Feature photo | Palestinian activist Khairi Hanoon waves the Palestinian flag as a convoy of Israeli military armored vehicles drives by during an army raid in Tulkarem, West Bank,, Sept. 3, 2024. Majdi Mohammed | AP

By Robert Inlakesh

Israel initially announced its largest military campaign in the West Bank since 2002, stating it would last only a few days and focus on the northern part of the occupied territory. However, “Operation Summer Camps” has since expanded into a much broader offensive, raising concerns that it may be paving the way for the de jure annexation of the West Bank.

On August 28, the Israeli army announced the launch of a large-scale military campaign aimed at dismantling Palestinian resistance groups operating in the northern West Bank. The operation began with the mobilization of tens of thousands of soldiers, accompanied by drones, attack helicopters, and military vehicles pouring into the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas.

The military operation, dubbed “Operation Summer Camps,” has been described as the largest Israeli military action in the West Bank since “Operation Protective Shield” in 2002, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 500 Palestinians.

From the outset, various media outlets reported the Israeli government’s narrative, which framed the operation as an effort to defeat “Iran-backed” armed groups and Hamas.

On the second day of the operation, The Associated Press published an article stating that 10 Hamas fighters had been killed. However, the Israeli military did not specify that all those killed were members of Hamas.

So far, the Israeli military has primarily targeted the al-Fara’a refugee camp in Tubas, Nour al-Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem, and the Jenin refugee camp. Surrounding areas have also been attacked.

Their tactics include using armored bulldozers to destroy roads, bombing entire buildings, and knocking out electrical and water facilities. Thousands have been forced to flee their homes on foot, while others have been sealed inside, unable to leave for fear of being shot.

Dozens of civilians have been killed or injured. Among them was an elderly man who was shot dead in front of his home and another man abducted from his house in Kafr Dan, west of Jenin. The latter was taken to the Salem checkpoint, where he was tortured to death.

Despite the military operation primarily taking place in the north of the occupied West Bank, it has already expanded to other areas, such as the Jordan Valley and the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, where a more limited assault is underway. Israel has now openly stated that Operation Summer Camps will last longer than initially expected and will include assaults on additional areas.

On August 31, a double operation targeted Israeli security and military officers in illegal Israeli settlements located between Bethlehem and al-Khalil, killing one and injuring four others. This was followed by a curfew imposed on al-Khalil. Shortly after, a former member of the Palestinian Authority’s Presidential Guard shot and killed three Israeli occupation police officers near the city.

As tensions escalate across the West Bank, so does the military operation, which increasingly seems to be another step toward a de jure annexation of the occupied territory. In June, the Israeli army transferred many powers over the West Bank’s illegal Israeli settlers to civilian control under Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler. This move was widely viewed as a de facto declaration of annexation, as applying civilian control powers indicates an intention to make these settlement blocs a permanent part of Israel.

In July, the Israeli Knesset unanimously voted to reject Palestinian statehood. At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear his intentions to annex large swathes of the West Bank, particularly Area C, which constitutes 60% of the land.

Netanyahu publicly declared that his annexation plans date back to 2019, when he proposed the annexation of the Jordan Valley and major settlements. At that time, Netanyahu’s government did not include the Religious Zionism alliance, which is now seen as driving force behind this development.

It appears that significant U.S. political donors have shown support for Israel’s annexation plans. Israel’s richest billionaire, Miriam Adelson, reportedly contributed $100 million to Donald Trump’s campaign, with the expectation that he would recognize Israeli annexation of the West Bank if elected President.

To facilitate such an annexation, addressing resistance groups in the West Bank is seen as crucial to maintaining security. While Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians between October 7 and the beginning of the military operation on August 28, the Israeli government has indicated a desire to intensify its efforts to further contain resistance.

[…]

Via https://www.mintpressnews.com/operation-summer-camps-israels-largest-west-bank-annexation/288235/

Dmitry Orlov

The interesting times in which we live are becoming ever more interesting. At this point, it is becoming difficult to find any sort of expert in the West who doesn’t think that the Ukraine’s war against its own Russians, and now against Russia itself, is a lost cause. “Why give even more money and weapons to a side that has already been defeated?” they ask, then listen intently to the muffled echo they get in response. You see, the Western politicians who have given well over a hundred billion dollars to the Ukrainian cause can’t afford the loss of face that will inevitably occur should they openly admit that the cause has been lost.

Let them fester and marinade in their own poisonous juices for as long as they like; we, on the other hand, are ready to draw some conclusions about the most likely outcome for the former Ukrainian territories once the Kiev regime stops resisting and collapses. These conclusions need not be based on ideological presuppositions, political opinion or wishful thinking: we can simply look at the numbers.

At the outset of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in the Ukraine in February of 2022, there came a nasty surprise. It turned out that the Ukrainians (as a society, not as individuals living on that territory) do not feel themselves to be part of a single, brotherly people with the Russians. Moreover, more than half of that population has been led to dream of victory over Russia (based on some really preposterously inaccurate information), whereas it was initially thought that such idiotic ideas could be entertained by five-ten thousand of brain-damaged Nazis (due to iodine deficiency) from Western Ukraine. Apparently, thirty years spent in the wilderness of “Ukrainian independence” and plentiful help from American NGOs had induced such degree of mental degradation that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians would willingly march to their certain death at the hands of the Russian army, navy and airspace force.

This nasty surprise percolated slowly through the minds of the Russian population, much of which was still very much used to thinking of Kharkov, Odessa and Kiev as great Russian cities and found the idea that their current inhabitants would disown their proud Russian heritage most shocking. But eventually certain patterns of thought emerged, which could be roughly separated into four categories:

1. Russia should annex all of the formerly Ukrainian territory and reeducate the populace.

2. Russia should annex all of the formerly Ukrainian territory and subject its populace to a filtration process, disposing of the disloyal element. Proposals of how to dispose of that element varied from forcing them to migrate westward to shipping them off to Siberia to live out their days shoveling snow.

3. Russia should annex a part of the formerly Ukrainian territory, keeping the loyal part of the population and banishing the disloyal to the remaining, notionally “independent” part.

4. Russia shouldn’t annex anything but just build a really high fence to prevent the Ukrainians from jumping over it and mining the strip of land next to the fence in case someone does jump over it.

It bears pointing out that the proponents of each of these four approaches were making the same fundamental mistake by assuming that there will be a Ukrainian population for them to somehow deal with. But the Ukrainian population has already dwindled, and will continue to dwindle, to a point that in a mere decade or two there won’t be much of a population left to discuss. This development will not come about because of war or pestilence or famine, but mere demographics. Looking at the numbers, a different question comes to the fore: not what to do with the Ukrainian population, but what population can replace it in order to control and make productive use of this vast and increasingly underpopulated territory.

The most realistic estimate of the current population of territories still under Kiev’s control is less than 20 million people. At the beginning of the SMO, the Kiev regime asserted that its population was 40 million (without Crimea but with the Donbass). In reality, there were no more than 35 million people living on territories under the Kiev regime’s control. And if you subtract the 3 to 5 million who permanently resided abroad, the number was closer to 30 million.

That is, over the two and a half years of the SMO the Ukraine lost between 10 and 15 million people. It seems unlikely that the SMO will run longer than three years (it could be less) and over this time total losses (those killed or dead from natural causes) among both the military and the civilians will be around a million people. According to the official Kiev regime figures, the population dwindled by 332.000 in 2022 and by 209.000 in 2023. The number of all deaths (not the ones at the front) was stated as 541.000 for 2022 and 496.000 for 2023. Keep in mind that these numbers are decidedly optimistic because the regime tried to paint as rosy a picture as possible. It is unclear where these statistics include those missing in action and deserters (a huge number) or those who quietly moved to the Russian side as battle front advanced (another huge number).

In any case, it is hard to come up with less than a million lost over three years, while a more realistic projection is for a million and a half and maybe even two, and the majority of them will have died not in battle but from natural causes: reduced quality of life, worsening access to medicine, etc.

Keep in mind that the above numbers are for demographic losses, which is deaths minus births (there are still some babies being born in the Ukraine, although fewer and fewer). The coefficient of fertility for 2024 stands at 0.71 per woman while it needs to be at least 2.1 merely to hold the population constant. That is, the size of the cohort of each next generation of Ukrainians is going to be a third of the previous generation.

Over the duration of the SMO, the former Ukraine will have lost between one and two million out of an initial maximum of 20 million. Right now the Ukraine’s borders are closed (huge bribes are charged for getting out) but once the battle front crumbles, along with the Kiev regime, three or four million people will flee to the European Union (as estimated by the Europeans themselves).

Who will be first in line to flee? Obviously all of the politicians, war correspondents, political experts and others who fear Russian justice due to their involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity, will flee first. They will be followed by a large portion of the remaining businessmen, who are convinced that the Russians will take their businesses away. Next will be the young people, who have been persuaded to think that they are Europeans and only see their future in the developed and prosperous West, not in the horrible, destitute Russian Federation (or so they have been persuaded to think).

People between the ages of 20 and 30 form the majority of those who voluntarily evacuate ahead of the advancing Russian army. And let’s not forget Ukrainian “intellectuals” — artists, writers, scientists who have struggled valiantly at the futile task of fashioning an artificial, non-Russian Ukrainian art, literature and science, and whose questionable skills will be of no use to anyone. Last but not least, the reverends of the various “Ukrainian” churches and charismatic and extremist sects will clear out as well, since Russia takes a very dim view of such practices. In all, a number of between three and five million people, estimated by the Europeans, seems reasonable.

Twenty million minus a million or two dead minus three to five gone gives us between 16 and 13 million left. Most of these will be elderly, with a fertility rate of zero. And most of these will be from rural areas, who don’t care a whit about the government and just don’t want to go anywhere. This population will simply age out and disappear.

What then is to be done about the large cities (of over a million inhabitants) in the central Ukraine and relatively large cities in the western Ukraine? They will be much too large for the remaining population and there will be no hope of maintaining them or keeping the utilities (heat, electricity, running water, public transportation) running given maximally worn out infrastructure and nonexistent resources. Most likely, these once huge cities, built under the Soviet Union and barely maintained by the Ukrainians, will become ghost cities.

It may turn out to be less of a problem for Russia to absorb the 13 to 16 million who will be left. Russia has already absorbed seven million former Ukrainian citizens just over then past decade and over 10 million if you include the entire period of Ukrainian pseudo-independence than to deal with the remaining population in situ. But this leaves unanswered a big question: How will Russia maintain control of a large, unpopulated territory? How will the Wild Field be resettled?

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/e2346408-6301-476a-a38a-675e177614f2

Episode 1 Medieval Beginnings

The Middle Ages Around the World

Dr Joyce E Salisbury

Film Review

Dr Salisbury blames the fall of the world’s major empires in the first centuries AD on increasing penetration of steppes nomads into settled areas. China’s Han dynasty was brought down in the third century AD by increasing Xiongnu raids. Likewise India’s Gupta empire was brought down by Hun invasions (via the Khyber Pass). The Huns also played a major indirect role in the fall of Rome. In 400 AD, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, pressured by westward Hun migration, received permission from the Roman emperor Valens to cross the Danube and settle in the Roman province of Gaul.

Angered by their treatment by Roman administrators (who raped their women and forced them to into slavery), the Visigoths were on the verge of an armed uprising when Valens marched on them (from Constantinople*). Following his defeat (and slaughter) in the Battle of Adrianopolis by skilled horseback warriors, his successor Theodosis I hired Germanic mercenaries to fight them. Meanwhile Visigoths and Ostrogoths repeatedly raided and pillaged the northern Roman provinces and even sacked Rome in 410.

Theodosis was followed by his daughter Gala Placidia, who served as regent for her son Vaentinian III. In 414-415 Gala was queen consort to Ataaulf, king of the Visigoths. In 452 after her daughter Honoria proposed marriage to him, Attila the Hun invaded Italy to claim his bride. He was just outside Rome after sacking Aquileia, Milan, and Pavia, when Leo, the bishop of Rome, rode out to meet with him. When famine and plague in his homeland forced Attila to withdraw, this apparent “miracle,” resulted in Leo becoming the first pope with authority over the entire Catholic church.

In 476  the last Roman emperor was deposed by Otoakar, a Germanic soldier serving in the Roman army.

The Roman Empire subsequently split into multiple warring kingdoms, with the Visigoths controlling Spain and France (with the Franks later replacing the Visigoths in France), the Angles and Saxons England and the Ostrogoths Italy. Although large cities disappeared, the trade in luxury goods continued.  Although Silk Road traffic was disrupted for two centuries following the fall of Rome it resumed under the Tang dynasty (618-907). Trade also flourished across the Indian Ocean form Africa.** Africa exported horses, ivory, saves and gold, while India, China and Southeast Asia exported pepper, cinnamon and cardamon.

After crossing the Indian Ocean, ships either unloaded at Mecca on the Arabian peninsula or in the African kingdom of Aksum, where they transferred their goods to camel caravans en route to Cairo, Aleppo and the Tigris River Valley. This allowed frankincense and myrrh from Yemen to be incorporated into the luxury trade, as well as gold, ivory, ostrich feathers and slaves from West Africa and salt (a non-luxury good) from northern Europe.

*The emperor Constantine moved the capitol of the Roman empire from Rome to Constantinople in 324 AD because of its better access to the Silk Road Trade.

**Greek and Roman sailors had learned to exploit the monsoon trade winds in 45 AD.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/13172786/13172788

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan at the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais Royal in Paris on February 7, 2024. (Photo credit: Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP)<

The Cradle

The International Criminal Court judges have yet to issue arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister four months after prosecutor Karim Khan requested them

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) says world leaders pressured him not to apply for arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister on allegations of war crimes in Gaza, the BBC reported on 5 September.

Karim Khan told the BBC, “Several leaders and others told me and advised me and cautioned me,” he said.

In May, Khan said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had committed war crimes during the Israeli assault on Gaza that has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children.

The state of Israel faces separate genocide charges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The chief prosecutor also applied for arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, claiming they bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity for actions taken by the organization’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, when it stormed Israeli military bases and settlements on 7 October as part of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Some 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in the operation. Some were killed by Hamas, while many were killed by Israeli forces using attack helicopters, drones, and tanks, per the controversial Hannibal directive.

Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, was assassinated in Iran by an Israeli strike on 31 July. Israel claims Deif was also killed in an airstrike in Gaza, but Hamas officials have stated he is still alive.

Though several months have passed since Khan’s application, ICC judges have not issued any arrest warrants.

Speaking to the BBC, Khan said it was important to show the court would hold all nations to the same standard in relation to alleged war crimes. He also welcomed the new UK government’s recent decision to drop its opposition to the arrest warrants.

“There’s a difference of tone, and I think of substance in relation to international law by the new government. And I think that’s welcome,” he told the BBC’s Nick Robinson.

Khan explained the ICC needed to request warrants for leaders on both sides of the conflict so that the court is viewed as applying “the law equally based upon some common standards.” “If one had applied for warrants in relation to Israeli officials and not for Gaza, [some would] say: ‘Well, this is an obscenity’ and, ‘How on earth is that possible?’” he said.

“You can’t have one approach for countries where there’s support, whether it’s NATO support, European support [and] powerful countries behind you, and a different approach where you have clear jurisdiction,” he added.

In response to criticism for applying for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, Khan stated, “I have one advantage at least. Hopefully, even they will concede I’ve seen the evidence. They haven’t … The application is not public. It is confidential. It is filed to the chamber. So they are guessing what evidence has been submitted.”

This week, a pro-Israel legal group in the UK threatened to press charges against Khan, claiming that his efforts to issue arrest warrants against Israeli officials are based on false premises.

The organization UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) wrote a letter to Khan dated 27 August, in which it attempts to refute his allegations against Netanyahu and Gallant.

If Khan were to be charged and found guilty of that accusation, he could potentially – as a barrister in the most serious cases – be disbarred and forbidden from practicing law in the UK.

In May, a dozen Republican senators sent a letter warning Khan not to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.

“Target Israel, and we will target you,” the senators, led by Senator Tom Cotton, warned in the letter. “Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and, if carried out, will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.” Senators Mitch McConnell (minority leader), Rick Scott, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio also signed the letter.

[…]

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/icc-prosecutor-says-world-leaders-threatened-him-over-israel-arrest-warrants

Maiya Focht

Vermont just became the second state to postpone public events in order to curb the spread of a deadly virus in the state.

The Green Mountain state joins neighboring Massachusetts in recommending their citizens stay home at night, amid high reports of Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE).

This rare sickness is carried by horses and spread by mosquitos, and in about 30 percent of human cases, can cause brain swelling, vomiting, seizures and death.

In addition to postponing local nighttime festivals and concerts, the Vermont Department of Health ‘strongly recommend[s]’ people in some of the state’s busiest towns stay inside between 6 pm and 6 am, when the bugs are most active.

Though the virus is rare, it’s already claimed one life in New England this year. Steven Perry, 41, a father-of-four, died after contracting the virus in New Hampshire last week.

He was the first person in New Hampshire to be infected with the virus in ten years.

Around the same time, across state lines, curfews were announced in multiple counties in Massachusetts. Sports games, cookouts and other end-of summer events have been postponed across the state, a move Vermont seems to be mirroring.

EEE is rare – affecting an estimated 11 Americans per year – but in the past year, it’s plagued New England at seemingly record levels.

August marked the first human case of the mosquito-borne illness in Vermont since 2012.

The areas in Vermont at highest risk, as highlighted by the health department include Burlington, Colchester, Alburg, Swanton and Sudbury.

Public health officials arrived at these areas after finding 47 groups of mosquitos with EEE across 11 communities – a sharp increase from last year, where 14 groups of mosquitos tested positive across three towns.

The events cancelled include Burlington’s annual Oktoberfest celebration, normally one of the state’s largest gatherings.

The event’s organizer put out a statement reading: ‘While the eventual outcome of this virus’ impact and the general response from the public is not our judgment call to make, the significant costs associated with organizing this event prevent us from delaying this decision any further to find out’.

Other cancellations include music and food festivals, art shows, concerts and outdoor movies.

Vermont’s Health Department stated that since there is no vaccine or treatment for the disease, prevention is the best course of action, even though it might be inconvenient.

‘The best way to reduce your risk of infection with EEE is by: limit time outdoors at dawn and dusk,’ officials said. If you have to go outside at night, they recommend using bug spray and wearing long sleeves.

Once in your system, the EEE attacks the nervous system, similarly to other mosquito borne illnesses like West Nile. 

In a typical case, an individual will experience flu-like symptoms like fever, chills, body aches and joint pain for one to two weeks.

But about 30 percent of people develop more serious symptoms due to brain or spinal cord infection, leading to brain swelling, mild disability or death.

People over age 50 or under age 15 are at a higher risk for these severe complications than the average person.

[…]

Via https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13818543/vermont-state-nighttime-curfew-mosquito-triple-e-virus.html

[Ed Note Do Not Comply – sure sounds like overkill to me. Citronella and penny royal oil make great non-toxic insect repellents as do these classic lightweight Bug Shirts. Don’t forget Boston was home to the first lockdown during the 2013 Boston Marathon. It’s clear now this was just a dry run to see if people would comply.]

Ramesh Thakur

A perfect storm of crises has been building. It comes from still bubbling rage with governments for their single-minded obsession with Covid and the lasting damage caused by lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates, with the media for amplifying government fear porn and social media platforms for collusion with innovative techniques of censorship, to the cost of living pressures, Ukraine war, and the crimes, housing crisis, cultural decay, and social dislocations of mass immigration. A survey earlier this year in France, Germany, Italy, and Poland found that 60 percent of voters lack trust in political institutions.

People have come to hold politicians to be dishonest, incompetent, and lacking courage and integrity. Being unheard and vilified has broken public trust in the underpinning institutions of democracy. In the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer, less than half the people in high-income developed countries trust their government, media, business, and NGOs.

In Australia, governments earned scores of -21 for competence and -5 for ethics. Pew Research Center polls show trust in the US government falling from 77 percent in 1964 to 22 percent in 2024.

Headlines capture a growing crisis of free speech and civil liberties that are a threat to Western liberal democracy with a transfer of power and rights from citizens to the state as the latter attempts to impose its dogmas on people, sometimes in defiance of biological reality.

Online safety measures run the risk of turning into censors’ charters. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner wants to control what can be said online. In a strange legacy of our first female PM, a recent court judgment enshrined transgender rights at the cost of women’s rights, ruling that lesbians may not lawfully exclude biologically male but legally female persons from a women-only dating app. The case, believe it or not, is called Tickle v Giggle.

Europe and the UK

When the ruling elites talk about diversity, they mean state-enforced conformity. The sense that the established parties hold voters in contempt and treat them like mugs has produced election gains for so-called populist parties and movements from Italy to the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France, the UK, and Germany. ‘Populist’ is commonly used pejoratively by mainstream political leaders and media. A woman in Europe who complains of being stalked by a ‘visible minority’ immigrant risks being scolded as a racist, victim-shamed, and told to be quiet. A politician who talks up her fears is sneered at as populist.

Yet the word populist comes from the notion of the popular will to describe policies that are popular with a large number of voters who have come to believe that their concerns are derided and disregarded by the governing, cultural, corporate, intellectual, and media elites. Hence the revolt of the masses against the homogeneous political establishment and the scolds and sneers in the commentariat. The people have had enough and are refusing to take it anymore. Even white upper-class liberals living in leafy suburbs who previously didn’t care awaken to the problems of the mass influx of migrants once the latter infiltrate their neighbourhood.

The threat from populists has provoked efforts by the establishment parties to nobble the upstart newcomers and the media to vilify them. This only creates a vicious cycle and generates more support for populists. In addition, as activist protestors and judges take to lawfare to frustrate governments’ ability to govern, the proliferating thickets of laws, checks, and balances have led to a condition of ‘legal impossibilism,’ in the words of Jaroslaw Kaczyński, the former prime minister of Poland.

France has arrested Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, because he refused to comply with authorities’ demands for greater restrictions on the popular app. Durov’s arrest is problematic because it is not possible to quarantine the extraordinary privacy-destroying surveillance powers of the state targeting criminals and terrorists from those engaged in peaceful protests and even humdrum everyday conversations. The crackdown by the Trudeau government on the truckers’ Freedom Convoy demonstrated this in vivid technicolour.

In Germany, a right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician has been fined for posting that Afghan immigrants are disproportionately likely to commit sexual violence against women and girls. She was convicted not of misinformation – she was citing official statistics – but for inciting hatred. In the two-weekend state elections that followed, the AfD won a plurality of votes (30-33 percent) in Thuringia and neighbouring Saxony. The party’s votes among the youth were particularly impressive: 38 percent of the 18–24 year-olds in Thuringia and 31 percent in Saxony.

The AfD and a new far-left party together polled almost half the votes in Thuringia and over 40 percent in Saxony. Many analysts interpreted the results as ‘less the rise of the far right than the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition.’ I believe however that the main story is that in country after country, instead of listening to and heeding their voters, the politicians are telling voters what they should believe, think, and say, and how they should vote. And then screaming ‘Far Right! Far Right!’ when voters look to alternatives to the mainstream parties.

In the UK, the Starmer government wants to ban hateful beliefs and speech and is also considering tackling extreme misogyny (what is moderate misogyny?) under anti-terrorism laws. On another culture wars front, police are recording more non-crime hate incidents (you know, the Orwellian category of lawful but harmful words and acts) than ever before, despite the previous Tory government having supposedly curtailed the practice. Pride in British history plummeted from 86 percent in 1995 to 64 percent last year. This will only worsen if teachers are to be trained to challenge ‘whiteness’ in schools.

People are being sentenced to one to three years in prison for posting and reposting comments on social media, yet actual physical assaults on women for wearing Western dress and makeup and for sexual assault and penetration as part of a grooming gang, earn suspended sentences. There’s also speculation that the government might criminalise Islamophobia, further entrenching the division between protected groups and, shall we say, Britain’s indigenous peoples. Deepening perceptions of two-tier laws, policing, and justice will continue to erode the legitimacy of the state.

Meanwhile, carmakers are rationing deliveries of petrol and hybrid vehicles to dealers/customers in order to avoid fines for failing to meet EV targets set by the government as a percentage of total sales. Once this used to be a hallmark of communist regimes organised around the command model of the economy. Hence the contention that EV mandates for manufacturers prove that Britain is no longer a free country. Dr David McGrogan of Northumbria Law School is full of dark forebodings that the growing hostility between the increasingly sullen people and the bossy Starmer government will not end well for Britain.

Last month Thierry Breton, an EU commissioner, wrote to Elon Musk with a regulatory warning over potentially harmful comments in the scheduled Musk-Donald Trump interview on X. Because the audience would include EU viewers, Breton asserted a right to limit what Americans can hear from one of the two major presidential candidates. Brazil has moved to an outright ban of X and will fine anyone who accesses it through a virtual private network (VPN).

Canada and the US

In Canada, regulators have been given carte blanche by the courts to subject professionals like Jordan Petersen to Maoist ‘reeducation’ courses for commenting on social and political issues, in their own time and on their own platforms outside their professional consulting rooms and roles. To make it even more like Alice in Wonderland, in Petersen’s case he apparently needs lessons in the use of social media.

The US weight in the democratic world is such that what happens in America doesn’t stay in America. Of course, I’m not a US citizen or resident, have neither vote nor voice in US elections, and have no party affiliation or allegiance. As such I have no partisan dog in the fight, so to say. My interest in this particular election is mainly what it implies for the health of democratic practices and freedoms. The rest of the world also has a stake in the outcome in terms of what it could mean for us, including prospects for war and nuclear war.

President Joe Biden’s growing physical frailty and cognitive deterioration were evident well before the start of the year. Consistent with existing norms and practices, Democratic Party elders could have tried to persuade Biden not to seek a second term. If he’d refused, they could have organised an open 2024 presidential primary and publicly encouraged other candidates to enter the fray. Had Kamala Harris emerged triumphant, dispelling doubts left over from 2020 about her electability, the outcome would have reaffirmed the democratic process for choosing the party nominee.

Instead, Democratic powerbrokers chose to act on a timeline that subverted internal party democracy. The exceptionally early Biden-Trump debate in June, which cruelled Biden’s ambition for a second term, led to a stage-managed process to crown Kamala Harris without a high-risk primary. Maureen Dowd argued in the New York Times that the party had engineered a ‘a jaw-dropping putsch’ to oust Biden and install Harris.

Victor Davis Hanson argued in the New York Post that in fact the Democrats were guilty of three successive coups. In 2020, the party elders ‘ossified’ the primary races to weed out other challengers; they conferred the nomination on a cognitively challenged Biden; and this year they defenestrated him despite his incumbency and a 14-million-vote decisive primary victory. ‘In the name of saving democracy,’ said Robert F Kennedy, Jr, the Democratic Party ‘set itself to dismantling it’ by silencing opposition, disenfranchising primary voters, and resorting to censorship, media control, and the weaponisation of federal agencies.

The strategy owes much to Harris’s flawed candidacy as an electoral liability with a record of failing upwards. Megyn Kelly explained on 24 July how a young Harris slept her way into politics and into power in California in the mid-1990s on the back of an affair with Democratic powerbroker Willie Brown. Harris was elected Attorney General of California, a deep blue state, in 2010 with less than one percent margin when other Democrats won landslide victories. Her 2020 primary run collapsed with spectacular swiftness.

She didn’t contest this year’s primary. ‘How did the Democratic party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle?’ Kennedy asked. Zero votes, zero press conferences or interviews (until the CNN love-in with Dana Bash), zero town hall meetings with questions from a live and unvetted audience.

Harris remains potentially vulnerable in the home stretch as a double diversity candidate who wasn’t chosen by party voters but anointed by the DC elite backed by the Democratic-adjacent media, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy donors. She is an empty signifier who means whatever her interpreter-voter wants her to mean. She’s a black woman of Jamaican heritage to one audience and an Asian of Indian heritage to another. Has anyone asked her for her views on the Supreme Court ruling that struck down Harvard’s race-based affirmative action admission policies that had discriminated in favour of blacks to the detriment of Asian-Americans in particular? I’d love to hear the answer, assuming it is intelligible.

[…]

The pre-Democratic nominee Harris is on record for clearly believing that social media platforms should not be able to communicate information to the people directly without government oversight and regulation.

According to Michael Shellenberger, Harris and Tim Walz would implement Brazil-style three-pronged censorship to fight ‘misinformation’ and ‘hate speech:’ ‘censorship of election “misinformation,” deplatforming political opponents, and cross-platform bans, which ban a person not just from one social media platform but from many or even all of them.’

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/why-the-ruling-class-fears-democracy/

The history of the proceedings against civil rights activist Dr Reiner Füllmich is impressive evidence of the erosion of the rule of law in the Federal Republic of Germany.

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The Füllmich Thriller: In the Beginning Was the Lie

Even the beginning of Füllmich’s persecution could be the subject of a cheap Hollywood-thriller. The story went like this: the young public prosecutor Simon Philipp John sets up a persecution scenario with former co-partners of the victim. Their holey story: Reiner Füllmich had illegally appropriated money and gold from the Corona Committee and wanted to make off with it. The fact that neither money nor gold were in his possession was irrelevant. For the story to be relevant at all, the complainants (the renegade lawyers Justus Hoffmann, Antonia Fischer and Marcel Templin) and the public prosecutor had to deceive the prosecuting authorities (BKA) and the courts – or co-operate with them.

The grotesque play was initialised by Viviane Fischer, Füllmich’s assessor on the Corona Committee, who in turn is primarily responsible for the prosecution of Füllmich. She had insidiously thrown the head of the Corona Committee out of the committee on 2 September 2022. While she led Füllmich to believe that no committee meeting was taking place, she used the actual meeting to publicly execute Füllmich. Since that day, Fischer has been waging a private war against her mentor and doing everything she can to put him behind bars. As a partner of the people who filed the charges, she plays the most inglorious role in this conspiracy.

Conditions for Prosecution

In order for Dr Füllmich to be prosecuted at all, the public prosecutor’s office had to make up a number of lies. In the end, they had to apply for an arrest warrant. This is where prosecutor John and the renegade lawyers showed their creativity. In order to demonstrate the illegality of Füllmich’s behaviour, they simply claimed, by omitting important information, that Füllmich should never have had access to the committee’s funds. In doing so, they maliciously concealed the fact that all managing directors were exempted from the restrictions of § 181 BGB by a shareholders‘ resolution. Füllmich therefore acted lawfully at all times within the scope of the powers conferred on him when securing the committee’s funds.

The Illegal Deal: Public Prosecutor and Co-prosecutors Working Together

Public prosecutor Simon Philipp John and the renegade lawyers constructed the Füllmich case in close coordination with each other. The very nature of the cooperation between the prosecution and those involved in a civil dispute is remarkable. Antonia Fischer forwarded all negotiation correspondence between the shareholders of the Corona Committee to public prosecutor John and maintained a personal relationship with him in this exchange.

Not only that: they discussed the possibilities of prosecuting and imprisoning Füllmich. This happened while the negotiations between Füllmich and the other committee members about the loan repayment were still ongoing. During the trial, Antonia Fischer admitted that she had never been interested in a negotiated outcome. She only ever wanted to get Füllmich into prison. The other main accomplice in the Füllmich conspiracy, Justus P. Hoffman, made a similar statement. The renegade lawyers, in coordination with the public prosecutor’s office, prevented an agreement in order to maintain the claim that Füllmich had committed misconduct.

Füllmich had already taken the first steps to return secured funds in accordance with the agreement. However, it would have been a disaster for the desired imprisonment and elimination of the civil rights activist if an agreement had been implemented. The lawyer and doctoral supervisor of Justus P. Hoffmann, Professor Martin Schwab, was to receive a power of attorney to make the secured gold – with the joint signature of Viviane Fischer – available to the committee. However, Schwab refused. One can only speculate about the reasons.

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The Federal Criminal Police Office Abducts Dr Reiner Füllmich

In the course of the abduction of the civil rights activist, the complicity of the Federal Criminal Police Office in the illegal action was also revealed. The public prosecutor’s office and the renegade lawyers set a trap for Reiner Füllmich. He was to be lured to the German consulate in Tijuana under the pretence that a signature was still missing from a document. The subsequent arrest by the Mexican authorities was coordinated by the BKA field office. This is evident from the communication of the service.

Under the pretext of a visa offence, Füllmich was arrested by his Mexican „colleagues“, put on a plane to Germany and arrested there as planned. As agreed, Reiner Füllmich was denied the opportunity to appeal against his deportation. The fact that the „visa offence“ was also part of the plan and an illegal favour is shown by the fact that Dr Füllmich’s wife was not expelled from the country in the same situation as her husband. It was only ever about illegally deporting Füllmich to the FRG in order to bring him to trial there.

The Federal Criminal Police Office and a Ridiculous “Denial”

The involvement of the BKA in the abduction of the civil rights activist has been proven. It is clear from the communication between the BKA and the public prosecutor’s office. However, the BKA also appears elsewhere in this bizarre piece: Dr Füllmich’s co-counsel, the Cologne criminal defence lawyer Christof Miseré, was leaked information which could describe the activities of the services (BKA, BND and/or Verfassungsschutz). It describes Füllmich’s work and defines the aim of preventing him from continuing to be publicly effective or even holding public office.

In order to verify the “truthfulness“ of the dossier, the public prosecutor’s office questioned the Federal Criminal Police Office. Of course, no one seriously expects an authority to confirm that it is involved in the illegal persecution of political dissidents and is being instrumentalised against the investigation. On the contrary, one would expect a clear denial. In the sense of: This paper and its contents do not originate from our authority, either in whole or in part. That would be a denial. However, the office’s answer is different: “It is therefore very unlikely that this is a document written by the BKA.“

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Regardless of the degree of involvement of the Federal Criminal Police Office in the persecution of the civil rights activist, its involvement in the abduction of Füllmich is proven by the available communication. In doing so, the Federal Criminal Police Office has foregone a constitutional way of detaining Dr Füllmich within the framework of internationally valid extradition procedures. This would have involved applying for an international arrest warrant and co-operating with Interpol. The procedure is well known to the BKA. However, the fabricated allegations would never have been sufficient for an international prosecution. So the only remaining option was the illegal route of abduction coordinated with the Mexican authorities.

The Metamorphosis of the Accusations – Conviction at Any Price

Once it was clear that Reiner Füllmich was exempt from the restrictions of Section 181 of the German Civil Code (BGB), it could have been established that the original accusation was unfounded and that there were no unlawful dispositions. The proceedings could have been discontinued and the shareholders could have continued their negotiations, which had been interrupted by the kidnapping, to determine when and how the loan amounts protected from state access should be transferred back to one of the Corona Committee companies. Due to this deliberate deception by the public prosecutor’s office and its accomplices, the court wrongly assumed from September 2022 to November 2023 that Füllmich could already be accused of criminal behaviour solely because of the lack of exemption from Section 181 BGB.

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When it could be proven on the basis of the shareholders‘ resolutions that Füllmich had effective sole power of representation, the court looked for new ways to incriminate the persecuted man. Füllmich’s lawyer Katja Wörmer commented:

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This means nothing other than: First, the court claimed that the persecuted person was not authorised to make his orders. When it then turned out that he was, the court changed its view and said that he was authorised but had abused his power of representation.

The Second Trick Also Fails

However, the questioning of the witnesses by lawyer Katja Wörmer and the persecuted man himself quickly showed that there had been no misuse of the power of representation. Even his former partners on the Corona Committee confirmed Dr Füllmich’s statements. Füllmich and Viviane Fischer wanted to protect the committee’s funds from possible access by the state or make this access more difficult. The donations had to disappear from the current accounts. The state had already frozen the funds of critics too often.

Viviane Fischer and Reiner Füllmich took two steps: firstly, they bought gold, which could retain its value even in the event of an economic crisis. Secondly, Fischer and Füllmich shifted the committee’s funds into their private sphere by granting loans. The loans were recognised in the accounting records and contractually agreed. The parties involved agreed that the loan amounts should be repaid to the committee.

Things went wrong? No problem.

So the second prosecution trick, supported by Judge Carsten Schindler, was also dashed by reality. It was proven that the funds were transferred by way of loan agreements and were to be repaid. The persons involved were authorised to do so on the basis of the existing agreements and had documented the procedure. They adopted the regulations and their legal content as their own. The loan agreements were therefore validly agreed. Everyone agreed on this – which is why the dispute between the shareholders centred on the question of when and how the loans were to be repaid. In Dr Füllmich’s case, this was to take place after the sale of his private property. He had never stated otherwise.

The fact that Dr Füllmich’s loan amounts were not repaid was due to an equally illegal arrangement. In collaboration with the notary who notarised the sale of the Füllmich family’s property, one of the complainants, Marcel Templin, in coordination with the other accomplices (Justus P. Hoffmann and Antonia Fischer), appropriated further parts of the proceeds from the sale of the property without sufficient legal grounds. Piquantly, the public prosecutor’s office blocked the Füllmichs‘ accounts – but did not seize the illegally collected share of the sales proceeds from Templin. No investigations were initiated against Marcel Templin either. He is now suspected of being an employee of the authorities and of ensuring the persecution of the civil rights activist Füllmich on their behalf and making it impossible for him to repay the agreed loan.

The arsenal of obstruction of justice is vast.

After the public prosecutor’s office had failed to substantiate the allegations against Dr Füllmich despite all the illegal machinations and objective misrepresentations, the court now came to the prosecutor’s aid. This was a surprise for the defence and the prosecution: the agreed loan agreements, which had been intended, described and assessed as such by all parties involved, were suddenly – after several weeks of trial – simply reinterpreted by the court.

The court is now constructing a „fiduciary relationship“ in order to ensure that Dr Füllmich is convicted. In the court’s instructions read out by presiding judge Carsten Schindler, the court now prefers to assume that a „fiduciary safekeeping of the funds was agreed in such a way that these funds were to be available at all times in bank accounts on behalf of the pre-company“. The court relied solely on the statements made by Viviane Fischer, who also placed herself at the service of the prosecution.

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Below is Dr. Fullmich’s statement on 01 September 2024:

[Ed Note: Prior to his arrest, Füüüllmich and his international team played a vital role in collecting evidence of government and corporate criminality related to so-called Covid 19 vaccine for a proposed Nuremberg 2.0 tribunal]