Tag: state department

STATE DEPARTMENT DECLARES “ETHNIC CLEANSING” IN SUDAN BUT WON’T SAY THE SAME ABOUT ISRAEL’S WAR IN GAZA

LATE LAST YEAR, 50 humanitarian organizations asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to make an atrocity determinationOpens in a new tab related to a conflict that was drawing global attention.

The groups requesting the designation had been lobbying the Biden administration for months. In their November letter, they zeroed in on atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces, one of the warring factions in a battle for control of Sudan. Six days later, Blinken responded with a determination that the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces were guilty. “Based on the State Department’s careful analysis of the law and available facts, I have determined that members of the SAF and the RSF have committed war crimes in Sudan,” Opens in a new tabhe said in a Opens in a new tabDecember 6 statementOpens in a new tab.

In the case of the RSF, Blinken went further: “I have also determined that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.”

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State Department Falsely Accuses Roger Waters of Antisemitism

The State Department has falsely accused rock legend Roger Waters, a co-founder of Pink Floyd, of antisemitism over a recent performance in Germany.

Waters has come under criticism for a May 17 show in Berlin where he donned an outfit that resembled a Nazi uniform, part of a performance of the legendary Pink Floyd album “The Wall.”

In response to the criticism, Waters released a statement that said the elements of the show he was criticized for are “quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms.”

“Attempts to portray those elements as something else are disingenuous and politically motivated. The depiction of an unhinged fascist demagogue has been a feature of my shows since Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ in 1980,” Waters said.

Due to his history of being supportive of Palestinian rights and his critiques of the Israeli government, footage of Waters’ concert was taken out of context on social media in an effort to smear him as an antisemite. Deborah Lipstadt, the US special envoy to combat antisemitism, joined in on the smears on Twitter, accusing Waters of “despicable Holocaust distortion.”

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Afghanistan watchdog accuses State Department of ‘bizarre’ attempt to censor embarrassing information

State Department officials attempted to censor watchdog reports on U.S. efforts in Afghanistan as Taliban militants swept across the country, according to a top oversight official.

“Some of the requests were bizarre, to say the least,” Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Ropko said Friday. “State requested we redact Ashraf Ghani’s name from our reports. While I’m sure the former president may wish to be excised from the annals of history, I don’t believe he faces any threats simply from being referenced by SIGAR.”

The requests extended a pattern of information suppression that the auditor described as “outrageous” and “offensive.” The habit of hiding embarrassing information damaged public debates about the conduct of the war and set the stage for the tragic chaos of the final evacuation from Kabul’s international airport.

“In my opinion, the full picture of what happened in August, and all the warning signs that could have predicted the outcome, will only be revealed if the information that the departments of Defense and State have already restricted from public release is made available,” Ropko said in his prepared remarks. “But as SIGAR has experienced all too often in the past, good intentions for transparency by senior leaders are frequently thwarted by bureaucratic inertia or fear of the public knowing the truth.”

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Former State Department Official Says Idea COVID-19 Emerged Naturally is “Ridiculous”

A former State Department official says that the idea the COVID-19 virus emerged naturally out of a zoonotic situation is “ridiculous.”

David Asher told Fox News that the scientific community consensus that the virus emerged in Wuhan as a result of a mutation in animals is completely inaccurate.

“We were finding that despite the claims of our scientific community, including the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Fauci’s NIAID organization, there was almost no evidence that supported a natural, zoonotic evolution or source of COVID-19,” said the former State Department official.

“The data disproportionately stacked up as we investigated that it was coming out of a lab or some supernatural source,” he added.

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Biden team shut down State Dept. inquiry probing possible lab link to COVID

The Biden administration ended an inquiry into a possible connection between the origins of the novel coronavirus and a lab in Wuhan, a CNN report published Tuesday claims.

The State Department launched the previously undisclosed inquiry last fall under President Donald Trump — but the effort was shut down this spring because of “concerns about the quality of its work,” CNN reported, citing three unnamed sources.

Allies of Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, were looking into the possibility that the coronavirus pandemic may have started in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and not in nature, CNN reported.

But after the changeover in administrations, concerns were raised early in 2021 about draft findings of the probe shared with Biden’s team, CNN said.

The State Department confirmed to CNN that the inquiry had stopped but said it is continuing to work with other agencies on “COVID origins issues.”

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Leaked State Department Memo Sanctions ‘Black Lives Matter’ Flags, Banners; Indicates Support For Radical BLM Agenda: Report

An internal State Department memo leaked by an anonymous whistleblower indicates the department’s sanctioning of Black Lives Matter (BLM) flags and banners at U.S. “Diplomatic and Consular posts” and indicates support for the radical BLM agenda while repeating left-wing narratives about police officers that are not backed by statistics.

The memo, first reported by Jack Posobiec at Human Events, prefaces the guidance on BLM in relation to the upcoming anniversary of George Floyd’s death:

May 25 marks one year since the brutal murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year, the horrific video of Mr. Floyd’s final 9 minutes and 29 seconds went viral and spurred Black Lives Matter protests worldwide, in response to his senseless killing and to demand an end to systemic racism and police brutality. One year later, many in the international community will honor Mr. Floyd and acknowledge the long journey nations face to advance racial justice. Leading up to May 25, the Department has issued guidance on the use of Black Lives Matter language, banners, and flags.

“The memo, which is in part a woke statement on social justice, part an apology for U.S. actions, and part an endorsement of all BLM materials, expressly encourages the display of the BLM flag or banner at U.S. facilities (except on the actual flagpole that holds the American flag),” Human Events reported.

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Russians are receiving text messages about the U.S. State Department’s $10 million reward for information on election interference

Residents of cities across Russia are receiving SMS messages about the U.S. State Department’s newly announced $10 million “Rewards for Justice” (RFJ) offer for information that helps identify or locate hackers attempting to interfere in the 2020 presidential elections, reports the Russian outlet TJournal. 

Russian social media users began sharing screenshots of these messages online on August 6, the day after the U.S. State Department announced the reward offer. Reports about the messages also started to appear in local news outlets, such as the Yekaterinburg-based outlet It’s My Cityand the Vladivostok-based outlet Vl.ru, among others. According to the website Pikabu.ru, residents of the Russian cities of Saratov, Krasnodar, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk, Perm, and Tyumen also reported receiving similar messages. 

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