance interoperability among Allies and maintain joint readiness. Thracian Summer 2021 has further improved collective operational tactics, techniques and procedures of participants. It has underscored that Bulgaria is able to logistically support and host a live-fly exercise of this format.

Ukrainian president: full-scale war with Russia (and Belarus) is likely
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 10 2021

Zelensky admits possibility of full-scale war with Russia, but this would be tragic mistake for Moscow
Interfax Ukraine, Sep 9 2021

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky believes that the possibility of a full-scale war with Russia is likely. Zelensky said: “If there is a powerful escalation on the part of Russia, this is the most terrible thing that could be. Unfortunately, there is such an opportunity.” According to him there will never be a more friendly attitude of Ukraine towards Russia and Belarus.

Zelensky not ruling out full-scale war with Russia
UkrInform, Sep 9 2021

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has said he does not rule out that the situation in eastern Ukraine might escalate and Russia may start a full-scale war against Ukraine. “I believe that after that there will never be a neighborhood of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus if there is a strong escalation on the part of Russia,” he said. Zelensky said he mentioned Belarus because “there is Russia’s presence” on its territory.

Zelensky: Ukraine needs NATO, NATO (and EU) need Ukraine
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 10 2021

Zelensky: Without Ukraine, NATO will be losing and EU weakening
UkrInform, Sep 9 2021

President Vladimir Zelensky believes Ukraine is ready for membership in NATO, and that without Ukraine, NATO will be losing, while the European Union will be weakening. Zelensky said: “We say we think NATO needs us, we think that without Ukraine, there will be no strong EU. I openly speak about this with the POTUS, and I believe that without Ukraine, NATO will be losing. I believe that without Ukraine, the EU will be weakening a little. We are ready for NATO, by the level of our Army, the level of our specialists. The reforms that we are pursuing, I believe it’s we who primarily need them, not someone else, neither NATO nor the EU, but we.”

Such self-abasing obsequiousness should earn him a Quisling of the Year Award.

Finland to offer NATO 300k-man army on Russia’s border
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Finland’s new defense report spells out strategy for coming decade
News.cn, Sep 9 2021

The government of Finland on Thursday approved and published a report on the strategic development of the country’s defense capability in the next ten years. According to the report, the country’s war-time defense forces count 280k people. A reform will divide the war-time forces into operational troops and local forces from 2025. The strength of the local forces will be increased starting in 2025 and they will be given new tasks. Local defense is being developed into a military capability encompassing the entire country. The report says that Finland maintains “the possibility of seeking membership in NATO.” Finland is not a member country of NATO but has an “enhanced opportunity partner” status with the organization.

NATO completes conference on air and space power
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Conference Highlights NATO Air, Space Power
Ritz Herald, Sep 9 2021

From Sep 7-9 the Joint Air Power Competence Centre (JAPCC) hosted their annual Conference convening the NATO Airpower community at Essen, Germany. The presentations and discussions were focused on the topic of Delivering NATO Air and Space Power at the speed of relevance. General Jeff Harrigian, Director of the JAPCC, who is also Commander Allied Air Command and Commander United States Air Forces in Europe, said: “The annual JAPCC conference provides an outstanding opportunity to address the significant challenges of bringing policy and concepts into action at the speed of relevance in great power competition.” Joint Air and Space practitioners from across NATO, the EU and other international partners come together regularly at the JAPCC Conference.

Colombia: NATO’s foothold in Latin America
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Deputy Secretary General meets Colombian Vice President and Foreign Minister
NATO, Sep 9 2021

On Thursday (Sep 9 2021), NATO’s Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană met Vice President and Foreign Minister of Colombia Marta Lucía Ramírez de Rincón, and discussed the deepening of bilateral cooperation between Colombia and NATO. Colombia and NATO will agree a new partnership programme in the autumn of 2021. Colombia has been a partner to NATO since 2017 and is NATO’s only partner in Latin America.

Poland rallies NATO, EU partners against Belarus
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Visegrad Four: The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Three Seas Initiative members: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Polish president honoured by Hungary
Polskie Radio, Sep 9 2021

Duda has already met with his Hungarian counterpart 12 times, either bilaterally or as part of the regional Visegrad Group, which also includes the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Duda is also set to discuss a deepening of regional ties through the Visegrad Group and the Three Seas Initiative of 12 European countries between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas, including Poland and Hungary. Kolarski said: “Security is also certain to be on the agenda, specifically the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border, and the crisis caused by the actions of the authorities in Minsk.”

Poland condemns sentencing of Belarus opposition leaders
Polskie Radio, Sep 9 2021

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz said in a tweet: “The decision of the Belarusian authorities deserves firm condemnation. This is an open crushing of human rights and another step intended to intimidate Belarusian society. This repression should not go unanswered.” [Polish President Andrzej Duda] said on Twitter: “Poland demands the unconditional release of all political prisoners.”

Turkish defense chief: we will continue to assist Azerbaijan in conquering the Caucasus
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Translation: United by blood, soil and faith we will mutually exterminate the infidel enemy.

Turkey to continue to support fraternal Azerbaijan – Turkish defense minister
Azer News, Sep 9 2021

Azerbaijan liberated its lands (Karabakh and 7 surrounding districts) from the Armenian occupation following the 44-day Armenia-Azerbaijan second Karabakh war, Turkish Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar said, Trend reports via Turkish media. Turkey, which supported Azerbaijan at that time (during the war, which took place from late Sep to early Nov 2020), will continue to be next to its brothers, based on the ‘One nation, two states’ slogan.

Turkey issues new condemnation of Syria
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Turkey ‘concerned’ over regime attacks on besieged Daraa
Hurriyet, Sep 9 2021

Turkey on Sep 8 expressed “concern” over the latest reports of Assad regime forces escalating attacks on the Daraa al-Balad neighborhood in southwestern Syria. “We are closely monitoring the developments in Daraa with concern,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgiç said in a written statement. Syria has been ravaged by civil war since early 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protesters.

Thousands of citizens return to their homes in Daraa al-Balad
SANA, Sep 9 2021

In implementation of the settlement agreement initiated by the State to consolidate security and stability in Daraa al-Balad neighborhood, thousands of citizens began to return to their houses after the Syrian Arab Army fixed some points in the area and the engineering units continued acts of dismantling mines. Units of the Army established control over Daraa al-Balad on Wednesday in light of a settlement agreement. SANA’s reporter said that thousands of citizens began to enter the neighborhood, returning to their houses from the al-Saraya side.

Russian, Assad regime forces kill 61 civilians in 3 months: NGO
Anadolu, Sep 9 2021

Russian and Bashar-al Assad regime forces in Syria killed 61 civilians, including 33 children and 12 women, over the past three months, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said on Thursday.

Eastern Europe, Balkans: NATO integrates air, ground special ops for “hard to predict conventional conflicts”
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Multinational Special Aviation Programme Hosts DV Day
NATO, Sep 9 2021

Senior Special Operations Commanders gathered at the Multinational Special Aviation Programme Training Centre to discuss future training programmes for special operations aviation, followed by a capabilities demonstration in Zadar, Croatia, on Wednesday. Maj-Gen Ivica Olujić, Croatian Director of General Staff…emphasis[ed] the importance of the Multinational Special Aviation Programme Training Centre. He stressed the unique aspect of the facility by enabling aviation crews from across Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, with the support from Poland and the US, to train together. Multinational Special Aviation Programme Training Centre, along with Col Raffaele La Montagna, NATO Special Operations Headquarters Director, Air Development Programme outlined the objectives of the training programme for the Special Operations Air Task Unit and how the nations coming together for training enhances NATO special operations interoperability. Col Christopher Cassem, NATO Special Operations Headquarters Senior Representative, said: “The security situation in the world is rapidly changing. In the future, it is hard to predict conventional conflicts, so we should be a step ahead. The capabilities demonstrated today highlight the importance of combined air and ground training in special operations. Together, their joint capabilities are ready to respond to any threat, from any direction, at any time.”

Atlantic to eastern flank: NATO’s “biggest adaptation since the Cold War era”
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

JSECS Road to Full Readiness Reaches Its Final Milestone
NATO, Sep 9 2021

As a result of its biggest adaptation since the Cold War era, NATO celebrated the foundation of a new full operational Headquarters in Ulm on Sep 8 2021. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Tod D Wolters, declared the Joint Support and Enabling Command’s full readiness in the presence of high-ranking international representatives of its allied nations, as well as high-level political guests. Parliamentary State Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Thomas Silberhorn, represented the framework nation Germany. The road to successfully join the NATO family has been a long ongoing one. Starting in 2018, the Joint Support and Enabling Command has been implemented into NATO’s command and control structure over the past three years and successfully provided evidence of its capabilities during the NATO exercise Steadfast Defender 2021. With over 20 different nations represented at the Command in Ulm, the Joint Support and Enabling Command already established a network to its NATO allies and has the potential to become NATO’s knowledge hub for reinforcement and logistics.

Georgian vassal state begs Albright for “election observers”
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Death cult goddess and perpetrator of mass slaughter in Somalia, the Bosnian Serb Republic, Iraq and Yugoslavia. When she appeared for a book-signing at a progressive bookstore only a few blocks from my apartment, Women and Children First (let its role be acknowledged), in 2003, there was a line for several blocks, including some “anti-war activists” I knew in the queue. Now she’s fighting fascism, but only where it doesn’t exist.

Georgian PM to NDI head Madeleine Albright: gov’t wants many int’l observers for elections
Agenda.ge, Sep 9 2021

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has held an online call with head of National Democratic Institute (NDI) Madeleine Albright, where he stated that the Georgian government is eager to receive many international observers for the Oct 2 municipal elections. Albright thanked Garibashvili for the Georgian assistance in the recent evacuation of civilians from Afghanistan. She said that NDI long-term observers will visit Georgia in the run-up to the elections to work on election-related issues on the ground.

Defense collaboration chief priority of US-Ukrainian strategic partnership: FM
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Kuleba: We intend to work to ensure US further supports strengthening of Ukrainian defense capability
Interfax Ukraine, Sep 9 2021

Based on the results of the visit of President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky to the US, four key areas have been identified, in which work will now be performed not only in order to successfully implement the agreements between the presidents of Ukraine and the US, but also in order to make Ukraine stronger, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba has said. Kuleba said at an online briefing in Thursday: “The first area is defense and security. We will work for the US to further support the strengthening of Ukrainian defense capabilities, from training the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the transfer or sale of military equipment and weapons as needed to Ukraine.” According to Kuleba, Zelensky’s visit brought the US-Ukrainian strategic partnership to a new level.

Crimea: West plays Tatar card in “liberating the peninsula”
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, Sep 9 2021

Kuleba slams Russia for going after innocent people over Crimea Platform disruption failure
UkrInform, Sep 9 2021

[Foreign Minister Dmytro] Kuleba said: “There can be no other interpretations than to acknowledge that these raids and arrests are part of Russia’s revenge for Ukraine’s successful holding of the Crimea Platform summit. They are forcing innocent Crimean Tatars to pay the price, throwing them behind bars and bringing grief to their families.” He stressed that Ukraine would work with partners to ensure that all political prisoners held by Russia be released. In this context, Kuleba recalled that during his visit to Washington, he handed to the US State Dept a full list of Ukrainian prisoners held in the occupied Donbas, occupied Crimea, and Russia, while during a summit of presidents of Ukraine and the US, Vladimir Zelensky also raised the issue. “I have one appeal to the Russians: ‘Stop showing your pettiness. If you can’t stop the government of Ukraine from fighting for Crimea and liberating the peninsula, you shouldn’t attack innocent people.”

Chubarov calls on Western leaders to snub Putin
UkrInform, Sep 9 2021

Chairman of the Crimean Tatars’ Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, has called on Western powers to refrain from pursuing dialog or meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He noted that the Mejlis was grateful to the EU, the US, Britain, Turkey, and other countries, which throughout the eight years of occupation of the peninsula “have been expressing serious concern about the situation in the occupied Crimea and the fate of our compatriots.”

eva bartlett explores the hell on earth that australia has become

Australian researcher Michael Swifte on draconian covid policies in Australia
Eva K Bartlett, Sep 8 2021

Michael Swifte is an independent activist and advocate residing in Brisbane, Australia. He is a part of the critical thinking collective Wrong Kind of Green. From a brief bio on him: “His work focuses on the non-profit industrial complex with a special interest in the development of the Galilee Basin coal complex, networked hegemony, the collateralization of nature for the ‘new economy’, and in highlighting the political will for fossil fuel driven industrial decarbonization.”

Follow his work:

http://www.twitter.com/empathiser
http://www.wesuspectsilence.wordpress.com/
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org
http://www.facebook.com/michaelswizswifte

Monica Smit Refuses to be Silenced: Chooses Jail over Unfair Bail
http://www.xyz.net.au/2021/09/monica-smit-refuses-to-be-silenced-chooses-jail-over-unfair-bail

Her arrest
http://www.twitter.com/_Mrtdogg/status/1432585114333110274
http://www.reignitedemocracyaustralia.com.au/monicas-arrest

CHO served
http://www.reignitedemocracyaustralia.com.au/sutton-served

Oz surveillance legislation

Australian government introduces new surveillance laws that allow authorities to quietly modify or delete Twitter and Facebook posts

Increase of suicidal ideations
http://www.rt.com/op-ed/519837-covid19-lockdowns-mask-wearing-isolation

Phone call with a lawyer at Caxton Legal Centre
http://www.sciencepublichealthpolicyqld2021.blogspot.com/2021/01/phone-call-with-lawyer-at-caxton-legal.html

Denis Rancourt interview
http://www.odysee.com/@EvaKareneBartlett:9/interview-with-canadian-physicist-and:1

Mark Crispin Miller censorship
http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1633-mark-crispin-miller-exposes-propaganda-in-the-academy
http://www.vaccinechoicecanada.com/wp-content/uploads/masks-dont-work-denis-rancourt-april-2020.pdf

Karen Goori at Yuggera Original Sovereign opening People’s Revolution Rally Meeanjin Brisbane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkyLwkGWg8w

omfg, i’m so in love

The US’ ‘anti-terror’ tools that failed in Afghanistan are being keenly used on activists at home… as the 1/6 witch-hunt shows
Helen Buyniski, RT.com, Sep 9 2021

Stung by its rout in Afghanistan, the US is doubling down on efforts to punish homegrown dissidents. But while the post-Jan 6 crackdown brought it into the public eye, the domestic ‘war on terror’ has been underway for years. As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks looms this weekend, the Dept of Homeland Security wants to make sure you’re afraid. Very afraid. Americans, it warned last month, are facing an enemy so drunk on mind-warping conspiracy theories that even the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus in the world can’t stop them. Subtlety has never been the strong point of the country’s ever-multiplying intelligence agencies and, for the 9/11 anniversary, the government is pulling out the stops for an orgy of fear not seen since the event itself. The recent DHS bulletin warned the surrounding weeks would be marked by a “heightened threat environment,” at least until Veterans’ Day, when a new excuse will likely be rolled out to be very afraid. It even dredged up al-Qaeda themselves, declaring the terror group had released its first English-language magazine in four whole years, apparently believing American dissidents would be inspired by their country turning tail and fleeing from Kabul.

But the DHS and its ilk have been screaming about terrorism since Jan 7, the day after hundreds of pissed-off Trump voters and other disaffected Americans stormed the Capitol in what has been retroactively recast as an armed insurrection, in the absence of any arms or of attempts on the life of any legislator. As with Sep 11 itself, law enforcement agencies are publicly atoning for their supposed catastrophic intelligence failure by cracking down on the dissidents they do know about, the equivalent of closing the barn doors as the last horse gallops across state lines, and papering over the logical gaps with rhetorical bluster. Except, in this case, the “If you see something, say something” of 20 years ago has become the more direct “snitch on your family”. If the definition of insanity is indeed doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, the American intelligence apparatus can be said to be well and truly batty. Bringing back home the same “war on terror” tactics that lost the war in Afghanistan, nearly fumbled it in Iraq, and have all but lost it in Syria is asking for yet another massive failure, one that will be much more difficult to recast as victory as its targets need not rely upon untrustworthy news media for information on what is happening outside their doors.

Ordering police forces, already a symbol of incipient US fascism to many after the backlash against police brutality that exploded last summer in the form of Black Lives Matter (and other actual riots), to deploy these tactics against their fellow Americans almost guarantees a rebellion. And Americans, unlike the goat-herders in dirt-poor Afghanistan, have been stocking up on guns and ammo so much that manufacturers are staring down two-year delays in restocking. But, while Covid-19 and the 2020 election may have unmasked the extent of the project, the designation of dissident Americans as the enemy has been underway for longer than many believe. Just as the neocons at the Project for a New American Century didn’t wait for the planes to hit the towers to write up their contingency plan for the ‘new Pearl Harbor’ existential crisis that 9/11 became, that group’s spiritual descendants have been cooking up some frightfully draconian legislation while the country was distracted with four years of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Those behind War on Terror 2.0 already have the dystopian tools at hand to wage unprecedented domestic warfare. All they need now is the proper catalyst.

This is why, nine months after the fact, we’re still hearing about the Jan 6 riot at the Capitol. Never mind that the only victims of that sad-sack demonstration were among the pro-Trump crowd, and that one of the supposed leaders of this big scary insurrection, Proud Boys chief Enrique Tarrio, was a known FBI collaborator. We’re told to fear “white ISIS” anyway, these LARPing boys in black having dropped seamlessly into the terror narrative where al-Qaeda and its boxcutters of doom once stood. It was “the most violent attack since the British burned the Capitol in 1814,” former Bloomberg News editor Albert Hunt wrote in an op-ed for the Hill, joining the tireless chorus that has spent so many months to try to puff up the rally into something it wasn’t.

Indeed, these ‘white supremacists,’ some of whom, to the embarrassment of the FBI and DHS, aren’t actually white, are said to be so dangerous that they must be brainwashed out of their political views if there is any hope of reintegrating them into society. One need only look at the case of Doug Jensen, one of hundreds locked up in the aftermath of the Capitol protest. Finally released on bail after six months, having promised he’d gotten his mind right and no longer believed in QAnon and others who questioned the 2020 election results, he was caught in his garage earlier this month watching a video of Mike Lindell, a.k.a. “MyPillow Guy,” one of the leading lights (dim as they may be) in the delusional community who believed Trump would be reinstated as president last month. Sending him back to jail for such a minor transgression harks back to the McCarthy era: “Are you now or have you ever been a follower of MyPillow Guy?” and spits in the face of any notion that the country is still, as it stridently claims, ‘Our Democracy.’

The increasingly open trend towards thought reform (brainwashing) as a prerequisite for an innocent verdict (or even bail) should terrify those on the Left as much as it does the Right. But they continue to fiddle while Rome burns, “othering” their ideological foes with dime-a-dozen smears like “white supremacist.” This puts them in bed with their avowed enemies the NYPD which, after being handed unprecedented powers to spy on its own citizens following 9/11, got on the “white supremacist” hunt early, starting a unit to deal with these types (who are vanishingly uncommon in a proudly multi-cultural city like New York) back in 2019. Equipped with dystopian technology like super-powered X-ray vans that can see human activity inside a car (or ground-floor home) and the Domain Awareness System, which constitutes the largest network of cameras, license-plate scanners and other sensors in the world, the department has primarily been using the weapons of war to bust petty criminals. One need only look at the spike in crime the city has seen over the past two years to be reminded that this tactic simply does not work. But then, that assumes the purpose is to bring down crime statistics. The NYT notes regarding 9/11:

It is almost impossible to overstate how profoundly the attacks changed American policing.

This is particularly true in New York, which seems to be sliding into full-blown fascism thanks to the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Told they could no longer so much as ride a subway train bare-faced without a $50 fine, most New Yorkers have simply assumed there are cameras everywhere and dutifully masked up, even when many independently express concerns the whole masking ritual is at best a cultish rite, and at worst an effort to dehumanize one’s fellow man. After all, there are criminals about, a lot of them! and the boys in blue are keeping us safe when they place their boots on our necks and apply just the right amount of loving pressure. The lofty battle cry the Bush administration let loose upon sending American soldiers into the 20-year quagmire that Afghanistan would become was that we must ‘get the terrorists’ lest they rob us of our freedoms. But instead of safeguarding them, American leaders memory-holed those freedoms as quickly as possible, the better to make “our boys” returning from Afghanistan feel right at home. The war is here, and the real terrorists, those in Washington, are already doing their victory dance. Let us hope it’s premature.

LifeLog 2.0.? Facebook summons the ghost of Google Glass with Ray-Ban ‘smart glasses’ capable of stealthily recording uninitiated
Helen Buyniski, RT.com, Sep 10 2021

Social media giant Facebook is breathing new life into the cringiest accessory of the oughties, Google Glass, joining forces with sunglasses powerhouse Ray-Ban to unleash a pair of “smart” glasses that can record your every move. The first product of a reported multi-year device partnership with Facebook, Ray-Ban ‘Stories’ sunglasses are almost indistinguishable from normal eyewear, except they sync up with a companion app called Facebook View on the user’s phone and require a Facebook account to use, according to Alex Heath, who tested them for The Verge. As of Thursday, the $299 glasses will be ubiquitous, on sale at all sunglasses stores that stock Ray-Bans. In addition to two forward-facing cameras for taking photos and video, the glasses contain dual Bluetooth speakers, all the better to record your phone calls with, and boast a six-hour battery life with a USB-C charger. According to Heath, the image quality pales in comparison to normal smartphones, making the glasses more useful for unobtrusive, spur-of-the-moment, or hands-free image capturing. The accompanying app allows basic editing of clips and photos, with the capability to share the content with other apps (apparently not just Facebook).

Unlike their ill-fated ancestors Google Glass, whose distinctive look made it immediately clear when an individual was wearing them (and possibly recording their surroundings), Stories look and feel almost exactly like Ray-Ban’s blockbuster Wayfarer style, according to Heath. According to The Verge, the tiny white recording light on the edge of the lens is so “dim” that it “could pose privacy concerns if people don’t realize the glasses are capturing photos or video.” Like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or Google Home, Ray-Ban Stories are activated with a ‘wake phrase,’ “Hey Facebook” in this case, and also sport a physical button on one side of the glasses frame that would come in handy for those who don’t want to let the whole room know they’re being recorded. It remains to be seen if, also like Alexa, Siri, and Google Home, the glasses are capable of activating themselves during intimate moments due to “mishearing” the wake phrase, or whether Facebook content monitors will also be listening in to tune the glasses’ voice recognition, as was the excuse when Amazon, Apple, and Google were caught with their hands in the data cookie jar. The privacy policy that one must page through to actually use the glasses makes it clear Facebook has permission to collect data about how the device is being used, but insists the company isn’t analyzing the content of the recordings saved in the View app for the purpose of targeting advertising.

Facebook’s adoption of a technology capable of recording the user’s every waking move calls to mind the Pentagon’s long-dormant LifeLog project, which aimed to record a complete visual diary of the user’s life – except that it was to be rolled out under the aegis of the US government at a time when Americans were deservedly wary of mass surveillance. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) killed the LifeLog project in 2004 for reasons that were never made public, just in time for the rollout of Facebook, which some speculated was designed as a kinder, gentler, private-sector version of the Pentagon’s spy app. Like Facebook, LifeLog aimed to “build a database tracking a person’s entire existence,” from their social relationships to their media consumption habits, their purchases (Facebook Marketplace), their communications (Messenger, WhatsApp), and package the data on memories, events and experiences into “discrete episodes” (Facebook Memories). Also like Facebook, it would include location tracking, keep tabs on what non-Facebook sites the user visited, and ultimately be able to predict the user’s actions before they knew themselves what they were going to do. DARPA’s documentation on LifeLog acknowledged as much, noting that the project “will be able to infer the user’s routines, habits and relationships with other people, organizations, places and objects, and to exploit these patterns to ease its task” of surveillance.

It’s recently been reported that the supposedly-encrypted Facebook messaging subsidiary WhatsApp is not only not actually encrypted but has been feeding users’ messages to law enforcement, not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in fines Facebook has racked up for repeated and wanton violations of users’ privacy. It’s therefore difficult to believe the images glimpsed through Ray-Ban ‘Stories’ aren’t going to end up in a government database with the rest of the data that US and allied intelligence agencies have been scraping from Facebook for so many years. But, unlike in 2004, the internet users of 2021 appear to have learned to love Big Brother so much they think nothing of paying to let ‘him’ see the world through their eyes.

the deceptively long sunset of empire

Britain supported Pakistan while the south Asia nation helped the Taliban kill UK troops
Matt Kennard, Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, Sep 9 2021

UK chief of defence staff General ‘Sir’ Nick Carter greets Pakistan’s
army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Britain, Oct 2018.

Last week, British foreign secretary Dominic Raab made his first trip to Pakistan after the botched withdrawal of troops and civilians from neighbouring Afghanistan in August. Raab described Pakistan as a “vital partner” as he sought with his Pakistani counterpart to “prevent Afghanistan becoming a hub for terrorist groups. Yet known to the British Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and intelligence services, is that Pakistan has been the leading external backer of the Taliban for several decades. Former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove has said the Taliban could not have completed its takeover of Afghanistan “without Pakistani backing.” US officials have often openly acknowledged Pakistan’s nurturing of extremist forces. The State Dept said in 2020:

Pakistan continued to serve as a safe haven for certain regionally-focused terrorist groups, and allowed groups targeting Afghanistan, including the Afghan Taliban, to operate from its territory.

Wounded Taliban fighters have been known to receive treatment in Pakistani hospitals. A report based on interviews with Taliban field commanders in Afghanistan found that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was giving “very significant” levels of funding, training and sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban. The 2020 study, by the London School of Economics, found that ISI agents even attend Taliban supreme council meetings. ISI chief Lt-Gen Faiz Hamid visited Kabul on Saturday to talk with Taliban leaders. Britain has assisted Pakistan’s security establishment despite Islamabad’s covert support for Taliban operations against British troops in Afghanistan. MI5 and MI6 have been training senior intelligence officers from Pakistan at an annual UK military course at Chicksands, a British army intelligence base in Bedfordshire, north of London. The course involves lectures by the chief and deputy chief of UK Defence Intelligence and modules on “security policy” and the “challenges of intelligence sharing.” It aims to “discuss and analyse the conduct and management of intelligence” as well as “forge personal and professional relationships.” The MOD has boasted that the course “provides a significant opportunity for intelligence diplomacy at the highest levels.”

RAF Chicksands in Bedfordshire, UK, where senior Pakistani intelligence
officers are being trained by MI5 and MI6. (Photo: Amy Swanson)

Little has been made public about the UK’s intelligence relations with the ISI, which has seen allegations of collusion over the mistreatment of Al Qaeda suspects. In 2009 Parliament’s foreign affairs committee said it was “very concerned by allegations that the nature of the relationship UK officials have with the ISI may have led them to be complicit in torture.” When the UK government was asked in parliament in 2018 whether it considered ISI’s support to the Taliban when providing aid to Pakistan, it simply replied:

It is the long-standing policy of the government not to comment on matters relating to intelligence or national security.

British military training of Pakistan, however, has been ongoing with courses in the UK having been given for years. In 2019-20, Pakistani personnel attended no less than 27 UK military courses given by the British Army, Navy and Royal Air Force. This included courses on “military psychological operations” and “joint information operations.” The previous year, Pakistani personnel attended 30 UK military courses in Britain with “bespoke” training offered. The UK deploys around 10 military personnel in Pakistan, where roles have included teaching pilots at the air force academy in Risalpur, near Peshawar. There have been ongoing high-level relations between senior officers. In 2016, the then head of the British Army, General ‘Sir’ Nicholas Carter, visited Pakistan “to reinforce the close military relationship between the UK and Pakistan.” It was the fourth time Carter and General Rahil Sharif, the Chief of Army Staff in Pakistan, had met in the last two years. Carter “spoke of his deep respect for the Pakistan Army’s achievements in combating terrorism.” The following year, General Carter gave a speech at the President’s Parade in Pakistan in which he said “our two Armies have a long and resilient relationship built on mutual respect and understanding.” Carter, now chief of defence staff, the UK’s top military officer, visited Pakistan again in Oct 2020 when he “highlighted the close UK-Pakistan defence partnership” in a speech to the National Defence University. The two countries’ militaries engage in annual talks among the army, air force and navy and the Ministry of Defence holds an annual Defence Cooperation Forum attended by the MOD permanent secretary, its top civil servant. Pakistan is also a significant market for UK arms exports. In the ten years to January 2021, Britain exported £267m of military or “dual-use” equipment to Pakistan. Among the most frequent licences granted were components for military helicopters, weapon sights, and small arms ammunition.

Former Taliban fighters line up to hand over their rifles,
Ghor, Afghanistan, May 28 2012. (Photo: Joe Painter)

Joe Glenton, a former soldier who fought in Afghanistan, told Declassified:

There has been very little critical analysis over the years of how Pakistan’s intelligence services were provisioning the exact same extremist forces who were sending young British soldiers home with missing limbs or dead. Like the massive arms firms profits generated by the occupation, this kind of detail, which is critical to even a basic understanding of the war, has been largely skipped over in favour of that very British kind of imperial fantasia which has characterised the entire two-decade-long disaster. Soldiers, veterans and the bereaved families of those killed and wounded, should be extremely angry, and they should be demanding answers.

In his memoir, ‘Sir’ Sherard Cowper-Coles, UK ambassador to Afghanistan from 2007-9, wrote that during his meetings with then Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai “one subject always came up”: Pakistan. Cowper-Coles wrote:

Like many of his fellow countrymen, Karzai was convinced that the source of many or most of his country’s troubles was Pakistan in general, and the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) in particular. He believed that Pakistan had never accepted the removal of the Taliban, Pakistan’s proxies, from power. Worse than this, he believed that Britain was in league with Pakistan. Time and again he accused me of being too sympathetic to Pakistan, and of working for a government that was colluding secretly with Pakistan to control Afghanistan.

Karzai was convinced that MI6 had especially close ties to Pakistan and operated in Afghanistan on Pakistan’s behalf. Pakistan was the staging post for the mujahideen put together by the CIA, MI6 and Pakistan’s ISI, called Operation Cyclone, in the 1980s to fight the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. One of those trained by the ISI during this period was Mullah Omar, the founder of the Taliban. The Brookings Institution notes of Omar:

As he created the Taliban, the Pakistani army gave him support for the drive on Kabul in 1996 that gave the Taliban control of most of the country. Pakistan provided experts and advisers for the Taliban military, oil for its economy and was their supply route to the outside world.

The Taliban took Kabul in 1996 and ruled until the US and UK invasion in Oct 2001, undertaken for the stated reason that the Taliban was harbouring Osama bin Laden, the architect of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. A report by Human Rights Watch in 2001 noted:

Pakistan was soliciting funding for the Taliban, bankrolling Taliban operations, providing diplomatic support as the Taliban’s virtual emissaries abroad, arranging training for Taliban fighters, recruiting skilled and unskilled manpower to serve in Taliban armies, planning and directing offensives, providing and facilitating shipments of ammunition and fuel, and on several occasions apparently directly providing combat support.

Pakistani support for the Taliban did not wane after the US and British invasion had toppled its regime and the movement turned to violent insurgency against Western troops in the country. In 2007 the NYT reported from Quetta, a Pakistani city near the border with Afghanistan, that it was “an important base for the Taliban” and that “Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them.” A Western diplomat in Kabul said “the Pakistanis are actively supporting the Taliban”, adding he had seen an intelligence report of a recent meeting on the Afghan border between a senior Taliban commander and a retired colonel in the ISI. Policy-makers in Islamabad have wanted to exert influence over neighbouring Afghanistan and counter Indian influence in the sub-region.

Hamid Karzai, former president of Afghanistan, speaks at Chatham House
in London, Jun 17 2016. (Photo: Suzanne Plunkett)

Islamabad’s support continued in later years of the Afghan conflict. Documents leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010 showed that Pakistan’s ISI was meeting directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organise the fight against American soldiers. The NYT wrote:

The ISI directly helped organise Taliban offensives at key junctures of the war.

Behind the scenes, both Bush and Obama administration officials and US commanders were said to have confronted senior Pakistani military officers with accusations of ISI complicity in attacks in Afghanistan, and even presented Pakistani officials with lists of ISI and military operatives believed to be working with militants. In 2011, Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Taliban was operating from Pakistan “with impunity” and that “extremist organisations serving as proxies of the government of Pakistan are attacking Afghan troops and civilians as well as US soldiers.” A year after Mullen’s accusation, as British prime minister David Cameron visited Pakistan, the UK government said the two countries had “an unbreakable partnership.” UK troops were still under attack from the Taliban in Afghanistan and around 400 had died by then. Cameron then launched an “enhanced strategic dialogue” involving a meeting every year in which the countries would discuss issues including security, trade and education.

David Cameron visits Islamabad, Pakistan, 30 June 2013.

If UK support for the Pakistani security establishment has been intended to influence it to reduce its support for the Taliban, it is unclear what has been achieved. In public, UK ministers, rather than challenging Pakistan for backing the Taliban, have long claimed Islamabad is keen to promote regional stability. The UK government stated in 2019:

The UK recognises the critical role Pakistan has to play in facilitating stability in the region, and in enabling the conditions for meaningful peace talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban. This is one of the many reasons that the UK continues to invest in the close Defence relationship with Pakistan.

The UK has offered some support to Pakistan to counter terrorism on its soil. In 2011, an elite team of 18-20 British military trainers was stationed in Quetta “to train front line forces in the struggle against al Qaeda and the Taliban.” But the team was expelled from the country by the Pakistani government after the US assassination of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan the previous month. Patrick Sanders, a senior UK military commander, said in 2017:

Pakistan has made breathtaking gains against terrorists and extremists in Tribal areas, unmatched in over 150 years, and deserves credit for that. Our relationship is very close and the role the Pakistan army plays is very important in the region.

In March of this year, Sanders was in Pakistan again to meet Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and said he “acknowledged and appreciated” the Pakistan army’s efforts in the fight against terrorism. Close relations between London and Islamabad have continued while Pakistan’s backing for extremist groups has gone beyond the Taliban. Last week Lt Gen HR McMaster, the former US National Security Adviser, said that Pakistan should be treated as a “pariah state” if it did not stop its support for jihadi groups. He said:

We have to stop pretending that Pakistan is a partner. Pakistan has been acting as an enemy nation against us by organising, training and equipping these forces and by continuing to use jihadist terrorist organisations as an arm of their foreign policy.

andrew may be a bit creepy, but biden is well creepy

Vaxy Joe Gives Kook Vaxer Speech Announcing Brutal New Abuses of Power
Andrew Anglin, Daiy Stormer, Sep 10 2021

The fiendish beast Joe Biden is making more demands of your body. He gave a speech Thursday night expressing gross rage and announcing that he’s going to force more people to take the deadly vaccine. I’m not going to counter all of these false statements about how it’s “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” A couple weeks ago, I would have embedded Alex Berenson’s tweets debunking all of the statements, but Berenson is now banned from Twitter. Now, you can just go read all of the articles I’ve written about this. Basically, statistics from the UK and Israel show that you’re more likely to “die from covid 19” if you are vaxed. He claimed that there are 80 million unvaxed, and called them selfish and other names. He also spread fake news about “mobile morgues” and “overwhelmed hospitals.” The most bizarre thing is that he didn’t tell people how many vaccines he’s demanding these people get. Presumably, he’s talking about at least three. Of course, we know from the Jews that the fourth is on the way. This is the beginning of a program to demonize the unvaxed. He says that the unvaxed are preventing the vaxed from going back to normal, and that they “cannot be allowed” to remain unvaxed. He said the unvaxed are “blocking public health.” “This is not about freedom or personal choice,” he said, emphasizing the word “freedom” with a mocking tone. He announced a program to mandate all federal workers, and anyone contracting with the federal government, to be vaxed. He also called on all companies to start forcing people to be vaxed. This is obviously going to lead to punishment to companies that don’t require this. The government has a lot of ways to punish you. He also called on doctors to believe him over their own medical expertise. He claimed that he knows more than doctors. He stressed the FDA approval, without mentioning that top FDA employees resigned. There were a lot of really angry, menacing moments in the speech, but one that really made my skin crawl was Biden claiming that his patience is at an end with people who think they have a right to resist his will.

BREAKING: President Biden says his 'patience is wearing thin' with unvaccinated Americans:

"What more is there to wait for? What more to do you need to see? We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us." pic.twitter.com/XcALP2MrQB

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) September 9, 2021

If he can force this on you, he can force anything on you. People do not agree that the vax is safe. Even if it is safe (it’s not), people have a right to disagree, and this is a political issue. If the president is allowed to make this decision for you, he can make any decision for you. This bullying is political. This does not somehow “transcend politics.” Democrats are feminine, for one, and are obsessed with safety and groupthink. For another, Democrats are emotional believers in authority, and don’t really care about facts. It is very natural that right and left are split on this vaccine. It is a partisan political issue, and Joe Biden is claiming that he has authority over your body. Biden announced that the vaxed are really safe anyway, which brings the question why it matters if everyone else gets vaxed. But then after saying the vaxed are safe, he said that actually, they’re not really that safe, and they need to take a third shot now. He then hinted at the fact he has a dead son, and that it is now time to vax 12-year-olds. He said that parents are begging for children under 12 to get vaxed. He also claimed that Ron DeSantis is evil and wants people to die from the virus, just to be mean. He then hinted that he might have DeSantis whacked. It’s really shameful that people are not repulsed by this man claiming that the Florida governor is literally metaphysically evil and wants people to die of a disease to be mean. How can an adult not be disgusted at being talked to this way?

Most distressingly of all, Biden announced that a “new pandemic” will be coming soon. He closed be creepily whispering “get vaccinated” into his mic. The most amazing thing about the speech was that it was over 20 minutes long. Biden is holding up a lot better than I thought he would.

Republicans are Claiming to be Making a Stand Against Joe Biden’s Sadistic Vax Mania
Andrew Anglin, Daily Stormer, Sep 10 2021

On Thursday, Joe “Vaxy Joe” Biden, the false president of America, gave a menacing and histrionic speech wherein he made a series of demands against the unvaxed population. The demands were accompanied by vicious and hateful threats. He basically said that he’s moving to force everyone in the country to take his deadly vax, and he’s going to force them out of their jobs and into poverty and starvation if they refuse. He really did up the ante. It was effectively a declaration of war on those who believe they have a right to make their own decisions about what gets rammed into their bodies. It will probably take most people a little while to realize just how aggressive this man has become. He is claiming outright to have authority over your body, and it doesn’t take a creative mind to realize where things can go from here. His threats come as the government is beginning to demand people take a third shot of the alleged vaccine. Anthony Fauci has already said that in order to qualify as “vaccinated,” you will have to have taken three shots. Israel has announced a fourth shot, which will of course come to America in the next few months. It should be noted that even as Biden is claiming he’s going to force everyone in the country to take this vax, the Postal Service is exempt (Actually, no – RB):

JUST IN: White House official now says USPS workers ARE part of the federal vaccine mandate under OSHA jurisdiction, though technically not under the executive order.

Deleting a previous thread that was based on earlier reporting. Will also momentarily update our write-up. pic.twitter.com/8ydESDhMeE

— Jacob Bogage (@jacobbogage) September 10, 2021

I have no idea why that is, but it shows that this whole “everyone must take the vax” thing is not real. He said “all federal workers,” and then exempted a federal agency with millions of employees, who also come into direct contact with large numbers of people daily, as they’re delivering the mail. It’s likely that other federal agencies will be issued exemptions. Hilariously, Anthony Fauci admitted back in May that between 40% and 50% of the employees at HIS OWN AGENCY, the NIH, are refusing the vaccine.

Senator Burr asked Fauci, Peter Marks from the FDA, and @CDCDirector what percentage of their own employees are vaccinated.

Fauci probably a bit more than half, around 60%.

Marks said about the same.

Walensky dodged the question. pic.twitter.com/zoeZXZeCWM

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) May 14, 2021

Those people obviously know more about the vax than anyone else in the world, so I seriously doubt they’re going to agree to take it. They will likely be given an exemption as well. The most shocking thing about the response to Vaxy Joe’s unhinged and menacing attack on America is the deafening silence from Donald J Trump. He issued multiple statements yesterday, including two about Afghanistan and one about the Jews, but did not comment on Joe Biden saying he’s going to force everyone to take a deadly gene therapy treatment against their will.

Psaki Declares Government Will Make Employers Enforce Vaccine Mandates
Steve Watson, Summit News, Sep 10 2021

After Joe Biden announced that all companies with more than 100 employees will be mandated to get employees vaccinated against COVID, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if the government has the power to enforce the move, to which she replied emphatically ‘yes’. The reporter asked Psaki:

How bold is the president willing to be as far as the private sector is concerned in the vaccine mandate area, even if they don’t have federal contracts. Can the Department of Labor or anyone else compel major employers, large employers, to force the vaccine mandates on their employees?

“Yes,” Psaki said, adding simply “Stay tuned.” Watch:

During a speech Thursday night, Biden threatened:

This is not about freedom or personal choice. We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And you’re refusal has cost all of us. So, please do the right thing. But just don’t take it from me. Listen to the voices of unvaccinated Americans who are lying in hospital beds saying, ‘If only I got vaccinated! If only!’

NOW – "Our patience is wearing thin," warns Biden the unvaccinated.pic.twitter.com/ODIylWPfOG

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 9, 2021

During the speech, Biden also pushed booster shots, vaccines for school children over the age of 12, and announced that the option of presenting a negative test instead of proof of vaccination will be removed for federal workers. Biden will also sign an executive order directing the same vaccine requirement be applied to employees of contractors who do business with the federal government. According to Biden’s Covid response director Jeff Zients, employers can be fined up to $14k if mandates are violated:

The Biden admin w/ enforce "substantial fines up to nearly $14,000 per violation" to employers that don't abide by the vaccine or weekly testing mandate for businesses with 100 or more employees that @POTUS will announce later today, per @WHCOVIDResponse Jeff Zients.

— Patsy Widakuswara (@pwidakuswara) September 9, 2021

There is one way to avoid the mandates:

So revoke your citizenship, go cross the Mexican border illegally, and you won’t have to comply with vaccine mandates and you’ll get free everything.

Good plan. 🙄https://t.co/uqZ2G90DWF

— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) September 10, 2021

i agree with the intercept that this story shows bad faith on the part of NIH

Nih Documents Provide New Evidence US Funded Gain-Of-Function Research In Wuhan
Sharon Lerner, Mara Hvistendahl, Maia Hibbett, Intercept, Sep 10 2021

Documents obtained by The Intercept contain new evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the nearby Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, along with their collaborator, the US-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, have engaged in what the US government defines as “gain-of-function research of concern,” intentionally making viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in order to study them, despite stipulations from a US funding agency that the money not be used for that purpose. Grant money for the controversial experiment came from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Anthony Fauci. The award to EcoHealth Alliance, a research organization which studies the spread of viruses from animals to humans, included subawards to Wuhan Institute of Virology and East China Normal University. The principal investigator on the grant is EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, who has been a key voice in the search for Covid-19’s origins. Scientists unanimously told The Intercept that the experiment, which involved infecting genetically engineered mice with “chimeric” hybrid viruses, could not have directly sparked the pandemic. None of the viruses listed in the write-ups of the experiment are related to the virus that causes Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, closely enough to have evolved into it. Still, several scientists said the new information, which the NIH released after it was sued by The Intercept, points to biosafety concerns, highlighting a general lack of oversight for research on pathogens and raising questions about what other information has not been publicly disclosed. Jesse Bloom, who studies the evolution of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said:

As a virologist, I personally think creating chimeras of SARS-related bat coronaviruses that are thought to pose high risk to humans entails unacceptable risks.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, is a disease caused, like Covid-19, by an airborne coronavirus. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci listens during a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic at the White House on Mar 26 2020 in Washington, DC. The experiment also raises questions about assertions from Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins that NIH-funded projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology did not involve gain-of-function research. In May, Fauci testified before Congress:

The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The documents do not establish whether Fauci was directly aware of the work. Scientists working under a 2014 NIH grant to the EcoHealth Alliance to study bat coronaviruses combined the genetic material from a “parent” coronavirus known as WIV1 with other viruses. They twice submitted summaries of their work that showed that, when in the lungs of genetically engineered mice, three altered bat coronaviruses at times reproduced far more quickly than the original virus on which they were based. The altered viruses were also somewhat more pathogenic, with one causing the mice to lose significant weight. The researchers reported:

These results demonstrate varying pathogenicity of SARSr-CoVs with different spike proteins in humanized mice.

But the terms of the grant clearly stipulated that the funding could not be used for gain-of-function experiments. The grant conditions also required the researchers to immediately report potentially dangerous results and stop their experiments pending further NIH review. According to both the EcoHealth Alliance and NIH, the results were reported to the agency, but NIH determined that rules designed to restrict gain-of-function research did not apply. The Intercept consulted 11 scientists who are virologists or work in adjacent fields and hold a range of views on both the ethics of gain-of-function research and the Covid-19 origins search. Seven said that the work appears to meet NIH’s criteria for gain-of-function research. One said that the experiment “absolutely does not meet the bar” for gain-of-function research. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, said:

You can’t predict that these viruses would be more pathogenic, or even pathogenic at all in people. They also did not study transmissibility at all in these experiments.

This meant that the scientists did not look at whether the viruses could spread across a population.Three experts said that, while they did not have enough knowledge of US policies to comment on whether the research met NIH criteria, the experiment involving humanized mice was unnecessarily risky.One virologist, Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, said while he considered the mouse experiment described in the document to clearly fall into the gain-of-function category, he didn’t see it as problematic. Racaniello said:

You can do some kinds of gain-of-function research that then has unforeseen consequences and may be a problem, but that’s not the case here.

Robert Kessler, communications manager for EcoHealth Alliance, denied that the work on the humanized mice met the definition of gain-of-function research. Kessler insisted that bat viruses are not potential pandemic pathogens because, he said, “a bat virus is not known to be able to infect humans.” The proposal justified the work on WIV1 by explaining that it is “not a select agent,” referring to a list of closely monitored toxins and biological agents that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public health, and “has not been shown to cause human infections, and has not been shown to be transmissible between humans.” But the group’s bat coronavirus research was focused on the very threat that bat viruses pose to people. Kessler did acknowledge that, while the original bat coronavirus in the experiment did not spread among humans, the research was designed to gauge how bat coronaviruses could evolve to infect humans. All but two of the scientists consulted agreed that, whatever title it is given, the newly public experiment raised serious concerns about the safety and oversight of federally funded research. Jacques van Helden, a professor of bioinformatics at Aix-Marseille Université:

In my point of view, the debate about the definition of ‘gain-of-function’ has been too much focused on technical aspects. The real question is whether or not research has the potential to create or facilitate the selection of viruses that might infect humans.

The experiments described in the proposal clearly do have that potential, he said. NIH spokesperson Elizabeth Deatrick said that the agency had considered the research, and decided not to restrict it under its own rules. Deatrick wrote:

In 2016, NIAID determined that the work was not subject to the Gain-of-Function (GoF) research funding pause and the subsequent HHS P3CO Framework.

He was referring to criteria put in place in 2017 to guide the agency’s funding decisions about research that involves, or is reasonably anticipated to involve, potential pandemic pathogens. Republican members of Congress have alleged, without sufficient evidence, that gain-of-function research in Wuhan sparked the coronavirus pandemic. As part of an inquiry into the origins of the pandemic, they have twice grilled Fauci in Congress on his role as NIAID director. In a heated exchange in July, Republican Sen Rand Paul accused Fauci of lying when he claimed that NIH did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Experts now say that the documents support the contention that NIH funded gain-of-function work, though not in the specific instance where Paul alleged it. Racaniello, of Columbia University, who pointed to the decreased weight of the mice infected with the chimeric viruses that was described in the research summaries sent to NIH, said:

There’s no question. From the weight loss, it’s gain of function. Tony Fauci is wrong saying it’s not.

But the documents do not prove Paul’s claim that Fauci was lying, as they do not make clear whether Fauci read them. Nor do they in any way support Paul’s allegation that Fauci was “responsible for 4 million people around the world dying of a pandemic,” or that anyone intentionally caused Covid-19. What is clear is that program officers at NIAID, the agency that Fauci oversees, did know about the research. A paragraph describing the research, as well as two figures illustrating its results, were included in both a 2018 progress report on the bat coronavirus grant and an application for its 2019 renewal. And NIH confirmed that it reviewed them. The agency said in a statement:

NIH has never approved any research that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans.

He was echoing remarks by Collins, the NIH director, posted to its website in May. These stated:

The research we supported in China, where coronaviruses are prevalent, sought to understand the behavior of coronaviruses circulating in bats that have the potential to cause widespread disease.

Similar research funded by NIH had aided in the development of vaccines against the coronavirus, the statement continued. The White House did not respond to questions about the research. The humanized mouse experiment fits with the overall goal of the $3.1m grant, which was titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” and aimed at preventing a pandemic by predicting the circumstances under which a bat coronavirus could evolve to infect humans. The researchers took an ambitious three-pronged approach: screening people with high exposure to wildlife, mathematical modeling, and lab experiments on viruses. Peter Daszak, the EcoHealth Alliance president, has worked closely with scientists in China for years, and roughly $750k of the grant was allocated for the Wuhan Institute of Virology. An additional nearly $300k went to East China Normal University, where researchers did field sampling. In a 2005 paper, Daszak’s team showed that the first SARS virus originated in bats. Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, is caused by a coronavirus that emerged in 2012 and also believed to come from bats, which are now a prime target for virologists trying to understand and combat emerging diseases. Daszak has long maintained that his research is critical to preventing outbreaks. But the research on the bat viruses in Wuhan showed that infecting live animals with altered viruses can have unpredictable consequences. A report to NIH on the project’s progress in the year ending in May 2018 described scientists creating new coronaviruses by changing parts of WIV1 and exposing genetically engineered mice to the new chimeric viruses. Research published in 2017 in the journal PLOS Pathogen showed that, in cells in a laboratory, similar chimeric viruses reproduced less effectively than the original. NIH cited that research as one of the reasons the moratorium on gain-of-function research of concern didn’t apply to this experiment. The email from NIH explained:

It was a loss of function, not a gain of function.

NIH also pointed out that the changes to the chimeric viruses “would not be anticipated to increase virulence or transmissibility in humans.” Inside the lungs of the humanized mice, however, the novel viruses appear to have reproduced far more quickly than the original virus that was used to create them, according to a bar graph shown in the documents. The viral load in the lung tissue of the mice was, at certain points, up to 10k times higher in the mice infected with the altered viruses than in those infected with WIV1. According to Deatrick, the NIH spokesperson, the difference in the rates of viral reproduction, which were particularly pronounced two and four days after the mice were infected with the virus, didn’t amount to gain of function because, by the end of the experiment, the amount of virus produced by the parent and chimeric strains evened out. Deatrick wrote:

Viral titers were equivalent by the end of the experimental time-course. NIH supports this type of research to better understand the characteristics of animal viruses that have the potential to spill over to humans and cause widespread disease.

Scientists The Intercept consulted expressed differing views on whether the increase in viral load could be translated to an increase in transmissibility, which relies on the virus’s ability to replicate. To some, the jump in viral load indicated that the modified RNA virus could replicate far more rapidly than the original in the lungs of the mice, likely leading to increased pathogenicity and spread. Rasmussen, of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, pointed out that viral load is not identical to reproduction rate, noting:

This shows the chimeric viruses replicated a little faster, but that tells us exactly nothing about transmissibility. Furthermore, WIV1 caught up by the end of the experiment. We see differences in the rate of viral replication all the time, but it is often not directly correlated with pathogenicity.

Another figure in the documents suggests that at least one of the altered viruses not only enhanced viral reproduction, but also caused the humanized mice to lose more weight than those exposed to the original virus, a measure of the severity of illness. NIH requires the increase in viral reproduction to be immediately reported, according to a note in the Notice of Award the agency issued in Jul 2016. The note said:

No funds are provided and no funds can be used to support gain-of-function research covered under the Oct 17 2014 White House Announcement.

If any new MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras show enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain, the researchers were instructed to stop all experiments with the viruses and send the data to NIAID grant specialists, as well as to the Wuhan Institute of Virology biosafety committee. The enhanced growth of the chimeric coronaviruses in the humanized mice was, at one point, up to 4 log greater, or 10k times, the rate of the original virus. But there are no indications the research was stopped. In fact, the bat coronavirus grant was renewed for a five-year period in 2019, although the Trump administration suspended funding in Apr 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic and spiraling concerns about its origins. Funding was later reinstated but under strict conditions that Daszak said were impossible for his group to meet. Kessler, EcoHealth Alliance’s communications manager, also pointed to the fact that the grant was renewed in 2019, after EcoHealth Alliance had twice submitted documents detailing the experiment, as evidence that the organization did nothing wrong. He said:

If there had been any violations, they would not have done so.

The practice of making chimeric viruses in order to study how they might become more contagious was under scrutiny long before the pandemic. Proponents of such gain-of-function research argued that it can help virologists better understand and defend against natural outbreaks. But critics said that they were unreasonably dangerous. In Oct 2014, the federal government put a moratorium on funding gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens that could be “reasonably anticipated” to lead to spread in humans, as outlined in a 2017 guidance from the Dept of Health and Human Services. In Dec 2017, the moratorium was lifted and replaced with new guidelines for oversight of research using potential pandemic pathogens. The grantees reported that the humanized mouse experiment was done between June 2017 and May 2018. Gain-of-function research was thrust into the spotlight again in 2020, amid speculation that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had conducted such research and that it was somehow linked to the pandemic. While the new information about the research on humanized mice does not provide the “smoking gun” for proponents of what has become known as the “lab leak theory,” it lends the hypothesis credence, according to Stuart Newman, a professor of cell biology who directs the developmental biology laboratory at New York Medical College. Newman said:

Making chimeric coronaviruses, mixing and matching RBDs [a part of the virus that allows it to attach to receptors] and spike proteins is exactly the scenario imagined by many lab-leak scenario proponents. The fact that this was an established research paradigm in the Wuhan lab … definitely makes the laboratory origin more plausible.

The documents about the research were released by NIH after The Intercept submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in Sep 2020, later suing to have it fulfilled. The request sought copies of these and other grant proposals that Daszak submitted to the agency, as well as the agency’s communications about the proposals. NIH originally denied The Intercept’s request on the grounds that releasing Daszak’s proposals would undermine an ongoing investigation. Counsel for the agency later admitted that NIH had not reviewed many of the records before making that assertion. Alina Chan, a Boston-based scientist and co-author of the upcoming book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19:

The contents of the grants raise serious questions about the review processes and oversight relating to risky pathogen research. The question is: What else did they do in more recent years that we’re not aware of?

exasperated

Why Is Biden Mandating a Vaccine that Does Not Protect Against Covid?
Paul Craig Roberts, Sep 9 2021

The dumbshit American population sat on their butts and allowed a few Democrat gangsters to steal a presidential election and stick in the Oval Office a complete moron. Doing his masters’ bidding, the moron is directing the Labor Dept to rule that companies with 100 or more employees must require employees to be vaccinated or have weekly testing. (The current PCR test in use is being abandoned as it produces false positives that have greatly exaggerated the number of Covid cases.) The moron is a puppet on a stick that gets moved around by the monied interests that rule us. The moron has been directed to get all Americans “vaccinated” with a “vaccine” that the public health authorities themselves admit does not protect against Covid or the Delta variant or any of the other variants. They have stated as much. Their solution for a “vaccine’ that does not work is more of the “vaccine.” Fauci says the population will need booster shots every 8 months forever. The Israeli “health minister” is already pushing Israelis to have a fourth booster shot with more to come. In other words, neither Fauci, the Israeli government, the elite controlling the narrative, nor the puppet on the stick are sufficiently intelligent to realize that what they are saying is: If you are doubly vaccinated (until the other day “fully vaccinated” and assured of protection), today you no longer qualify as vaccinated, and you might be more vulnerable to Covid and its variants than the unvaccinated. Moreover, as the Israeli “health minister” has said, you are not vaccinated even if you have the first booster shot, the third shot. You must have a fourth booster. Fauci has already said that you will have to have boosters forever. In other words, the vaccine, whatever it is, is most certainly not a vaccine against Covid or its variants. In view of these acknowledged facts, what is the point of the mad-hat vaccination campaign? Is it to maximize adverse vaccine reaction deaths and illnesses? As of July, the combined adverse vaccine reaction databases of the US, EU, and UK reported more than 5 million adverse reactions and 40k deaths. This information until recently was available on Google, but Google now hides it, and a search only pulls up Big Pharma propaganda that adverse reactions are “rare.” In other words, the accomplices to murder at Google disavow the official adverse reaction reporting systems and suppress them for “spreading misinformation.” The numbers of adverse reactions and deaths associated with the Covid Vaccine is far greater than the officially reported numbers. Many experts agree that few adverse reactions are reported. Hospitals have financial incentives to call adverse reactions Covid cases. Vaccine advocates refuse to admit that there are adverse reactions. Among some age groups the vaccine has done more harm than Covid. These known facts are kept out of the media. Then there is the other problem that is being kept secret. The vaccine itself is the cause of the variants. As I have previously reported, the vaccine enables the virus to escape immune response. Thus, Covid cannot be controlled by mRNA vaccination. The bottom line is: The entirety of the Covid policy is and has been counterproductive and greatly harmful to public health, the economy, and civil liberty, and the response of the American Elite is to continue the harm. The Covid policy of the US is a complete and total betrayal of the American people. It is a policy of total Evil.

daily sceptic

News Round-Up
Michael Curzon, Daily Sceptic, Sep 9 2021

• “Mass boosters unnecessary as immunity ‘lasting well’, says Oxford vaccine professor” – Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert urges ministers to send third doses to countries where only a small number of people have been jabbed, reports the Telegraph.
• “Vaccine booster jabs are ‘safe and effective’, says medicines regulator” – Guidance has been updated ahead of a crucial decision by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, reports the Telegraph.
• “Number 10 fears double whammy of flu and Covid this winter” – The question preoccupying influential figures in Whitehall is whether we can get through winter without reimposing restrictions, writes James Forsyth in the Times.
• “The emergency is over. Now the government must relinquish its emergency powers” – “It is dangerous to give politicians a taste of power without the usual democratic restraints,” reads the lead article in this week’s issue of the Spectator.
• “Office small talk at risk of becoming a Covid casualty” – A survey has found that young workers fear they have forgotten how to chat to colleagues after 18 months in lockdown, reports the Telegraph.
• “The Smile Free Survey” – Here are the most welcoming supermarkets for unmasked shoppers, according to a new survey.
• “How do other countries survive without Our NHS?” – “As long as the institution is treated as an infallible deity to which only further sacrifices must be made – a few more billion pounds here, a few months locked up inside there – nothing meaningful will change,” writes Frederick Edward in Bournbrook Magazine.
• “Sixty doctors plead with chief medical officers to reject child vaccination” – “The Covid pandemic and its management has become one of the most contentious issues in a generation,” writes Dr Ros Jones in TCW Defending Freedom.
• “Biden Plans Covid Vaccine Mandate for 80 Million Private Sector Workers” – Joe Biden says American companies with more than 100 employees will require vaccinations or once-per-week testing for their workers, reports the Epoch Times.
• “America’s Top 10 Vaccinated States Under Siege by Covid Breakthrough Infections” – The most vaccinated states are now all in some version of a surge, although the news wouldn’t cover such a point of view, reports TrialSite.
• “United Airlines Staff With Vaccine Exemptions Told They’ll Be Placed on Unpaid Leave” – The airline says: “We can no longer allow unvaccinated people back into the workplace until we better understand how they might interact with our customers and their vaccinated coworkers,” as the Epoch Times reports.
• “Sweden 1. Faith 0” – “Discovering Sweden is like discovering intelligent life in the universe after being told there can’t be any,” writes Richard Lyon in his latest substack update.
• “Australians shocked after NSW health officer says post-lockdown Sydney will be a ‘new world order’” – Dr Kerry Chant, the Chief Health Officer of New South Wales, sent social media into a frenzy on Thursday, after she referred to a post-lockdown “new world order” during a Covid press conference, reports Russia Today.
• “Who wants to live forever?” – “Without a sense of what human life is for, and what its basic natural or even theological rhythms might be, we fall back on the idea that more is always better,” writes Giles Fraser in UnHerd.
• “Ireland freezes power exports to UK as energy costs rocket tenfold” – Low wind speeds and tight supplies of gas have sent power prices spiralling, reports the Telegraph.
• “Winston Churchill erased from his own charity in unprecedented display of wokery” – A charity set up to honour Sir Winston Churchill has sparked a ‘woke’ storm by changing its name and erasing him from its website, reports the Sun.
• “Boris Johnson accuses charity of airbrushing Winston Churchill” – But Sir Winston Churchill’s grandson says his family “unreservedly support” the organisation, reports BBC News.
• “The Queen ‘backs BLM’” – Sir Ken Olisa, the first black Lord-Lieutenant for London, tells Channel 4 the Queen and the royal family are supporters of BLM and “care about making Britain bound by the same values”, reports MailOnline.
• “Google and BBC staff are facing an onslaught of woke indoctrination, but it won’t work… people can spot bullshit a mile away” – Bosses at Google are pushing training that suggests babies are racist, while BBC workers are playing games to “assess their privilege”. While employees pay lip service to it all, you can bet many think it’s utter madness, writes Charlie Stone in Russia Today.
• “I used to defend the BBC. Now I’m switching off” – The Today programme in particular has given up all pretence to presenting an objective point of view, writes Michael Howard in the Telegraph.
• “Woke book-burning” – A Canadian school board has burned 30 “problematic” books. Are you scared yet, asks Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “The political power of Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown” – “Roy Chubby Brown is the culture war writ small, and this stuff really, really matters to working-class voters,” writes Rod Liddle in the Spectator.
• “Covid vaccines for 12 to 15 year-olds are being considered despite not being recommended by the JCVI” – Former NHS Consultant Dr John Lee says on talkRADIO: “The medium and long-term risks are unknown. It’s just wrong to suggest for a potential societal benefit that you should do this.”

Covid vaccines for 12 to 15-year-olds are being considered despite not being recommended by the JCVI.

Former NHS Consultant Dr John Lee: "The medium and long-term risks are unknown. It's just wrong to suggest for a potential societal benefit that you should do this" @JuliaHB1 pic.twitter.com/XSSoWn3V2y

— talkRADIO (@talkRADIO) September 9, 2021

highlights from wsws

Australian Labor Party helps push through “extraordinary” surveillance laws
Mike Head, WSWS, Sep 10 2021

Late last month, the opposition Labor Party again assisted the Liberal-National Coalition government to rush through parliament far-reaching bills that expand the already vast spying powers of the police and intelligence agencies. In the space of several days, three bills were rammed through both the House of Representatives and the Senate, accompanied by guillotine motions to gag debate, in the same week that Labor and the Coalition combined to drive through anti-democratic electoral laws. Under the misleading banner of fighting “serious crime,” the most extensive bill allows the police and intelligence forces to secretly hack into online devices, collect, alter or delete data, and take over social media accounts. The Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill hands agencies, including the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), three new powers, which can be activated without informing those affected:

1. Data disruption warrants give the police the ability to “disrupt data” by modifying, copying, adding or deleting it.
2. Network activity warrants allow the police to collect intelligence from devices or networks.
3. Account takeover warrants permit the police to take control of an online account (e.g., social media) to gather information. Currently, agencies can only take over a person’s account with that person’s consent. This power facilitates covert and/or enforced takeovers.

None of these powers are confined to use against people alleged or suspected of committing an offence. They can be invoked against any “third party” whose accounts police say could generate material for investigation. Such people and system administrators can be compelled to assist the hacking operations, including by accessing passwords and cracking open encryption programs. Anyone refusing to comply can be jailed for up to 10 years. All the police have to assert is that they “suspect on reasonable grounds that” an offence is “likely to be” committed, and that the disruption of data “is likely to substantially assist in frustrating the commission of offences.” No judicial approvals are required. Most warrants can be issued by an Administrative Appeals Tribunal member, even by “telephone, fax, email or any other means of communication.” An “emergency authorisation” procedure also allows these activities without any warrant at all.

During the token parliamentary sessions, both government and Labor representatives sought to justify the bills as intended to fight child exploitation and terrorism. But the bill authorises “disruption” of anyone linked to a suspected crime that is subject to imprisonment of three years. That covers a wide range of offences, notably “foreign interference” and other political offences, and even theft and tax evasion. In effect, the legislation makes the expanded powers available to the entire Australian intelligence network and its US partners. The bill’s official explanatory memorandum notes that the AFP and ACIC share information and “facilitate joint operations” with “other members of the National Intelligence Community.” Also, “it is anticipated that the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) may provide assistance to the AFP and the ACIC in relation to data disruption.” The ASD is the electronic eavesdropping agency that operates in close partnership with the US National Security Agency, as part of the US-led “Five Eyes” global mass surveillance operation exposed by imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The bill adds to the immense online surveillance powers imposed over the past two decades in the name of the “war on terrorism,” contained in the Surveillance Devices Act and the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act. The second law, the Foreign Intelligence Amendment Act, allows the domestic political spy agency, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), to intercept foreign communications and collect overseas intelligence on Australian residents who are suspected of “foreign interference.” The third measure, the Counter-Terrorism Sunsetting Act, extends a range of police-state powers that were due to expire, including preventative detention, control orders and stop, search and seizure powers. In parliament, Labor’s shadow home affairs minister, Senator Kristina Keneally, emphasised Labor’s determination to keep partnering with the Coalition on such measures, despite describing them as “extraordinary.” Keneally said Labor’s backing for the bills “serves as another example of how seriously Labor takes its commitment to constructive, bipartisan cooperation on national security legislation in the national interest.” She publicly thanked Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews for working with Labor “to deliver much-needed reforms and powers.”

The shadow minister professed to be concerned about the danger of “surveillance creep.” In reality, Labor has backed every law to permit mass political spying. That included the 2015 metadata retention legislation, which allows the agencies to collect and retain online data, such as a person’s email contacts and web searches; a 2018 law that forces internet companies to facilitate the cracking of encryption, passwords and other privacy-protected communications, including WhatsApp and iMessage conversations, and the 2018 “foreign interference” legislation that expands the scope and penalties of the secrecy laws, and criminalises links with China or other “foreign entities.” Since the declaration of the “war on terrorism” in 2001, Labor has joined hands with the Coalition to pass more than 125 “national security” bills, containing over 14,500 amendments to previous laws. Greens Senators voted against the “identify and disrupt” bill, but said they would be prepared to support it if the government accepted amendments to insert “safeguards.” Senator Lidia Thorpe said:

The Australian Greens will support it, in terms of keeping children safe and keeping our country safe, but there are innocent people who could be targeted through this bill.

None of this legislation is about the “safety” of the population. The bipartisan drive to protect and bolster the police and intelligence apparatuses is aimed at preparing for political and class convulsions. A 2017 “intelligence review” pointed to the global and domestic concerns wracking the ruling elite. It warned that Australia’s “national security environment” was being reshaped by the decline in the global influence of the US, “heightened tensions and instabilities” and “a growing sense of insecurity and alienation.” That was before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has intensified these social and political tensions, and triggered growing working-class struggles. These bills are part of a deepening assault on basic democratic rights, including privacy, free speech and the right to organise, especially against the corporate and political establishment. Their purpose is to suppress dissent and social unrest.

Johnson government announces “pushback” policy in stepping up of anti-immigration agenda
Robert Stevens, WSWS, Sep 10 2021

The UK government is stepping up its anti-immigration agenda by rolling out a “pushback policy” to turn away migrant boats attempting to enter the UK via the English Channel. The Home Office has utilised a spell of good weather, and consequent increase in the number of migrants and asylum seekers seeking to enter the UK, to announce it will intercept and turn around migrants’ small boats from France mid-Channel to prevent them reaching the UK. Around 1,500 migrants arrived on the UK’s shores this week, with the right-wing media dedicating blanket coverage to demands to stop the “flood.” According to the Telegraph:

The Home Secretary has secured legal advice for Border Force vessels to start redirecting migrant boats away from UK waters and back towards France, where the French will have to return them to shore. Turning back migrant boats has already been extensively trialled for months by Border Force at sea, overseen by the Royal Marines, is due to conclude this month, weather permitting. Sources said that the tactics were ready to deploy as soon as practical and safe.

Due to the fact that the “refoulement” that Patel proposes is illegal under the international law of the sea, she has commissioned, according to the Telegraph, “robust and detailed” legal advice from Michael Ellis, the Attorney General, and expert QCs”. The Times reported:

She told law officers to rewrite Britain’s interpretation of international maritime law to allow the Border Force to intercept boats as they tried to enter British territorial waters. Officers would then contact the French coastguard to inform it that vessels in French territorial waters were in need of rescue, which would put the legal responsibility for the migrant boats on France. There would be a ‘limited’ legal window to deploy the tactics and only if certain conditions were met. These would include ensuring that the migrant boat in question was not in danger of sinking or capsizing, was not over capacity and was able to return to the French coast.

No-one should believe that such legal niceties will be adhered to. Given the perilous nature of the Channel crossings, with many migrants often crammed onto small unsafe boats, the policy must result in more deaths. The Home Office announcement was timed to coincide with a meeting in London Wednesday between Patel and her French counterpart Gérald Darmanin. Patel insisted in “very tense” talks that France had been lax in preventing migrants reaching Britain from its shores and must step up the enforcing of a previously agreed policy of stopping them at the French coastline. It emerged that Britain has even offered to provide the French state a plane to increase its shoreline monitoring. On Monday, Patel told Tory MPs that she was ready to cut or withdraw the tens of millions of pounds the UK gives to France to prevent migrant crossings. A further £54m in funding was agreed between London and Paris in July. Patel said:

We’ve not given them a penny of the money so far and France is going to have to get its act together if it wants to see the cash. It’s payment by results and we’ve not yet seen those results. The money is conditional.

The Times reported that Patel committed to withdrawing funding “if they failed to stop three in four crossings by the end of this month.” The mood among Tory MPs was, if anything, even more vociferous, with the Guardian reporting that Craig Mackinlay called for the “immediate removal back to France of all who arrive via this illegal route” and for the UK to “disregard diplomatic niceties.” Lee Anderson agreed, declaring:

I said we should drop these illegal immigrants, not migrants, off on a French beach and send the French government a bill for the cost of the journey.

The following day, Darmanin sent Patel a letter declaring that the existing system could be enforced and boasting:

The rate at which small boat crossings are thwarted stands at 57.3%, i.e. a higher level than that recorded over the same period in 2020. The increase in migrants landing in the UK is mainly due to a new strategy by people smugglers of using larger boats which can now hold up to 65 people. These groups of migrants are made up of particularly vulnerable people (infants, young children and elderly or disabled people), which limits our means of action.

Darmanin made the sinister accusation that their “behaviour is increasingly violent.” He added:

I noted the use of military-style detection technology you are proposing. All available intervention capabilities are permanently mobilized along the Channel coastline.

Darmanin promised that the number of security personnel on the French Channel coast would be doubled. He emphasised that his main concern was stopping migrants getting into France via the Mediterranean in the first place. He wrote:

Migration pressure at our internal borders has never been greater… The mobilization of our forces at our southern borders, as well as at the EU’s borders through the Frontex Agency, must not weaken, when we know the risks of migratory movements which the crises in Afghanistan and Belarus are likely to generate.

The French minister of the interior made a contemptible effort to cloak this falling out among Gestapo officers in a claimed concern for human rights, declaring:

Safeguarding human lives at sea takes priority over considerations of nationality, status and migratory policy.

He tweeted Thursday:

France will not accept any practice that goes against maritime law, and will not accept any financial blackmail. The UK must hold up its commitment.

What passes for Britain’s liberal media responded with extraordinary complacency to Patel’s proposals, essentially writing them off as unworkable. This is despite the fact that her Nationality and Border Bill, which is presently going through Parliament, contains, as the Guardian noted, “provisions to set up offshore processing centres and turn suspected migrant boats away from the UK.” The newspaper cited the comments of Lucy Moreton, a professional officer at the right-wing Immigration Services Union, a splinter union founded to campaign for stricter immigration and border controls. Moreton claimed:

In practical terms, if this happened even once I’d be surprised. There are understandably a lot of constraints around it and you cannot do this with a vessel that is in any way vulnerable and more importantly you need the consent of the French to do it.

Another cited by the Guardian was Conservative MP Tim Loughton, who said:

It sounds good pushing them back but it’s not going to work in practice.

The fact is that pushback policies are routine at the borders of “Fortress Europe” and internationally. Patel is basing much of her anti-immigration policy on that being enforced by Greece’s conservative New Democracy government, which she visited only last month to learn from its latest brutal measures. Greece has just completed the sealing off its northern border with Turkey with a massive 40km (25-mile) steel fence and new electronic monitoring system. This is why the Telegraph, among the firmest backers of Patel’s border strengthening policies, could write Thursday:

The government is only following the EU’s lead on controversial migrant pushback policy. Its announcement that it will push back migrant boats trying to cross the Channel has striking parallels with tactics used by both Greece and Italy. Felipe González Morales, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, said recently that Greece has engaged in “the summary and collective expulsion of tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers. Italy has essentially adopted pushback by proxy. Along with other EU countries, it gave training, financing and equipment to the Libyan coast guard, which essentially carries out the dirty work of intercepting migrant boats and driving them back to the coast.

syrian girl partisan (maram al-susli) in al mayadin

“Israel” Seeks to Replace the US with China after Afghanistan Withdrawal
Maram Susli, Al Mayadin, Sep 9 2021

On Aug 28 2021, “Israel’s” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Biden’s administration to discuss how the US expects “Israel” to act towards China. This comes a day after “Israel” inaugurated the Chinese-run Haifa port terminal which was leased to China for 25 years. On the same day, an opinion piece written by “Israel’s” former president Ehud Olmert appeared in the Jerusalem Post, insisting that “Israel” should refuse US demands to cool relations with China. He expressed his worry that the US appears weak, and then in the next sentence, he felt obligated to insist that this had nothing to do with its withdrawal from Afghanistan. But reading between the lines the message is clear, the US is a falling empire, and rather than sink with the ship, “Israel” is preparing to jump to a new host. He wrote:

I too begin to worry that the US’s strength is actually much weaker than we thought it was, in particular the image of its strength. I feel obligated to make it clear that this impression has nothing to do with President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.

While the US appears weaker, China is appearing stronger. As the US leaves Afghanistan, China has moved in to fill the vacuum with plans of reconstruction and cooperation rather than invasion. Last week, Taliban spokesman Zabih’ullah Mujahid called China the country’s “most important partner” and the deputy head of the Taliban office pledged to ‘actively support’ the belt and road initiative of ‘trustworthy friend’ China. The belt and road initiative will spread economic prosperity and Chinese influence across the Middle East, and “Israel” does not want to be left out.

As Bennet left the meeting with Biden, he stated flatly that the US did not make any specific demands of “Israel” vis-à-vis China. In other words, “Israel” isn’t obligated to change anything in its dealings with China. But even when the US has made demands in the past, “Israel” has ignored them. In February, “Israel” rejected the US’s request to inspect the Haifa port and has repeatedly ignored US warnings against signing the port deal in the first place. But it isn’t just the Haifa port deal that has frustrated the US. In March, “Israel” sold suicide drone technology to China, and last December, the US warned that Chinese investments in Israeli artificial intelligence would pose a security threat. In 2013, “Israel” transferred secret US missile tech to China, a repeat of an incident in 2001 when “Israel” sold China US developed sidewinder missile technology in spite of American demands to cancel the contract. In fact, “Israel” has been selling US secret military technology to China since the 1980s. “Israel” gave China US F-16 fighter Jet technology and helped develop its tank programs. In the 90s, then CIA Director James Woolsey said that “Israel” had been selling US secrets to China for a decade. But it seems the US was, and continues to be, incapable of putting an end to this behavior, the US’s ‘special relationship’ with “Israel” appears to be one-sided.

Part of “Israel’s” motivation in selling out the US, has been to use its influence in China to limit its relationship with Iran and Syria. “Israel” began making the deals in the 1980s in exchange for Chinese restraint in arms sales to countries in the near east. Last month, Israeli government sources told Breaking Defense that if China attempts to expand its defense technology ties with Iran then Jerusalem may cut off its economic agreements with Beijing. But “Israel’s” gamble might not pay off. In March, China signed a 25-year strategic agreement with Iran, and in July China met with Syria’s President Assad to discuss rebuilding the country. Furthermore, China’s support for the Palestinian cause has a long history, dating back to the non-aligned movement. Beijing only recognized “Israel” after Arafat did so, during the Oslo accords. During “Israel’s” latest bombing of Gaza, China was exceptionally vocal in its support for Palestine. A month later, “Israel” was accusing China of human rights violations at the UN, a slight that China is unlikely to forget.

With the US increasingly beating the drums of war against China, it would be foolish if China chooses to strengthen its relationship with Saudi Arabia and “Israel” at the expense of countries to which the US is hostile, such as Syria and Iran. China’s Belt and Road initiative relies on stability in all participating nations. Beijing may be concerned about “Israel” potential to destabilize the region given its location. In 2019, China was holding discussions to invest in a port in Lebanon as a potential gateway to Syria. Then in 2020, a blast took out the port in Beirut; some Lebanese officials believe it was “Israel’s” doing. “Israel” may believe it can continue its double-dealings with China and the US because the influence of the Zionist lobby over American politics is so powerful that no US administration would be able to withdraw support. But, as ForeignPolicy.com points out in an article named “Can China replace the US in Israel,” “Israel’s” popularity is weakening amongst left-wing Americans, and this pivot towards China may also make them lose support among the right. As the crack grows wider between China and the US, “Israel” will be forced to choose and it may try to opt for China. But as it attempts to jump ship from the US to China, “Israel” may find itself cut adrift and lost at sea.