Tag: perpetual war

AP erases Israeli pledge to attack Gaza like ‘Axis Power’ as officials threaten Palestinians with ‘Dresden’ doctrine

As Israeli officials proudly compare their bombardment of the Gaza Strip to the Allied firebombing of Dresden, the Associated Press has quietly removed a section noting US alarm over the historical comparison.

The Associated Press has quietly deleted a reference to official Israeli threats to subject the Gaza Strip to a Dresden-style firebombing campaign — the latest move in legacy media outlets’ ongoing push to downplay the impacts of Tel Aviv’s siege of over two million Palestinians.

“Four U.S. officials familiar with the discussions said American diplomats became increasingly alarmed by comments from their Israeli counterparts regarding their intention to deny water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel into Gaza, as well as the inevitability of civilian casualties,” the AP article previously stated.

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Ukraine’s baby factories rake in record profits amid chaos of war

While average Ukrainians suffer amid NATO’s proxy war against Russia, business is booming for the surrogate baby industry, which requires a steady supply of healthy and financially desperate women willing to lease their wombs to affluent foreigners.

Surrogates “have to be from poorer places than our clients,” explained the medical director of Kiev’s largest “baby factory.”

Ihor Pechonoha of the Swiss-based BioTexCom says the business model that enabled him to build one of the most profitable surrogacy companies in the world is simple exploitation: “We are looking for women in the former Soviet republics because, logically, [the women] have to be from poorer places than our clients.”

It is no surprise then that BioTexCom’s quest for rentable wombs has led it to the seemingly endless pool of desperate young women in war-torn Ukraine. Eight years of civil conflict combined with the subsequent proxy war between NATO and Russia has plunged Ukraine into economic disaster. As Ukrainians sank into poverty, their country swiftly emerged as the international capital of the surrogacy industry. Today, Ukraine controls at least a quarter of the global market—despite being home to fewer than one percent of the world’s population. Alongside the industry’s rise, a seedy medical underworld filled with patient abuse and corruption took hold of the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team have actively encouraged the West to plunder their war-torn country, inking an investment partnership with the global asset management firm Blackrock, stripping workers of labor protections, and handing state owned companies over to private firms.

Yet Ukraine’s surrogacy industry has fallen under the radar, despite pumping over $1.5 billion into the country’s economy in 2018 alone. Since then, the global market for surrogate babies has more than doubled. The industry was valued at over $14 billion in 2022, and is projected to grow by around 25% annually in coming years, according to an analysis by Global Market Insights.

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The Israel-Hamas War is ALREADY Pushing the Great Reset Agenda

Afew days ago we published an article discussing how the Great Reset agenda is still moving forward behind the scenes, while the headlines are full of Israel-Palestine.

But it’s also true that, in its thirteen days of existence, the war itself has already pushed that agenda forward as well.

CENSORSHIP

Normalising the suppression of dissent and creating a culture of fear around free expression are a major part of the Great Reset, after all the other steps are so much easier if you outlaw inconvenient protests.

And, naturally, calls for the suppression of freedom of expression have sprouted up everywhere since the war started. We covered this in our article “Israel-Hamas “war” – another excuse to shut down free speech”

Since that article was published this campaign has gained momentum.

European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton sent warning letters out to every major social media platform, claiming they needed to “combat disinformation” regarding Israel and threatening them with fines.

In yet another blow to the “China is on our side” narrative, Chinese video-sharing service TikTok has eagerly agreed to “combat disinformation”.

Students from Harvard and Berkeley have been threatened with “blacklisting” for voicing support for Palestine.

German and French police are breaking up pro-Palestine demonstrations, while – in both the UK and US – there are calls to arrest people for waving Palestinian flags, or deport those who “support Hamas”.

Creating a culture of fear, making people afraid to express themselves or their political opinions, is just one of the many things that Covid, Ukraine, Climate Change and now Israel have in common.

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US Republican senators ask tech firms about content moderation in Israel-Hamas war

A U.S. Senate panel’s Republican lawmakers sent a letter on Friday to tech companies Meta Platforms, Google, TikTok and X, formerly called Twitter, seeking information on their content moderation policies in the Israel-Hamas war, the senators said.

The Republican lawmakers of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee said they asked the companies “to commit to fully preserving a documentary history of Hamas’s atrocities.”

Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people, mainly civilians. Since then Israel has bombed Gaza with air strikes. At least 4,137 Palestinians have been killed, including hundreds of children, in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Gaza, a 45 km-long (25-mile) enclave home to 2.3 million people, has been ruled since 2006 by Hamas. Gaza has been cut off from much of the outside world for 16 years since Israel imposed a blockade.

“We believe it is imperative that we preserve a full documentary history of Hamas’s atrocities,” the Republican lawmakers led by Senator Ted Cruz said.

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The ‘Absolute Right’ To Commit War Crimes? Gaza, Israel And Labour ‘Opposition’   

The attacks by Hamas fighters in southern Israel on 7 October, and the Israeli air attacks on Gaza that have followed, and now the unfolding humanitarian disaster there, once again expose fundamental bias in the state-corporate news media. Does news coverage really convey the impression that all lives – Palestinian and Israeli – are of equal value? After all, they surely deserve the same level of humanity and compassion. Do the news media present heart-wrenching stories of individual victims and their grieving families from both sides? And is the full context and history explained in order for audiences to arrive at a proper understanding of events?

As Jack Mirkinson, an interim senior editor at The Nation magazine, wrote:

‘Who is allowed humanity, and who is not? Whose deaths are tragedies worth paying concerted attention to, and whose deaths can be dealt with in a matter of seconds? Whose children are worth learning about? Whose heartbreak is worth lingering over? And which people, when confronted by bloodshed, deserve to have the world put everything on hold and rush to their side? The answer is clear. Palestinians are killed by Israel all of the time, including when they peacefully protest. But the world never puts itself on hold to bear witness to their heartbreak.’

On BBC Newsnight, host Kirsty Wark listened to Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, describe how six of his family members had been killed by Israeli air strikes. Wark reacted oddly:

‘I’m sorry for your own personal loss. I mean, can I just be clear, though, you cannot condone the killing of civilians in Israel, can you?’

This captures an essential element of western media coverage in the region: the death of Palestinians might be noted, but attention is swiftly brought back to the suffering of Israelis.

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Israel slated to shut ‘pro-Hamas’ network Al Jazeera run by Qatar

The Qatar state-owned network Al Jazeera is facing intense criticism that it is assisting the Hamas terrorist movement in its war against the Jewish state, prompting the government to declare that Al Jazeera’s operation will be outlawed in Israel for transmitting “sensitive information to our enemies.” 

When asked about a ban on Al Jazeera and two additional reportedly pro-Hamas news outlets, foreign ministry spokesman, Lior Haiat, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday “The government is working on something. And it is being led by the Communications Ministry and the Defence Ministry. The idea is if they are crossing the line in assisting Hamas, we can shut out the entire channel. “

He added that the closure of a network is “directed at channels that are crossing the line in assisting Hamas.”

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Israel floods social media to shape opinion around the war

A photo with a bloody dead baby whose face is blurred has been circulating on X for the last four days. 

“This is the most difficult image we’ve ever posted. As we are writing this we are shaking,” the accompanying message says. 

The footage is not from a reporter covering the conflict in Israel and Gaza, or from one of the countless accounts sharing horrifying videos of the atrocities. 

It’s a paid message from the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry.

Since Hamas attacked thousands of its citizens last week, the Israeli government has started a sweeping social media campaign in key Western countries to drum up support for its military response against the group. Part of its strategy: pushing dozens of ads containing brutal and emotional imagery of the deadly militant violence in Israel across platforms such as X and YouTube, according to data reviewed by POLITICO.

Israel’s attempt to win the online information war is part of a growing trend of governments around the world moving aggressively online in order to shape their image, especially during times of crisis. PR campaigns in and around wars are nothing new. But paying for online advertising targeted at specific countries and demographics is now one of governments’ main tools to get their messages in front of more eyeballs. 

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Instagram sorry for adding ‘terrorist’ to some Palestinian user bios

Meta has apologised for adding “terrorist” to the biographies of some Instagram users describing themselves as Palestinian.

Meta said it fixed a problem “that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations” in some of its products.

“We sincerely apologise that this happened,” it told the BBC.

The platform has also faced accusations of suppressing content voicing support for Palestinians during the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Some users say they have been “shadow banned” on Instagram over pro-Palestinian posts. This is when a platform intervenes to make sure posts do not appear in other people’s feeds.

The users claim 24-hour posts on Stories referencing the conflict have had fewer views than others and that their accounts cannot be found as easily in search.

The tech giant acknowledged a bug had affected Stories but said it had nothing to do with subject matter.

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Unconfirmed ‘Beheaded Babies’ Report Helped Justify Israeli Slaughter

There’s perhaps no more serious a time for journalists to do their jobs responsibly than during a war.

But corporate media have not been, as evidenced by their repetition of the shocking, unsubstantiated claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies in its violent attack on a kibbutz in southern Israel on October 7.

It all started with television reporting by journalist Nicole Zedek, who works for the 24-hour Israeli cable news channel i24, now embedded with the Israeli Defense Forces. In one October 10 report, she said, “I’m talking to some of the soldiers, and they say what they’ve witnessed…babies, their heads cut off.” In another report later that day, she says, “About 40 babies at least were taken out on gurneys,” prompting the host to interject: “Nicole, I have to cut in—that’s such a shocking, jarring statement there…. You’re saying 40 babies, dead babies?”

Zedek’s reporting was cobbled together into the viral claim that 40 babies were beheaded, despite that, by her own account, she had not seen the bodies herself, and relied solely on Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers as her sources. This might not have mattered as much if she were reporting on a less inflammatory subject, or had a more reliable source, but the IDF is known for misleading journalists.

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US Declares ‘War’

U.S. foreign policy has set the country on a course destined to lead to a world of rivalry, strife and conflict into the foreseeable future. Washington has declared “war” on China, on Russia, on whomever partners with them.

That “war” is comprehensive — diplomatic, financial, commercial, technological, cultural, ideological. It implicitly fuses a presumed great power rivalry for dominance with a clash of civilizations: the U.S.-led West against the civilizational states of China, Russia and potentially India.

Direct military action is not explicitly included but armed clashes are not absolutely precluded. They can occur via proxies as in Ukraine. They can be sparked by Washington’s dedication to bolster Taiwan as an independent country.

A series of formal defense reviews confirm statements by the most senior U.S. officials and military commanders that such a conflict is likely within the decade. Plans for warfighting are well advanced. This feckless approach implicitly casts the Chinese foe as a modern-day Imperial Japan despite the catastrophic risks intrinsic to a war between nuclear powers.

The extremity of Washington’s overreaching, militarized strategy intended to solidify and extend its global dominance is evinced by the latest pronouncement of required war-fighting capabilities.

Recommendations just promulgated by the congressional bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission include developing and fielding “homeland integrated air and missile defenses that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China, and determine the capabilities needed to stay ahead of the North Korean threat.”

They were endorsed by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley in his post-retirement interview where he proposed adding up to $1 trillion to the current defense budget in order to create the requisite capabilities.

President Joe Biden, in his weekend interview on 60 Minutes, reiterated the dominating outlook with buoyant optimism:

“We’re the United States of America, for God’s sake!; the most powerful nation in the history of the world.”

This is the same country whose war-fighting record since 1975 is one win, two draws and four losses — or five losses if we include Ukraine. (That tabulation excludes Granada which was a sort of scrimmage). Moreover, the U.S. stock of 155mm artillery ammunition is totally exhausted – as is that of its allies.

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