Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.
Why is this man smiling? Ford CEO Jim Farley, driving a Ford Lightning in California last September. Photo credit: Russ Mitchell, Los Angeles Times
How bad is the EV business? Yesterday afternoon, Ford Motor Company reported that the operating loss it incurred on its EV business in 2023 exceeded its total profit for the year.
That shocking fact comes directly from the company’s earnings report, which carried the headline, “Ford+ Delivers Solid 2023…” The Dearborn-based auto giant had an operating loss (also known as EBIT, or earnings before interest and taxes) of $4.7 billion on its EV business last year. Meanwhile, the company reported net income (profit) of just $4.3 billion, on revenue of $176 billion. The company also reported operating income, or what it called “adjusted EBIT,” of $10.4 billion.
Calculating the company’s per-EV operating loss requires only a bit of simple division. The company sold 72,608 EVs last year and had an EBIT loss of $4.7 billion in its “Model e” segment. Thus, the auto giant lost a knee-buckling $64,731 for each EV it sold in 2023. To put that $64,731 per-vehicle loss in perspective, a top-of-the-line Mustang Mach-E listed on the website of a large Ford dealership here in Austin (see below) is selling for $66,615.
The company said the $4.7 billion loss reflected “an extremely competitive pricing environment, along with strategic investments in the development of clean-sheet, next-generation EVs.” The $4.7 billion loss is far higher than the $3 billion loss Ford projected back in March. Further, it’s more than double the $2.2 billion loss it recorded in the EV segment in 2022. Thus, in the last two years alone, the company has lost nearly $7 billion on its foray into fully electric automobiles. Recall that, as I reported here last July, the company has plans to spend $50 billion on EVs.
Given the company’s 2023 results, it’s clear that Ford’s headlong plunge into the EV market has been an unmitigated disaster and that the company would be far more profitable had it ignored the EV fad. Of course, the company tried to put a positive spin on its EV results, noting that EV sales rose by 18% last year. But those sales must be put into context. In 2023, Ford sold 750,789 F-Series trucks. Thus, the auto giant sold more than 10 times as many conventionally powered trucks as EVs (72,608).
Warnings about the company’s failing EV business have been coming for months. In December, the automaker announced it was slashing production of its F-150 Lightning in half, from 3,200 trucks per week to 1,600 per week, as part of an effort “to match Lightning production to customer demand.” On January 19, the company said it was cutting production of Lightning even further because, as Reuters reported, “demand for EVs has been lower than expected.”
What should be particularly worrisome for investors — and for the company’s CEO, Jim Farley — is that Ford’s EV losses aren’t falling, they are rising. Indeed, those losses doubled between the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2023. Ford’s first-quarter EV operating loss was $722 million. In the second quarter, it was $1.1 billion. In the third quarter, it was $1.3 billion, and in the fourth quarter, Ford’s EV operating loss hit $1.57 billion.
Ford’s losses are only part of the ongoing train wreck in the EV market. Last October, General Motors said it would delay the opening of a $4 billion electric truck factory in Michigan for a year. That same month, Reuters reported that Honda and General Motors “were ending a $5 billion plan to develop lower-cost EVs together just a year after announcing the effort.” The article continued, noting that GM “would focus near-term EV efforts on meeting demand rather than hitting specific volume targets.”
In November, nearly 3,900 automobile dealers across the country sent a letter to President Biden telling him that EV demand is “not keeping up with the large influx of BEVs arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. BEVs are stacking up on our lots.” They continued, saying EVs are “not selling nearly as fast as they are arriving at our dealerships.”
As I explained in the written testimony I submitted to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last month, EVs have always been a niche-market product, not a mass-market one. And that niche market is dominated by wealthy, white, male, liberal voters who live in a handful of heavily Democratic cities and counties.
I wrote:
Further, that niche market is primarily defined by class and ideology. Some 57% of EV owners earn more than $100,000 annually, 75% are male, and 87% are white. Last March, Gallup reported, “a substantial majority of Republicans, 71%, say they would not consider owning an electric vehicle.”
Last October, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, released a remarkable study that found “counties with affluent left-leaning cities” like Cambridge, San Francisco, and Seattle “play a disproportionately large role in driving the entire national increase in EV adoption.” The researchers found that over the past decade, about half of all the EVs sold in the U.S. were sold in the most heavily Democratic counties in the country. The summary of the study deserves quoting at length:
“The prospect for EVs as a climate change solution hinges on their widespread adoption across the political spectrum. In this paper, we use detailed county-level data on new vehicle registrations from 2012-2022 to measure the degree to which EV adoption is concentrated in the most left-leaning U.S. counties. The results point to a strong and enduring correlation between political ideology and U.S. EV adoption. During our time period about half of all EVs went to the 10% most Democratic counties, and about one-third went to the top 5%. There is relatively little evidence that this correlation has decreased over time, and even some specifications that point to increasing correlation. The results suggest that it may be harder than previously believed to reach high levels of U.S. EV adoption.” (Emphasis added.)
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the staggering losses at Ford and the other automakers is that the carmakers didn’t understand the limited appeal of EVs. Their lack of knowledge of the history of EVs, the concentrated nature of the market, and the limited number of motorists interested in buying EVs should go down as one of the biggest blunders in modern automobile history. Again, as I noted in my written testimony:
Ford and the other big automakers have been spending billions of dollars to cater to the whims of a tiny segment of the overall car market — a segment heavily concentrated in a handful of liberal counties. That’s a lousy business strategy. But it is an even worse strategy for federal policymakers who must be responsive to the transportation needs of every American, not just those who live in liberal cities and large, wealthy states.
Fried rice being prepared over a gas flame, Tokyo, March 4, 2023. Photo by author.
Court’s latest ruling has national implications and affirms that bans on direct use of natural gas violate federal law.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has cranked up the heat on the “electrify everything” foolishness.
Last month, the Ninth Circuit denied the city of Berkeley’s petition to re-hear its case after the city’s ban on natural gas use in homes and businesses was ruled illegal last April. The January 2 ruling has national implications and is an enormous loss for the electrify everything movement, the lavishly funded campaign that seeks to ban natural gas stoves, water heaters, and other gas-fired appliances in the name of climate change.
Before I delve into the court ruling, it’s essential to understand the danger to our energy security posed by the electrify everything effort and the dark money groups that are pushing it.
As I have reported here, the electrify everything movement could result in enormous reductions in the affordability, reliability, and resilience of our electric grid. The campaigners want to add massive amounts of new load onto an energy network that is already cracking under existing demand. Indeed, the electrify everything jihadis are pushing for the electrification of heating, transportation, and industry at the very same time that numerous policymakers and regulators are warning about the declining reliability of the power grid.
To cite two recent examples, last May, members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission delivered stark warnings to the members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The agency’s acting chairman, Willie Phillips, told the senators, “We face unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system.” FERC Commissioner Mark Christie echoed Phillips’ warning, saying the U.S. electric grid is “heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.” His colleague, Commissioner James Danly, averred that there is a “looming reliability crisis in our electricity markets.”
Last August, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation named “changing resource mix” as a top reliability risk facing the electric grid. And for the first time, it named climate policy as one of the most significant risk factors. It said, “policy decisions can significantly affect the reliability and resilience of the [bulk power system]. Decarbonization, decentralization, and electrification have been active policy areas. Implementation of policies in these areas is accelerating, and, with changes in the resource mix, extreme weather events, and physical and cyber security challenges, reliability implications are emerging.” (Emphasis added.)
Further, the same NGOs pushing to electrify everything are also aggressively promoting policies that will make our electric grid even more reliant on weather-dependent sources like wind and solar. As the slide above shows, NERC is warning that our grid is increasingly vulnerable to “wind and solar droughts.” If climate change means we are facing more extreme weather of all types, the last thing we should do is make our grid more dependent on the weather.
The electrify everything movement is fueled by massive contributions from some of the world’s richest people, including Michael Bloomberg, John Doerr, and Laurene Powell Jobs. Numerous climate-focused NGOs, including the Sierra Club (2022 budget: $168 million) and Rocky Mountain Institute (2022 budget: $117 million), as well as dark-money entities like Climate Imperative and Rewiring America, are leading the attack against gas stoves and the direct use of gas. In 2022, Climate Imperative — headed by veteran climate activist Hal Harvey and two former Sierra Club employees, Bruce Nilles and Mary Anne Hitt — had revenue of $289 million. For comparison, the American Gas Association, which represents gas utilities, had revenue of about $37 million that year.
Jobs and Doerr were founding board members of Climate Imperative, which does not reveal the identities of its donors. Last March, in “The Dark Money Behind The Gas Bans,” I wrote about Rewiring America, which had recently hired Georgia politician Stacey Abrams. I explained that Rewiring America has about 40 employees and:
is among the most prominent members of this dark money network. The group doesn’t publish its budget or file a Form 990. Instead, it is a sponsored project of the Windward Fund, a 501c3 non-profit that does not disclose its donors. Nor does it reveal how much it is giving to Rewiring America. Although it is impossible to know exactly how much dark money is being shuffled among groups like the Windward Fund, Rewiring America, and others, my tally shows that just four of the dark money NGOs behind the gas bans have combined budgets of about $820 million.
Now, back to the Ninth Circuit. The court’s January 2 decision not to entertain a rehearing of the Berkeley case confirms that the gas bans enacted in California over the past several years are invalid. According to the Sierra Club, which has been gleefully tracking the bans, some 76 cities or counties in the state have enacted bans or restrictions on gas since Berkeley enacted its ban in 2019. On a website that tracks the restrictions, the Sierra Club makes no mention of the Ninth Circuit’s rulings. The group may want to ignore it, but the decision affects all of the states in the Ninth Circuit: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. That means the recent bans on gas in Seattle and the statewide ban in Washington, which was adopted last year, are invalid. So, too, is the ban imposed by Eugene, Oregon, in early 2023.
The San Francisco Chronicle summarized the appeal, noting that “Berkeley, joined by the Biden administration, other cities and states, and conservation groups, then asked the full appeals court, which has 16 Democratic appointees among its 29 judges, to order a rehearing. But only 11 judges, all appointed by Democratic presidents, voted for a new hearing…the ruling will now become final unless the conservative-majority Supreme Court agrees to review it.” The article quoted Sarah Jorgensen, a lawyer for the California Restaurant Association, who said the court recognized that “energy policy was a matter of national concern and that there should be uniform national regulation.”
Berkeley’s gas ban was first ruled illegal last April, when the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the restaurant association. The January 2 decision affirmed the court’s prior ruling and noted that Congress, when it passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) of 1975, “ensured that states and localities could not prevent consumers from using covered products in their homes, kitchens, and business. EPCA thus preempts Berkeley’s building code, which prohibits natural gas piping in new construction buildings from the point of delivery at the gas meter.”
expressly preempts State and local regulations concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in household and restaurant kitchens. Instead of directly banning those appliances in new buildings, Berkeley took a more circuitous route to the same result and enacted a building code that prohibits natural gas piping into those buildings, rendering the gas appliances useless….By its plain text and structure, EPCA’s preemption provision encompasses building codes that regulate natural gas use by covered products. And by preventing such appliances from using natural gas, the new Berkeley building code does exactly that.” (Emphasis in original.)
A January 3 article published by Oakland-based KTVU, quoted Berkeley City Council member Kate Harrison, who authored the gas-ban ordinance, saying her city “will continue to do everything in its power to fight climate change and protect the health of its residents.”
The Ninth Circuit’s latest decision should also mean that bans on natural gas in other parts of the country should also be nullified. But the Ninth Circuit only covers part of the country. That means its decisions may set a precedent, but it doesn’t mean the precedent applies to other regions. That could change soon, however, because Jorgenson has filed a similar suit against the state of New York.
Last May, New York became the first state to ban gas stoves and furnaces in most new buildings. The law requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026, and for taller buildings by 2029. The city of New York has also passed a ban in the form of Local Law 97, which is even more destructive. That measure requires building owners to remove gas boilers over the next few years or face huge financial penalties. For more on Local Law 97, see the September 26, 2023 edition of the Power Hungry Podcast with my pal, Jane Menton, a lifelong New Yorker, who calls the measure an “electrification monster” that could result in a humanitarian nightmare in Gotham.
On October 12, Jorgenson filed suit on behalf of a group of plaintiffs, including propane dealers, homebuilders, and plumbers. In a press release, Jorgenson’s firm said the “The drastic step of requiring ‘all-electric’ new buildings despite an already-strained electric grid stands at odds with the public’s need for a reliable, resilient, and affordable energy supply. New York’s gas ban is preempted by federal law, is contrary to the public interest, and harms plaintiffs and the members they represent.”
If Jorgenson prevails in New York, and she should, the next stop on the litigation is the U.S. Supreme Court, which should weigh in and declare that the electrify everything effort, is, as Jorgenson says, “contrary to the public interest.”
Israeli bombings destroy homes in Rafah, Feb. 12, 2024. | Photo: X/ @L_insoumission
Newsletter
Palestinian prime minister Shtayeh stated that these recent times have been the bloodiest in contemporary Palestinian history.
On Monday, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) accused Israel of intensifying attacks on Rafah to force the exodus of 1.4 million Palestinians crowded in that area.
In the early hours of Monday, Israeli occupation forces carried out brutal bombardments in Rafah, where the Gaza-based Health Ministry reported the killing of 67 people and dozens trapped under rubble.
The target of this attack signifies “an official Israeli effort to target civilians and shift the war to the Rafah area, which is densely populated, to push them to migrate and displace,” the PNA’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
Rafah, bordering Egypt and the only point in the Strip where Israeli forces have not yet entered by land, appears to be the next destination of the occupation troops, aiming to control the entirety of Gaza.
The PNA also asserted that yesterday, a hundred bodies of Palestinians were found under rubble in the Tel Al Hawa neighborhood in Gaza city, and also reported the death of 15 people in an attack on the city of Deir Balah, where many internally displaced people also gather.
“These massacres and the high number of deaths and casualties among civilians are further evidence of the validity of international warnings and fears about the catastrophic consequences of the expansion and deepening of the war in Rafah,” the PNA stated, considering it “a direct reflection of Israel’s mindset of revenge.”
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohamed Shtayeh stated today that these recent times have been “the bloodiest in contemporary Palestinian history.”
Since the outbreak of the war on October 7, 2023, the total number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli offensive in Gaza is 28,340, and the wounded approach 68,000.
#BreakingNews | Israeli occupation planes are launching intense bombing raids on Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt, and destroyed the Al-Huda Mosque in Yabna, the Al-Rahma Mosque in Al-Shaboura#GenocideGazapic.twitter.com/qbxXLMsxPV
The change in the status of women after abolition of the French monarchy led to major changes in divorce and inheritance laws, as well as the father’s authority over adult children.
Prior to the revolution, a disgruntled husband could divorce his wife or legally lock her up in a convent. In contrast women had virtually no access to divorce, except in cases of bigamy, life threatening cruelty or insanity.
In September 1792, the revolution’s National Convention, legalized divorce (by a 5 to 1 majority) for the following indications:*
mutual consent
incompatibility
insanity
cruelty
long term abuse
abandonment
emigration
Following enactment of the new law (which also made it legal for divorced parties to remarry), women initiated 66-75% of divorces, mainly for abuse. Divorce was more rare in the countryside (where women were often unaware of the new law or couldn’t support themselves outside of marriage) than in the cities.
The same month, the National Convention also passed a law that anyone age 21 or over could marry without parental consent. Previously even adult children required their father’s consent to marry. Prior to the revolution, fathers also had the power (abolished in September 1792) to imprison wayward children in monasteries and convents.
As part of the new law, responsibility for recording new marriages passed from parish priests to local communes. Couples could still have their marriage blessed in church, but also required civil authority approval. The new republic actively encouraged marriage (to produce more republican babies) and held revolutionary festivals celebrating family as a civic function.
With the consent of the Convention, northern communes passed laws requiring fathers to divide their property equality among all their children (including, in some cases, the illegitimate ones), whereas pre-revolutionary tradition tended to favor firstborn over younger sons and sons over daughters. Most communes made the law retroactive to 1789, which led many firstborn sons to challenge the law in Family Tribunals specifically created to hear divorce and inheritance cases.
*in 1792, France would be the first country in Europe to legalize no-fault divorce. When Napoleon came to power in 1799, he would make divorce more difficulty to obtain. It would be 1975 before France reenacted no-fault divorce.
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Mark Epstein has argued that the previously unreported image contradicts the official story about the convicted pedophile’s demise
The brother of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile sex-trafficker who allegedly killed himself in prison while awaiting trial, has released a previously unreported autopsy photo, which he argues, debunks the official version that suicide was the cause of death.
Mark Epstein discussed the photo and other evidence in an interview on Friday with US podcast host Megan Kelly. The graphic picture shows a large red scar across the middle of the deceased pedophile’s neck, which his brother said was inconsistent with reports by authorities that he hung himself in his New York City jail cell.
If Jeffrey Epstein had been found hanging from the upper bunk, as reported, ligature marks should have gone up under his chin and behind his ears, his brother said. “From that picture, the ligature mark on his neck is more in the middle of his neck and sort of goes straight back,” he said. “In a hanging, it goes really high up in the front of the neck because you sink down into that noose.”
Jeffrey Epstein was found dead inside his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide by the city’s chief medical examiner. A doctor hired by Epstein’s family who was present for the autopsy claimed that some of the evidence, including multiple neck fractures, suggested that he was murdered.
Doubts cast on the official findings stoked speculation that Epstein was killed to prevent possible exposure of the rich and politically powerful people on his client list. Previously sealed court documents from a case involving one of the pedophile’s alleged victims were released last month but didn’t contain any of the bombshell information that some observers expected.
Mark Epstein has speculated that another inmate in the section of the jail where his brother was held killed him. The camera in that section wasn’t working on the night of Epstein’s death, according to government authorities, who have refused to release footage from a camera outside the wing or to disclose the identities of the other inmates.
“All I got from them, for every question I asked, was, ‘After a thorough investigation, we determined it was a suicide,’” Mark Epstein said. “That was the answer I got to every question.” He claimed that normal investigative practices weren’t followed, such as leaving the body in place until the medical examiner arrived.
Mark Epstein also raised questions about an autopsy photo of his brother’s legs, which didn’t have lividity marks, contrary to official claims about his body position. “If he was hanging the way they said, there would be evidence of lividity in his legs and buttocks,” he said.
The leader of the Ukrainian opposition, Viktor Medvedchuk, revealed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is preparing to flee the country after acquiring a luxury apartment in Dubai valued at almost $17 million. This is another example of how Zelensky continues to enjoy a high-end lifestyle despite his peoples immense suffering.
“A modest 600-square-metre apartment awaits Zelensky on an island with a warm sea. This is why hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dying today,” the opposition leader warned in an article published on the website of the party The Other Ukraine.
Medvedchuk revealed that Zelensky acquired, through his frontmen, a luxurious apartment in Dubai in the Bvlgari Marina Lofts complex for $16.9 million.
“Zelensky apparently lost hope in the Americans and in the mansion in Florida that they promised him,” he noted.
The opposition leader indicated that the Ukrainian president “found a new homeland and luxury housing, while millions of his compatriots live as refugees and lost their homes.”
“Instead of helping the pensioners for whom he whines so much in the West, Zelensky diverts the money ‘honestly earned’ in the war to tax havens and does not plan to invest in Ukraine, in the economy, in the country’s defence,” he said.
As revealed by Medvedchuk, the Ukrainian president registers properties and companies abroad through Serhiy Shefir, his close friend, to whom he transferred all his assets in tax havens before the 2019 presidential elections. In November 2023, it emerged that Shefir and his brother Boris bought two yachts for a total value of $75 million, he said.
The opposition leader alleged that the luxury apartment in Dubai was registered in the name of Serhiy Shefir, and the deal was closed on December 22, according to the ‘Dubai Land Department,’ the government entity that registers real estate transactions.
“This rat dug another burrow to escape (…) What do you care about retirees, disabled people or public workers?” he emphasised. “Zelensky claims that Ukrainians fight for themselves, for their lives, but that is a crude lie.”
Medvedchuk acknowledged that Moscow provides all kinds of help to residents of the former Ukrainian territories that joined Russia in September 2022 following referendums.
“The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, declared on numerous occasions that for the Russians, the Ukrainians were not enemies. That is why Zelensky’s power will be defeated and not the Ukrainian people. Today, Ukrainian soldiers die not for Ukraine that the regime sold to the West, but because of the corruption that enriches Zelensky and his entourage,” he added.
Although Zelensky is unlikely about to flee, the crux of the story is that Zelensky is spending millions upon millions on his lavish lifestyle while Ukrainians are suffering like no other people on the European continent and at a time when the West portrays the Ukrainian president as an anti-corruption crusader.
Zelensky became president in 2019 on the platform of fighting domestic corruption, which meant finding economic and administrative lapses and punishing those who benefitted. However, it is very evident that Zelensky has been benefitting from corruption.
Property purchases in Dubai are far from the only scandals in which Zelensky has been embroiled. He is regularly accused of owning properties overseas, and it is known his wife goes on lavish shopping trips on her travels, such as in New York and Paris.
While Zelensky and his family are living extravagantly, Ella Libanova, director of the Institute of Demography and Social Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, warned that male life expectancy in the war-torn country had decreased from 66-67 years to 57-58 years due to the conflict, meaning that only Chad (54), Nigeria (54), Lesotho (55) and the Central African Republic (55) had lower life expectancies. This reflects the nightmarish situation Ukraine has put itself in by continuing the war, a reality that Zelensky has mostly insulated himself from.
Worse, there are no immediate prospects for improving economic, societal, and demographic issues.
One example is that foreign direct investment in Ukraine has plummeted from $6.5 billion in 2021 to just $570 million in 2022, following Russia’s launch of the special military operation, whilst the National Bank of Ukraine has thus far refused to publish figures on foreign investments in 2023. Ukraine is struggling to find funds for its economy and the war effort, and given that corruption is even at the level of the presidency, it cannot be expected that many foreign companies will invest in the country.
Therefore, whether Zelensky flees to one of his overseas properties or not, he will continue to live lavishly, having extracted what he wanted from Ukraine, while ordinary Ukrainians will continue to suffer.
Everyone is talking about Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The two-hour long conversation was live-streamed on twitter. Every major news outlet has had some form of coverage.
[…]
After eight years of covering the Ukraine coup/civil War, and more specifically Western propaganda on Russia, I could pretty much tell you everything Putin was going to say before he said it.
Anybody who has covered Russia or Ukraine could tell you that.
He was always going to detail, in cogent and historically literate terms, Russia’s position on Ukraine.
He was always going to cite the (very real) broken promises Western diplomats made about NATO’s Eastward expansion.
He was almost certainly going remake his very worthy point about US foreign policy never seeming to change no matter who is President.
He’s an intelligent and persuasive speaker, and he was always going to do well.
And, if this was 2014, that would be great.
But it’s not 2014 is it?
It’s 2024 & the world is being hurried fast toward the Brave New (“multipolar”) Normal. Russia is on board with Agenda 2030 & very powerful western establishment voices are now promoting Putin & his once-sidelined views.
In the face of these realities we should be asking questions about the relevance and purpose of this kind of geopolitical theatrics.
Let’s remind ourselves again that everyone is talking about the Putin interview.
Every major news outlet covered it, too. Maybe they “fact-checked” it, maybe they ranted about it or insisted it be banned, but they were all talking about it.
The same Tucker Carlson who applied to (but was allegedly turned down by) the CIA.
How did this re-invention happen?
When did it happen?
Why did it happen?
And no, I’m not claiming everything he says is de facto wrong, a lot of it is in fact very right. His monologues on the state of the economy, the 2020 election, JFK and 9/11 have all been at least partially accurate.
…but that should make us ask more questions, shouldn’t it?
Did he have some great awakening?
Even if you believe he did, do you believe that his bosses at Fox did as well? Or that Elon Musk did? Or that either of these entities would be powerless to stop him dropping supposed truth bombs on their dime if they didn’t want him to?
Tucker Carlson was the most watched current events program on US television before he was apparently fired by Fox News last year.
Since then, and with all the hero-kudos of being exiled by the establishment, he has been live-streaming his shows on X/Twitter instead, and every single one of them gets more views than CNN or MSNBC or his old show on Fox…Combined.
Interesting, no.
The fact is, legacy media is dying. Which is a good thing. But do you think the establishment doesn’t see this? Do you think it hadn’t occurred to them to get out in front of it by seizing control of the new media platforms and planting “leaders” in supposedly independent media movements?
As we keep having to remind our readers lately the people and institutions that run the world are not wed to any single platform, method, nation or flag.
Or media.
They bought up all the newspapers because they were useful, they “syndicated” all the television networks because that’s what people were watching…
so now as legacy media dies – what do you think they’re gonna do?
Like a hermit crab swapping out shells – they will simply slide themselves from their old home to a nice shiny new “indy” one.
Goodbye old fashioned corporate CNN, hello honestly completely organic guerilla news reporting livestreaming on X and getting totally accidentally promoted by the algorithm.
Goodbye long form editorials in newspapers, hello ten-second tiktoks from fake influencers in a government-run opinion factory.
Goodbye Tucker Carlson, paid disinfo promoter, hello Tucker Carlson voice of the new media who somehow still gets promoted by the very forces he’s supposed to be opposing .
We’ve seen other examples of this kind of thing already, for example AOC’s obviously fake“look at me live streaming my random off the cuff thoughts” videos. As if she hasn’t had a focus group decide exactly how little make up she should wear or how “unkempt” her hair should be be, or signed a sponsorship deal for the fried chicken she’s eating.
The selling point of new-media was that everyone had access to it instantly, with that came realness marked by rawness. The establishment quickly seized on these markers of authenticity & tried to make them their own. Now that rawness is being manufactured and realness is being faked on a production line.
And by seeding the rising new-media with establishment voices allegedly “gone rogue” , the establishment take control of it.
On top of that, the transition from old to new media can also be used to co-opt independent outlets and construct agenda-controlling fake binary narratives. With the old media selling one “side”, and new media the other.
That’s how you end up with crazy scenarios where billionaires like Elon Musk are cast as some kind of outsider, no matter how many Great Reset talking points he promotes, or podcasters like Joe Rogan apparently get $250 millionfrom the system to attack the system, or the “intellectual dark web” shilling vaccines and Israel in equal measure.
The old establishment voices (Guardian, CNN, New York Times or whoever) noisily attack these new “anti-establishment” voices (who are always selling the same agenda in a slightly altered form), knowing that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” mindset will give them cred in genuine alternate media circles.
I mean it’s pretty cool to get a big old “ex”-mainstreamer on your side and agreeing to be on your podcast, right? Instant kudos, excitement. “See, even Big Name X admits we’re right about this”. It’s too easy to be seduced by the lure of “celebrity rebel” narratives. We all want to believe them don’t we.
And thus, by putting “former” establishment insiders in leadership positions of “the alternative”, the ‘elite’ control the direction of their supposed opposition.
Tucker Carlson is the first really big voice to make the swap in a major way, but he won’t be the last. And his interview with Putin is yet another sign of the “approved alternative” messaging.
According to Twitter, the interview has been viewed 140 million times in 24 hours. Tucker and Putin have been trending ever since, promoted by the all powerful algorithm on a site owned by the richest man in the world, whilst simultaneously appearing on the front pages of every paper.
Wow, cool, right. The new media is just so right about this the establishment has no choice but to promote it!
Too easy to fail to notice there’s nothing really “new” about this media at all. It’s just a very old hermit crab in a very new shell.
The Biden administration claims that U.S. foreign policy works to uphold human rights and democracy while containing rising authoritarian powers such as Russia and China.
Biden administration officials routinely condemn the jailing of opposition figures in Russia like Alexey Navalny and by socialist governments like Nicaragua and Venezuela.
But the Biden administration has voiced no outcry over the arrest of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who just days ahead of parliamentary elections on February 8, was given a ten-year prison sentence for revealing state secrets about how the U.S. pushed for his removal from power.[1]
The document that Khan revealed showed that U.S. State Department officials had threatened Pakistani officials with consequences were Khan not removed from office, citing anger over Khan’s neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Captain of Pakistan’s national cricket team throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Khan served as Pakistan’s Prime Minister from August 2018 until his ouster in April 2022.
In May 2023, he was arrested by paramilitary troops as part of a wave of repression directed against his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Party along with independent journalists like Arshad Sharif, who was hounded out of Pakistan and assassinated in Kenya.[2]
According to a January report in Time magazine, thousands of PTI members have since been arrested and dozens of party leaders resigned following lengthy interrogations.
Khan’s name was even banned from Pakistani media, and the PTI Party was banned from using its trademark cricket logo on ballot paper, significantly hampering its chances among an electorate that is 40% illiterate.[3]
Arif Rafiq, a Pakistani specialist at the Middle East Institute, told The Intercept that “Khan was convicted on flimsy charges following a trial where his defense was not even allowed to produce witnesses. He had previously survived an assassination attempt, had a journalist aligned with him murdered, and has seen thousands of his supporters imprisoned. While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship.”
Over the last two decades, the U.S. government has provided billions of dollars of military aid to Pakistan, which has long been used as a base for clandestine operations into Afghanistan. This aid has helped to fortify the military’s power and fuel state repression.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA offshoot spent $3.952,238 in Pakistan in 2021 supporting civil society groups. Part of the purpose of the funding was likely to assist in regime change efforts once it was clear that Khan was too independent.
Khan’s rise to power had resulted not only from his status as a cricket star but also his generous philanthropy. The World Socialist Website (WSWS) criticized him for embracing austerity measures recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that resulted in the slashing of social spending and food subsidies and selling off of public sector enterprises wholesale.
Athiyan Silva and Kumaran Irawrote that Khan “exploited social anger at the previous PML-N government to win the July [2018] election, making demagogic promises, including to create more jobs and provide relief for the poor, while criticizing the murderous U.S. drone attacks in the Federally Administered Tribal Area.”
Once in power, Khan “formed his government by picking ministers who have already worked under former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) governments, which imposed IMF austerity measures and collaborated with the U.S.-led NATO war in Afghanistan.”
Dropping his campaign rhetoric against U.S. drone murder, Khan met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after his election and began tacking closer to Washington, though sustained commitment to developing Pakistan’s economy and industry via the multi-billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, the “flagship project” of China’s Eurasian BRI (Belt and Road Initiative).[4]
Launched in 2015, the CPEC is a planned network of roads, railways and energy projects linking western China to Pakistan’s strategic Gwadar Port on the Indian Ocean, near the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
Pompeo stated that it would be “unacceptable” for Pakistan to use U.S. financial aid to pay off infrastructure and industrial debts to China, which is a key reason why Khan became a target for regime change alongside his lack of support for U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
In a March 2022 meeting, Donald Lu, the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, told the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., Asad Majeed Khan, that Khan had to be removed as Prime Minister in a parliamentary vote of no confidence. Otherwise, Lu said, there would be consequences for Pakistan.[5]
Just days before the meeting with Majeed, Lu had been questioned at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing over the neutrality of India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan in the Ukraine conflict.
In response to a question from Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)[7] about a recent decision by Pakistan to abstain from a UN resolution condemning Russia’s role in Ukraine, Lu said, “Prime Minister Khan has recently visited Moscow, and so I think we are trying to figure out how to engage specifically with the Prime Minister following that decision.”[8]
Lu subsequently told Majeed Khan that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position [on Ukraine], if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.”
Lu in turn said: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.”[9]
The day before the meeting, Khan had addressed a rally responding directly to European calls that Pakistan support Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd: “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “We are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.”
Khan’s fiercely independent stance was intolerable for the U.S., which demands obedience like a Mafia godfather. And so Khan had to go, like Lumumba, Castro, Qaddafi, and so many others.
Farmer protests have been taking place since Tuesday throughout Spain. Yesterday they announced that would they take their protest to the Socialist Party headquarters in Madrid today. The government has announced that they would deploy riot police to avoid farmers blocking roads as they had done for the previous four days.
Meanwhile, yesterday, social media users were widely sharing footage of police aggression towards protestors. Many are claiming these are not the usual police officers but rather members of [the EU-run] Eurogendfor.
On the second day of the farmers’ protests, EuroNews reported that the protests, involving several thousand people on tractors and in other vehicles, had not been backed by Spain´s three main farming organisations However, they had called for separate protests in the coming days.
“Some demonstrations deteriorated into scuffles when police moved in to remove roadblocks, prompting several arrests, with the interior ministry raising to 19 the total number detained since the start of the protests,” France 24 wrote.
Yesterday, the fourth day of blocking streets across the country, the protests centred around the northern cities of Oviedo, Pamplona and Zaragoza, with tractors clogging several city streets and commuter roads. In many places, farmers kept their protests going overnight, ABC News reported.
Meanwhile, on social media, on Friday the video below was being widely shared with people commenting that members of the Eurogendfor are being used against protestors. For example, the video was shared on Twitter with the comment: “It’s being reported that the EU has deployed their European paramilitary police Eurogendfor, to crush the farmers in Granada.”
Has EU deployed their European paramilitary police Eurogendfor to crush farmers in Granada, Spain?
Other videos being shared also raise concerns about the deployment of Eurogendfor such as THIS tweet and the tweet below.
URGENT – Worst tensions in Spain: EUROGENDFOR riot police beating farmers with battons, who were trying to approach the Presidency of the Principality in Oviedo, Spain. pic.twitter.com/gYL44LqH6N
Another Twitter user suggests that the aggressive tactics used by police in the videos above are not the actions of the national police force. The translation of the comment that accompanies the video below reads: “Murcia Spain, the police set up street blockades, which the farmers easily bypass. The Spanish police take little action and let them do their thing. Clearly whose side they are on. Eurogendfor, on the contrary, they do fight, so you can recognise the difference as a layman.”
Murcia Spanje 🇪🇸, de politie werpt straatblokkades op, die de boeren makkelijk omzeilen. De Spaanse politie onderneemt verder weinig actie en laat ze hun gang gaan. Duidelijk aan wiens kant ze staan. Eurogendfor integendeel die vechten wel, zo herken je als leek het verschil. #EUpic.twitter.com/Sm9pHomxa8
For comparison to the unforms worn by police in the videos above, some on social media are sharing the image below taken from an article about Eurogendfor officers training the National Police of Ukraine (“NPU”) in 2016. However, no description accompanies the image and it seems that the men in the image are NPU and not Eurogendfor officers.
We make this conclusion for two reasons. Firstly, the Ukranian emblem on their uniforms. Secondly, the article stated that four Eurogendfor officers went to Ukraine. Another image in the same article shows about 15 similarly uniformed men in the background, which in the image below the majority are out of camera shot.
Despite Eurogendfor clearly stating it is only deployed to stabilise crisis and conflict areas outside the European Union (see next section), if Eurogendfor has been deployed against the Spanish farmers, it would not be for the first time within the European Union.
In 2018, it was believed that Eurogendfor was deployed during a protest in France. This is based on eyewitness accounts of the presence of armoured vehicles displaying the European Union flag or foreign emblems and some people seeing and recognising the Eurogendfor emblem – the blue weapon with the sword and the motto “Lex Paciferat” (English: The law makes peace).
A group of farmers announced plans yesterday to gather in Madrid for a Saturday protest near the headquarters of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (“PSOE”).
According to Europa Press, faced with the possibility of a “tractor rally” in front of PSOE headquarters, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has warned that “they are not going to allow” the protests with tractor drives and road blockades that have been taking place in several locations to reach the PSOE headquarters.
El Mundo reported that hundreds of Police Intervention Unit (“UIP”) officers, better known as riot police, will be deployed in Madrid and Valladolid to avoid the roadblocks announced for today, which will be the fifth day of the farmers’ protests.
The demonstrations are expected to continue over the coming weeks, with a major protest in Madrid planned for 21 February 2024.
There have been other protests in countries such as France, Poland and Greece in recent days. The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has already made concessions to farmers over the last few weeks on environmental rules, subsidies and exemptions, and this week decided to shelve plans to halve the use of pesticides.
Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib of Belgium, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said on Wednesday that the rules governing farming “need to be reassessed in the light of current realities”.
You can read live news updates about the protests in Spain on Europa PressHERE or El MundoHERE. The web pages are in Spanish with the option to translate.
The European Gendarmerie Force (“EUROGENDFOR”) is a European rapid reaction force composed of elements of several European police and gendarmerie forces. Eurogendfor is tasked with performing policing duties within the scope of crisis management operations. However, as its Twitter profile above states, these operations are for areas outside the European Union.
Its website states: “EUROGENDFOR is offered as an operational, pre-organised, robust and rapidly deployable asset, able to perform all police tasks. EUROGENDFOR can be put mainly at disposal of the EU, the UN, OSCE, NATO, and other international organisations or ad hoc coalitions.”
Officially the acronym for the organisation is written in capital letters, “EUROGENDFOR,” however, for ease of reading we have used the proper noun version, “Eurogendfor.”
Gendarmeries were – unequivocally – established as police forces called to provide robust, professional solutions to increased requests for public security. Their personnel were mainly taken from the best elements of the armed forces, therefore offering discipline, professionalism and dedication. Since their establishment, gendarmeries continue to operate for and within the populace, offering an all-encompassing set of capacities, rooted in their military background. Such an approach proved to be easily applicable to deployments abroad, where populations are threatened before, during and after conflicts or crises.
The common grounds, traditions and experiences of European gendarmeries were then gathered together with the establishment of the European Gendarmerie Force (“EUROGENDFOR”). This initiative offers a police force with military status capable of performing all police (policing) tasks in conflict prevention, peace and humanitarian missions and in crisis management operations outside of the borders of the European Union, under any chain of command (either military or civilian).
Gendarmeries are police forces with a “military status,” mostly the ones following the model of the French Gendarmerie.
The “military status” grants gendarmerie forces the affiliation to both the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Interior. Some of the Eurogendfor gendarmerie forces are a standalone armed force, like the traditional ones, under the Ministry of Defence and the Defence General Staff, while others only respond to the Ministry of Interior. Whatever their hierarchical affiliation, when exerting civilian police duties, all of them fall under the functional authority of the Ministry of Interior.
The first formal step towards the setting up of the Eurogendfor was taken with the Declaration of Intent, agreed by France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain at the meeting of Ministers of Defence on 17 September 2004 in Noordwijk, Netherlands.
On 18 October 2007, the Treaty establishing Eurogendfor was signed in Velsen, the Netherlands. The five founding countries were joined by Romania and, later, by Poland. Turkey and Lithuania are also part of the organisation, respectively with observer and partner status.
The Eurogendfor force is defined in the Treaty of Velsen as: “The personnel of the police forces with military status assigned by the parties to Eurogendfor to fulfil a mission or an exercise, following the transfer of authority, and a limited number of other personnel designated by the Parties in an advisory or supporting role.”
To this effect, the Eurogendfor force is not a stand-by (or permanently assigned) force, since it is generated on an ad hoc basis depending on the type of mission to be performed.
Since its foundation, Eurogendfor has been deployed, under the aegis of the main international organisations, in various theatres of operations, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Haiti, Central African Republic, Libya, Niger, and Mali.
Farmer protests have been taking place since Tuesday throughout Spain. Yesterday they announced that would they take their protest to the Socialist Party headquarters in Madrid today. The government has announced that they would deploy riot police to avoid farmers blocking roads as they had done for the previous four days.
Meanwhile, yesterday, social media users were widely sharing footage of police aggression towards protestors. Many are claiming these are not the usual police officers but rather members of [the EU-run] Eurogendfor.
On the second day of the farmers’ protests, EuroNews reported that the protests, involving several thousand people on tractors and in other vehicles, had not been backed by Spain´s three main farming organisations However, they had called for separate protests in the coming days.
“Some demonstrations deteriorated into scuffles when police moved in to remove roadblocks, prompting several arrests, with the interior ministry raising to 19 the total number detained since the start of the protests,” France 24 wrote.
Yesterday, the fourth day of blocking streets across the country, the protests centred around the northern cities of Oviedo, Pamplona and Zaragoza, with tractors clogging several city streets and commuter roads. In many places, farmers kept their protests going overnight, ABC News reported.
Meanwhile, on social media, on Friday the video below was being widely shared with people commenting that members of the Eurogendfor are being used against protestors. For example, the video was shared on Twitter with the comment: “It’s being reported that the EU has deployed their European paramilitary police Eurogendfor, to crush the farmers in Granada.”
Has EU deployed their European paramilitary police Eurogendfor to crush farmers in Granada, Spain?
Other videos being shared also raise concerns about the deployment of Eurogendfor such as THIS tweet and the tweet below.
URGENT – Worst tensions in Spain: EUROGENDFOR riot police beating farmers with battons, who were trying to approach the Presidency of the Principality in Oviedo, Spain. pic.twitter.com/gYL44LqH6N
Another Twitter user suggests that the aggressive tactics used by police in the videos above are not the actions of the national police force. The translation of the comment that accompanies the video below reads: “Murcia Spain, the police set up street blockades, which the farmers easily bypass. The Spanish police take little action and let them do their thing. Clearly whose side they are on. Eurogendfor, on the contrary, they do fight, so you can recognise the difference as a layman.”
Murcia Spanje 🇪🇸, de politie werpt straatblokkades op, die de boeren makkelijk omzeilen. De Spaanse politie onderneemt verder weinig actie en laat ze hun gang gaan. Duidelijk aan wiens kant ze staan. Eurogendfor integendeel die vechten wel, zo herken je als leek het verschil. #EUpic.twitter.com/Sm9pHomxa8
For comparison to the unforms worn by police in the videos above, some on social media are sharing the image below taken from an article about Eurogendfor officers training the National Police of Ukraine (“NPU”) in 2016. However, no description accompanies the image and it seems that the men in the image are NPU and not Eurogendfor officers.
We make this conclusion for two reasons. Firstly, the Ukranian emblem on their uniforms. Secondly, the article stated that four Eurogendfor officers went to Ukraine. Another image in the same article shows about 15 similarly uniformed men in the background, which in the image below the majority are out of camera shot.
Despite Eurogendfor clearly stating it is only deployed to stabilise crisis and conflict areas outside the European Union (see next section), if Eurogendfor has been deployed against the Spanish farmers, it would not be for the first time within the European Union.
In 2018, it was believed that Eurogendfor was deployed during a protest in France. This is based on eyewitness accounts of the presence of armoured vehicles displaying the European Union flag or foreign emblems and some people seeing and recognising the Eurogendfor emblem – the blue weapon with the sword and the motto “Lex Paciferat” (English: The law makes peace).
A group of farmers announced plans yesterday to gather in Madrid for a Saturday protest near the headquarters of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (“PSOE”).
According to Europa Press, faced with the possibility of a “tractor rally” in front of PSOE headquarters, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has warned that “they are not going to allow” the protests with tractor drives and road blockades that have been taking place in several locations to reach the PSOE headquarters.
El Mundo reported that hundreds of Police Intervention Unit (“UIP”) officers, better known as riot police, will be deployed in Madrid and Valladolid to avoid the roadblocks announced for today, which will be the fifth day of the farmers’ protests.
The demonstrations are expected to continue over the coming weeks, with a major protest in Madrid planned for 21 February 2024.
There have been other protests in countries such as France, Poland and Greece in recent days. The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has already made concessions to farmers over the last few weeks on environmental rules, subsidies and exemptions, and this week decided to shelve plans to halve the use of pesticides.
Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib of Belgium, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said on Wednesday that the rules governing farming “need to be reassessed in the light of current realities”.
You can read live news updates about the protests in Spain on Europa PressHERE or El MundoHERE. The web pages are in Spanish with the option to translate.
The European Gendarmerie Force (“EUROGENDFOR”) is a European rapid reaction force composed of elements of several European police and gendarmerie forces. Eurogendfor is tasked with performing policing duties within the scope of crisis management operations. However, as its Twitter profile above states, these operations are for areas outside the European Union.
Its website states: “EUROGENDFOR is offered as an operational, pre-organised, robust and rapidly deployable asset, able to perform all police tasks. EUROGENDFOR can be put mainly at disposal of the EU, the UN, OSCE, NATO, and other international organisations or ad hoc coalitions.”
Officially the acronym for the organisation is written in capital letters, “EUROGENDFOR,” however, for ease of reading we have used the proper noun version, “Eurogendfor.”
Gendarmeries were – unequivocally – established as police forces called to provide robust, professional solutions to increased requests for public security. Their personnel were mainly taken from the best elements of the armed forces, therefore offering discipline, professionalism and dedication. Since their establishment, gendarmeries continue to operate for and within the populace, offering an all-encompassing set of capacities, rooted in their military background. Such an approach proved to be easily applicable to deployments abroad, where populations are threatened before, during and after conflicts or crises.
The common grounds, traditions and experiences of European gendarmeries were then gathered together with the establishment of the European Gendarmerie Force (“EUROGENDFOR”). This initiative offers a police force with military status capable of performing all police (policing) tasks in conflict prevention, peace and humanitarian missions and in crisis management operations outside of the borders of the European Union, under any chain of command (either military or civilian).
Gendarmeries are police forces with a “military status,” mostly the ones following the model of the French Gendarmerie.
The “military status” grants gendarmerie forces the affiliation to both the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Interior. Some of the Eurogendfor gendarmerie forces are a standalone armed force, like the traditional ones, under the Ministry of Defence and the Defence General Staff, while others only respond to the Ministry of Interior. Whatever their hierarchical affiliation, when exerting civilian police duties, all of them fall under the functional authority of the Ministry of Interior.
The first formal step towards the setting up of the Eurogendfor was taken with the Declaration of Intent, agreed by France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain at the meeting of Ministers of Defence on 17 September 2004 in Noordwijk, Netherlands.
On 18 October 2007, the Treaty establishing Eurogendfor was signed in Velsen, the Netherlands. The five founding countries were joined by Romania and, later, by Poland. Turkey and Lithuania are also part of the organisation, respectively with observer and partner status.
The Eurogendfor force is defined in the Treaty of Velsen as: “The personnel of the police forces with military status assigned by the parties to Eurogendfor to fulfil a mission or an exercise, following the transfer of authority, and a limited number of other personnel designated by the Parties in an advisory or supporting role.”
To this effect, the Eurogendfor force is not a stand-by (or permanently assigned) force, since it is generated on an ad hoc basis depending on the type of mission to be performed.
Since its foundation, Eurogendfor has been deployed, under the aegis of the main international organisations, in various theatres of operations, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Haiti, Central African Republic, Libya, Niger, and Mali.
The elections in Pakistan today were much freer and fairer than I had expected. Hence, the preliminary results simply reflected the obvious for most of us: former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party, PTI (the movement for justice) – facing ruthless repression over the past year – have swept the elections in every single province of the country.
Khan, surviving two assasination attempts and languishing in a supermax dungeon since last August, is more popular than ever. Among the youth, Gallup Pakistan surveys have consistently reported around 80-90 percent support for Khan and his party.
The tyranny of the generals in the military high command along with the kleptocratic and dynastic political parties entailed even the suppression of PTI’s symbol (a cricket bat) and virtually a ban, with horrific consequences if violated, on candidates running on a PTI ticket. Thus, all of these candidates ran as independents.
Of course, we have now become used to one criminal travesty after the next by Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus. So, we are cautious about any temporary victory for people’s democracy, triumphing over the Washington-backed totalitarian military and political elite. The latter are in full-blown panic mode, and are trying their best at tampering and rigging before announcing the final results.
The preliminary results, regardless of the fraudulent shenanigans of the national security state expected in the next few days, already represents a resounding defeat of the neo-colonial comprador oligarchy in Pakistan. One just needs to see how highly strung the spokesperson of the State Department was in addressing questions related to these elections.
There is one sign of both hope and danger. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the normally unified and disciplined armed forces are now experiencing deep divisions. The majority of military officers and and 95 percent of soldiers are repulsed by the behavior of Wasington’s minions in the top brass. To the surprise of many of us, these divisions also exist within the intelligence agencies. We are witnessing in an unprecedented way a refusenik impulse within the military. Not to sound like the bogus alarmism we’re used to from Washington think tanks, it’s still worth remembering that Pakistan is a country of 240 million, nuclear-armed.
The Pakistani people badly need international solidarity at this point.
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Kit Knightly
The Most Revolutionary Act 