#U.S. Embassy Operations

[justsaying4041]

The Future of U.S. Embassy Operations Under Project 2025: A Critical Perspective

Project 2025 outlines a transformative vision for U.S. embassy operations, aiming to streamline diplomatic missions, increase efficiency, and align embassy roles more directly with U.S. foreign policy goals. While the plan seeks to modernize embassy functions and reduce operational costs, critics argue that the proposed changes could compromise the diplomatic effectiveness, flexibility, and local…

[sayruq]

THE WHITE HOUSE is worried that Iran might strike a U.S. target as part of a potential retaliation for Israel’s April 1 attack on its embassy in Damascus, Syria, according to notes from a meeting involving National Security Council officials earlier this week. Tehran has vowed that “Israel will be punished” for the Syria strike and the killing of Quds Force commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi. New concern about a potential Iranian strike comes even though the Biden administration has sought to distance itself from the Israeli airstrike, stressing that it had no advance knowledge of the operation. “I don’t have anything more to say about the strike in Damascus, except that we weren’t involved in any way whatsoever,” NSC spokesperson retired Adm. John Kirby said on Monday. On Monday night, Iran conveyed to the Biden administration that if it involved itself in defending Israel were Tehran to undertake a retaliatory strike, it would consider the United States a viable target as well. The issue was discussed at a Tuesday NSC meeting, according to notes reviewed by The Intercept. (The NSC did not respond to a request for comment.)

Since then, the U.S. has quietly conducted talks with Iranian officials to seek to avoid direct confrontation between the two countries’ armed forces, according to CNN and other media reports. On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Biden and his team are working to prevent escalation with Iran in the Middle East. On Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Israel “must be punished and it shall be.” That same day, Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz said his country would respond with a direct attack. “If Iran attacks from its own territory, Israel will respond and attack in Iran,” Katz posted on X. Since April 2023, the U.S. and Israel have been in close cooperation in sharing and building common Iran contingency plans.

[probablyasocialecologist]

More than half of Iran’s weapons were destroyed by U.S. aircraft and missiles before they ever reached Israel. In fact, by commanding a multinational air defense operation and scrambling American fighter jets, this was a U.S. military triumph.   The extent of the U.S. military operation is unbeknownst to the American public, but the Pentagon coordinated a multination, regionwide defense extending from northern Iraq to the southern Persian Gulf on Saturday. During the operation, the U.S., U.K., France, and Jordan all shot down the majority of Iranian drones and missiles. In fact, where U.S. aircraft originated from has not been officially announced, an omission that has been repeated by the mainstream media. Additionally, the role of Saudi Arabia is unclear, both as a base for the United States and in terms of any actions by the Saudi military.

[...]

Israel’s statement that it shot down the majority of Iranian “cruise missiles” is probably an exaggeration. According to U.S. military sources and preliminary reporting, U.S. and allied aircraft shot down the majority of drones and cruise missiles. U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the Royal Air Force Typhoons intercepted “a number” of Iranian weapons over Iraqi and Syrian airspace. The Jordanian government has also hinted that its aircraft downed some Iranian weapons. “We will intercept every drone or missile that violates Jordan’s airspace to avert any danger. Anything posing a threat to Jordan and the security of Jordanians, we will confront it with all our capabilities and resources,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said during an interview on the Al-Mamlaka news channel. French fighters also shot down some drones and possibly cruise missiles.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

The Guardian:

Donald Trump said on Monday he would sign an executive order imposing a 25% tariff on all products coming in to the United States from Mexico and Canada, and additional tariffs on China.

“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. Trump said the tariffs would remain in place until the two countries clamp down on drugs, particularly fentanyl, and migrants crossing the border illegally. In a follow-up post, Trump announced that the US “will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America”. He said that the reason for the additional tariff was China’s failure to curb the number of drugs entering the US. China is a major producer of precursor chemicals that are acquired by drug cartels, including in Mexico, to manufacture fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid. “I have had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail … Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America.” In response, China warned that “no one will win a trade war”.

Liu Pengyu, a Chinese embassy spokesperson, said China had taken steps to combat drug trafficking after an agreement was reached last year between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. “The Chinese side has notified the US side of the progress made in US-related law enforcement operations against narcotics,” he said in a statement. “All these prove that the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.” Canada’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, released a statement on Monday evening saying that the country places the highest priority on border security and the integrity of its shared border with the US. Trump and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau spoke on Monday night about trade and border security, Reuters reported, citing a Canadian source directly familiar with the situation. Freeland’s statement did not mention the tariffs directly. It also said that the Canada Border Services Agency, the US Drug Enforcement Administration and US Customs and Border protection “work together every single day to to disrupt the scourge of fentanyl coming from China and other countries.”

[...] A tariff is a tax placed on goods when they cross national borders. Import tariffs such as those proposed by Trump can have the effect of protecting domestic industries from foreign competition while also generating tax revenue for the government. But economists widely consider them an inefficient tool that typically leaves consumers and taxpayers bearing the brunt of higher costs.

Donald Trump vows to enact economy-crushing 25% tariffs on fellow USMCA members Mexico and Canada, and much steeper tariffs on China.

See Also:

HuffPost: Trump Says U.S. Will Impose Massive Tariffs On Mexico, Canada And China From Day 1

[hussyknee]

Unrolled twitter thread by Progressive International (@ProgIntl)

30 Sept 24 • 4 minute read • Read on X

On 30 September 1965, the Indonesian military, working closely with the US government, initiated a coup that would depose President Sukarno and install the brutal, 30-year dictatorship of General Suharto.

In the dark years that followed, the dictatorship massacred over a million Indonesian communists, with the CIA and US diplomats drawing up “kill lists” for the Indonesian military. The operation would become a template for the US’s regime change operations for decades to come.

Major-General Suharto with Indonesian Army in 1966

In 1945, President Sukarno led Indonesia to independence from Dutch colonial rule. He championed the Non-Aligned Movement and hosted the historic Bandung Conference, a meeting of Afro-Asian states, in 1955.

First President of Indonesia Sukarno making a speech circa 1945

Opening the conference and forecasting what was to come, Sukarno said: “We are often told ‘Colonialism is dead’. Let us not be deceived or even soothed by that… Colonialism also has its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control, actual physical control by a small, but alien community within a nation.”

Leaders attending the Bandung Conference 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia. From left: Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghanian Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser, President Sukarno, and Yugoslavian Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito.

By 1965, Indonesia possessed one of the world's largest communist parties, the PKI. The PKI had a mass membership and mobilized vast numbers of people in the battle against Indonesia’s ruling class.

Campaign of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in September 1955.

Terrified by the strength and organization of Indonesia’s people, the Indonesian military’s 30th September Movement began to purge the PKI.

Men suspected of being IPK members being transported under guard by an armed Indonesian soldier

In the early hours of 1 October, a group of military conscripts murdered six high-ranking generals. Blaming the deaths on the PKI, Suharto used the attacks as a pretext to seize power. CIA communications equipment allowed him to spread false reports around the country and begin a long campaign of anti-communist propaganda.

The US had tried to overthrow Sukarno for years; in 1958, the CIA backed armed regional rebellions against the central government. In 1965, they did all they could to aid Suharto’s murderous power grab.

The campaign soon became genocidal. On islands like Bali, up to 10% of the population was massacred — and luxury hotels soon began to appear over the killing fields.

One US embassy staffer told the US press that Suharto’s military “probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad.”

Time Magazine referred to the killings as “the West’s best news for years in Asia”.

A cable from the US embassy’s first secretary, Mary Vance Trent, to the State Department referred to events in Indonesia as a “fantastic switch which has occurred over 10 short weeks”. It also included an estimate that 100,000 people had been slaughtered.

Cementing his power, Suharto became president in 1967. His ‘New Order’ policy allowed Western capitalism to exploit Indonesia’s cheap labour and plunder its natural resources. Civil rights and dissent were suppressed.

In one of the world’s most populous countries, any possibility for the emergence of a new, democratic political project was eliminated. Richard Nixon described Indonesia as “the greatest prize in Southeast Asia”. Suharto would not leave office until 1998.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan stands with Indonesian President Suharto in the White House South Lawn at the arrival ceremony for Suharto's State Visit. Oct 12, 1982

CIA officers described Suharto’s rise to power and anti-communist purge as the “model operation” and “Jakarta” soon became the codeword for anti-communist extermination programs in Latin America, where hundreds of thousands were massacred in regime change efforts engineered by Washington.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Aaron Bushnell:  Self-Immolated in Front of the Israeli Embassy

Bushnell was a 25-year-old member of the U.S. Air Force stationed in San Antonio and originally from Cape Cod in Massachusetts. He joined the Air Force as an active-duty member in May 2020 and has since worked in information technology and development operations.

Hours before lighting himself on fire, Bushnell posted a Twitch link on his Facebook page with the caption:

Many of us like to ask ourselves, “What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?” The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.

Shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday, Bushnell began his livestream and walked toward the Israeli Embassy with an insulated water bottle full of flammable fluid. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” he said in his video. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

Bushnell then placed his phone on the ground and walked to the gates of the embassy, where he doused himself in liquid from the bottle. “Free Palestine,” he said, as he struggled to light himself. A law-enforcement officer approached, asking, “Can I help you, sir?” At this point, Bushnell lit himself on fire, screaming, “Free Palestine.”

As Bushnell screamed in pain, a law-enforcement officer off-camera yells at him to “get on the ground.” A second officer yelled at the first: “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers.” By the time D.C. Fire and EMS arrived on the scene, the fire had been put out.

An incident report filed by a Secret Service agent states that they “received a distress call regarding an individual exhibiting signs of mental distress outside the Israeli embassy.” (The Secret Service is responsible for foreign-embassy security.) “Before the Secret Service officers could engage, [Bushnell] doused himself with an unidentified liquid and set himself on fire. The Secret Service officers promptly intervened, extinguishing the flames before the arrival of the fire department. [Bushnell] was subsequently transported to a local hospital due to the burns sustained from the incident. The report states that Bushnell was pronounced dead at 10:06 p.m. on Sunday.”

[beardedmrbean]

BEIRUT (Reuters) -A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago was freed from Gaza this week in an operation involving the United States and Israel, officials said.

The rescue also involved Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.

The woman is a member of the ancient Yazidi religious minority mostly found in Iraq and Syria which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in an IS campaign in 2014 that the U.N. has said constituted genocide.

She was freed after more than four months of efforts that involved several attempts that failed due to the difficult security situation resulting from Israel's military offensive in Gaza, Silwan Sinjaree, chief of staff of Iraq's foreign minister, told Reuters.

She has been identified as Fawzia Sido. Reuters could not reach the woman directly for comment.

Iraqi officials had been in contact with the woman for months and passed on her information to U.S. officials, who arranged for her exit from Gaza with the help of Israel, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The Israeli military said it had coordinated with the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and "other international actors" in the operation to free Sido.

It said in a statement her captor had been killed during the Gaza war, presumably by an Israeli strike, and she then fled to a hideout inside the Gaza Strip.

"In a complex operation coordinated between Israel, the United States, and other international actors, she was recently rescued in a secret mission from the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom Crossing," it said.

After entering Israel, she continued on to Jordan through the Allenby Bridge Crossing and from there returned to her family in Iraq, the military said.

A State Department spokesperson said the United States on Tuesday "helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yezidi woman to be reunited with her family in Iraq".

The spokesperson said she was kidnapped from her home in Iraq aged 11 and sold and trafficked to Gaza. Her captor was recently killed, allowing her to escape and seek repatriation, the spokesperson said.

TRAUMATIZED

Sinjaree said she was in good physical condition but was traumatized by her time in captivity and by the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. She had since been reunited with family in northern Iraq, he added.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani had directly followed up on the issue with U.S. officials on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York last month, according to Khalaf Sinjar, Sudani's advisor for Yazidi affairs.

More than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by Islamic State militants from Sinjar region in Iraq in 2014, with many sold into sexual slavery or trained as child soldiers and taken across borders, including to Turkey and Syria.

Over the years, more than 3,500 have been rescued or freed, according to Iraqi authorities, with some 2,600 still missing.

Many are feared dead but Yazidi activists say they believe hundreds are still alive. ______________________

Big question i have is why is a isis kidnapping victim being held in Gaza

[zvaigzdelasas]

The Arab Weekly - US embassy in Baghdad struck with mortars as militia attacks in Iraq and Syria escalate

Approximately seven mortar rounds landed in the US Embassy compound in Baghdad during an attack Friday, a US military official told Reuters, in what appeared to be the largest attack of its kind in recent memory. US forces in Iraq and Syria were also targeted with rockets and drones at least five more times on Friday; three times at separate bases in Syria, and twice at the Ain al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad, a different US defence official said. The attacks were the most recorded against US forces in the region in a single day since mid-October, when Iran-aligned militias started targeting US assets in Iraq and Syria over Washington’s backing of Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, in a call with Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaa Al-Sudani, condemned the attacks and singled out Iran-aligned armed groups Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba for the recent targetting of US personnel. “The United States reserves the right to respond decisively against those groups,” Austin told Sudani, according to a Pentagon statement summarising the call. The embassy attack marked the first time it had been fired on in more than a year, apparently widening the range of targets. Dozens of military bases housing US forces have been attacked, increasing fears of a broadening regional conflict.

No group [yet] claimed responsibility[...]

The US military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, left open the possibility that more projectiles were fired at the embassy compound but did not land within it. The US officials said Friday’s attacks caused no injuries, and the embassy attack caused very minor damage.[...]

State media said the attack damaged the headquarters of an Iraqi security agency. Sheikh Ali Damoush, a senior official in the Lebanese group Hezbollah, said in a Friday sermon that attacks by Iran-aligned groups across the Middle East aim to apply pressure for a halt to Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. He did not refer specifically to Friday’s attack. US forces in Iraq and Syria have been attacked at least 84 times since October 17, the defense official said.

The US has responded with a series of strikes that have killed at least 15 militants in Iraq and up to seven in Syria. The State Department called on the Iraqi security forces to immediately investigate and arrest the perpetrators. “The many Iran-aligned militias that operate freely in Iraq threaten the security and stability of Iraq, our personnel, and our partners in the region,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

“The Iraqi government has repeatedly committed to protect diplomatic missions as well as U.S. military personnel, who are present in the country at Iraq’s invitation. This is non-negotiable, as is our right to self-defence,” Miller added.[...]

[Prime Minister Sudani] said that undermining Iraq’s stability, reputation and targeting places Iraq has committed to protect were acts of terrorism. The head of militia Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, one of the main factions that has been targeting US forces in the region, said in a social media post that he rejected “stopping or easing operations” while “Zionist crimes continue in Gaza.”

The powerful Iraqi militia Kataeb Hezbollah said on Saturday that the rocket attack on the US embassy in Baghdad was “just the beginning of a new phase of fighting” and threatened to continue “operations against the US occupation” in Iraq.[...]

Kataeb Hezbollah, classified as a terrorist group by Washington, is part of the Islamic Resistance of Iraq militia, which has claimed more than 80 attacks against US posts in Iraq and Syria since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. However, the attack on the US embassy marked a serious escalation of these actions.

9 Dec 23

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Biden’s final days: Escalating aggression against Venezuela

By Lallan Schoenstein

After imposing genocidal policies that cost his party the U.S. election, President Joe Biden is filling out his final days of office with a slash-and-burn agenda that is even worse than the one he instigated before the elections.

In an outrageous attack on a sovereign country, the U.S. government is attempting to deny the Venezuelan people the leadership of their freely elected president, Nicolás Maduro. The Biden administration declared its belated recognition of Edmundo Gonzalez, the U.S.-funded candidate and big-time loser, in the July elections four months ago.

Biden waited until after the U.S. elections on Nov. 5 to more fully exercise his powers of “regime change” — a bid to overthrow a democratic election in Venezuela. Gonzalez is an old hand, a mercenary for the U.S. During the 1980s Contra war in Central America, Gonzales, operating from then-President C. A. Pérez’s Venezuelan embassy in El Salvador, was instrumental in running the covert U.S. counter-revolutionary campaign responsible for murdering thousands of Salvadorans.

[mariacallous]

Ukraine is set to face its toughest winter since the start of the full-scale invasion as Russia eyes cutting off its nuclear power after already bombing out capacity from half of its electricity generation sector in large-scale air strikes.

For now, Russia is not directly striking the plants with missiles and kamikaze drones. But Moscow has increasingly targeted nearby infrastructure, such as substations containing crucial equipment like transformers and power lines connecting nuclear plants to the grid.

“We're in a world where (Ukraine) has a deficit of functioning infrastructure. This is going to be the hardest winter yet,” International Energy Agency (IEA) Chief Economist Tim Gould told the Kyiv Independent.

If Russian attacks successfully disconnect all the power plants from the grid, then Ukraine’s only stable power source is gone, said Warsaw-based energy analyst Wojciech Jakobik.

“(Nuclear power) is a baseload capacity, which is irreplaceable by renewables, other sources, and especially not by energy imports,” he told the Kyiv Independent.

“With a smaller nuclear capacity in place, Ukraine will have less flexibility and less ability to stabilize (energy) generation.”

Ukraine has lost 9 gigawatts of power generation, including eight thermal plants and five hydro plants, due to Russian strikes this year. While companies scramble to repair their damaged assets, Russia is gearing up to attack Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure, the Energy Ministry's press office told the Kyiv Independent, which would freeze out Ukrainians and cause a humanitarian crisis if the country can’t swiftly repair and protect its infrastructure.

After the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in 2022, Ukraine relies heavily on three nuclear plants remaining under government control. They are the lifeline of the country, providing 60% of its power. The last mass attack on Aug. 26 forced Ukraine to disconnect three units at the Rivne and South Ukraine plants, causing weeks of power outages.

The country’s state-owned nuclear company, Energoatom, told the Kyiv Independent that all its power units are ready to operate at “maximum capacity” during the heating season, and the company connected a refurbished one-gigawatt nuclear power unit to the grid on Oct. 1. However, it has only recently announced plans to build additional fortifications to protect power plants from attacks.

Without stable power, Ukrainians will face another round of blackouts similar to the ones in the summer which could last as long as eight hours a day, according to Kyiv-based think tank DiXi Group. Brutally cold winter temperatures during power outages will freeze pipes, cutting off Ukrainians’ access to water and heating, and may lead to another wave of refugees, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) told the Kyiv Independent.

At the same time, attacks on nuclear infrastructure massively heighten the risks of accidents, the Energy Ministry's press office said. While Jakobik believes a Chernobyl-like scenario is unlikely as reactors are well protected, damage to substations could prevent backup supplies of electricity that ensure the safety of reactors, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The EU and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv both told the Kyiv Independent that they are pitching in to bolster the energy sector in time for winter with financial support, backup equipment, and humanitarian aid. But with Russia relentlessly churning out and firing its missiles and drones, the only tangible tool for energy security is stronger air defense, the Energy Ministry's press office said.

Running out of time and options

During the first years of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine relied on different facilities within its massive energy sector to survive the initial attacks on energy infrastructure and even managed to export electricity to the EU. But that changed this year after mass attacks beginning in March wiped out 50% of its energy assets. Now, Ukraine has run out of options and switched from exporting to importing 2 gigawatts of electricity from its European neighbors. Winter power outages appear inevitable. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission (UNHRMM) expects blackouts to last between 4-18 hours a day, depending on attacks and the weather, causing living conditions to crumble for millions of citizens. “The deficit of electricity supply could be up to 6 gigawatts. That's the equivalent of peak demand in Denmark,” Gould said. With nuclear power as the remaining foundation for Ukraine’s energy stability, it is the prime target for Russian strikes, the Energy Ministry's press office said. Ukraine’s government seeks to decentralize the power grid as quickly as possible, but this is unlikely to happen by the winter and private energy companies are desperately restoring their assets to strengthen the grid.

Ukraine hopes to recover 3 gigawatts by the end of the year, said Olena Lapenko, general manager in the Field of Security and Resilience at DiXi Group. But this depends on critical funding, which state electricity grid operator Ukrenergo puts at $1.5 billion for rapid repairs this season. So far, Ukraine has received nearly 700 million euros ($766 million) from its energy support fund in cooperation with the European Commission, and winter is fast approaching.

Part of the fund covers much-needed equipment, such as autotransformers, to patch up facilities damaged by Russian air strikes as fast as possible. Simple repairs around nuclear plants, like power lines, can be fixed within 24 hours, said Jakobik. But specialized equipment depends on deliveries from Western allies, which can take months unless there are readily available stockpiles, he said. “The tough part is, you replace the old infrastructure with new parts and Russia attacks it once again,” he added. DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company owned by its richest man Rinat Akhmetov, has lost 90% of its thermal plants capacity to Russian attacks. By winter, the company hopes to restore 60-65% of its thermal power that was damaged in spring. But even this would not be enough to replace nuclear power if all the plants are disconnected, said Oleksiy Povolotskiy, DTEK’s head of Recovery Office. Another issue, said Povolotskiy, is that the war has bitten a chunk out of Ukraine’s manual workforce while the scale of the damage is massive. DTEK is bringing in workers from other enterprises, like miners, to help clear debris. The company has asked European states to send engineers and machinery for more complex repairs.

The costs of Russian attacks are piling up for Ukraine. DTEK has already funneled $80 million into repairs from its own budget. Instead of relying on equipment that softens the fallout of attacks and power outages, Povolotskiy believes the most efficient solution is for Western allies to provide Ukraine with additional air-defense systems.

“Partners should understand that it is much cheaper and much more efficient to protect (energy facilities) than to repair,” he said.

The U.S. embassy in Ukraine told Kyiv Independent that the Defense Department will provide an additional Patriot battery and missiles but did not specify if this was directly for the protection of energy facilities. For now, this is the only confirmed delivery of an additional air defense battery, although Washington pledged a $2.6 billion aid package on Sept. 26 that includes munitions and support for air defense systems.

Ill prepared and ultra exposed

With no other extra air-defense systems currently in the pipeline, Ukraine’s government is building protective constructions for substations against falling debris and drones. However, not enough constructions have been built in time for winter and contractors have allegedly not been fully paid.

“More concrete constructions must be built as soon as possible,” Povolotskiy said.

Yuliia Kyian, an official at the Energy Ministry, told the Kyiv Independent during a discussion in Kyiv on Oct. 2, that the constructions are expensive and take time to build. They also cannot withstand ballistic missile strikes, she added.

Energoatom has faced criticism. In September and October, the company signed contracts to construct a $12.3 million shield around the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant and a $14.4 million worth of protection around the South Ukraine plant in Mykolaiv Oblast. Ukrainian anti-corruption watchdog Nashi Groshi reported that the contracts were concluded only after President Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN Security Council that Russia was preparing an attack on the three operating nuclear plants.

“It is difficult to assess why this was not done earlier,” said DiXi Group’s Lapenko.   “Probably no one could imagine that the Russians would aim directly at the nuclear power sites as this is a serious threat to nuclear safety. But we can’t exclude such a scenario.”

A nuclear disaster would threaten the whole of Europe, the Energy Ministry's press office said, adding that the global community must unite to prevent a catastrophe. Kyiv has reached out to the UN’s nuclear agency (IAEA) to place more observation missions around its power plants, but an agreement has not yet been reached.

International observers will ensure that safety standards are enforced at the plants and combat disinformation, as Moscow frequently denies Ukraine’s accusations of endangering nuclear safety, Jakobik said. Nevertheless, Russia could pummel nuclear facilities to the point that it is dangerous for people to remain and force evacuations.

“Russia is not a responsible stakeholder in the nuclear sector,” he said.

“It's using energy terrorism against Ukraine. You cannot be sure about what Russia is doing,” the energy analyst added.

[milkboydotnet]

Malaya Movement USA vehemently condemns the US government’s clandestine anti-vaccination and anti-China disinformation campaign aimed at Filipinos at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. This psychological warfare operation, uncovered by Reuters, is an unconscionable act by the US military in an effort to discredit and attack its rival superpower, China, at the expense of thousands of Filipino lives. It contributed to unfounded anti-vaccination hesitancy at a time when the Philippines was experiencing some of the worst cases of COVID infections and deaths in the region.

The investigation exposed the US’ psychological warfare operation through an orchestrated social media campaign to spread anti-Chinese sentiments and distrust for the Sinovac vaccine in the Philippines in early 2021. As the US worked with private corporations to squeeze profit out of the sale of vaccines, it also kept the life-saving vaccines away from innocent Filipinos for its own political, economic, and military interests against China. The massive disinformation campaign was carried out by the US military’s psychological operations center based in Tampa, Florida and deployed by private corporation, General Dynamics.

Such a campaign was possible because of the history of disinformation and psywar that was especially devastating under former president and dictator Rodrigo Duterte. Coupled with Duterte’s heavily militarized response to the global pandemic and crumbling public health infrastructure, the Philippines was not equipped to combat this anti-vaccination campaign. It is unsurprising but shameful that the Philippine state, through its Embassy or Consulates, failed to comment on the matter when asked by the journalists at Reuters. It is imperative that the Philippine Embassy do its job and uphold its duties to protect and serve Filipinos.

This sinister campaign is infuriating. The US has blood on its hands and certainly contributed to so many preventable deaths through this plot. While the US military was busy carrying out psychological warfare on innocent people across the globe and wasting US tax dollars, people in the US also suffered devastating deaths with very little support from the government. We remember the disproportionate number of Filipino nurses killed at the start of the pandemic and the dismal “stimulus” that amounted to less than a month’s worth of rent and bills. It is alarming that US tax dollars have not only funded human rights violations and war crimes in the Philippines but have also contributed to this blatant medical disinformation and psychological warfare on our people.

At present, mainstream media outlets in the Philippines are also radio silent on the matter, and we call on all Filipinos to raise public clamor. Do not let this story go unheard! Filipinos are not mere pawns and collateral in US’ war games. There is no excuse for gambling with the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and the US military, Department of Defense, the Pentagon, State Department, and all officials who played a role in implementing this deadly propaganda psywar must be held to account.

We demand that the Philippine government, particularly its Consulates and the Embassy in Washington DC, conduct an independent probe and investigate on behalf of its people.

We hold firm that no more US tax dollars go towards human rights violations, war crimes, and psychological warfare in the Philippines and that the Philippine Enhanced Resilience Act must be rejected. Pass the Philippine Human Rights Act instead and prevent more tax dollars from funding crimes against the Filipino people.

[girlactionfigure]

*ISRAEL REALTIME* - "Connecting the World to Israel in Realtime"

🔻Anti-genocide peace rockets fired from Gaza today (2) at Sderot, and friendly neighbor welcoming rockets and friendly homicide drones were fired by Hezbollah at Kiryat Shmona (3), Arab al-Aramsha, and Katzrin today.

▪️From Wednesday to Friday, 70 buses with "pilgrims" crossed the Iraqi-Syrian border. It is clear that these are not pilgrims, but Iranian and Iraqi fighters who cross into the territory of Syria and Lebanon.

▪️ABOUT ALL THE WARNINGS OF WAR IN THE NORTH.. The IDF does not inform the public or countries near and far about future military operations that it intends to launch into an operation or war.  The messages you have been hearing are NOT from the IDF, but rather efforts of the political echelon to deliver a message to Hezbollah that Israel is getting serious.  And in response you get the opposite, the item above, Iran moving militia fighters closer.

▪️Houthis: American and British ships (war and merchant) became legitimate targets after their attacks on Yemen.

▪️4 U.S. bases attacked in Syria and Iraq overnight.

▪️ANGRY SOLDIERS SAY.. he media does not reflect the reality, we are mowing them down in Gaza!!  According to US estimates, Hamas had approximately 25,000 terrorists before the October 7 war, and that the IDF has eliminated about 10,000 Hamas fighters since Oct. 7 with thousands more are missing and wounded.

▪️JUDEA-SHOMRON STATs.. since the beginning of the war, over 2,950 wanted persons have been arrested throughout the Judea and Samaria Division and the Bekaa and Valleys Division, over 1,350 of whom are associated with the terrorist organization Hamas.

▪️FRANCE has joined the suspend-UNWRA club.

▪️Heavy snow on Mt. Hermon, the site is closed.

▪️(How info spreads…)  Min. Of Foreign Affairs contacted foreign embassies in Israel and checked whether they have generators and satellite phones for backup in case of long power outages.  And noting that all these facilities are in Tel Aviv, Hertzilya or Jerusalem - that spreads the thought “what does the government know that they would ask such a question?”

▪️Noting 10 days after “medication” was delivered with the promise of delivery to hostages - with evidence.  No evidence provided.  Remember the last deal, visits by the Red Cross… never happened.  Why do we keep doing this?

▪️NBC news says Biden administration considering slowing down arms shipments to Israel to force Netanyahu to follow U.S. orders to reduce fighting in Gaza.  WHERE ARE THE BABIES?

▪️Min. Of National Security signs regulations automatically extending gun licenses that would expire in Q1, 2024 for months.

▪️IDF: Two reserve units are withdrawing from Gaza, one reserve unit is DEPLOYING to Gaza.

[orangerosebush]

[Link to the Reuters article. From June 14th, 2024]

"At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.

“COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!” one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: “From China – PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real.”

After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

The U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so.

Spokespeople for Trump and Biden did not respond to requests for comment about the clandestine program.

A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda to disparage China’s vaccine in the developing world, but the official declined to provide details.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the U.S. military “uses a variety of platforms, including social media, to counter those malign influence attacks aimed at the U.S., allies, and partners.” She also noted that China had started a “disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the spread of COVID-19.”

In an email, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it has long maintained the U.S. government manipulates social media and spreads misinformation.

Manila’s embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters inquiries, including whether it had been aware of the Pentagon operation. A spokesperson for the Philippines Department of Health, however, said the “findings by Reuters deserve to be investigated and heard by the appropriate authorities of the involved countries.” Some aid workers in the Philippines, when told of the U.S. military propaganda effort by Reuters, expressed outrage.

Briefed on the Pentagon’s secret anti-vax campaign by Reuters, some American public health experts also condemned the program, saying it put civilians in jeopardy for potential geopolitical gain. An operation meant to win hearts and minds endangered lives, they said.

“I don’t think it’s defensible,” said Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. “I’m extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the U.S. government would do that,” said Lucey, a former military physician who assisted in the response to the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The effort to stoke fear about Chinese inoculations risked undermining overall public trust in government health initiatives, including U.S.-made vaccines that became available later, Lucey and others said. Although the Chinese vaccines were found to be less effective than the American-led shots by Pfizer and Moderna, all were approved by the World Health Organization. Sinovac did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Academic research published recently has shown that, when individuals develop skepticism toward a single vaccine, those doubts often lead to uncertainty about other inoculations. Lucey and other health experts say they saw such a scenario play out in Pakistan, where the Central Intelligence Agency used a fake hepatitis vaccination program in Abbottabad as cover to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. Discovery of the ruse led to a backlash against an unrelated polio vaccination campaign, including attacks on healthcare workers, contributing to the reemergence of the deadly disease in the country.

“It should have been in our interest to get as much vaccine in people’s arms as possible,” said Greg Treverton, former chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, which coordinates the analysis and strategy of Washington’s many spy agencies. What the Pentagon did, Treverton said, “crosses a line.”

Together, the phony accounts used by the military had tens of thousands of followers during the program. Reuters could not determine how widely the anti-vax material and other Pentagon-planted disinformation was viewed, or to what extent the posts may have caused COVID deaths by dissuading people from getting vaccinated.

In the wake of the U.S. propaganda efforts, however, then-Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte had grown so dismayed by how few Filipinos were willing to be inoculated that he threatened to arrest people who refused vaccinations.

“You choose, vaccine or I will have you jailed,” a masked Duterte said in a televised address in June 2021. “There is a crisis in this country … I’m just exasperated by Filipinos not heeding the government.”

When he addressed the vaccination issue, the Philippines had among the worst inoculation rates in Southeast Asia. Only 2.1 million of its 114 million citizens were fully vaccinated – far short of the government’s target of 70 million. By the time Duterte spoke, COVID cases exceeded 1.3 million, and almost 24,000 Filipinos had died from the virus. The difficulty in vaccinating the population contributed to the worst death rate in the region.

A spokesperson for Duterte did not make the former president available for an interview.

Some Filipino healthcare professionals and former officials contacted by Reuters were shocked by the U.S. anti-vax effort, which they say exploited an already vulnerable citizenry. Public concerns about a Dengue fever vaccine, rolled out in the Philippines in 2016, had led to broad skepticism toward inoculations overall, said Lulu Bravo, executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination. The Pentagon campaign preyed on those fears.

“Why did you do it when people were dying? We were desperate,” said Dr. Nina Castillo-Carandang, a former adviser to the World Health Organization and Philippines government during the pandemic. “We don’t have our own vaccine capacity,” she noted, and the U.S. propaganda effort “contributed even more salt into the wound.”

The campaign also reinforced what one former health secretary called a longstanding suspicion of China, most recently because of aggressive behavior by Beijing in disputed areas of the South China Sea. Filipinos were unwilling to trust China’s Sinovac, which first became available in the country in March 2021, said Esperanza Cabral, who served as health secretary under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Cabral said she had been unaware of the U.S. military’s secret operation.

“I’m sure that there are lots of people who died from COVID who did not need to die from COVID,” she said.

To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military’s psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”

In uncovering the secret U.S. military operation, Reuters interviewed more than two dozen current and former U.S officials, military contractors, social media analysts and academic researchers. Reporters also reviewed Facebook, X and Instagram posts, technical data and documents about a set of fake social media accounts used by the U.S. military. Some were active for more than five years.

Clandestine psychological operations are among the government’s most highly sensitive programs. Knowledge of their existence is limited to a small group of people within U.S. intelligence and military agencies. Such programs are treated with special caution because their exposure could damage foreign alliances or escalate conflict with rivals.

Over the last decade, some U.S. national security officials have pushed for a return to the kind of aggressive clandestine propaganda operations against rivals that the United States’ wielded during the Cold War. Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in which Russia used a combination of hacks and leaks to influence voters, the calls to fight back grew louder inside Washington.

In 2019, Trump authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government, Reuters reported in March. As part of that effort, a small group of operatives used bogus online identities to spread disparaging narratives about Xi Jinping’s government.

COVID-19 galvanized the drive to wage psychological operations against China. One former senior Pentagon leader described the pandemic as a “bolt of energy” that finally ignited the long delayed counteroffensive against China’s influence war.

The Pentagon’s anti-vax propaganda came in response to China’s own efforts to spread false information about the origins of COVID. The virus first emerged in China in late 2019. But in March 2020, Chinese government officials claimed without evidence that the virus may have been first brought to China by an American service member who participated in an international military sports competition in Wuhan the previous year. Chinese officials also suggested that the virus may have originated in a U.S. Army research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. There’s no evidence for that assertion.

Mirroring Beijing’s public statements, Chinese intelligence operatives set up networks of fake social media accounts to promote the Fort Detrick conspiracy, according to a U.S. Justice Department complaint.

China’s messaging got Washington’s attention. Trump subsequently coined the term “China virus” as a response to Beijing’s accusation that the U.S. military exported COVID to Wuhan.

“That was false. And rather than having an argument, I said, ‘I have to call it where it came from,’” Trump said in a March 2020 news conference. “It did come from China.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said in an email that it opposed “actions to politicize the origins question and stigmatize China.” The ministry had no comment about the Justice Department’s complaint.

Beijing didn’t limit its global influence efforts to propaganda. It announced an ambitious COVID assistance program, which included sending masks, ventilators and its own vaccines – still being tested at the time – to struggling countries. In May 2020, Xi announced that the vaccine China was developing would be made available as a “global public good,” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” Sinovac was the primary vaccine available in the Philippines for about a year until U.S.-made vaccines became more widely available there in early 2022.

Washington’s plan, called Operation Warp Speed, was different. It favored inoculating Americans first, and it placed no restrictions on what pharmaceutical companies could charge developing countries for the remaining vaccines not used by the United States. The deal allowed the companies to “play hardball” with developing countries, forcing them to accept high prices, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University who has worked with the World Health Organization.

The deal “sucked most of the supply out of the global market,” Gostin said. “The United States took a very determined America First approach.”

To Washington’s alarm, China’s offers of assistance were tilting the geopolitical playing field across the developing world, including in the Philippines, where the government faced upwards of 100,000 infections in the early months of the pandemic.

The U.S. relationship with Manila had grown tense after the 2016 election of the bombastic Duterte. A staunch critic of the United States, he had threatened to cancel a key pact that allows the U.S. military to maintain legal jurisdiction over American troops stationed in the country.

Duterte said in a July 2020 speech he had made “a plea” to Xi that the Philippines be at the front of the line as China rolled out vaccines. He vowed in the same speech that the Philippines would no longer challenge Beijing’s aggressive expansion in the South China Sea, upending a key security understanding Manila had long held with Washington.

“China is claiming it. We are claiming it. China has the arms, we do not have it.” Duterte said. “So, it is simple as that.”

Days later, China’s foreign minister announced Beijing would grant Duterte’s plea for priority access to the vaccine, as part of a “new highlight in bilateral relations.”

China’s growing influence fueled efforts by U.S. military leaders to launch the secret propaganda operation Reuters uncovered.

“We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners,” a senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign in Southeast Asia told Reuters. “So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”

U.S. military leaders feared that China’s COVID diplomacy and propaganda could draw other Southeast Asian countries, such as Cambodia and Malaysia, closer to Beijing, furthering its regional ambitions.

A senior U.S. military commander responsible for Southeast Asia, Special Operations Command Pacific General Jonathan Braga, pressed his bosses in Washington to fight back in the so-called information space, according to three former Pentagon officials.

The commander initially wanted to punch back at Beijing in Southeast Asia. The goal: to ensure the region understood the origin of COVID while promoting skepticism toward what were then still-untested vaccines offered by a country that they said had lied continually since the start of the pandemic.

A spokesperson for Special Operations Command declined to comment.

At least six senior State Department officials responsible for the region objected to this approach. A health crisis was the wrong time to instill fear or anger through a psychological operation, or psyop, they argued during Zoom calls with the Pentagon.

“We’re stooping lower than the Chinese and we should not be doing that,” said a former senior State Department official for the region who fought against the military operation.

While the Pentagon saw Washington’s rapidly diminishing influence in the Philippines as a call to action, the withering partnership led American diplomats to plead for caution.

“The relationship is hanging from a thread,” another former senior U.S. diplomat recounted. “Is this the moment you want to do a psyop in the Philippines? Is it worth the risk?”

In the past, such opposition from the State Department might have proved fatal to the program. Previously in peacetime, the Pentagon needed approval of embassy officials before conducting psychological operations in a country, often hamstringing commanders seeking to quickly respond to Beijing’s messaging, three former Pentagon officials told Reuters.

But in 2019, before COVID surfaced in full force, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper signed a secret order that later paved the way for the launch of the U.S. military propaganda campaign. The order elevated the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the State Department when conducting psyops against those adversaries. The Pentagon spending bill passed by Congress that year also explicitly authorized the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, even “outside of areas of active hostilities.”

Esper, through a spokesperson, declined to comment. A State Department spokesperson referred questions to the Pentagon.

In spring 2020, special-ops commander Braga turned to a cadre of psychological-warfare soldiers and contractors in Tampa to counter Beijing’s COVID efforts. Colleagues say Braga was a longtime advocate of increasing the use of propaganda operations in global competition. In trailers and squat buildings at a facility on Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base, U.S. military personnel and contractors would use anonymous accounts on X, Facebook and other social media to spread what became an anti-vax message. The facility remains the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda factory.

Psychological warfare has played a role in U.S. military operations for more than a hundred years, although it has changed in style and substance over time. So-called psyopers were best known following World War II for their supporting role in combat missions across Vietnam, Korea and Kuwait, often dropping leaflets to confuse the enemy or encourage their surrender.

After the al Qaeda attacks of 2001, the United States was fighting a borderless, shadowy enemy, and the Pentagon began to wage a more ambitious kind of psychological combat previously associated only with the CIA. The Pentagon set up front news outlets, paid off prominent local figures, and sometimes funded television soap operas in order to turn local populations against militant groups or Iranian-backed militias, former national security officials told Reuters.

Unlike earlier psyop missions, which sought specific tactical advantage on the battlefield, the post-9/11 operations hoped to create broader change in public opinion across entire regions.

By 2010, the military began using social media tools, leveraging phony accounts to spread messages of sympathetic local voices – themselves often secretly paid by the United States government. As time passed, a growing web of military and intelligence contractors built online news websites to pump U.S.-approved narratives into foreign countries. Today, the military employs a sprawling ecosystem of social media influencers, front groups and covertly placed digital advertisements to influence overseas audiences, according to current and former military officials.

China’s efforts to gain geopolitical clout from the pandemic gave Braga justification to launch the propaganda campaign that Reuters uncovered, sources said.

By summer 2020, the military’s propaganda campaign moved into new territory and darker messaging, ultimately drawing the attention of social media executives.

In regions beyond Southeast Asia, senior officers in the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia, launched their own version of the COVID psyop, three former military officials told Reuters.

Although the Chinese vaccines were still months from release, controversy roiled the Muslim world over whether the vaccines contained pork gelatin and could be considered “haram,” or forbidden under Islamic law. Sinovac has said that the vaccine was “manufactured free of porcine materials.” Many Islamic religious authorities maintained that even if the vaccines did contain pork gelatin, they were still permissible since the treatments were being used to save human life.

The Pentagon campaign sought to intensify fears about injecting a pig derivative. As part of an internal investigation at X, the social media company used IP addresses and browser data to identify more than 150 phony accounts that were operated from Tampa by U.S. Central Command and its contractors, according to an internal X document reviewed by Reuters.

“Can you trust China, which tries to hide that its vaccine contains pork gelatin and distributes it in Central Asia and other Muslim countries where many people consider such a drug haram?” read an April 2021 tweet sent from a military-controlled account identified by X.

The Pentagon also covertly spread its messages on Facebook and Instagram, alarming executives at parent company Meta who had long been tracking the military accounts, according to former military officials.

One military-created meme targeting Central Asia showed a pig made out of syringes, according to two people who viewed the image. Reuters found similar posts that traced back to U.S. Central Command. One shows a Chinese flag as a curtain separating Muslim women in hijabs and pigs stuck with vaccine syringes. In the center is a man with syringes; on his back is the word “China.” It targeted Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a country that distributed tens of millions of doses of China’s vaccines and participated in human trials. Translated into English, the X post reads: “China distributes a vaccine made of pork gelatin.”

Facebook executives had first approached the Pentagon in the summer of 2020, warning the military that Facebook workers had easily identified the military’s phony accounts, according to three former U.S. officials and another person familiar with the matter. The government, Facebook argued, was violating Facebook’s policies by operating the bogus accounts and by spreading COVID misinformation.

The military argued that many of its fake accounts were being used for counterterrorism and asked Facebook not to take down the content, according to two people familiar with the exchange. The Pentagon pledged to stop spreading COVID-related propaganda, and some of the accounts continued to remain active on Facebook.

Nonetheless, the anti-vax campaign continued into 2021 as Biden took office.

Angered that military officials had ignored their warning, Facebook officials arranged a Zoom meeting with Biden’s new National Security Council shortly after the inauguration, Reuters learned. The discussion quickly became tense.

“It was terrible,” said a senior administration official describing the reaction after learning of the campaign’s pig-related posts. “I was shocked. The administration was pro-vaccine and our concern was this could affect vaccine hesitancy, especially in developing countries.”

By spring 2021, the National Security Council ordered the military to stop all anti-vaccine messaging. “We were told we needed to be pro-vaccine, pro all vaccines,” said a former senior military officer who helped oversee the program. Even so, Reuters found some anti-vax posts that continued through April and other deceptive COVID-related messaging that extended into that summer. Reuters could not determine why the campaign didn’t end immediately with the NSC’s order. In response to questions from Reuters, the NSC declined to comment.

The senior Defense Department official said that those complaints led to an internal review in late 2021, which uncovered the anti-vaccine operation. The probe also turned up other social and political messaging that was “many, many leagues away” from any acceptable military objective. The official would not elaborate.

The review intensified the following year, the official said, after a group of academic researchers at Stanford University flagged some of the same accounts as pro-Western bots in a public report. The high-level Pentagon review was first reported by the Washington Post. which also reported that the military used fake social media accounts to counter China’s message that COVID came from the United States. But the Post report did not reveal that the program evolved into the anti-vax propaganda campaign uncovered by Reuters.

The senior defense official said the Pentagon has rescinded parts of Esper’s 2019 order that allowed military commanders to bypass the approval of U.S. ambassadors when waging psychological operations. The rules now mandate that military commanders work closely with U.S. diplomats in the country where they seek to have an impact. The policy also restricts psychological operations aimed at “broad population messaging,” such as those used to promote vaccine hesitancy during COVID.

The Pentagon’s audit concluded that the military’s primary contractor handling the campaign, General Dynamics IT, had employed sloppy tradecraft, taking inadequate steps to hide the origin of the fake accounts, said a person with direct knowledge of the review. The review also found that military leaders didn’t maintain enough control over its psyop contractors, the person said.

A spokesperson for General Dynamics IT declined to comment.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using “disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”

And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign – General Dynamics IT – won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military."

[s7ray-cat]

PSA for any LGBTQ2IA+ people traveling abroad

This is a link to the LGBTQ+ Travel Safety Index

(Disclaimer: These are excerpts from an article I found)

These are some tools to find safe places to travel for LGBTQ2IA+ people:

LGBTQ-specific travel news and safety basics

U.S. State Department ✈ A section of this government-run online resource offers basic pointers for LGBTQ travelers such as travel document checklists, general safety tips, and information about travel insurance and various U.S. embassy locations.

Equaldex ✈ Launched in 2014, this interactive map-anchored website keeps a running tab on LGBTQ rights–related laws around the world via a global network of user contributions.

National Center for Transgender Equality ✈ This Washington, D.C.–based advocacy organization addresses information relevant to gender-nonconforming and transgender travelers. It features a particularly comprehensive guide to airport security that addresses concerns related to potentially intrusive TSA screening procedures.

OutRight Action International ✈ Formerly known as the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, this nonprofit publishes news, studies, and reports on LGBTQ issues around the world that can help travelers stay informed about safety in various destinations.

Erasing 76 Crimes ✈ Journalist and LGBTQ advocate Colin Stewart heads up this news-oriented blog that spotlights global developments related to LGBTQ rights spanning countries across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, and the Americas.

GoAbroad’s LGBTQ Study Abroad Guide✈ For queer students interested in studying abroad, this PDF provides a wealth of information, including tips for coming out to a host family, LGBTQ-specific scholarships, and a list of queer-friendly study abroad programs.

LGBTQ-friendly accommodations and services

The International LGBTQ+ Travel Association ✈ This website acts as a one-stop-shop for all things related to LGBTQ travel planning. It brings together a massive network of queer-approved hotels, transportation providers, tourism boards, travel agencies, tour operators, event promoters, and local media in over 80 countries worldwide; it also maintains recommendation-based travel and business blogs.

Purple Roofs ✈ An LGBTQ mainstay since the late ’90s, this booking website showcases small, family-owned bed-and-breakfasts, hotels, vacation rentals, inns, and tour companies worldwide. It also hosts a variety of related travel resources, including event listings and a dedicated LGBTQ travel blog.

World Rainbow Hotels ✈ This modern travel directory combines a curated list of stylish, queer-friendly hotels in countries where attitudes toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans travelers are for the most part accepting. The website also features an image-driven blog full of travel inspiration, global news, events, and other articles.

Travel Gayand Travel Gay Asia ✈ These twin booking sites serve a predominantly gay male audience, pointing international travelers to city guides with relevant information about bars, clubs, saunas, shops, beaches, and events, as well as queer-friendly hotels across the globe.

GayCities ✈ A similarly gay male–focused online travel guide, this web resource recommends gay-friendly bars, clubs, restaurants, hotels, shops, gyms, and more in 238 different cities from Cape Town to Mexico City.

In addition to explicitly LGBTQ outlets, you can now find pages dedicated to LGBTQ consumers on mainstream online travel booking sites like Expedia and Orbitz. Queer-oriented promotions and packages are also often offered by big-name hotels such as Marriott and Kimpton.

LGBTQ-specialized tour operators and agencies

LGBTQ-friendly tour operators for organized trips

For LGBTQ travelers who’d rather leave trip planning to the experts, award-winning tour operators such as Outstanding Travel, Zoom Vacations, Out Adventures, Toto Tours, Detours Travel, and Concierge Travel all offer a diverse array of international group and private trips. International tour operator R Family Vacations also designs and leads LGBTQ family-friendly trips (plus a few new adults-only options) on land and at sea for public groups and individuals. The queer-run wilderness education organization, The Venture Out Project, operates LGBTQ-specific backpacking trips in the United States for teens, adults, and families.

LGBTQ-friendly cruises

Inclusive travel company Vacaya hosts curated LGBTQ getaways on chartered cruise ships, as well as to all-LGBTQ international resorts. The popular lesbian travel brand Olivia Cruises has been running entertainment-filled cruise, resort, adventure, and riverboat group trips exclusively for queer female–identified travelers since 1990. And cruise company Source Events, which caters predominantly to gay men and their families, organizes both all-gay charters and private LGBTQ groups aboard larger cruise ships (as well as personalized cruise journeys and on-land group itineraries).

Related Free Travel Apps to Download Before Your Next Trip

LGBTQ-friendly travel and networking apps

From joining queer-specific networking groups, to checking for upcoming LGBTQ events in different cities, to starting important conversations about shared experiences through hashtags such as #travelingwhiletrans, LGBTQ travelers have long relied on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter when planning for domestic and international trips. More recently, meetup apps have created new opportunities for connection between LGBTQ travelers.

Apps (available on iOS and Android)

Meetup ✈ This stalwart community-building platform is a great tool for connecting with fellow LGBTQ folks and getting to know local queer scenes on the road. The “LGBTQ Meetups” section points app users toward various happy hours, professional networking events, book clubs, and hiking groups, as well as playgroups for LGBTQ parents.

SCRUFF Venture ✈ Gay dating app SCRUFF recently launched a travel-oriented edition aimed at making it easier to connect with LGBTQ people “before and while you travel.” By clicking into one of the app’s 500-plus destinations, users can view members marked as “visiting now” or “visiting soon” in each given location. The app also provides travel tips from city “Ambassadors” (members who volunteer to give advice and recommendations to visitors), plus updates about LGBTQ issue–related travel advisories.

Refuge Restrooms ✈ This important resource for trans, intersex, and gender-nonconforming individuals maps out safe restrooms in various countries around the world, which users can search for based on proximity to a location.

Related Seeing the World Through Rainbow-Colored Glasses

LGBTQ-focused travel magazines and blogs

Magazines

Out Magazine’s online outpost Out Traveler covers everything from luxury LGBTQ-friendly hotels and nightlife hot spots to the latest must-have gadgets for jet-setters. Passport Magazine, available in both digital and print formats, touches upon a wealth of topics related to LGBTQ travel, with sections devoted to food and drink, hotel reviews, product roundups, and events. Also worth checking out is Connextions Magazine, which compiles long-form hotel reviews, human interest stories, destination guides, and other global lifestyle content relevant to LGBTQ travelers. (The print and digital publication also has a Spanish edition.)

Although not their main focus, many widely circulated LGBTQ lifestyle outlets like the Advocate, Curve, Autostraddle, Diva, and Chill also feature travel-related news, commentary, city guides, hotel reviews, profiles, and more.

Blogs

Touted as “a lifestyle blog for men and other stylish travelers,” the popular blog Travels of Adam hosts op-eds and personal essays, LGBTQ travel tips and hacks, and restaurant, bar, and hotel reviews in destinations from Egypt to England. Married couple Auston and David head up another gay male–focused travel blog called Two Bad Tourists, which features navigating international gay-friendly destinations, festivals, and events.

On the queer female travel blog Dopes on the Road, you can expect to find a wide range of content, from travel diaries and safety tips to pop culture commentary. Beautiful photo galleries, travel journals, LGBTQ profiles and interviews, travel tips, and destination guides dominate Once Upon a Journey, a helpful travel blog from lesbian couple Roxanne Weijer and Maartje Hensen.

[eretzyisrael]

BY: TAMAR STERNTHAL

On April 1, Iran condemned Israel “for its attack on the consular building of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Damascus,” and threatened that the “Zionist regime will be held responsible.”

Israel, however, disputes that the fatal strike, which killed seven Revolutionary Guards members, including two commanders, hit a diplomatic facility. As Haaretz‘s Amos Harel explained:

Since the Damascus bombing Monday, the Iranians have focused on the site that was attacked, a building attached to their embassy in Syria. Iran has described the structure as part of its consulate in the city. Israel asserts that it is not a diplomatic facility, that Iran has no consulate in Damascus and that all those who were killed were from the IRGC, Hezbollah and Syrian militias, known terrorists and no diplomats or ordinary civilians. Iran’s assertion of the building’s diplomatic status is aimed at laying the groundwork in the international arena for the Iranian case that the facility was under Iranian sovereignty, and tantamount to an attack on Iranian soil.

The United States, for its part, has not yet determined whether or not the attacked site was a consular facility. As State Department spokesman Matthew Miller stated in an April 8 press briefing: “It is our position that we are still attempting to answer that question, whether it was a consular facility or not.”

Enter United Press International journalist Adam Schrader, a New York-based reporter who has trouble reporting United Nations data on Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians without fabricating libels, who accepted at face value unfounded claims from anti-Israel activists that a New Jersey synagogue was selling off Palestinian land, who has exonerated Hamas for its Oct. 7 atrocities, and has falsely reported that “Israeli leaders raided the al-Aqsa Mosque.”

It’s astonishing that while U.S. intelligence has yet to determine whether or not the attacked Damascus building is indeed a diplomatic facility, Adam Schrader has gotten to the bottom of the matter.

“Israel launched an attack Monday that destroyed Iran’s consulate in Damascus, the capital of Syria,” he unequivocally reported in his April 7 article (“Iran’s top commander warns Israel it committed suicide with Damascus attack“).

If U.S. intelligence, with all of its vast resources, has not yet determined whether the building that was hit was a consular facility, how exactly has the UPI reporter with a troubled relationship with facts managed to do so?

Going even beyond Iran’s claim, Schrader deemed the building “Iran’s consulate in Damascus.” Thus, he falsely reported that the whole consulate was destroyed, as opposed to a specific building which the Iranians say belong to its consular mission.

Meanwhile, Schrader further harms UPI’s standing as “a credible source for the most important stories of the day” while bolstering Iranian and Hamas messaging. Veering sharply from the attack on the building in Damascus to uncritically parroting highly dubious propaganda accusing Israeli troops of carrying out sexual violence against Palestinians, he wrote:

[Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim] Safavi also encouraged the Palestinian militia Hamas to preserve its strength and continue its offensive operations against Israel, as he said that the Israeli occupation has led to “war crimes, genocide, rape and famine.” U.N. experts have previously expressed alarm at reports of rape of Palestinian women amid the war, while experts have long expressed concern of sexual violence against Palestinian women detained by Israeli forces. And Israel is currently facing charges of genocide levied by South Africa.

Who needs a building in Damascus for diplomacy when a UPI journalist in New York eagerly promotes Iranian messaging? 

CAMERA commends McClatchy newspapers for pulling Schrader’s story from the following news sites following communication from our Israel office: Merced Sun Star, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Rock Hill Herald, Belleville News-Democrat, Lexington Herald-Leader, The Telegraph (Macon), Centre Daily Times, San Luis Obispo Tribune, The Bellingham Herald, The Modesto Bee, The Sacramento Bee, Olympian, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Wichita Eagle, Tri-City Herald, Herald-Sun, Bradenton Herald, Fresno Bee, Idaho Statesman, Tacoma News Tribune, The State, Island Packet, Sun News, and Miami Herald.

[usafphantom2]

Fearing war with Iran, Israel asks the United States to approve the sale of 25 F-15EX fighters soon

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 04/02/2024 - 19:47 in Military

The consequences of the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, on April 1º 2024, may mean that Israel defied an open war with Iran. Although it is militarily superior in the Middle East, and always has the support of the United States, the many fronts that Jews have to face make Israel need to prepare for various scenarios. One scenario to face the war with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries is to request the accelerated delivery of the purchase of 25 F-15EX fighters.

President Joe Biden's administration is considering whether to authorize the huge $18 billion arms transfer package to Israel, which includes the acquisition of dozens of F-15EX fighters along with weapons, three sources familiar with the matter said.

The sale of 25 Boeing F-15EX jets to Israel has been under review since the United States received a formal order in January 2023, one of the sources said. Accelerating the delivery of the planes was one of the main requests of the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, who visited Washington last week and held talks with those responsible ?? Americans, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Seeing the escalation that is taking place in the Middle East, a source said that the U.S. is now considering accelerating the sale of F-15EX fighters to Israel. The Israeli Air Force also said it intends to double the number of orders in question.

The official Request Letter (LOR) for the purchase of the F-15EX fighters was sent by the Israeli Government to the U.S. Government last week. LOR is the first stage of the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) process. Indonesia had already submitted a LOR for the F-15EX acquisition plan. After sending the LOR, only then will the Agency for Cooperation for the Security of Defense (DSCA) disclose the information of the offer along with the value of the sale.

The Israeli Air Force wants 25 new F-15EX and, in parallel, will also upgrade 25 of its F-15I variants to the same avionic configuration as the F-15EX, except for the fly-by-wire system. The Israeli Air Force currently operates 50 F-15 A/B/C/D variants and 25 F-15I variants.

F-15I

When Israel made the decision to buy more F-15 and F-35, it was based on the assumption that in future combat scenarios the targets would be protected by advanced air defense systems. This would require the first wave of F-35 to neutralize the enemy's air defense systems and then the role of the F-15 to carry out subsequent attacks on enemy territory.

Although Israel has asked to speed up the acquisition of the F-15EX and Washington is considering doing so, on the other hand, it is not easy for Boeing to accelerate the production of the F-15EX, unless this is done through a 'change' in the production queue of the F-15EX (Eagle II) commissioned by the U.S. Air Force (USAF).

Tags: Military AviationBoeingF-15EXIAF - Israeli Air Force/Israel Air Force

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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