by Caitlin Johnstone

I will never get used to living in a world where our rulers will openly imprison a journalist for telling the truth and then self-righteously pontificate about the need to stop authoritarian regimes from persecuting journalists.

Just today US State Department spokesman and CIA veteran Ned Price tweeted disapprovingly about the Kyrgyz Republic’s decision to deport investigative journalist Bolot Temirov to Russia, where press freedom groups are concerned that the Russian citizen could face conscription to fight in Ukraine.

“Dismayed by the decision to deport journalist Bolot Temirov from the Kyrgyz Republic,” said Price. “Journalists should never be punished for doing their job. The Kyrgyz Republic has been known for its vibrant civil society — attempts to stifle freedom of expression stain that reputation.”

This would be an entirely reasonable statement for anyone else to make. If you said it or I said it, it would be completely legitimate. But when Ned says it, it is illegitimate.

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1595562379378851841?s=20&t=8UXhhKxnHpfCT9oI5Q12Yw

Ned Price @StateDeptSpox

Dismayed by the decision to deport journalist Bolot Temirov from the Kyrgyz Republic. Journalists should never be punished for doing their job. The Kyrgyz Republic has been known for its vibrant civil society — attempts to stifle freedom of expression stain that reputation.6:19 PM ∙ Nov 23, 202267Likes15Retweets

This is after all the same government that is working to extradite an Australian journalist from the United Kingdom with the goal of imprisoning him for up to 175 years for exposing US war crimes. Price says “Journalists should never be punished for doing their job,” but that is precisely what the government he represents is doing to Julian Assange, who has already spent three and a half years in Belmarsh Prison awaiting US extradition shenanigans. This is in top of the seven years he spent fighting extradition from the Ecuadorian embassy in London under what a UN panel ruled was arbitrary detention.

A UN special rapporteur on torture determined that Assange has been subjected to psychological torture by the allied governments which have conspired to imprison him. Scores of doctors have determined that his persecution is resulting in dangerous medical neglect. Yet he is being pulled toward the notoriously draconian prison systems of the most powerful government in the world, where he will face a rigged trial where a defense of publishing in the public interest will not be permitted. 

All to establish a legal precedent that will allow the most powerful empire that has ever existed to extradite journalists from anywhere in the world for exposing inconvenient truths about it. But sure, Ned, “Journalists should never be punished for doing their job.”

https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1587807060195958786?s=20&t=8t0sFDkVdYuAnJrNFSK98Q

Secretary Antony Blinken @SecBlinken

No member of the press should be threatened, harassed, attacked, arrested, or killed for doing their job. On the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, we vow to continue protecting and promoting the rights of a free press and the safety of journalists.

Department of State @StateDept

On this International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, we urge other governments to hold accountable those who target journalists with harassment, intimidation, and violence. We renew our commitment to an open and free press at home and abroad. https://t.co/wZ7mz4lJCz2:01 PM ∙ Nov 2, 20221,858Likes572Retweets

Earlier this month US secretary of state Antony Blinken posted a tweet of his own commemorating the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, without the slightest trace of self-awareness.

“No member of the press should be threatened, harassed, attacked, arrested, or killed for doing their job,” Blinken said. “On the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, we vow to continue protecting and promoting the rights of a free press and the safety of journalists.”

Two weeks later, the Biden administration shockingly granted Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman immunity from lawsuits regarding the gruesome assassination of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, thereby slamming the final door on all attempts to hold the tyrannical ruler responsible for his brazen assault on the press.

“No member of the press should be threatened, harassed, attacked, arrested, or killed for doing their job.”

Two weeks.

Matt Lee @APDiploWriter

WASHINGTON (AP) – Biden administration moves to shield #SaudiArabia crown prince from lawsuits over his role in killing of #US-based journalist3:07 AM ∙ Nov 18, 20221,030Likes277Retweets

We are ruled by tyrannical, hypocritical freaks who do not care about truth and freedom; they care only about power and what they can use to obtain it. The only press they support are those whose persecution can be politically leveraged, and those who can be used to peddle propaganda like the notorious AP editor who recently said she “can’t imagine” a US intelligence official being wrong.

Pointing out hypocrisy is important not because hypocrisy is an especially terrible thing in and of itself, but because it draws attention to the fact that the hypocrite does not really stand where they claim to stand and value what they purport to value. The rulers of the western empire care about press freedoms only exactly insofar as they can use them to concern troll foreign governments they don’t like to advance their global power agendas. And not one molecule further.

by Barbara McKenzie

The New Zealand Supreme Court has ruled in favour of lowering the voting age to 16.

‘Justice France told the court it was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights to not allow 16-year-olds to vote, and the decision of the Court of Appeal was overturned.’

Jacinda Ardern announced the same day, 21 November, that the Cabinet had decided ‘to draft a piece of legislation with a proposal to lower the age to 16 for the whole of Parliament to consider’.   While the required 75% majority makes its success unlikely, Labour’s present majority means this may be its best chance for a long time, and if the Bill does gets through, it will be very difficult to reverse.  However it comes at an interesting time:

Education standards are plummeting

Nearly two-thirds of students failed the writing standard in the latest NCEA literacy and numeracy pilot, released in October.  The highest pass rate was the reading standard, with 64% of students scoring an achieved or higher.  That was followed by numeracy at 56% and writing at 34%.  Those pass rates were even lower than the results in 2021, which themselves were a matter of concern for educators.

At the same time, truancy is skyrocketing. Earlier this month Education Review Office warned that NZ has worse school attendance than other English-speaking countries and many parents don’t care if their children miss classes.  Children failing in the 3Rs, and their reluctance to attend school, can in part be put down to the destructive pandemic measures, ranging from disruption to schooling to enforced mask wearing.  Another factor could be:

NZ education consists of wall to wall indoctrination, manipulation and abuse

The New Zealand school curriculum exposes children to every kind of damaging wokery, including:

•  Critical race theory, whereby children have imposed upon them colonial guilt if of European descent, and victimhood and inferiority if Maori.  The capacity for bullying in the classroom of racial minorities of Maori or European descent is huge.
• Conscious grooming for gender transition (leading to counselling, puberty blockers, mutilation, sterility, and more counselling);
• Endless lies about ‘climate change’, with children consciously indoctrinated to become activists for the pseudoscience ‘climate change’ narrative, and no room for critical thinking.

Read on…

Wry comments by Peter Dunne on this subject are here

Those who voted for the project to be scrapped at the council meeting yesterday were Crs Koh, Cooper, Halliday, Wilson and Prvanov. All the rest voted for it to continue, in the interim at least. It’s very disappointing but not particularly surprising. It looks like the squandering of Ratepayer money that councils over the last 15 years have been notorious for will continue under this one. At least the vote in favour of this white elephant at 6-5 is smaller than the 7-4 it had in the last council.

Comments by former Cr Gwynn Compton on this charade:

Died Suddenly, a documentary about ‘vaccine’ sudden deaths, was released this week and unsurprisingly was quickly kicked off the Google subsidiary of YouTube.

Even in America most people don’t know about this lawsuit and finding updates requires lots of digging online. But it’s not too surprising when it’s about the FDA being sued for misleading the public about the off-label use of Ivermectin during the pandemic.

Not only is it Legal and a Long-Standing practice for doctors to prescribe medications off-label, it’s also a crucial element to their ability to treat patients. Without it, patients suffer.   

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) filed its motion and amicus brief with the federal district court in Galveston urging it to allow the lawsuit to proceed against the FDA for its misleading statements against ivermectin. In Apter v. HHS, a group of physicians sued to hold the Food and Drug Administration, a federal agency within the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), accountable for its interference with physicians’ ability to treat Covid-19.

“Defendant FDA has improperly exploited misunderstandings about the legality and prevalence of off-label uses of medication, in order to mislead courts, state medical boards, and the public into thinking there is anything improper about off-label prescribing,” AAPS writes in its amicus brief to the court. “Not only is off-label prescribing fully proper, legal, and commonplace, but it is also absolutely necessary in order to give effective care to patients.”

Yet the FDA published multiple statements and sent letters to influential organizations to falsely disparage ivermectin, implying that it was not approved for treating Covid-19. Many, including courts and state medical boards, were misled by the FDA into thinking that its lack of approval for this treatment meant that ivermectin should not be used to treat Covid-19.

“It has never been proper for the FDA to interfere with that essential part of the practice of medicine, and the FDA knows it,” AAPS informed the court. The FDA “insisted and continues to insist on interfering with the prescription of this safe medication by physicians in treating Covid-19,” AAPS added.

AAPS General Counsel Andrew Schlafly pointed out to the court that the FDA “has engaged in a campaign of interference with the proper use by physicians of ivermectin, which has long been approved as fully safe for human use.” He alerted the court that once the FDA approves a medication as safe, then physicians have full authority to prescribe it to treat any illness, particularly a novel virus like Covid-19.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943. Its motto is omnia pro aegroto (everything for the patient).

Contact: Jane M. Orient, M.D., (520) 323-3110, janeorientmd@gmail.com or Andrew L. Schlafly, Esq., (908) 719-8608, aschlafly@aol.com

Red Fire is a Communist (traditional form) website, but it takes the same stance on the war provoked by the Biden administration as do Libertarians.

The world is closer to nuclear annihilation today than at any other time in history. The responsibility for this impending catastrophe lies entirely with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the anti-Russian military alliance of the collective West. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has virtually no authority; it is here rather an administrator who marches under American command.[1] NATO is made up of governments in Europe allied with the United States, but ultimately Washington decides. And right now they are pushing with dizzying recklessness toward a nuclear confrontation with Russia, abandoning any pretense of supporting Ukraine only with arms, money and “advisers”.

Russia again warns the United States

The proposed referendums for the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye – which give them the possibility of joining the Russian Federation – have once again directly warned the United States and its allies in the European Union (EU) . In the event, as expected, that these regions vote to join Russia – these vast regions will very quickly become Russian territory. Then there would be no question of a “special military operation” with limited rules of engagement for Russian forces. If the Ukrainian army, which is led by NATO and supported by the Nazis, launches an assault on one of the new borders, surely Russia will respond. President Vladimir Putin’s statement that Russia has much more advanced weapons than the West, and that it will use them if the territory of Russia is threatened, is not at all a “bluff”.[3] It was yet another warning — for the hundredth time — to American leaders that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is not only equal to theirs, but that Russia also has hypersonic missiles. These projectiles accelerate to several times the speed of sound and can hardly be intercepted by any defenses the US military will be able to assemble.

The peoples of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye have already been waiting for 8 years for the opportunity to be able to reach what they consider to be their homeland. The heroic peoples of Donetsk and Luhansk rejected the NATO-backed Nazi coup in Kyiv in 2014 and fought back, sacrificing thousands of deaths. As soon as these regions (Novorossiya) become part of the Russian Federation, the American State has practically only two options. 1. Recognize the new geopolitical reality by ordering Kyiv to withdraw or 2. Provoke Russia to use tactical nuclear weapons by ordering Kyiv to launch a massive invasion of last resort.[4] Yet the macabre cynicism with which the United States and the EU have waged their war so far, which has resulted in the loss of countless Ukrainian lives and a lesser number of Russian lives, is possibly not yet silenced.

The consequences of a nuclear war, even if “limited”, will be incalculable. Arguably, this war from the start could have been avoided IF Washington had simply granted Moscow the assurance that Ukraine would never be part of NATO. Nevertheless, that in this case would practically mean the West abandoning 20 years of irrational, hysterical and even racist Russophobic propaganda, and an admission that it was at least partly false. However, the ruling classes in the US and EU are ready to use any means to achieve their ends, even if it means arming and funding Nazi forces, tearing the world to pieces or even down to nuclear Armageddon.

One fight, same fight

Working people around the world cannot afford NATO to destroy the world, whether by design or by accident. It must be recognized, first of all, that this difficult situation is part of the continuity of 2.5 previous years of repression, and that it is in no way separate from it. The Covid was hardly a “pandemic”, but rather an elaborate attempt to revive or re-set the capitalist mode of production in a desperate attempt to go against the gigantic economic power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and military and political cooperation with Eurasia which is only one of the results. The economic power of the PRC stems from its state ownership of the strategic means of production and a planned economy, where private profit is NOT the overriding ambition. However treacherously, the governments of the PRC and Russia capitulated to the West regarding their fraudulent Covid terror agenda, and even embraced it – albeit to varying degrees.

The level of political repression under the guise of Covid was not as severe – in some parts of Russia or the PRC as elsewhere. For example, while the PRC had some of the most stringent regulations in place, it was unable to impose vaccination mandates. The working class in the West, on the other hand, suffered job losses living under absolute restrictions, which defy all logic – including the construction of concentration camps. It required historically unprecedented political repression, and a “sanitary” justification, to prevent the working class from beginning to resist the loss of its livelihoods, let alone having to resist the crushing weight of medical fascism. As expected, the extremely violent attempt of these last 2.5 years of reviving capitalism has not had enough effect to restore the profit rates demanded by the big business tycoons. The imperialist West simply cannot afford that the PRC can continue to produce at least three times the economic growth of the US and the EU. She not only fails to compete — she finds herself compelled to seek and wage war, even at the risk of their own destruction.

Read the rest

from the Daily Telegraph NZ

The history of Ukrainian nationalist cruelty is an important factor, barely discussed, or known, in the West.

Russian troops shot in the legs screaming in pain. Others dying from blood loss and shock. With no one around to provide medical assistance. A Russian soldier crucified on an anti-tank barrier, chained to a metal ‘hedgehog’ and then burned alive…

For many, graphic footage of Russian servicemen tortured and killed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and nationalist battalions, came as a real shock. But this did not surprise those who are familiar with the ‘traditions’ of Ukraine’s ‘fighters for national freedom’, as they have more than a century of history in this sort of thing.

Europe’s first Concentration Camps

The first concentration camps in Europe – Terezin and Thalerhof – were established in Austria-Hungary in the fall of 1914, not to hold prisoners of war, but the empire’s own citizens. This is how Vienna, then the ‘sick man of Europe’, tried to protect its eastern border areas from members of its population which sympathized with neighboring Russia. Fighting between the two countries had broken out just before the beginning of the First World War. Austria-Hungary’s last emperor, Charles I, confessed in his edict of May 7, 1917, “All the arrested Russians are innocent, but they were detained to prevent them becoming guilty.”

People from Galicia who did not want to call themselves Ukrainians, as the Austrian authorities insisted, and continued to use the name ‘Rusyns’, were arrested and incarcerated in two places – in a garrison fortress in Terezin and in a valley near Graz, the capital of Styria. While the prisoners in Terezin were held in the vaults and dungeons of the fortress, with the support of local Czechs, the concentration camp later known as Thalerhof was little more than a bare field fenced in with barbed wire.

Today, most of Galicia is in Western Ukraine and the largest city is Lviv, which was known as Lemberg by the Austrians and Lvov by the Soviets and Polish.

The initial prisoners were brought there in September of 1915, and the first barracks began to be built only at the beginning of the following year. Prior to that, the people were forced to lie in the open in the rain and cold. According to US Congressman Joseph McCormick, the prisoners were often beaten and tortured. (Terrorism in Bohemia; Medill McCormick Gets Details of Austrian Cruelty. ‘New York Times’, December 16, 1917)

According to the memoirs of those who survived the inhumane conditions (about 20,000 prisoners passed through the camp), 3,800 people were executed in the first half of 1915 alone, and 3,000 people died from the horrific conditions and diseases in a year and a half. Vasily Varvik, a writer, poet, literary critic, and historian who endured Thalerhof’s hell describes the atrocities in the internment camp as follows: “In order to intimidate people, to prove their power over us, the prison authorities drove poles into the ground all over Thalerhof Square, on which brutally beaten martyrs often hung in unspoken torment.”

What do the Ukrainians have to do with it? The fact is that Ukrainian nationalists were specially recruited to guard the Thalerhof camp. According to numerous testimonies, the arrested, which comprised nearly the entire Russian intelligentsia of Galicia and thousands of peasants, were also escorted to the camp by the Ukrainians.

Indeed, descriptions given in the Thalerhof Almanac detail how Ukrainian Sichoviki in the Carpathian village of Lavochnoye tried to bayonet the prisoners, among whom there was not a single Russian, but only their fellow Galicians.

It was the Ukrainian nationalists who were the concentration camp guards’ cruelest torturers and murderers. “In the end, the atrocities committed by the Germans do not equate to the victimization of your own people. A soulless German could not get his iron boots so deeply into the soul of a Slavonic Rusyn as well as a Rusyn who called himself a Ukrainian,” wrote Vasily Varvik.

From the Volyn Massacre to 1954

A the end of February 1943, the ‘revolutionary’ wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUP), headed by the current idol of many Ukrainians, Stepan Bandera, decided to create the so-called ‘Ukrainian Insurgent Army’ (UPA) to ‘fight the advancing Red Army’, which was driving the Nazis from the country. But the first detachments that emerged in March and April, of the same year, began to fight not the Soviets, whose troops were still waiting for the Nazis to strike near Kursk, but Polish peasants in territory that had belonged to Warsaw up until 1939. These events, which lasted for more than six months, were called the ‘Volyn Massacre’. UPA detachments and units from the SS-Galicia division, which was made up of locals from the eponymous area, killed from 40,000 to 200,000 people, according to various estimates. The Polish Sejm and Senate put the number of victims at approximately 100,000 people, and July 11 is recognized as a ‘National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of Polish Citizens by Ukrainian Nationalists’.

Read the rest

Early on in the Ukraine-Russia war, and even before it, Russia was willing to negotiate. Ukraine could have gotten pretty reasonable terms, too. Now the Russians are destroying Ukraine on the battlefield; they don’t need to negotiate. Winter will only help them. From Scott Ritter at consortiumnews.com: Communications between the U.S. and Russia are essential […]

SCOTT RITTER: The Back Channel — STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC