The WHO and Phony International Law 

by Bruce Pardy, Brownstone Institute
January 31, 2024

A new pandemic treaty is in the works. Countries are negotiating its terms, along with amendments to international health regulations. If ready in time, the World Health Assembly will approve them in May. The deal may give the WHO power to declare global health emergencies. Countries will promise to follow WHO directives. Lockdowns, vaccine mandates, travel restrictions, and more will be in the works. Critics say that the agreements will override national sovereignty because their provisions will be binding. But international law is the art of the Big Pretend.

You drive down Main Street. Cars are parked everywhere. The signs say “No Parking” but they also say, “The City does not enforce parking restrictions.” In effect there’s no rule against parking. Laws are commands imposed with the force of the state. Rules without sanctions are mere suggestions. Some people may honor the request, but others won’t. Those who disagree with the rule can safely ignore it. In domestic law, “enforceable” and “binding” are synonyms.

But not in international law, where promises are called “binding” even if they are unenforceable. In the international sphere, countries are the highest authority. Nothing stands above them with the power to enforce their promises. No such courts exist. The International Court of Justice depends on the consent of the countries involved. No international police enforce its orders. The UN is a sprawling bureaucracy, but in the end, it is merely a place for countries to gather. The WHO is a branch of the UN whose mandate countries negotiate amongst themselves.

In the proposed pandemic treaty, parties are to settle disputes through negotiation. They may agree to be subject to the International Court of Justice or to arbitration. But they cannot be required to.

Yet international law jurists insist that unenforceable treaty promises can be binding. “The binding character of a norm does not depend on whether there is any court or tribunal with jurisdiction to apply it,” Daniel Bodansky, a professor of international law at Arizona State University, wrote in a 2016 analysis of the Paris climate agreement. “Enforcement is not a necessary condition for an instrument or norm to be legally binding.” Without this Big Pretend, international law would collapse like a house of cards on a windy beach.

All countries are sovereign. They are free to retaliate against each other for perceived wrongs, including breaches of treaty promises. They can seek to have other countries censured or expelled from the international regime. They can impose trade sanctions. They can expel ambassadors. But retaliation is not “enforcement.” Moreover, international relations are a delicate business. Aggrieved countries are more likely to express their disappointment in carefully crafted diplomatic language than to burn bridges.

The threat from WHO proposals come not from outside but from within. We live in a managerial age, run by a technocratic elite. Over time, they have acquired for themselves the discretion to direct society for the common good, as they declare it to be.

As journalist David Samuels puts it, “Americans now find themselves living in an oligarchy administered day-to-day by institutional bureaucracies that move in lock-step with each other, enforcing a set of ideologically-driven top-down imperatives that seemingly change from week-to-week and cover nearly every subject under the sun.” These bureaucracies regulate, license, expropriate, subsidize, track, censor, prescribe, plan, incentivize, and inspect. Pandemics and public health are the most recent justifications for yet more control.

Domestic governments, not international bodies, will impose WHO recommendations on their citizens. They will pass laws and policies that incorporate those directives. Even an exasperated WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said so in a briefing this week. “There are those who claim that the pandemic agreement and [amended regulations] will seed sovereignty…and give the WHO Secretariat the power to impose lockdowns or vaccine mandates on countries…These claims are completely false…the agreement is negotiated by countries for countries and will be implemented in countries in accordance with your own national laws.”

Ghebreyesus is correct. Local and national authorities will not give up their powers. To what extent international commitments will be “binding” on a country depends not on international law but on that country’s own domestic laws and courts. Article VI of the US Constitution, for example, provides that the Constitution, federal laws, and treaties together “shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” That does not mean that treaties supersede the Constitution or federal laws. Domestic legislation and policy will be required for the proposed pandemic treaty and WHO directives to be enforced on American soil. Such legislation is an exercise of sovereignty, not a repudiation of it.

The proposals are not benign. Domestic authorities seek cover for their own autocratic measures. Their promises will be called “binding” even though they are not. Local officials will justify restrictions by citing international obligations. Binding WHO recommendations leave them no choice, they will say. The WHO will coordinate their imperatives as the face of global public health.

The WHO is not taking over. Instead, it will be the handmaiden for a coordinated global biomedical state. Managers hate straight lines. Diffuse, discretionary powers avoid accountability and the rule of law. The global health regime will be a tangled web. It is meant to be.

Connect with Brownstone Institute

Cover image credit: Clker-Free-Vector-Images

Zionism and the Creation of Israel

They want you to pick a side and kill each other but we can always choose peace and learn to love our neighbors. 

by Greg Reese, The Reese Report
October 17, 2023



The word “Israel” was first presented in the Bible as a name given to Jacob after he fought an angel. Its meaning was a man who has struggled with God. And is commonly translated as “God Prevails” or “Man seeing God”. Many have argued that the word Israel in the Bible does not refer to a place, but rather a believer or a group of believers in God.

Others believe the land known as Palestine was where the Biblical state of Israel once stood. And in the 17th century, Sabbatai Zevi was the first Jew to try and re-settle there.

Sabbatai Zevi claimed to be the Messiah and amassed a large Jewish following that engaged in ritual sex orgies and the defilement of God’s law. In the spring of 1666, they were planning to be the first Jewish settlement in Palestine. But things changed when Sabbatai was arrested and thrown in jail. His radical movement continued with the Frankism movement, and Zionism became more political.

Although they claimed to be secular, the Zionists flooded the temples with prayers for a return to Zion and a restoration of the Jewish state. But the rabbis rejected them. In 1885 the rabbis wrote that “we consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community; and we therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws”

While the rabbis offered no support, the Zionists garnered the support of the British Crown as early as 1841. And they were funded by the Rothschild banking dynasty, otherwise known as the Bank of England, so the Crown was likely involved from the start.

In 1897, the political intent to re-create the state of Israel was made official to the public. And in 1917, under the British government’s Balfour Declaration, British troops seized control of Palestine on behalf of the Zionists.

In 1922, the League of Nations adopted the declaration. And in 1947, the United Nations granted parts of Palestine to the Zionists.

Between 1947 and 1949, Palestinians were made refugees and kicked out of the homes of their ancestors. Hundreds of villages were destroyed, and thousands of Palestinians were murdered in a series of massacres known as the Nakba. The Zionists killed Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews

The Zionists claimed to be non-religious but they were mostly Ashkenazi Jews. The Ashkenazi can be traced back to the Khazars; the progenitors of Rabbinic Judaism.

The Khazar Khaganate was a major empire in what is now Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and parts of Russia, Turkey, and Iran. It was ruled by the Khazars but made up of several diverse nomadic tribes.

In the year 740 the Khazars mass converted to Judaism. Synagogues and schools were built and Rabbinic Judaism was born. The original Jerusalem Talmud was replaced by the recently codified Babylonian Talmud. Which was based on Babylonian philosophy and became the mainstream thanks to the Khazars and the Zionists.

Some Christians believe that this is the synagogue of Satan written about in the Bible. “Which say they are Jews, and are not.” And many other Christians have become Zionists themselves.

The Zionists have tremendous support from American Megachurches and Christian Evangelicals many of whom believe that as the world becomes a fiery hell, they will be saved and brought to an eternal paradise. But in order for this to happen, the Temple of Solomon must be rebuilt, and two-thirds of the Jewish people must perish.

According to the Bible, King Solomon’s temple was constructed in 957 BC, and destroyed in 586BC. Rebuilt again in 516BC, and destroyed again in the year 70AD.

Many Christians and Jews believe that this temple must be rebuilt in order for their messiah to come. But there is something in its way. Originally built near the end of the 7^th century, the Al-Aqsa mosque is considered one of the three holiest sites in Islam. Islam teaches that this is where the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. The Temple Mount has been occupied by Israel ever since the Six-Day War of 1967. And now it looks like they are ready to complete their mission.

This is the Holy War that sane people have feared, and zealots have prayed for. They want you to pick a side and kill each other. But we can always choose peace. And learn to love our neighbors.

Connect with Greg Reese

Cover image credit: Prawny

Doug Casey on Argentina’s Javier Milei, Anarcho-Capitalist Front-Runner in the Presidential Primaries

Doug Casey on the World’s First Anarcho-Capitalist President

by Doug Casey, International Man
August 30, 2023

International Man: Anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei recently won Argentina’s presidential primary. He is now the undisputed front-runner in the upcoming elections.

The outcome took many by surprise. Milei is an outsider who bested the country’s two entrenched establishment parties.

How did this happen, and why should anyone outside of Argentina care?

Doug Casey: It could be the most dramatic thing that’s happened politically since at least World War II. Anywhere. Why? Because he’s an AnCap libertarian who’d like to abolish the State—or come as close as possible. If he’s elected in October, he’ll make every move possible to eliminate—not just reduce—as many government departments as possible as quickly as possible. And most people seem oblivious to it.

Milei was in first place in the primary. Historically, in Argentina, the person who wins the primary wins the general election. There’s only been one exception to that rule. Even more encouraging is his ratings have gone up from 30% to 40% since the primary. It appears his campaign is not just a flash in the pan but a trend that’s building momentum.

Argentina was one of the most prosperous countries in the world a hundred years ago when it was about as free as any country economically. Before Peron, the Argentine GDP equaled the rest of the continent put together. But since the accession of Juan Peron in 1946, it’s consistently gone downhill every year.

Why might that be?

Peron was an overt fan of Mussolini and fascism. Fascism—a word coined by Mussolini—is defined as the complete subordination of corporations and business to the State. After WW2, the word “fascism” was a no-no, so the system was rechristened “Peronism” in Argentina. It’s not a consistent philosophy; it has many mutations. It’s all about businessmen and politicians using each other, through the State, to get rich. The lower classes are made dependent, and the middle class is impoverished. Fascism has little to do with militarism and jackboots; it’s an economic system. Almost every country in the world is fascist today—including the US, the EU, China, and Russia.

Despite the triumph of Peronism, Argentina still has the most classically liberal traditions in all of Latin America. It’s always been the most outward-looking country in Latin America. I’ve always believed it was the most fertile ground for a pro-individual liberty revolution in Latin America. Now, that may be happening.

If we divide Argentine society into a ruling, a lower, and a middle class, it’s clear that for the last 80 years, the ruling class has used welfare schemes and lies to get the lower classes to vote against their own interests. The middle class has paid for it with immense taxes and regulations. Inflation has basically destroyed the lower and middle classes; high inflation has made it impossible for them to save and build capital.

Milei could totally overturn all of this. The average Argentine is fed up with being ripped off. Milei’s support is greatest among the young and what’s left of the middle class. Estimates are that half the country is hard-pressed to feed themselves. They desperately and enthusiastically want radical change, and only the most stupid can’t see what fascism, socialism, and other varieties of statism have done. The main supporters of the status quo are the unions and welfare mooches. Everyone else hates them.

International Man: Milei has called central banking and fiat currency a historical fraud. He has vowed to “burn down the central bank” and replace the peso with the dollar and whatever commodity the free market would choose as money. He is favorable to precious metals and Bitcoin.

He has called taxation theft and seeks to drastically reduce—and eventually eliminate—many taxes.

Milei also wants to radically cut down the size of the government and eliminate numerous departments.

He also rejects the climate change hoax and was critical of the Covid mass hysteria.

Doug, you are a prominent anarcho-capitalist. What is your take on the soundness of Milei’s platform?

Doug Casey: I am totally in favor of Milei. In fact, he’s more radical (using radical in the proper sense of getting to the root of the problem) than Ron Paul was in his US campaigns. He’s as radical and sincere as my old friend Harry Browne, who ran for the US presidency in 1996 and 2000.

Milei is extremely outspoken and vibrant. He realizes that, since the average person doesn’t understand economics and has no interest in philosophy, politics is 90% entertainment. I urge everybody reading this to go to YouTube and tune into several videos of Milei (here, here, and here).

Milei is totally sound from an economic, political, and a philosophical point of view. But—and this is critically important—he’s sound from a moral point of view.

He deals in basic concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. That’s something that no politician anywhere discusses, certainly not in South America. It’s the equivalent of hitting a donkey between the eyes with a two-by-four to get his attention. Everyone intuitively understands that the political class is essentially criminal—but only Milei is brave enough to say it. The average guy wants to do the right thing, the moral thing. That’s what Milei is pointing out to people and why they like him. He doesn’t use doubletalk, brook compromise, or support half measures.

That’s why, in the US, I actually respect the Democrats more than the Republicans.

How can I say that?

Every idea the Democrats have is wrong and rotten to its core, but at least they’re not hypocrites. They say what they want to do. They actually believe in something, even though it’s stupid and evil.

The Republicans, on the other hand, don’t have any real core beliefs. They don’t disagree with the moral premises of the Democrats. They just say that the Democrats are going too far, too fast.

Milei, on the other hand, wants to overturn the moral structure that politics is built on.

International Man: The global mainstream media has synchronized their talking points on Milei.

It’s almost impossible to find an article about Milei—in any language—that doesn’t preface him with some kind of meaningless pejorative, labeling him a “far-right populist,” an “ultra-rightist,” or something to that effect.

Why is the Davos class so afraid of Milei? Can he overcome their opposition?

Doug Casey: This is further proof of how worthless the mainstream media is. They call Milei a Donald Trump lookalike, or ultra-right wing, in an attempt to scare Boobus argentinus. These people don’t deal in issues and factual programs but fear-mongering. Everywhere in the world, the chattering classes are only malevolent mouthpieces of the ruling class.

Milei is not “ultra-right.” He’s a libertarian who believes in free minds and free markets. In fact, he’s more than a libertarian; he’s an AnCap—an anarcho-capitalist. He doesn’t believe the State serves a useful purpose. He believes that society, certainly in an advanced industrial country, can live without a government. I’ve discussed this philosophy here and here.

His plan is to reduce the size of the government by 50% this year, 50% the next year, and so on, until it’s as near zero as possible. The horrible people in Davos hate him because he’s attacking their very essence. He doesn’t intend just to make a few changes around the edges but to transform Argentina into the freest and most prosperous country on the planet.

In some ways, he’s symptomatic of what’s going on in the world at large today. The United States itself, in my opinion, is on the ragged edge of a civil war. Freedom and personal liberty have been retreating at an accelerating rate for years. People in the US are just as fed up as the Argentines; we just don’t have a proper firebrand. Trump is as close as we get, but he’s just a traditionalist, not a libertarian.

Milei is cause for optimism in the world at large.

International Man: President Nayib Bukele dramatically transformed El Salvador at lightning speed—drastically reducing crime, making Bitcoin legal money, and initiating reforms to bring business and productive people to the country.

Although Argentina is much bigger than El Salvador, does Bukele’s example suggest that enormous positive change is possible in Argentina?

Doug Casey: Bukele is another symptom of a possible major turnaround in the world.

The statists and collectivists may finally have overplayed their hand. They’re just clever criminals with large followings, like Hitler in Germany and Mao in China. Only the brain-dead buy their themes. “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.” The world is ending because of climate change. Vaccinate or die. 15-minute cities. Restricted travel. No eating meat. ESG. DEI. No fossil fuels. It’s a long litany. They can destroy civilization itself.

People with a brain are looking for a lightning rod to catalyze change.

In El Salvador that may be Bukele. He definitely has libertarian instincts, indicated by the fact his main economic advisor is Safedean Ammous, an AnCap. He’s one of the most important economists in the world today, along with Walter Block and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. I urge you to listen to the interview he did with me last month on AnCap principles (link).

El Salvador is the last country in the hemisphere—with the exception of Haiti—I would have picked to turn around. It’s the most overpopulated country in the hemisphere. It’s crime-ridden, which is why he’s locked up 65,000 gang members. It had a nasty civil war from 1979-1982. It has no exports except for coffee, bananas, and poor people. Who could have guessed?

Bukele already made Bitcoin legal tender. It’s possible that he’ll reform El Salvador in the same way as Milei will try to reform Argentina.

International Man: What are the investment or speculative implications of Milei’s rise for Argentine assets?

What are the lifestyle and other international diversification implications?

Doug Casey: Right now, Argentina is the cheapest, nice country in the world. Certainly the cheapest country in the Western world.

That’s especially amazing in view of the immense tax burden that the Argentine economy has to bear, paying huge numbers of useless mouths who detract from prosperity.

If Milei is elected, he’ll radically reduce taxes, which means that costs of production will drop radically. As the country dollarizes, the currency will stabilize, and gold could come next. Real prices could drop further, but not because of a collapsing currency. The economy should boom economically as investment pours in. People will go back to work, start saving, and rebuild domestic capital. Argentina could quickly become, again, one of the world’s richest countries.

What could go wrong with the scenario? The parasites now living off the State don’t want their rice bowls broken. Even though Milei has huge support from people across the social spectrum—including the lower classes who are fed up with being kept like pets by the people in the Deep State. The Deep State will undoubtedly fight Milei’s reforms viciously. I hope he has plenty of competent bodyguards around him because these people are genuinely evil, just like the Deep State in the US.

If he’s elected, both the lifestyle and investment implications could be huge.

Argentina has always been one of my favorite countries in the world, bar none. But if they go to sound banking, a sound currency, and disregard the rules laid down by the US, the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum—it could really be one of the best places in the world to live.

You ought to keep in mind that citizenship is available with only two years of residency. And even during those two years of residency, it’s only necessary to spend half of the year in the country. Culturally, Argentina is more European than some countries in Europe.

If Milei manages to wash away the socialist immorality and criminality that has corrupted Argentina for so many years, I won’t just live down there half of the year, but all of the year.

Connect with International Man

Cover image credit: VOX España

Debunking Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s Pro-Israel Talking Points

by Robert Inlakesh, The Last American Vagabond
August 6, 2023

US Democratic Party Presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr recently sat down with celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach at an event in New York to perform a pre-prepared set of pro-Israel talking points. This came after the politician stated that Covid-19 didn’t effect Jewish and Asian people as much as White and Black Americans, drawing complaints of anti-Semitism from aspiring statesman.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s support of Israel, showcased in a recent event in New York, has been broadly interpreted to have been set up in order to run damage control over claims of anti-Semitism against the Democratic Party contender. RFK’s pandering to Israel tipped over into conflations between Jewish people and the Israeli regime, with the Presidential hopeful going on to deny that Palestinians lived under a racist Apartheid regime. Kennedy shared that,

“a major piece of my campaign will be explaining to Americans why that is wrong and making the case for Israel.”

RFK, despite pegging himself as the anti-establishment figure running within the Democratic party, takes an even more extreme pro-Zionist view than the sitting US President, Joe Biden, as he slammed his own party’s acknowledgment that Israel occupy’s Palestinian territory. In terms of his pro-Israel stance, there is little that seems to separate Kennedy and former US President Donald Trump, with RFK demonstrating a much more robust understanding of Israeli history and pro-Israel talking points.

Debunking RFK’s Pro-Israel Talking Points

During the course of the dialogue between Rabbi Shumely Boteach and RFK, the Presidential candidate made a large number of factually incorrect statements and spread provably false accusations about Iran, the Palestinians, the Arab world, and the Israeli government itself. To address each point in extensive detail would be too lengthy, however, the following claims are in need of rebuttal.

Claim 1: Israel is the only nation in the Middle East with freedom of expression

False: To begin with, Israel was ranked 97 in the world for press freedom, by Reporters Without Borders, in 2023. On the leading NGO’s website, it is stated that “Palestinian journalists are systematically subjected to violence as a result of their coverage of events in the West Bank, and Israeli reporters are barred from entering the Gaza Strip.” The 2022 assassination of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli security forces remains unpunished, despite strong pressure from the international community and the Israeli authorities’ admission, as well as video evidence, witness testimony, and forensic evidence all finding that this was a targeted killing by the IDF. The climate of impunity has only increased violence against Palestinian journalists in Israel, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza.” Reporters Without Borders also understates the number of Palestinian journalists currently held under Israeli detention and has not factored in the countless shootings carried out by the Israeli military, against Palestinians journalists, so far this year. The Committee to Protect Journalists has also protested that Israel’s murder of 20 renowned Palestinians journalists over 22 years, without anyone being held accountable, endangers reporters further.

While the Middle East may have a very low standard for protection of journalists, no other nation has a two tier system of racial segregation, with separate sets of laws to target a specific ethnicity. The Israeli police have even barred the display of Palestinian flags in public, attacking and injuring those who have displayed it. The Israeli Knesset is currently in the process of advancing a bill that will make it a criminal offense to display the flag of Palestine. The current Israeli border authorities also frequently detain, interrogate, and deport people for the very reason that they are interpreted to hold anti-Israel beliefs, whether or not they do, based largely on their ethnicity. In the US, this is called racial profiling and is considered by most as racist and unacceptable, yet those same people often turn a blind eye in the case of Israel.

Claim 2: Israel is the only place in the Middle East where women have rights

False: Bobby Kennedy claimed that Israel is the only place in the Middle East where women have rights, he then went on to say that women in Iran “are being jailed for wearing habibs, uh, for not wearing habibs”. To begin with, the word he is trying to say is hijab, which is the term for an Islamic headscarf. The mere fact that he repeatedly said the word habib, which means “darling” in Arabic, demonstrates his lack of knowledge on the subject. However, getting past that semantic point, the Israeli system is again a two-tiered one, where Palestinian women are afforded no rights at all in the occupied territories. One cannot claim that because Jewish Israeli women have a set of rights that in many ways replicate those that are afforded to women across the collective West, that Israel in its totality is a State that performs well on women’s rights.

Furthermore, there are decency laws in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Morality police (that are small units) that will sometimes appear in public spaces to either tell women to put on their headscarfs, and in the worse cases arrest women for not doing as such, and there is a small possibility of arrest for not wearing one. It is important to note that the harassment faced by women inside Iran for this is indeed a real thing and there are cases of abuse for not wearing the hijab. Yet to say this type of dynamic does not exist in the West is simply not true. One obvious example of such a dynamic is the recent vaccination craze, wherein people are still being pressured to adhere to a government required action, and demonized and attacked if they do not. What is often ignored in this discussion about hijabs is that many women in Iran choose to wear these, both for religious adherence as well as an act of rebellion against the previous illegal US occupation, while other do because they feel they must for varying reasons. The Western media has clearly exploited the situation in order to demonize their enemy, which has brought with it much exaggeration.

In addition to this, the point that RFK is making was concocted to stereotype Middle Eastern men as being backwards and oppressive towards women. While in various Middle Eastern nations, there are a number of laws that restrict female freedom of movement, dress and expression, by no means are all Middle Eastern nations the same. For instance, in Turkey or even Lebanon, anyone who goes on holiday there will see with their own eyes how women are free to dress, work, and behave in a similar manner to their Western female counterparts. In the region, societal pressures and cultural norms will create certain restrictions for women in different contexts, which is made apparent when you visit different parts of Middle Eastern countries. If you are to travel to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for instance, you will see that women who live in the city of Amman are going to be treated completely different than if you were to travel to a more isolated village community. Similarly, Jewish Israeli women who live in Tel Aviv are treated starkly different to Jewish Israeli women who are living in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods located in Jerusalem; where women are often isolated to remaining indoors and even kept from attaining literacy in some instances.

Claim 3: Iran is castrating gays, while Israel has pride parades with 150,000 present

False: There are no known cases of Iran ever castrating gay people, nor would this be permitted under its legal system. Claims have been made that due to a law passed in 1987 in Iran, permitting sex-change treatments, Iranian parents have forced their gay children to undergo hormone therapy and even surgery’s in order to make their sexuality legal. The research on how extensive this problem is/was, is minimal to say the least, yet due to a statement from former Iranian President, where he stated that “in Iran, we don’t have this phenomenon [of gay people]” there have been concerns raised over the above mentioned claim.

When it comes then to Israel’s pride parades, you will be welcome to join such events, so long as you are not Palestinian of course, then your attempt to travel from the West Bank or Gaza would be stopped by armed soldiers with guns and potentially land you in a military prison. Israel has long used ‘pink washing’ to try and justify its crimes against the Palestinian people, by claiming that because it welcomes the LGBTQ+ pride parades, this somehow undoes its ongoing racial tier system. Ministers in the current Israeli government are also threatening to abolish the yearly pride parades and may soon succeed at this.

Claim 4: The Israeli military only killed terrorists in Jenin, it refrains from killing civilians

False: Israel killed 12 Palestinians during its recent invasion of Jenin, 8 of which were members of armed groups, the rest were verifiably civilians. RFK claims that not a single civilian was killed, which is a lie, he also made up the claim that all the 12 killed were involved in bomb making and planning attacks on Jewish civilians. So not only did he call 4 civilians terrorist, but justified their murders through more lies. He also spread the racist Israeli claim that “virtually everyone” living in Jenin supports terrorism and claimed that Israel went in surgically. He then went on to entertaining the idea that insulting idea that the Israeli army is more restrained than it has to be and is “putting its own soldiers in harms way”.

During that invasion, journalists, medical workers, children, women, and the elderly were all injured by Israeli fire. Airstrikes and military vehicles also targeted the critical infrastructure of the Jenin refugee camp. Not only this, but the UN rapporteur on Palestinian rights accused the Israeli army of committing possible war crimes. As for the claims about the conduct of Israeli forces in general, there has been no accountability for the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army. There are only a handful of cases where Israeli soldiers have been held accountable for their abuses of Palestinian human rights in the past 15 years, one of them was for murdering a Palestinian on video and the soldier became a hero in Israeli society, donations totaling in the hundreds of thousands poured in to support the soldier. That same soldier went on to live a life of luxury, being regarded as an Israeli hero and only served a small stint in prison, far from a life-sentence. The Israeli army’s conduct is without question one of the worst on the planet, the ICC has a pending investigation into its warcrimes, countless UN and human rights reports document hundreds of thousands of violations of international law — to list the crimes committed would take a lifetime.

Claim 5: The Palestinian Authority pays people to kill Jews, Hamas has an official policy of genocide against Jews

False: The Palestinian Authority (PA) fully coordinates with the Israeli army, it has saved countless illegal Israeli settlers and soldiers, it arrests, tortures, harasses, and has even killed Palestinians in order to protect Israelis. The PA does not pay Palestinians to kill Jews, however, it does give financial support to Palestinian family’s in the West Bank if they are killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers, in addition to this it will give an allowance to families of political prisoners held illegally in Israeli military prisons. Even Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been recently calling for strengthening the PA; the PA’s President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly condemned Palestinian armed attacks on Israelis and rejects the idea that Palestinians should use arms to resist and protect themselves — despite their legal right to do so as an occupied territory, which is outlined by the Geneva Conventions and supported by the UN.

As for Hamas, in its original charter that was released in 1988 it used language such as it intended to push the Jews into the sea. In 2017, Hamas made its latest update to its charter, in which it rejects anti-semitism and all forms of racism and explicitly states its opposition to Zionism and Israel. Upon the founding of Hamas, in 1987, it had no armed wing and next to no power. It then dramatically changed over time and became the governing force in the Gaza Strip, where it ran in a democratic election. The Hamas organization also stated in 2017 its openness to a two-state solution. Hamas does not advocate the genocide of the Jewish people and has never carried out an attack against non-Israeli Jewish targets. Hamas explicitly seeks the liberation of Palestine through violent means (again, that which is their legal right as an occupied territory) but the idea that it seeks the genocide of the Jews is explicitly a lie.

Claim 6: All the Arab country’s had plans to exterminate the Jews in 1948 and sided with Hitler

False: The idea that is conjured up by pro-Israel propagandists, that attempts to depict the Arab World as being on the side of Hitler and of seeking to cause a Holocaust, is completely ahistorical. To begin with, there was no master plan to exterminate all the Jews in Palestine. The Arab nations that sent soldiers to fight against the newly declared Israel, did so after a third of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians had already occurred. Countries like Syria, Jordan and Lebanon all witnessed a massive surge of refugees into their lands and scrambled to put together what forces they had to fight on the side of the Palestinians. These nations were not capable of carrying out such an extermination campaign, nor is there any historical evidence to suggest that all the Arab nations came together to work on a genocidal plan.

Before Israel was created in 1948, a third of Baghdad’s residents were Jewish. In the following years war, propaganda and foreign conspiracy would push them to leave.

Watch our interview with Israeli historian Avi Shlaim on The Big Picture podcast: https://t.co/qqIZKmWK5S pic.twitter.com/QEWKDwGNOy

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) August 3, 2023

The idea that the Arab world sided with Hitler’s Germany is also ridiculous. Jordan and Egypt for instance were very much on the side of the British, as were others like Saudi Arabia during the war. In the case of Syria for example, the nation only won independence from the French in 1945 — the year that WW2 ended — meaning that it quite literally could not have sided with Hitler, as he was dead. There were a handful of high-ranking Arab personalities who had collaborated with the fascists in Germany and Italy, yet, they did so out of a need for support in their liberation struggles against Britain and France; this context is key, as some leaders within communities under foreign rule were simply seeking to ally with the enemy of their enemy. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, for example, who received his position as a Palestinian leader with British authorization originally, did collaborate with the fascists, but had been driven out of Palestine and was in competition with others who sought to lead the Palestinian struggle. The Grand Mufti is now wrongfully blamed for coming up with the idea for the Holocaust by the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu, yet his influence was minuscule and he suffered to even receive meetings with Nazi officials for a period of his stay in Hitler’s Germany. All of this, however, is getting into unnecessary detail, because the point made by RFK is not rooted in history and is an invention of Zionist propaganda, not a debate on individual leading Arab personalities who had met with or received funds from fascists.

RFK Jr. also disputes the idea that Israel is an Apartheid regime. Israel’s top human rights organization, B’Tselem, in addition to the world’s two leading human rights groups, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, all say that Tel Aviv operates an Apartheid regime. Calling Israel an Apartheid regime is not hyperbole, it is not just students and professors on university campuses saying this, it is the mainstream human rights groups who have released lengthy documents — hundreds of pages long — not only documenting why Israel constitutes an Apartheid regime, but also rooting their argument in international legal standards. To second that, leading anti-Apartheid activists and freedom fighters — against South African Apartheid — such as the later Archbishop Desmond Tutu, not only compared Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians to Apartheid South Africa, but stated that the situation in Palestine-Israel is worse than what they suffered.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s pro-Israel views are more extreme than any other Democratic Party candidate and are rooted in historical distortions, sweeping generalizations, anti-Arab racism, lies about the Palestinians, in addition to conflation of Jews and the government of Israel. Such views expressed by Mr Kennedy are an indication that he will be a pro-war President if elected and will continue to unconditionally back Israel — even when it kills and injures Americans — with billions of US tax dollars.

https://twitter.com/TorahJudaism/status/1687354790479597568

https://twitter.com/falasteen47

Connect with The Last American Vagabond

Cover image credit: DEZALB

A Beginner’s Guide to Syria, With Vanessa Beeley

by Jeremy Nell, Jerm Warfare, with Vanessa Beeley
originally published April 4, 2023



In the following conversation about Syria, Vanessa Beeley dropped so many truth bombs that Joe Biden thought that Olympus Has Fallen is a documentary.

Vanessa lives in Syria’s capital, Damascus, and is one of the few journalists who actually knows what’s going on and experiences, you know, reality rather than Western propaganda via the likes of CNN and The New York Times.

For a conversation surrounding Syria and navigating the fog of information war, I strongly recommend listening to my conversation with Piers Robinson in which he touched on talking points including:

• false narratives published by media across the Western world,
• the role of propaganda to shape public perception, and
• the “chemical weapons” hoax.

Vanessa’s discussion with me is more raw and closer to Syrian reality on the ground, acting as a brilliant beginner’s guide of sorts, including:

• some history leading up to the current war,
• the geopolitical complexities around Syria,
• Western central intelligence agencies’ creation and funding of terrorist groups,
• daily life and struggles in Damascus under severe sanctions,
• allies of Syria and why the Deep State is panicking, and
• why Bashar al-Assad will never bow to Washington.

Her lights went out midway. Thankfully, she had a LED light on hand.

Connect with Jerm Warfare

Connect with Vanessa Beeley

All image sourced from Jerm Warfare

What’s the Message With Roscosmos’ Satellite Images of …

by Joseph P. Farrell, Giza Death Star
July 8 2022

One story that fascinated me during the past week was this story of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, releasing satellite imagery of western “decision centers” during the G7 conference and the NATO summit in Madrid, attended by western “leaders” such as Boris Johnson, and alleged US President “Biden”.  It was a clear message, but exactly what was that message? I believe that to decode it, one has to look at the images themselves:

Warning: Roscosmos Releases Satellite Imagery Of Decision Centers Ahead Of NATO – Foreign Affairs

The article, you’ll note, contains seven large images, and in order from top to bottom, they are:

(1) Madrid, the site of the NATO meeting;

(2) Washington, DC, with various landmarks including the White House, Supreme Court, US Capitol, and Washington monuments clearly visible;

(3) Another view of Washington DC, of the Pentagon including the “ground zero” garden and park in the center of the structure clearly visible;

(4) London, with a view of Westminster and the now-famous giant ferris wheel;

(5) Central Paris along the Champs Elysee with all the associated famous landmarks;

(6) Brussels, with the EU headquarters clearly shown, and finally,

(7) Berlin, with the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate clearly visible in the center-right, and lower-center right.

Now as reading the many comments accompanying the “article” demonstrate, similar images can be pulled up from Google. Indeed, one might have difficulty figuring out if Google was the source of the Roscosmos images, or for that matter, if Roscosmos was not the source of many Google earth images, including of these cities.

As one commenter put it, “what’s the big deal” with Roscosmos publishing such images anyway? Anyone can find them after all.

Most internet commentary on the strangeness of Roscosmos doing so are focussed – rightly – on the timing of the release to coincide with the G7 and NATO meetings, and thus on the idea that Roscosmos is sending a message.

With all of this I concur… Roscosmos was indeed sending a message.

But exactly what was the message?  We can nuke your capital cities?

If so, then the message wasn’t very new… Russia has always been capable of nuking the west’s capital cities and vice versa.  There’s absolutely nothing new there, and no real reason Russia needs to remind everyone else…

… unless, of course, that was not the message at all, and with that, we get to today’s high octane speculation.  Recently Mr.  Putin also gave an extensive speech during the St. Petersburg economic forum, during the same time frame as the Roscosmos “satellite image release.” (See St Petersburg International Economic Forum Plenary session)  Mr. Putin’s remarks were full of references to the anti-globalist and multi-polar agenda he has maintained in speeches over the past few years, such as the following:

However, the ruling elite of some Western states seem to be harbouring this kind of illusions. They refuse to notice obvious things, stubbornly clinging to the shadows of the past. For example, they seem to believe that the dominance of the West in global politics and the economy is an unchanging, eternal value. Nothing lasts forever.

Our colleagues are not just denying reality. More than that; they are trying to reverse the course of history. They seem to think in terms of the past century. They are still influenced by their own misconceptions about countries outside the so-called “golden billion”: they consider everything a backwater, or their backyard. They still treat them like colonies, and the people living there, like second-class people, because they consider themselves exceptional. If they are exceptional, that means everyone else is second rate.

Thereby, the irrepressible urge to punish, to economically crush anyone who does not fit with the mainstream, does not want to blindly obey. Moreover, they crudely and shamelessly impose their ethics, their views on culture and ideas about history, sometimes questioning the sovereignty and integrity of states, and threatening their very existence. Suffice it to recall what happened in Yugoslavia, Syria, Libya and Iraq.

Mr. Putin also alleges that the European Union has lost sovereignty and is dancing to “someone else’s” tune, while not defining who that someone else may be:

The attempts to keep up appearances and the talk about allegedly acceptable costs in the name of pseudo-unity cannot hide the main thing: the European Union has lost its political sovereignty, and its bureaucratic elites are dancing to someone else’s tune, doing everything they are told from on high and hurting their own people, economies, and businesses.

Much of the rest of Mr. Putin’s speech consists of criticisms of American and European policy toward Russia, and pointing out the stupidity of those policies, and Russia’s own strides toward making its own economy more efficient, and expanding technological businesses, and of course, outlining its military operations in the Ukraine.

So again, assuming the Roscosmos satellite image release and the speech to be “message sending,” what, if anything, is the message one is supposed to gain from looking at the images, and considering President Putin’s remarks, beyond the obvious message that Mr. Putin is not the blithering idiot that alleged President Biden is.

There is a rumor that during Mr. Putin’s remarks, he allegedly made reference to more “red lines” that the West should not cross, but he did not spell these out, but made it very clear that to cross them would be to imperil the western leadership. The rumor has it that these remarks were omitted from the translation of the speech.

But even without them, that message I believe is painfully obvious and simple: we have exact data on all your hideaways and retreats; we know where you live, and what your personal security consists of. We do not need to nuke your cities… there are other ways of dealing with you, and we have them, and are perfectly willing to “go there.” After all, wet operations are a specialty of ours.

Mr. Putin, in other words, as his remarks make clear, directed his criticism of the West not against the average Spaniard, German, Frenchman, American, or Briton, but against its leadership and their places of “decision”, which need not be the capital cities… but anywhere that the “leadership” hides out and “decides” things.

IN short, as I’ve warned many times, “two can play the covert ops game,” and the West and USSA have been caught red-handed trying to play it in the Ukraine; think only of the biolabs.  Now, I suspect, we can prepare for the favour to be returned, but in such as way as to target not the people of the west, but its leadership.

If I am correct, this is about to get very interesting…

See you on the flip side….

Connect with Joseph P. Farrell