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Friday, March 21, 2025
Batflu Memoir - The Catholic Thing - Guest Post by David Warren
Batflu Memoir - The Catholic Thing
7 min
We still do not know – anything, really – about the “coronavirus pandemic” that passed through the news five years ago. We agreed to a fortnight to “contain the spread,” on Dr. Birx’s advice, now 130 fortnights ago. Needless to say, her official mission seems to have ended, along with Dr. Fauci’s, and for the moment we do not endure arbitrary public health instructions.
Things like churches are open again; and restrictions on prayer are only in effect near abortion clinics, or in communist jurisdictions, such as England.
We have “experience” now, I read in the media.
Perhaps the main thing we have “learned” is that lockdowns, business closures, mask mandates, travel restrictions, quarantines, social distancing, contact tracing, &c, were either useless against the Batflu, or made it worse – the medical versions of “the process is the punishment.”
I wrote “learned” sarcastically. In fact, the worthlessness of each of these proposed remedies was fully known and demonstrated in all previous “pandemics.” The public health “experts” were in a position to warn us against each of these old wives’ tales, but falsely promoted them in the name of “science.”
As to whether the “vaccines” were any more use than other pharmaceuticals – or the infamous ventilator machines – I have no special insight. My skepticism, which did not require a medical degree, has been growing quite radically, since the “Batflu” was first announced.
Too many untruths were told about it.
And by the summer of 2020, the “experts” were supporting mass political demonstrations, cheered on by hospital staff in every “progressive” urban environment, that contradicted their own explicit medical instructions.
In view of this obvious and total hypocrisy, people like me became convinced that expert views on public health should be ignored. Nevertheless, they were legally enforced, in all those theaters where human freedom is held in contempt.
By coincidence, this was about the time my spiritual master died, at an advanced age, and not from the COVID virus. (Fr. Jonathan Robinson, 3 June 2020.) His funeral could not be attended.
The “old world,” in which the life of Christian nations could be taken for granted, was now over.
As, imperfectly enough, an “old Christian,” I had the new feeling of being entirely on my own. This was subtly confirmed by various environmentalist pronouncements, coming from the Vatican. The Church herself seemed to be surrendering to the public health authorities. And even the pope, apparently, was no longer Catholic. How could this be?
But this was a panic as indefensible as the Batflu response. For there is God, there is Christ, there is the Spirit; and the created universe does not change like a transient political event.
Snuff Bottle with Five Bats by an unknown Chinese artist, late 18th century [The MET, New York]
My own learning, about the best and also the worst of medical procedures in my little corner of the world, happened a year later when I suffered a heart attack and stroke: also quite unrelated to the Batflu.
It was my first sudden acquaintance with life in a “world-class” public hospital, where I would encounter the abilities and efficiencies of doctors and nurses. Several happy truths would be illustrated.
Yet I would also come up against the influences that were undermining, possibly destroying, what had been one of the most splendid features of Western, Christian civilization.
For Western medicine, its clinics and hospitals, were the creations of the Church, and patronized almost exclusively by the Church, over many centuries.
Even today, in non-Christian countries, medical services and investments are largely in the hands of Christian missionaries (in the broadest sense) or are modeled on Christian institutions (e.g. the Red Crescent after the Red Cross).
In the West, however, the healing art has been mostly nationalized, or crudely commercialized, and tax monies have replaced the work of charitable religious orders.
A conscious effort to desanctify the hospitals has accompanied the heathen and atheist movements to take them over. Where once there was a real attempt to bring mercy to the sick and dying, we now have a professional machine, and the ideology of posthumanism.
This became clearer during our Batflu “pandemic.” That it began with “gain of function” research in the Wuhan labs, financed by Fauci’s bureaucracy itself, is something that should be understood.
Nor will it be understood until the unambiguously satanic nature of such researches is publicly acknowledged. We, our taxes, and our political representatives are now openly working towards another slaughter or apocalypse that will be accomplished by a straightforward laboratory spill.
This does not mean that it must happen, though it may revisit us on a scale that will make the Batflu seem relatively harmless. There is God, it is His universe, and I doubt he has made the world so easy to destroy. Nature is full of the most amazing checks and balances, which will subvert every endeavor to subvert it.
Through the eyes of faith, rather than from the results of medical research, we may perceive this. But, like other realities that are profoundly and immortally true, we may assume that the faithless will not perceive this.
We should exult in their mockery.
Belief in God is now a quaint rarity among hospital staff, and leftwing activism often replaces it. Indeed, more than one nurse warned me, sympathetically, that I would be wise to keep my observations to myself.
For in the hospital, in the circumstances dictated by the Batflu arrangements, I came into direct and personal contact with the new order. In fact, I had several useful conversations with nurses (doctors being more reserved) about the attitudes that had spread through the hospital wards.
The attitudes are political, and medical staff are becoming creatures of the brainwashed Left. They are subject to the pressures that made many things that were once unthinkable, in Christian society – abortion , euthanasia – not only commonplace but in many instances impossible to avoid. Or if you would avoid them, it will cost you your medical employment.
That was the revolution that the Batflu completed.
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Personal information, Social Security numbers exposed in JFK files - The Washington Post
Personal information, Social Security numbers exposed in JFK files - The Washington Post
The data belongs to more than 200 former congressional staffers and others with connections to decades-old investigations.
March 19, 2025 The Washington Post
Joseph diGenova, a former attorney for the Trump campaign, was among those whose private information was made public in the release of documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images) (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP)
By William Wan, Aaron Schaffer, Aaron Gregg and Clara Ence Morse
The Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 200 former congressional staffers and others were made public Tuesday in the unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, according to a review by The Washington Post.
“It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional,” said former Trump campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, 80, whose private information was included in the release.
“It not only means identity theft, but I’ve had threats against me,” said diGenova — a fixture in Republican and Washington legal circles who has fiercely defended President Donald Trump and has pounced on Trump’s critics on cable news. “In the past, I’ve had to report real threats against me to the FBI. There are dangerous nuts out there.”
More than 60,000 pages related to the 1963 assassination were released this week by the Trump administration. Many of the pages had been previously disclosed, but with redactions. Many, but not all, redactions have been removed. The records have been posted to the National Archives webpage under the headline “JFK Assassination Records — 2025 Documents Release.”
The Post, in its review of the previously redacted material, discovered the Social Security numbers, birthplaces and birth dates of more than 100 staff members of the Senate Church Committee, established in 1975 to investigate abuses by America’s intelligence agencies and government. The Post also discovered more than 100 Social Security numbers of staff members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which investigated the killing of Kennedy. Many of the individuals are still alive.
The Department of Justice had no comment Wednesday evening. The National Archives did not respond to a request for comment.
The release of the information raises legal questions under the Privacy Act of 1974, according to experts.
“Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,” said Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. “It’s absolutely a Privacy Act violation.”
Many whose Social Security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington. They include a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, researchers in the intelligence world, State Department workers and prominent lawyers.
In announcing the release of the material Tuesday, The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the roughly 80,000 pages were “previously-classified records that will be published with no redactions.”
“It’s astonishing that our personal information is now just out there for anyone to see. Someone dropped the ball,” said Loch Johnson, a retired intelligence expert and professor emeritus at the University of Georgia. “I hope they weren’t as sloppy in the JFK files with covert agents and assets overseas.”
Mark Zaid, a national security attorney who fought for the JFK records to be made public, called the release of private information “incredibly irresponsible.”
“In some of these documents, the only thing that was being redacted for the last 20-plus years was someone’s Social Security number,” Zaid said. “It is dangerous for these individuals, who can now be doxed.”
DiGenova said he had no idea his name and personal information — including his Social Security number and date and place of birth — were included in the JFK files until a Post reporter called him while he was shopping for groceries.
“It makes sense that my name is in there,” he said, because of his work in the 1970s investigating intelligence abuses, “but the other sensitive stuff — it’s like a first-grade, elementary-level rule of security to redact things like that.”
“It was fascinating work,” diGenova said. “One of the lawyers on our team located the girlfriend of a mafia guy who was supposedly seeing JFK at the same time. He found her in Nevada or Arizona and got chased away by her husband. Other work we did was looking into assassination plots against Castro and people who were assets of the CIA. Incredible stuff.”
DiGenova said the government should pay to help protect those who had their personal information released, as some companies do with credit score agencies after a data breach.
At its peak, the Church Committee had 150 staffers. According to Senate records, the select committee held 126 meetings, interviewed 800-some witnesses and combed through 110,000 documents, and it identified abuses by multiple agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Internal Revenue Service and National Security Agency.
In the unredacted files, the former Church Committee staffers’ names and personal information appear in tidy typewritten columns on pages that list which of them had been cleared for “access to classified information up to and including TOP SECRET.”
“This was in the wake of Watergate and Nixon,” said one former Senate staffer, who spoke on the condition anonymity to avoid becoming a target of identity theft. “The whole idea was to unveil the secret, illegal activities going on.”
That former staffer, who later worked for the State Department, said she was furious at now having to worry about financial fraud and identity theft. “It just shows the danger of how this administration is handling these things with no thought of who gets damaged in the process.”
Three other former staffers for the committee said that since learning from The Post that their Social Security numbers had become public, they had called their banks to freeze their accounts and credit cards. One had started to talk to others about whether it would be possible to sue the National Archives.
“It seems like the damage is done, but clearly we have to talk to some lawyers,” that former staffer said.
Christopher Pyle, a former Army officer, exposed the Army’s hidden domestic intelligence operations and testified before Congress. He said his activities as a whistleblower landed him on the Nixon administration’s “enemies list.”
Pyle was unaware that his Social Security number had become public until a Post reporter reached him by phone Wednesday.
“I’m fascinated that this ended up in the released papers,” he said. “Good Lord, government doing foolish things as usual.”
Pyle said he worried about how the disclosure will affect those who worked so hard in the 1970s to uncover nefarious government actions. “Why did they even have anything on the Church Committee?” he said. “I would be interested to know that.”
Jonathan Edwards, Kyle Rempfer, Alec Dent, Evan Hill, Azi Paybarah, Alexandra Tirado Oropeza, Anthony J. Rivera, Anumita Kaur, Beck Snyder, Ben Brasch, Ben Pauker, Chris Dehghanpoor, Daniel Wu, Danielle Newman, Elana Gordon, Hari Raj, HyoJung Kim, Ian Shapira, Jada Yuan, Jorge Ribas, Kelly Kasulis Cho, Kelsey Ables, Kim Bellware, Leo Sands, Meghan Hoyer, Kyle Melnick, Tom Jackman, Niha Masih, Razzan Nakhlawi, Sally Jenkins, Sarah Cahlan, Tobi Raji, Joseph Menn and Vivian Ho contributed to this report.
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
The Israeli-American Trump mega-donor behind speech crackdowns | Responsible Statecraft
The Israeli-American Trump mega-donor behind speech crackdowns | Responsible Statecraft
New Eli Clifton: turns out that Trump megadonor and Israeli-American Miriam Adelson is not only the chief backer ($70M) of the Macabee Task Force, which has long targeted pro-Palestinian student protesters and advocates of the BDS movement and is behind the current attacks on Mahmoud Khalil, she is the president. They have kept this, mysteriously, off their staff page.
Please read and share the full piece here: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/miriam-adelson-trump/
UK Policy on Ukraine Proxy War is a SHAMBLES, Based on LIES- Lord Skidelsky
UK Policy on Ukraine Proxy War is a SHAMBLES, Based on LIES- Lord Skidelsky
"Lord Skidelsky to ask His Majesty’s Government what is their policy with regard to the Ukraine war following the new policy of the government of the United States of America."
My Lords, last Thursday, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, asked the House to take note of the UK’s international position. My purpose today is narrower but more urgent; to ask the Government what their Ukraine policy now is. It is urgent because the Trump Administration have torn up the familiar script. I wish the Government had offered a full-length debate to consider the consequences of this.
I remind your Lordships of the script. The King’s Speech of 17 July promised full support to Ukraine and a clear path to NATO membership. That was of course before the American election. It echoed what David Lammy, Labour’s prospective Foreign Secretary, had written in May, which was that
“the British government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory”.
This, in turn, echoed the previous Government’s Grant Shapps: “We need consistently and reliably to do whatever Ukraine needs to win the war”. I have heard this repeated word for word all round your Lordships’ House in every Ukraine policy debate over the last four years.
Concerning Ukraine’s clear path to NATO membership, Peter Hegseth, US Defense Secretary, has just said that “NATO membership is not a realistic outcome of a negotiated peace”. So that is one plank of the King’s Speech gone.
What about full support for Ukraine’s war aims? Our leaders may have thought it necessary to pledge this to keep up Ukrainian morale, but there is not— and never was going to be—a Ukrainian victory, for the simple reason that the United States and NATO were never going to risk a war with Russia to achieve it. President Zelensky has now recognised this and accepted a ceasefire, and with it the reality of a compromised peace. In upending these pledges, the Trump Administration have upended our own reckless, dangerous and insincere quasi-commitments.
Words have real effects. Words such as “unprovoked”, “full-scale”, “barbaric” and “criminal” to describe Russian actions, which have tripped effortlessly off ministerial tongues, closed the door to diplomacy. You do not talk to people you label criminals and pariahs. It is an important step forward that no member of the Trump Administration has used this language since the President has been in office.
As far as I know, there has been—and the Minister might confirm this—no direct contact with the Russian Government since the war started. The Russian embassy in London has been treated as an unwelcome outpost of an enemy state. So much for the role of diplomacy in the last four years.
The UK needs to provide some thought leadership on how to end this tragic conflict. To his credit, our Prime Minister has made a start. At the London meeting of 2 March, Sir Keir Starmer proposed a four-point peace plan. The first point was to keep up military aid to Ukraine and economic pressure on Russia. I agree with this, but we should not be tempted to provide the kind of military help urged by some of our warmongers, which will only lead to a dangerous escalation.
We should also understand the limits of economic sanctions. Trump has threatened bad financial things if Russia rejects a ceasefire, but Russia is already the most sanctioned nation in the world. The purpose of sanctions, as often stated, was to degrade Russia’s ability to wage war. However, Russia has opened up alternative import routes for essential supplies and markets for its oil, energy and natural gas exports. The sanctions regime is, and will remain, much too full of holes to prevent Russia finishing its business with Ukraine. Nevertheless, the promise of its withdrawal does remain a powerful potential inducement to bring Russia to the negotiating table.
I agree with the second point that any lasting peace must guarantee Ukraine’s security, but Sir Keir said nothing about Russia’s security. He reflected the standard Whitehall view that NATO was never a real threat to Russia. This script, too, must be scrapped. Any durable peace must take into account the security concerns of both Ukraine and Russia.
I agree with the third point, that we must increase our military spending, but I mistrust the reason most often given, which is to meet the Russian threat. That is just a replay of Cold War rhetoric. European defence spending needs to go up, not because Russia threatens Europe but because Europe and Britain need to shoulder a larger share of NATO’s costs. We cannot go on expecting America to pay for our protection for ever.
Sir Keir Starmer’s fourth point is that the UK, with countries such as France, should place troops on the ground and aircraft in the air to enforce the ceasefire. This has always been a non-starter, despite the mindless repetition of the cliché “coalition of the willing”. The Trump Administration will not agree to provide the necessary backstop, and Russia, as could have been expected, has rejected the idea of NATO forces being stationed in Ukraine under a different name. Why make a proposal which is bound to be rejected unless the intention is to prolong hostilities? I concur therefore with Anatol Lieven when he says:
“Any peacekeeping force must come from genuinely neutral countries under the authority of the United Nations”.
Standing in the way of more realistic UK appraisals is the continuing misinterpretation of the motives of Putin and Trump. Time and again, I have heard noble Lords echo the Government’s line that, unless Putin is seen to fail in Ukraine, he will be “emboldened” to broaden his assault on Europe, starting with Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic states—and where will it end? I believe this profoundly misinterprets both his intentions and Russia’s capabilities.
Of course one can argue endlessly about what Putin’s intentions are, but I concur with many specialists who believe that, above all, he wants Russia to be surrounded by neutral states, not by NATO missiles. A slight knowledge of history will explain why this might be so. However, I agree with Professor Jeffrey Sachs that we should not provoke the bear by inflaming ethnic nationalism in Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania, as we did in Ukraine. A durable peace with a prickly nuclear power requires great prudence. As for Russia’s expansionary capacity, I will just cite Owen Matthews in the Spectator:
“the supposedly mighty Russian army has been fought to a standstill not by Nato … but by Ukraine’s once-tiny military”.
We must also scrap our Trump-phobic narrative. This views him as an amoral deal maker with no principles, cozying up to dictators. In fact, President Trump has consistently and persistently said “Stop the killing” —an eminently moral standpoint sometimes ignored by our own humanitarians. He has replaced a passive war policy with an active search for peace. If he does succeed in ending the war, he will richly deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Government have been talking about a peace process based on sticks, but in diplomacy you need both sticks and carrots. Where are the carrots? What positive incentives are we offering Russia to make peace? I would like the Minister, in winding up, to endorse the blessed phrase “compromise peace”. Only if he does so can we be sure that the script has changed.
Monday, March 17, 2025
16 yrs ago, Chas Freeman was smeared out of a job at DNI, too | Responsible Statecraft
16 yrs ago, Chas Freeman was smeared out of a job at DNI, too | Responsible Statecraft
Excellent recounting of the painful three weeks that Chas endured in 2009 when the Israel lobby, led by AIPAC's Steve Rosen, activated the neocon blogosphere, powerful establishmentarian editors Jeffrey Goldberg and Martin Peretz, as well as their Hill shills, to smear and tank him. As Jim Lobe writes here for RS:
Indeed, the campaign against Freeman was waged as much on Capitol Hill as on the web. Although the position to which Blair had appointed Freeman was not subject to Senate confirmation, various key lawmakers, notably New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, and then-Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk — all three among the top ten recipients of campaign funding by pro-Israel PACs between 1990 and 2024 — denounced Freeman’s appointment.
Unlike Gabbard, DNI Blair stuck by his appointee throughout the assault, even testifying before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee to rebut the various charges that had been leveled against Freeman just hours before Freeman announced he was withdrawing....
Please read more of this sad historical account, which was mirrored in the demise of Daniel Davis's short lived appointment to be deputy to DNI Tulsi Gabbard, last week: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/daniel-davis-tulsi-dni/
“When the Eternal Breaks Through” BISHOP BARRON’S SUNDAY SERMON
Sunday Sermon
https://video.wordonfire.org/sunday-sermon
Is the Trump Administration Using Yemen as an Excuse to Attack Iran? - Guest Post by Larry Johnson
https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/is-the-trump-administration-using?publication_id=1225061&post_id=159231492&isFreemail=true&r=1y80w&triedRedirect=true
Is the Trump Administration Using Yemen as an Excuse to Attack Iran?
Larry C Johnson
Mar 17, 2025
First, a note about the new author at sonar21.com. Peter Haensler is a Swiss businessman and attorney, who lives in Russia. I met Peter during my recent sojurn in Moscow. I hope you take the time to read his five-part series.
Now, forward to World War III. Short answer to the question i present in the title of this piece… Yes!! Prior to yesterday, the Houthis had not breached the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. The strikes on Houthi sites in Yemen comes after the group said it would restart attacks in the Red Sea if Israel did not honor the terms of the ceasefire and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. But this is not about bringing the Houthis into submission… this is about Iran.
Son of the New American Revolution is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
It is no coincidence that the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), issued the following on Friday:
Iran, China, and Russia issued a joint statement on March 14 effectively condemning the US “maximum pressure” strategy vis-a-vis Iran.[i] The statement came from a meeting of the Iranian, Chinese, and Russian deputy foreign ministers in Beijing.[ii] The statement called on “relevant parties”—a reference to the United States—to “lift all illegal unilateral sanctions” on Iran. The statement described Iranian nuclear activities as “exclusively for peaceful purposes,” despite numerous indications that Tehran has restarted its nuclear weapons program.[iii] Iran currently has enough high-enriched uranium to build six nuclear weapons, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.[iv] The statement also emphasized the parties’ commitment to strengthening their cooperation through BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Tehran wants to use these institutions to undermine US sanctions and build a parallel economic order to the US-led one.
The publication of this statement coincides with Russia, China and Iran concluding their annual joint-naval military exercise. This is the seventh iteration since 2019. The ISW conveniently ignores the joint-security agreement that Russia and Iran concluded on January 17.
The Iranian-Russian Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, signed on January 17, 2025, includes provisions for cooperation in peaceful nuclear energy. Article 23 of the treaty states:
“The Contracting Parties shall promote the development of long-term and mutually beneficial relations for the purpose of implementing joint projects in the area of peaceful use of nuclear energy, including the construction of nuclear energy facilities”.
The agreement supports ongoing collaboration in Iran’s civilian nuclear industry, with Russia’s state-run Rosatom currently assisting in the construction of two new units at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant. This cooperation is seen as a significant contribution to Iran’s energy security and economic growth.
It’s important to note that the treaty also emphasizes adherence to international non-proliferation agreements. Article 10 mentions cooperation on “non-proliferation… within the framework of the relevant international treaties,” which is interpreted as referring to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This commitment, along with Russia’s historical willingness to support sanctions against Iran for violations of international obligations, provides a critical guarantee against nuclear weapons proliferation… one that the United States should take seriously if it hopes to achieve in any progress with Russia on other issues of mutual concern.
There are unconfirmed claims from Yemen that they fired a combination of missiles and drones at the USS Harry S Truman, an aircraft carrier. The Trump administration, as of this time, has said nothing about such an attack. I am certain of one thing–Yemen will fire missiles and drones at US and Israeli ships in the Red Sea and the US will continue to launch attacks inside Yemen. If the Houthis succeed in hitting a US ship, I think the Trump administration will use this as its casus belli to attack Iran.
Instead of cowering in fear, I believe that Iran is preparing for the likelihood of a US strike and will retaliate against US military installations in the region. This could get out of hand real quick. If the Saudis allow US combat aircraft to launch against Iran, then Saudi oil-installations also are likely to be immolated.
There are no adults around Trump capable of talking him out of pursuing this insane policy. Trump appears to genuinely believe that he can force both Yemen and Iran into submission with a combination of attacks from combat jets and missiles. He, along with the US neocons, are likely to learn a very hard lesson if they follow thru with their threats.
Son of the New American Revolution is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Saturday, March 15, 2025
[Salon] Weaponising humiliation - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Weaponising humiliation
Summary: with the world’s attention focussed on the Ukraine war and Donald Trump’s efforts to end it on terms that will appeal to Vladimir Putin - an unlikely gambit but one he hopes will secure him the Nobel Peace Prize - a shocking report about the IDF’s conduct has had limited press coverage.
Released yesterday by the UNHRC the introduction to a report from the Independent International Commission of Enquiry on the Palestinian Occupied Territories notes:
the disproportionate violence against women and children resulting from Israel’s method of war….It describes the destruction of Palestinians through reproductive violence and harms resulting from the Israeli Security Forces’ deliberate attacks on sexual and reproductive health care facilities and the collapsed health care infrastructure in Gaza.
The report continues:
The Commission also examines the sharp increase in sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated by members of the Israeli Security Forces and settlers online and in person across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including rape and other forms of sexual violence.
And adds:
It also examines how sexual and gender-based violence has taken different forms when committed against male and female members of the Palestinian community in order to dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part.
The report references the bombing in December 2023 of the Al Basma IVF Centre in which more than 4000 embryos were destroyed. At the time Israel said it would investigate why the centre was attacked. To date no answers have been provided. But Israel was quick to denounce yesterday’s report saying it had made “unfounded allegations.”
The facts fly in the face of that claim. The centre was bombed and destroyed. It was not a legitimate military target. Rather its destruction was part of a systematic and genocidal attack:
The Commission concludes that the destruction of the Basma IVF clinic was a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act under the Rome Statute and Genocide Convention. The Commission also concludes that this was done with the intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, in whole or in part, and that this is the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question.
The report notes the destruction of health facilities and hospitals in Gaza, paying particular attention to the catastrophic impact on pregnant women which is creating “unimaginable misery.” It said that “the prolonged physical and mental suffering caused by reproductive harms to pregnant, post-partum and lactating women amount to the crime against humanity of (sic) other inhumane acts and the war crime of wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health.”
An Israeli soldier posted a picture of himself with a fetus preserved in formalin. The image is believed to have been taken in Al Basma IVF Centre, the largest fertility clinic in the Gaza Strip, where 4,000 embryos were destroyed in December 2023 [photo credit: @ytirawi]
Other crimes committed by the IDF include the wilful killing of civilians by sniper fire, the rape and sexual abuse of male internees in detention and the sexual humiliation of women, girls, men and boys. It cites a culture of impunity that was encouraged by members of the Israeli cabinet including the then National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Both men spoke in defence of five soldiers who were arrested after the rape of a male detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman camp came to light. It quotes Smotrich decrying the “terrible injustice” the soldiers were facing while Ben-Gvir referred to them as Israel’s “best heroes.” The soldiers were charged only with GBH while the physical evidence of the rape was ignored.
When the matter was raised in the Knesset the report quotes the response of Likud’s Hanoch Milwidsky:
When asked if it was legitimate to “insert a stick into a person’s rectum”, Milwidsky responded: “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do. Everything.”
Alex Hobson in a New Lines Magazine article reflects on the degree to which both Trump and Netanyahu trade in “humiliation entrepreneurship” which involves a transferral of their own personal humiliations into shared national humiliations that demand the humiliation of the other and justifies and exonerates the infliction of extreme cruelty in so doing. In Trump’s case his humiliation was the impeachments, his election loss and the numerous criminal cases brought against him while for Netanyahu it was the 7 October attack. Hobson writes:
The convergence of Netanyahu’s and Trump’s fantasies and illusions represented a culminating moment in the merging of strategy with the emotional currency of humiliation and outrage. The two leaders’ shared fantasy is that Israel, with U.S. support, can ethnically cleanse Gaza through destructive vengeance for Al-Aqsa Flood and the near-total devastation wrought by 16 months of bombing, which human rights organizations have dubbed a genocide. Their shared illusion is that the U.S. and Israel can, in tandem, exert their will over the Middle East without any concern for the animosity, resentment and resistance that their deeds and words stir.
Both men strive to project a ‘hard man’ masculinity. When Trump the abuser of women talks about his launch of a global trade war he smoothly incorporates language associated with women and girls who survive abuse. “We have been abused for a long time and we will be abused no longer” said the president about tariffs he holds to be “unfair.”
In depicting Palestinians as Amalek Netanyahu invoked the bible 1 Samuel 15:3: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have... slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
The UN report has a section on “Masculinity, nationalism and militarization” that confirms Hobson’s thesis that humiliation is a powerful weapon of war be it Ukraine, a world trade war or the genocide of Gaza. That is true particularly when used against women and girls:
Women’s bodies and sexuality are often perceived as linked with the dignity of the nation and other negative gender stereotyping, such as the collective’s honour and emasculation. Several experts have noted that allegations of sexual violence against Israeli women on 7 October 2023 have resulted in attempts to rebuild Israeli national masculinity through aggression and in retaliation for the attacks carried out by the military wing of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.
True to form - and stereotype - Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the report while labelling the UNHRC an “anti-Semitic, rotten, terrorist supporting body… attacking Israel with false accusations including unfounded allegations of sexual violence.”
The investigation conducted by the Commission of Enquiry is forensic in its detail and took statements from multiple witnesses and victims. You can find the full report here (warning the content is disturbing.)
[Salon] What did we die for? by Leonid Ragozin - Guest Post
RAGOZIN: What did we die for?
Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jeddah. He went in talking tough, but came out with a very thin agreement indeed. / bne IntelliNews
By Leonid Ragozin in Riga March 13, 2025 https://www.bne.eu/ragozin-what-did-we-die-for-371564/
In the morning on March 11, the Guardian ran an article by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. It stated that a ceasefire in the Russo-Ukrainian war would be meaningless without security guarantees for Kyiv, more sanctions against Russia and transferring frozen Russian assets to Ukraine.
In the evening on the same day, after eight hours of negotiations with state secretary Marco Rubio and national security advisor Michael Waltz in Saudi Arabia, the same Ukrainian official agreed to endorse the American proposal which envisaged a 30-day comprehensive ceasefire without any mention of the said conditions.
Yermak also walked away from Ukraine joint initiative with the UK and France which suggested that the ceasefire should be limited to airspace and sea. As he left the meeting, Rubio said that the ball was now in the Russian court.
Russia’s reaction came two days later and it was initially ambivalent. Putin’s foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said that ceasefire would only give a respite to Ukrainian forces, while Russia wants a comprehensive settlement rather temporary freezing of the conflict. But he didn’t reject the American proposal out of hand saying that it needed to be adjusted taking into account Russian interests.
A few hours later Putin appeared before cameras to say that he was endorsing the ceasefire plan but he listed various caveats making it certain that ceasefire talks will be difficult and protracted.
The proverbial ball is thus in the American court and it is up to Trump’s administration to decide whether it wants to adjust the proposal as per Russian suggestion.
What did we die for?
The moment Jeddah talks finished and the ceasefire proposal was announced Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijarto felt vindicated. “For three years, we have been urging a ceasefire and peace talks in Ukraine - only to be insulted for our stance”, he said. “Now, after three years, ceasefire and negotiations are finally being discussed. Perhaps if there had been less condemnation, hundreds of thousands fewer would have died, millions fewer would have been displaced, and the damage would be far less”.
Ever since Ukraine’s failed counter-offensive in 2023, it was only a matter of basic intellectual decency to realise that the longer this war continues, the worse the final outcome for Ukraine will be. But pro-war lobby made both Zelensky’s administration and numerous governments in the West too invested in delusional expectations, which is what is making damage control particularly tricky at the moment.
Sadly for Western liberalism, it is now left to far-right governments of Victor Urban and Donald Trump to deliver the bitter truth. That’s because they have never been invested in the risky enterprise of challenging a major nuclear power to what Western politicians, like Marco Rubio and former British prime-minister Boris Johnson are now openly calling a proxy war.
What politicians and lobbyists who helped to derail Istanbul agreements in the spring of 2022 (and Minsk agreements before that) can’t possibly admit, is that Ukraine’s terrible sacrifice was in vain.
Hence the attempts to make the war last for another year or two - in the hope that some miraculous black swan event, be it a sudden economic crisis or military uprising along the lines of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin putsch in 2023, will bring Russia on its knees. None of that seems conceivable as things stand now.
The benchmark for what Ukraine would see as a success or failure in the full-out war was spelled out in March 2022 by Oleksiy Arestovych who was Yermak’s aide and one of Ukraine’s top spokesman on all things related to war. Anything worse than the conditions of Minsk agreements, which ended the hot phase of the conflict in 2015, would be deemed as Ukraine’s defeat, he said a few weeks into the full-out war and at the time when Istanbul talks were in full swing. Minsk agreements is what Kyiv effectively rejected in the run-up to full-out invasion, perhaps believing that it was calling Putin’s bluff or that the invasion was doomed to failure.
Ukraine is further away from achieving these goals today than any time during the three years of the full-out conflict. That creates a major headache for war enthusiasts who spent three years promoting delusional expectations in order to make Ukrainians fight a losing battle - effectively for nothing. The bitter pill Ukraine and Europe will have to take will need to be explained to the voters. More than a few political careers will unravel as the blame game ensues.
For Russia, on the other hand, it is the moment when its skilful diplomats, led by foreign policy veteran Sergey Lavrov and the above-mentioned Ushakov, may help it seal what has been achieved on the battlefield over the last three years.
Dancing around ceasefire
On the face of it, ceasefire is disadvantageous for the Russians who have been slowly advancing all along the frontline since the end of 2023, with the notable exception of the debacle in Kursk region where the Ukrainians managed to seize a chunk of rural territory. By the time Jeddah talks happened, however, this area had been all but liberated with remaining Ukrainian troops either trapped without supplies in Russian territory or fleeing across the border.
But the 30-day limit on ceasefire, negotiated by Yermak and Trump’s envoy, may provide an opening for Putin. This term is short enough for any major changes with regards to military capability on either side. There is not much Moscow is losing by agreeing to ceasefire while signalling its willingness to cooperate with Trump. If nothing is achieved, it can resume the offensive. At the same time, it will incentivise Trump to exert more pressure on Ukraine and extract more concessions.
Besides, agreeing to talk about a ceasefire is not the same as agreeing to ceasefire per se. Ceasefire talks will be difficult and highly technical - the separation of troops and effective monitoring of ceasefire violations proved a major sticking point already when Minsk agreements were still alive. Both sides may eventually pull out blaming each other for failing to achieve a result. Ceasefire talks may drag on for months while the Russian army will continue advancing along the frontline. Most crucially, Moscow will be able to bring up any kind of conditions in the meantime steering the conversation towards its desired format of long-term settlement.
Over many months, the Kremlin repeatedly said that it is interested in a comprehensive peace treaty not just with Ukraine but also with the West - not in a ceasefire that could result in the Korean-style freezing of the conflict.
That suggests that it will try to at least agree upon the general framework of the future peace negotiations before committing to the end hostilities. Russia insists on reviving the Istanbul framework which envisaged Ukraine’s neutrality and limiting the size of its armed forces. In addition, Moscow insists on keeping the territory it has occupied so far or even on the Ukrainian withdrawal from the rest of the four regions Russia has formally annexed after sham referendums in 2022. The latter demand shouldn’t be taken too seriously - it is the reaction to similarly unrealistic demands by the Ukrainian/Western side, like deployment of NATO “peacekeepers”.
Peace according to Putin
Territory is not what Putin is fighting for in Ukraine - it is a tool of punishment for intransigence and a bargaining chip in negotiations. What Moscow is going to be focused on in the talks both prior and after the prospected ceasefire is a new security architecture in Europe that will set a red line for NATO’s eastward expansion for decades to come.
As for Ukraine, multiple statements and leaks suggest that Moscow will be satisfied with it attaining the status similar to Finland’s and Austria’s after the World War II. That will effectively mean a return to the status quo prior to Maidan revolution in 2014 when Ukraine was geopolitically equidistant from Russia and the West. Incidentally, it was also more democratic and inclusive.
But Moscow will insist on the removal of all kinds of NATO infrastructure, specifically the CIA listening stations which emerged along the Russian border after 2015, as per reports by the mainstream American media. It will also insist on the de-Americanisation of Ukrainian security agencies, the SBU and the HUR, parts of which are all but run by the CIA, according to investigative reports by Washington Post and New York Times.
This might be the toughest bargain of all for the West because the withdrawal of both the CIA and the MI6 from Ukraine will be the West’s most tangible defeat in its confrontation with Putin’s Russia over Ukraine.
Moscow will also likely to insist on the decriminalisation of political forces representing Russian-speakers as well as on ending the ban on the formerly Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It is also hard to imagine Putin agreeing to peace that doesn’t envisage the end of the culture war on Russian language and all vestiges of Russian culture currently under way in Ukraine.
But this is also something that will be fairly easy for Kyiv to agree with and get a sympathetic response from the public. As the Ukrainian leadership very well understands, rather than harming Ukraine, ditching ethnonationalist policies is what will help make Ukraine genuinely democratic, inclusive and compatible with EU standards. Xenophobia and discrimination will make little sense once the conflict is properly over.
Will Ukraine and the West agree to all of that? Not immediately for sure. But what we saw over the last several months was them slowly backtracking on key issues with regards to the future settlement, starting with the de-facto acceptance of Ukraine’s territorial losses.
Trump administration may try and pressure Putin into accepting what he doesn’t want to accept. Whether that strategy will succeed depends on how Putin sees the prospect of Russia sustaining the war effort for another few years in the face of potentially increasing Western sanctions. All signals so far have indicated that Moscow is ready to engage in fighting for much longer than the West. Unlike the latter, it is genuinely seeing this war as existential.
But for Trump, pressuring Putin too much means getting invested in a project he is not invested in at the moment and the one which by all means looks doomed to failure, even putting aside the moral qualms associated with the idea of “fighting to the last Ukrainian”.
What we are seeing now is likely to be the beginning of a long negotiations process in which the performative aspect will be more prominent than any other. Western and Ukrainian leaders will need to produce a lot of “tough talk” while gradually backtracking on key issues and carefully selling these concessions to domestic audiences which was being sold delusional expectations over the last three years.
Some goodwill gestures by the Kremlin are not inconceivable since ultimately it wants to restore good relations with the West - on its terms. These terms, however, appear to be largely non-negotiable and Putin appears to be dead certain that time is on his side.
Friday, March 14, 2025
AP: US officials want to send Palestinians to Sudan, Somalia | Responsible Statecraft
AP: US officials want to send Palestinians to Sudan, Somalia | Responsible Statecraft
Perhaps the height of absurdity here is that Sudan is currently in the throes of a brutal civil war and famine in which over 150,000 of people have been killed and 11 million displaced over the last two years. It is one of the few places on earth that may be worse than Gaza in the scope of the violence and human suffering!
[Salon] The Minsk Agreements and why they failed -
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/03/14/the-minsk-agreements-and-why-they-failed/
The Minsk Agreements and why they failed
Thursday, March 13, 2025
[Salon] A Question of Incitement? Ukrainian nationalism rears its ugly head, again.-Guest Post of The Realist Review
The Realist Review
The Realist Review
A Question of Incitement?
Ukrainian nationalism rears its ugly head, again.
James W. Carden
Mar 13, 2025
Alexander Motyl, a little known Ukrainian nationalist teaching in Newark, first came across my radar about a decade ago when he filed a bigoted attack on the people of the Donbas (who, at the time, were being targeted by a Western-funded “anti-terrorist operation” launched by Kiev) as “the most reactionary, intolerant and illiberal population within Ukraine.” They also—and this is the real sin from the standpoint of Ukrainian nationalists—speak and read and teach in their native language.
As the journalist and author Lev Golinkin pointed out in response,
…That is correct: eastern Ukraine -- a land where the vast majority of the population speaks Russian as its native and primary tongue -- has an overabundance of Russian schools and newspapers. A similar situation can be found in Canada's French-speaking province of Quebec, whose reactionary, intolerant and illiberal French-speaking population has the gall to inundate their French-speaking region with the French language that nearly everyone there speaks. It can also be found in most Chinatowns, or Little Koreas, or pretty much most linguistic enclaves in America.
Over the past month, Motyl has published a number of pieces in The Hill which might fairly be, given the two assassination attempts on Trump during the 2024 campaign, characterized as incitement.
On February 25th, Motyl envisioned a “palace coup” that “could rid the country of an illegitimate leader [Trump] and usher in a transition to moderation and democracy — call it a Thermidor — that Vance would be unlikely to survive politically.”
“There will be chaos,” he concludes, “but America will have the opportunity to save itself from the revolutionaries and terrorists.”
The following day, Motyl once again appeared in The Hill to answer the question: “Was 40-year-old Trump recruited by the KGB?” Well, according to Moytl, could well be…
The former head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence service, Alnur Mussayev, recently claimed in a Facebook post that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987, when the 40-year-old real-estate mogul first visited Moscow.
The allegation would, if true, be a bombshell. Mussayev provides no documentary evidence —but then how could he? He alleged that Trump’s file is in Vladimir Putin’s hands.
…the fact that three KGB agents located in different places and speaking at different times agree on the story suggests this possibility should not be dismissed out of hand. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the first Trump administration and from the initial weeks of the second, it is that everything, including what appears to be impossible, is possible.
March 3rd found Motyl once again in the pages of The Hill warning readers that “Trump’s second administration resembles totalitarian political systems.”
This was followed up (does he sleep?) with a hysterical screed in which he charged that Trump has “effectively endorsed Vladimir Putin’s genocidal war” and that “Trump and his sycophantic subordinates” might one day be tried before the the International Criminal Court. To sum up: Trump, according to Motyl is a criminal, a totalitarian, and, possibly an agent of the Kremlin.
Galician nationalists specialize in these incitements to violence—as some of us who have been repeatedly placed on their enemies lists know only too well. Starting well before Putin’s February 2022 invasion, Galician nationalists and other far-Right extremists began publishing enemies lists such as the notorious Myrotvorets (Peacemaker) which doxxed hundreds of American and European journalists who were credentialed by the governing authorities in the breakaway People’s Republic of Donetsk.
As Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute has written,
…The Ukrainians seemingly love to make lists of their “enemies.” One of their most notorious of these is the infamous “kill list” put out by the Mirotvorets Center in Kiev. From that list several have already been murdered by Ukraine, including prominent Russian journalist Daria Dugina.
Last year, a Ukrainian NGO called TEXTY released a list of its own which included scores of American politicians, journalists and analysts. At the time, Dr. Sumantra Maitra, senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, told The Spectator that in his view,
…It’s clarifying to see the State Department-funded Ukrainian NGOs showing their true colors and creating blacklists, demonstrating how utterly Soviet they still are.”
This week comes news of a Ukrainian “intelligence gathering” service called MOLFAR with an “enemies list” that includes, among other notables, the current vice president, JD Vance.
What makes this all the more galling is that it was ( is?) being funded by the US government though USAID. Whatever sympathy we may (and do) feel for people who have lost their jobs at USAID and at USAID-linked contractors, the Trump administration was absolutely right in pulling the plug on this kind of nonsense.
Worryingly, Trump’s determination to force Zelensky to the negotiating table could well put him in the crosshairs of Ukrainian nationalists—like those in the diaspora such as Motyl and those the Biden administration spent the last 3 years arming to the teeth.
Col. Douglas Macgregor was exactly right when, in a new interview with Tucker Carlson, said, with regard to Ukrainian ultras,
...I would be very worried about our president. I think the president is very much at risk, these people seem to have no sense of limitation—they’re capable of anything, I hope the Secret Service is on its toes.”
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Anti-Israel commentator tapped as a deputy director of national intelligence
Anti-Israel commentator tapped as a deputy director of national intelligence
FM: John Whitbeck
Transmitted below is a fierce reaction (not the only one) to reports that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has offered my distinguished recipient Danny Davis, some of whose excellent Daniel Davis Deep Dive interviews I have circulated, the position of Deputy Director of National Intelligence and that Danny has accepted the offer of this position.
Many of my distinguished recipients will recall that when it was reported that my distinguished recipient Ambassador Chas Freeman had been chosen to serve as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the first Obama administration, fierce opposition from Israel-Firsters, who, quite rightly and as is also Danny's case, believed that Chas put American interests ahead of Israeli desires, a preference which has traditionally disqualified candidates for high office in the U.S. government, effectively scuttled his nomination.
It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump will show more backbone than Barack Obama in resisting Israel-First opposition to a potentially influential nomination that could help to bring genuine intelligence, in both senses of the word, into consideration in foreign policy decision-making.
Were Trump to do so, it would be both stunningly surprising and utterly wonderful.
https://jewishinsider.com/2025/03/daniel-davis-anti-israel-deputy-director-of-national-intelligence
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
When anti-war protesters are called national security threats | Responsible Statecraft
When anti-war protesters are called national security threats | Responsible Statecraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvbd6HAziaE
Vice President JD Vance stunned Europe at the Munich Security Conference in February by calling the continent out for serious backsliding on core democratic principles.
He cited annulled elections when the wrong candidate appeared slated to win, digital censorship of opinions that run afoul of the majority or established perspective, and the policing of silent thought (prayer) as exhibits A, B, and C. “In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”
After acknowledging similar trends in President Biden’s America, Vance boasted that, “In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.”
Unless you are a green card holder talking about Israel.
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