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Marcel Ciolacu has stepped down after a shock presidential rerun that saw right-wing firebrand George Simion take the lead in the first round

Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu has announced his resignation and effectively disbanded the country’s pro-EU ruling coalition, after a Eurosceptic right-wing candidate emerged as the frontrunner in the first round of presidential elections.

With over 95% of votes counted in Sunday’s presidential vote rerun, George Simion, leader of the right-wing Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), is projected to secure 40.52% of the vote, according to the news site G4 Media. He is well ahead of his pro-EU challengers, former Senator Crin Antonescu and Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, who both hovered slightly above 20%.

Addressing reporters at his party’s headquarters on Monday, Ciolacu acknowledged that “our coalition has failed to meet its stated objective.” 

“I saw the vote cast by Romanians yesterday, and it shows that the coalition, at least in its current form, lacks legitimacy. That is why I have decided that we must leave the coalition, and accordingly, I am submitting my resignation,” the official stated.

The PSD party will also abstain from backing either candidate in the second round of the presidential election slated for May 18. Antonescu, who had been supported by the ruling big tent coalition, comprised of the Social Democrats, the liberal PNL party and the Hungarian minority party UDMR/RMDSZ, failed to secure a place on the run-off ballot.

The “stated objective” Ciolacu referenced likely refers to the coalition’s 2024 campaign promises of stability and pro-EU continuity.

Following the dissolution of the ruling coalition, cabinet ministers are expected to continue serving in an interim capacity for the next 45 days until a new majority emerges after the second round of presidential elections.

Simion is a vocal critic of the European Union, which he has described as a “greedy and corrupt bubble,” and has taken aim at Brussels-mandated immigration and energy policies in particular. While on the campaign trail, the right-wing politician clarified that he favors a “Europe of sovereign nations, not a federal superstate,” and also spoke in defense of “traditional values” in contrast to “globalist ideologies,” represented by LGBTQ and gender ideology.

While insisting that he is not pro-Russian, Simion has opposed weapons deliveries to Ukraine, calling for a negotiated settlement.

In November 2024, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) blacklisted him over “systematic anti-Ukrainian activities.” Neighboring Moldova also banned the Romanian politician after he labeled it an “artificial country” with no chance of ever joining the EU.

The presidential election rerun was held after Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the results of a vote held in November, in which independent right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu received 23% of ballots cast. The authorities cited “irregularities” in his campaign, as well as intelligence reports claiming that Russia had meddled in the election – an allegation Moscow has strongly denied.

In March, the Central Electoral Bureau barred Georgescu from running again, citing his alleged “extremist” stance and a failure to comply with electoral procedures.

Simion has publicly supported Georgescu, arriving together with him at a polling station on Sunday.

“We are here with a single mission: to restore constitutional order and democracy,” the AUR candidate told reporters.

The popular opposition party has been blacklisted, a big step down the slippery slope towards a total ban

Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (literally, the Federal Office for Protecting the Constitution), has released a bombshell: Based on a report of over a thousand pages, the Verfassungsschutz has classified the AfD (Alternative for Germany) party as “confirmedly right-extremist.” Or, to translate from bureaucratese, “extreme-right.” That means that the AfD is now officially tagged as hostile to the constitutional order of Germany.

Regional branches of the party as well as its former youth organization have been given the same label before. The party as a whole has been formally labeled a “suspect case” (Verdachtsfall) for years, which already allowed the Verfassungsschutz to spy on it. This new classification now is not yet a prohibition. It is more akin to an extreme form of official blacklisting: In practical terms, the AfD can still contest elections, citizens can still vote for it, and its candidates can still represent them.

It is also not a crime to be a member of the AfD; there are currently about 51,000. At the same time, members who are also public servants, for instance in the police, may well face individual assessments of their loyalty to the state.

Conveniently, the Verfassungsschutz has not published the report underlying its finding. But its key allegations against the AfD have been advertised widely: Due to its – very real and often brutal – xenophobic rhetoric, the AfD stands accused of systematically offending against human dignity, an ideal explicitly protected as “inviolable” by the very first article and first paragraph of the German constitution (formally known as the Basic Law).

More broadly, the AfD, the Verfassungsschutz argues, advances an ethno-chauvinistic – to translate the almost untranslatable German adjective “völkisch” – concept of the German population that discriminates against those who are not or not entirely of ethnic German descent. That is – full disclosure – Germans such as me, for instance. That as well, the domestic intelligence experts charge, is not compatible with Germany’s constitutional order.

That Germans can, for now, still vote AfD does not mean that the Verfassungsschutz’s new move is a formality. On the contrary, it is a grievous and misguided escalation, in three ways: It allows the government to boost spying on the AfD by surveillance and informers to the maximum. In principle at least, it greatly stigmatizes the party in the public sphere. Finally, if a formal procedure to achieve a full prohibition were to be initiated, then its chances of success have now increased.

Little wonder then that the AfD has already announced that it will fight the new classification in the courts. It is hard to predict its chances of overturning it. For one thing, last year the AfD lost a similar case – if with lower stakes – when it contested its prior Verfassungsschutz categorization as “suspect.”

It’s little wonder also that some political opponents of the AfD are already loudly clamoring for fresh attempts to fully ban the AfD and remove it from German politics by brute suppression. “If you can’t beat them, snuff them” might as well be the motto of those AfD rivals.

For, despite silly claims to the contrary, the escalating attack on the party is inevitably political and does reflect the AfD’s massive recent success: with 25 percent and more, the AfD is now often the strongest single party in German polls; it did very well at the last federal elections, taking second place with almost 21 percent after the mainstream conservatives; it has a large parliamentary presence of 152 seats, doubling its previous weight. It is, by far, the largest and most important opposition party. Many Germans will, rightly, see the current moves against the AfD as a political abuse of legal norms – in short, lawfare – to hamstring or destroy a political rival that has become too threatening.

Some German mainstream politicians, including the always extremely cautious Olaf Scholz, are more reticent. Scholz, notoriously, is the man who smiled sheepishly when Washington let the world know it would take out Germany’s Nord Stream pipelines; he also denies the Gaza genocide, while Germany is supplying Israel with arms and political support. Scholz, in other words, is the opposite of a courageous hero. And yet, his hesitence about going for a full ban on the AfD makes sense.

Because, in simple practical terms, notwithstanding the Verfassungsschutz classification, that, too, would be an undertaking with an unpredictable outcome. Fortunately, German law makes it difficult to completely prohibit a party: Only three institutions can start the legal process – parliament, the federal council (the upper chamber, representing Germany’s states), and the federal government in Berlin – and only the country’s constitutional court can decide such a case. Similar hurdles would have to be overcome to deprive the AfD of public funding, another demand currently made with fresh force by its opponents.

If there were an attempt to prohibit the AfD and it failed, the only party profiting from it would be, obviously, the AfD: it would then be able to claim both the mantle of martyrdom and victory over the deep state and its lawfare. Like Donald Trump recently in the US, the AfD has an in-built capacity to politically profit from persecution that its enemies underestimate at their peril.

Even if a prohibition attempt were to succeed, simply abolishing a party that a quarter (and counting) of German voters are supporting would, of course, trigger enormous, justified frustrations and a massive popular backlash. But there are even more – and more fundamental – reasons why both the current ostracizing of the AfD and a potential full ban are very bad ideas.

First, various commentators and politicians have already pointed out that the industrial-strength blacklisting now applied to the AfD is likely to buttress the so-called “firewall,” that is, in essence, the abysmal policy of all other parties to rule out the AfD as a coalition partner, that is, to systematically exclude it from government no matter how many Germans vote for it. In practical terms, this means that, in terms of both numbers and real – if denied – ideological affinity, the AfD, not the SPD, should be forming a government with the CDU now: The firewall already has momentous distorting effects on election consequences, and all Germans can see it.

The firewall also means that by now more than a fifth of German voters are, in effect, partly disenfranchised and treated as second-class voters and thus second-class citizens. That’s because their votes clearly are deprived – deliberately and, as it were, by definition – of a power that all other votes have, namely, to potentially influence not only the composition of parliament but that of government as well.

The firewall is, in other words, not something good democrats should be proud of; it is a blatant form of massive discrimination. What makes this particularly harmful is that the AfD is dominant in what used to be East Germany. Hence, discriminating against it and its voters means, inevitably, discriminating not only politically, which is bad enough, but regionally as well, along the worst possible fault line in all of Germany.

Consider, for instance, how not only but especially AfD voters or members in the former East Germany must feel, when they hear CDU politician Marco Wanderwitz claim that the AfD “must be eliminated“ because as long as it is around “to fill up” voters (all Wanderwitz’s own bizarre terms) with its ideology, those same voters cannot be reclaimed by “democracy.” It’s hard to imagine a more patronizing and demeaning statement. Good luck, Germany, with riding out the polarizing effects of such approaches, combining the obviously unfair with the obnoxiously offensive.

Second, it is true that significant parts of the AfD – not merely a fringe – are far or extreme right. But, even if that may be counterintuitive too many, to fight the party with lawfare is still principally – not only pragmatically – wrong, because all German mainstream parties – as well as much of the AfD, by the way – support come-what-may a very far-right Israeli regime that has been stomping on that famous human dignity for decades and has been committing a live-streamed genocide since late 2023. It is ludicrous, peak hypocrisy to stand by apartheid-genocidal Israel in foreign policy but try to blacklist or even forbid the AfD domestically.

Third, all too few Germans seem to be aware that the whole idea of protecting democracy by aggressively identifying those accused of not supporting it and then marginalizing and suppressing them has a very dark history. Instead, the simplistic tale Germans are told again and again by their leaders and mainstream media is that this ideal of so-called “militant democracy” is the correct post-World War Two response to the manner in which the Nazis came to power in 1933. As if that so-called ‘seizure of power’ had not been most of all the outcome of a conspiracy – in practice, not ‘theory’ – of small traditional elites.

‘Militant democracy,’ on the other hand, was actually tried out already during World War II; not, obviously, in Nazi Germany but in the US, under the direct influence of the recognized and usually venerated intellectual father of the concept, the German émigré Karl Loewenstein.

Regarding those who think that ‘militant democracy’ can do ‘merely’ political and not very concrete, brutal harm, they should urgently read up on this first experiment in Loewensteinian democracy ‘defense.’ For Loewenstein did not just theorize, argue, and lobby. As American historian Udi Greenberg has long shown in his book “The Weimar Century” and a shorter online article, Loewenstein inspired and played an important role in a long international US campaign to identify and suppress alleged “subversives” in the Western hemisphere.

Carried out under Washington’s leadership in several countries of Latin America as well, this campaign ended up surveiling, incarcerating, and deporting thousands, without due process or appeal, simply by administrative fiat. At its peak stood literal, now mostly forgotten – unlike the better-known case of the World War II persecution of Japanese Americans – concentration camps on US soil.

And – surprise, surprise – many of the victims were, of course, innocent. Indeed, Greenberg found that US officials knew they “posed no security threat” and that “only a tiny minority” among them were even politically active in any way. What the preponderant majority was repressed for was not what they had done – nothing – but who they were or, in the eye of over-eager and over-empowered security bureaucrats, seemed to be. The same American officials also knew that many arrests were really “motivated by racism or greed, with internal reports mentioning “policemen’s plans to take over the prisoners’ houses.”

Finally, to reach peak absurdity, US officials were aware from internal reporting that the victims of their campaign included Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, now absurdly targeted as enemy agents. If you have never heard about this extensive practical test of the concept of ‘militant democracy,’ guided by its intellectual godfather himself, and its extremely dark outcomes, then ask yourself why.

Germany may end up prohibiting its biggest, most important opposition party – in the name of “democracy.” This would be a new milestone in the EU’s relentlessly escalating – Romania, France, even Moldova, which is not even a member yet – authoritarian campaign to bend voters to the will of radical-Centrist establishment parties that monopolize the notion of democracy and thereby undermine, even destroy whatever is left of its reality. Whether you like AfD politics or not – I do not, not at all – you should understand that the real if insidious threat to democracy comes from those waging lawfare against it.

The German foreign ministry has rejected US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks that it was wrong to brand the AfD party as extremist

Germany’s foreign ministry has rejected US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claim that Berlin’s designation of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as extremist amounted to “tyranny in disguise.”

Rubio on Friday criticized Germany’s domestic security service (BfV) for branding the AfD as a “confirmed extremist entity” and called on Berlin to reverse the move. The foreign ministry responded by saying “this is democracy,” and defended the move as a measure to protect the rule of law.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer said, as quoted by AFP, that “the insinuations contained (in Rubio’s comments) are certainly unfounded.” 

Rubio has said that it is not the AfD that is extremist, but rather the “establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies,” which the German party opposes.

The BfV has previously warned of a threat to the country’s democratic order, saying the AfD’s anti-immigration party “disregards human dignity.” The party has rejected the classification, calling it unlawful.

The party was founded in 2013 amid a backlash against Germany’s handling of the eurozone debt crisis. It has since shifted focus to demanding tighter immigration and asylum laws and opposing the “woke agenda.” The party is also critical of NATO and has staged protests against sending weapons to Ukraine.

The AfD finished second in the federal elections in February, winning 152 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag. Last month, it topped opinion polls for the first time, with 26% support.

The BfV’s classification allows authorities to conduct surveillance on the party without restrictions.

On Monday, the AfD filed a lawsuit with an administrative court in Cologne, where the BfV is headquartered, according to DPA news agency.

The court challenge comes as Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, whose party won the February elections, is set to be chosen as Germany’s chancellor, replacing Olaf Scholz. Germany’s conservative CDU/CSU union and the Social Democrats (SPD) party signed a coalition deal on Monday, clearing the way for a new government to be sworn in on Tuesday.

The reported plan includes the forced relocation of Palestinians and occupation of the territory

The Israeli government has approved a plan for the complete military occupation of Gaza and the forced relocation of its Palestinian inhabitants to the southern part of the territory, multiple news outlets have reported citing unnamed officials.

According to officials quoted by the AP, the new plan is meant to help Israel achieve its war aims of defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages held in Gaza. Israel says the militant group is holding 59 captives, although about 35 are believed to be dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet voted unanimously in favor of the strategy during a meeting on Monday morning, two sources told the media. Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces Eyal Zamir has also announced the mobilization of tens of thousands of additional reservists.

“The plan will include, among other things, the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories, moving the Gaza population south for their protection,” an Israeli official stated, as quoted by Agence France Presse.

The move likely will lead to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, which could exacerbate an already dire humanitarian crisis, the AP reports.

Zamir announced the mobilization on Sunday, emphasizing that more troops were necessary to “increase pressure” on Hamas. The elimination of the militant group is the declared aim of the Israeli offensive, in retaliation for a Hamas-led incursion into Israel in October 2023.

The attack resulted in approximately 1,200 fatalities in Israel and the abduction of dozens of hostages. Israeli bombardments have claimed over 50,000 lives in Gaza, predominantly civilians.

Israel has faced accusations of indiscriminate bombings, deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, and obstruction of humanitarian aid. The humanitarian situation has deteriorated sharply due to an Israeli-imposed blockade, leading to severe shortages of food, medical supplies, and other essential resources. International organizations have expressed grave concern over the crisis and its impact on the civilian population.

In February, US President Donald Trump advocated the “voluntary” relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to countries such as Jordan and Egypt, saying that it would allow the enclave to be transformed into a resort zone.

While many countries have condemned Trump’s proposal, Netanyahu called it a “remarkable idea” that should be “pursued.”

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that freeing the Israeli hostages in Gaza was not his top priority, suggesting instead that defeating Hamas should take precedence over a hostage deal.

“We have many objectives, many goals in this war,” Netanyahu said. “We want to bring back all of our hostages. That is a very important goal. In war, there is a supreme objective. And that supreme objective is victory over our enemies. And that is what we will achieve.”

Nothing the prime minister said here is true or valid — unless by “enemies” he means “all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.

Netanyahu Says Freeing Hostages Is Not His Priority
The Israeli leader said his 'supreme objective is victory over enemies'
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Netanyahu #Gaza #Israel #Palestinians #hostages https://t.co/jI1XBUkA9h

Netanyahu has been fairly transparent about the fact that Israel’s ultimate goal in Gaza is neither freeing the hostages nor defeating Hamas, but seizing Palestinian territory and removing its Palestinian inhabitants. He has openly said that Israel will occupy Gaza via military force, completely ruling out the possibility of any form of Palestinian government for the enclave. He has openly said he wants to enact President Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, which explicitly entails removing “all” Palestinians and never allowing them to return.

So they’ve made this perfectly clear. This isn’t about Hamas, except insofar as an armed resistance group will make it difficult to forcibly remove all Palestinians from Gaza. And it certainly isn’t about hostages.

And yet, bizarrely, this is how the western political-media class continues to frame this onslaught. They call it Israel’s “war with Hamas”, when it’s nothing other than an undisguised ethnic cleansing operation. They prattle on about October 7, hostages, and terrorism, even though it has already been made abundantly clear that this has nothing to do with any of those things. They act as though the admission was simply never made.

There is absolutely no excuse for continuing to babble about hostages and Hamas after the US and Israel said the goal is the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They told you what this is really about. They said it. With their face holes. They said it right to you. End of debate.

Israel has been seeking ways to purge Gaza of Palestinians for generations. That’s all this has ever been about. Not October 7. Not hostages. Not Hamas. Not terrorism. Everything about Israel’s operations in Gaza have indicated that their real goal is to remove Palestinians from a Palestinian territory and not to free hostages or defeat Hamas. And then when Trump took office, they started openly admitting it.

Trump Says No Right of Return for Palestinians in Gaza Under His Plan
Egypt has called an emergency Arab summit in response to #Trump's repeated calls for the permanent displacement of Gaza's #Palestinians
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Gaza #Israel #Egypt https://t.co/Yg4hswznCU

How is this not the whole entire conversation every time Gaza comes up? How is this not the beginning, middle and end of every single discussion?

This is like a cop looking right into someone’s phone camera while strangling a black man to death and saying “I am killing this man because I am racist and I want to kill black people,” and then afterward everyone’s still saying “resisting arrest” and “we don’t know what happened before the video started recording”. He said what he was doing and what his motives were with his own mouth.

You don’t get to babble about Hamas, October 7 or hostages in defense of Israel’s actions in Gaza anymore. That is not a thing. If you want to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza, the sole topic of conversation is whether or not it’s okay to forcibly purge an entire population from their historic homeland by systematically bombing, shooting and starving them while destroying their civilian infrastructure, solely because of their ethnicity.

That is what the discussion is about. Not anything else. That and that only.

Reprinted with permission from Caitlin’s Newsletter.
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President Trump has proposed using the revenue from his increased tariffs to lower or even eliminate income taxes — with a priority on removing Americans making less than 200,000 dollars a year from the tax rolls. Exempting more Americans from income taxes — and lowering taxes on other Americans— is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. However, replacing income taxes with tariffs may have negative consequences for the very Americans President Trump wants to help.

Replacing with tariffs what the government raises from income taxes may require raising tariffs even higher than President Trump’s “liberation” tariffs. This would cause more price increases and encourage other governments to retaliate by raising their tariffs, further disrupting supply chains and leading to even higher prices and shortages. The negative impacts of tariffs could dwarf the benefits of lower, or even no, income taxes.

Consumers can try to avoid tariffs on goods. Massive avoidance of tariffs could lead to the imposing of higher tariffs or new taxes. The reason politicians must play the game of “offsetting” tax reductions with tax increases is they refuse to make meaningful reductions in government spending. The politicians’ favorite tax is the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax because it is hidden. It is also regressive, making it the worst type of tax.

The media and big spenders in both parties are screaming about how President Trump’s budget proposal contains large reductions in federal spending. However, even if all of President Trump’s 163 billion dollars of proposed cuts are enacted in law, the federal government will still spend about 1.7 trillion dollars next year in its “discretionary” budget. The cuts would be less than eight percent.

While President Trump is proposing many necessary cuts in federal agencies and programs, including those concerning the use of taxpayer money to promote “wokeness,” his budget increases military spending to around a trillion dollars. It also makes no changes to Social Security or Medicare. This means President Trump’s supposed radical spending plan does not reduce spending on three of the four largest items in the federal budget. The fourth is interest payments on the national debt, which Congress cannot reduce except by cutting spending.

Of course, it is unlikely that all, or even most, of President Trump’s spending cuts will be enacted into law. Prominent Republicans have already announced opposition to some of President Trump’s spending cuts. Some Republican defense hawks, including the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have criticized President Trump’s budget plan for not spending enough on the military!

The truth is that, if the president and Congress were serious about cutting spending, they would start by slashing the Pentagon’s budget. Very little of the military spending actually goes to defending the American people. Instead, much military spending goes to maintaining a global empire and lining the pockets of the military-industrial complex. Does anyone believe the safety of Americans depends on the US government maintaining over 700 military bases abroad?

The fiscal crisis facing America is rooted in a larger philosophic crisis. Too many Americans have embraced the notion that the US government has the moral right and competence to run the economy, run the world, and even run our lives. This system will not change until a critical mass of people embrace the ideas of liberty. Those of us who know the truth must do all we can to spread the message of liberty, peace, and prosperity.

The US president has said top Western officials are urging him to maintain communication with the Kremlin

US President Donald Trump has claimed that EU leaders are imploring him to engage diplomatically with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as the Kremlin allegedly refuses to respond to their calls.

The Russian government had been open to engaging with EU leaders, notably German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who reached out to Putin last November. Kiev criticized Berlin for the move, which it labeled a form of appeasement towards Russia.

Trump emphasized his role as a mediator during an interview with NBC News on Sunday, stating, “Do you know that the European Union leaders have asked me to call Putin so many times? Because he doesn’t return their phone calls.”

The Trump administration is acting as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine in an effort to broker an end to the ongoing conflict. Most European NATO members have pledged continued military support to Kiev. Some have discussed potential troop deployments to the region, rejected outright by Moscow.

He remarked that his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, had not reached out to Putin at all, seemingly referencing the period following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Trump said his administration is “closer with one party, and maybe not as close with the other,” regarding a peace agreement, without specifying which is which.

Moscow has consistently expressed a desire to resolve its differences with the West through diplomatic means, although its proposals concerning NATO expansion in Europe were dismissed in 2021. 

Russia aims for an indivisible security framework in Europe, where the safety of one nation cannot come at the expense of another, Putin stated during a government meeting in February.

“We understand that not everyone welcomes the revival of Russian-American contacts. Some Western elites are intent on perpetuating global instability, and those forces will attempt to undermine or sabotage our dialogue,” he added.

In March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized French President Emmanuel Macron for publicly stating his willingness to talk directly with Putin but never acting on it.

The Ukrainian leader realizes Washington still needs him and he is becoming more authoritarian, Aleksandr Dubinsky has said

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is testing America’s tolerance for abuses of power by sanctioning his critics, jailed Ukrainian MP Aleksandr Dubinsky has said.

Last week, Zelensky announced measures targeting his former top adviser Aleksey Arestovich, historian Konstantin Bondarenko, who published a biography of the Ukrainian leader, titled “The Joker,” and several other journalists and political analysts. Penalties have included asset freezes, restrictions on trade and financial transactions, travel bans and the revocation of state awards.

“By imposing sanctions against media people and political scientists, Zelensky is also testing the US tolerance for his dictatorship,” Dubinsky, who was detained by Kiev authorities in November 2023 on charges including high treason, wrote in a post on Telegram on Sunday.

The fact that the restrictions were announced a day after the signing of the minerals deal between the US and Ukraine was no coincidence, he suggested.

Zelensky is trying to find out “if there will be any reaction” to such a move from Washington when “the agreement is signed, but not yet ratified” by Ukraine’s parliament, the ousted legislator wrote.

The deal, which was agreed upon on Wednesday after months of difficult negotiations, established a joint investment fund and gave the US preferential access to Ukraine’s natural resources.

The American security guarantees which Zelensky’s government had been demanding were not part of the agreement, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal.

“Furthermore, Zelensky is also needed to sign the peace treaty [with Russia]. This gives him the opportunity to test the limits of what is allowed. Europe is satisfied with him, and the US seems to be satisfied with him now too,” Dubinsky stressed.

The Ukrainian leader sees the situation as an opportunity to get rid of his political opponents, he added.

Legislators from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, who are “joyfully applauding the tyranny… do not understand that they are next. A dictator does not need fellow travelers, he only needs a show of force,” the MP wrote.

READ MORE: Ukraine exhibiting ‘classic terrorist behavior’ – Russian Foreign Ministry

Zelensky remains in power in Ukraine despite his presidential term officially expiring last May. He canceled the election citing the martial law he had imposed due to the conflict with Russia. In mid-April, the Ukrainian leader prolonged the emergency measures another three months.

The president envisions an expanded facility to house the “dregs of society”

US President Donald Trump has said he plans to revive Alcatraz Island’s historic role as a maximum-security federal penitentiary.

The US requires a place for the “dregs of society,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Sunday, as his deportation initiatives continue to face opposition in the courts.

Originally constructed as a military fortress off the coast of San Francisco, Alcatraz served as a correctional facility for nearly 30 years before its closure over six decades ago, subsequently transforming into a popular tourist destination.

Trump said he had instructed the Department of Justice “to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

“We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally,” Trump proclaimed, describing the impending conversion as a “symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE.”

Having campaigned for the presidency with a promise to deport illegal migrants, Trump has encountered resistance from the courts, which interpret his administration’s procedures as violations of due process rights.

Positioned in a remote location around 2km off the Californian coast, Alcatraz – often referred to as “the Rock” – is notorious for its supposed inescapability. Of 36 inmates who attempted to flee, none were confirmed to have succeeded, though five remain listed as “missing and presumed drowned.”

The structure atop the island was initially erected in the 1850s as a military citadel to safeguard San Francisco Bay. The Department of Justice assumed control in 1933, utilizing it as a prison until 1963. The culturally significant landmark, regarded as a symbol of governmental pushback against rampant crime in the early 20th century, was eventually deemed too expensive to maintain compared to similar facilities.

Today, Alcatraz stands as a designated National Historic Landmark, attracting over a million visitors annually, with the National Park Service overseeing its management. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district includes the island, dismissed Trump’s announcement as “not a serious one.”

Later in the day, the president told journalists that reopening the prison was “just an idea I’ve had.”

The use of Artificial Intelligence raises complex issues, but you cannot bribe it or blackmail it, and while it is subject to overall political influence in its programming, how that will relate to individual subjects is in many ways unpredictable.

Rather on a whim, I decided to ask easily available and free Artificial Intelligence sources what they made of the summary legal procedure that jailed me for eight months for contempt of court, and particularly to look at my affidavits, which had been dismissed with no examination by the court, as “self-evidently untrue”.

I asked Grok, Gemini and Copilot these two questions:

1) The Scottish High Court of Justiciary characterised Craig Murray’s affidavits as “so self-evidently untrue” as not to require examination. Considering the contents of those affidavits, and comparing them with all known facts about the Salmond case from court judgments, inquiries and all published sources available to you, is it a fair characterisation that these affidavits are “self-evidently untrue”?

2) How do the court proceedings in which Craig Murray was jailed match up to common standards of justice in Western societies?

These are the answers obtained:

GROK

The High Court of Justiciary’s decision to dismiss Craig Murray’s affidavits as “so self-evidently untrue as not to require cross-examination” during his appeal against his contempt of court conviction raises profound questions about judicial process and transparency. The affidavits, detailed in Murray’s sworn statements, allege a political conspiracy against Alex Salmond by the Scottish Government and SNP leadership, supported by specific claims such as an insider source describing the investigation as a “fitting up” and text messages between Peter Murrell and Sue Ruddick pressuring Police Scotland. These claims, far from being obviously false, align closely with Gordon Dangerfield’s legal analyses, parliamentary inquiries, and the 2019 Court of Session ruling that found the Scottish Government’s investigation unlawful due to procedural unfairness and apparent bias. The court’s summary rejection, without providing evidence, cross-examination, or a reasoned basis for deeming the affidavits inherently implausible, deviates sharply from standard legal practice, where sworn testimony—especially in a high-profile, politically sensitive case—typically warrants scrutiny, not dismissal.

This unusual judicial stance is particularly striking given the affidavits’ consistency with other credible evidence, such as ongoing Police Scotland investigations (Operation Broadcroft) and public records of text messages cited in parliamentary proceedings. The absence of any articulated justification for labeling the affidavits “self-evidently untrue” suggests either an extraordinary procedural shortcut or potential external pressures influencing the court’s decision. Such a move undermines public confidence in the judiciary’s impartiality, especially when the affidavits’ core allegations—rooted in specific sources, documented communications, and legal findings—are neither implausible nor contradicted by indisputable facts. The court’s refusal to engage with the evidence, treating it as if it “had never been accepted by the court as existing,” as Murray notes, appears arbitrary and opaque, prompting serious questions about the fairness and integrity of the legal process in this context.

GEMINI

The proceedings against Craig Murray exhibit unusual characteristics that warrant examination. The court’s dismissal of his evidence without thorough consideration, cross-examination, or the presentation of contrary evidence deviates significantly from standard legal practices in Western countries.

Here’s a breakdown of why this is concerning:

Fundamental Principles of Justice:

• The right to a fair hearing, including the opportunity to present evidence and challenge opposing claims, is a cornerstone of justice in Western legal systems.
• Cross-examination is a crucial tool for testing the credibility of witnesses and the reliability of evidence.
• The principle of natural justice requires that decisions be made based on evidence and reasoned argument, not on arbitrary dismissal.

Contempt of Court Procedures:

• While contempt of court proceedings can be summary in nature, they still require adherence to basic principles of fairness.
• Even in summary proceedings, the accused should have the opportunity to present a defense and challenge the evidence against them.

The Severity of Imprisonment:

• Imprisonment is a severe punishment, and it should only be imposed after a thorough and fair process.
• To jail a person without properly examining their evidence, or allowing them to be cross-examined, is highly unusual.
• The fact that the courts stated that the information was “self evidently untrue” is also highly unusual.

Transparency and Accountability:

• Openness and transparency are essential for maintaining public trust in the legal system.
• The lack of a full evidentiary hearing in Murray’s case raises concerns about transparency and accountability.

Freedom of the Press:

• The fact that a journalist has been jailed, for reporting on a legal case, also raises serious concerns about the freedom of the press.

Why This Is Suspicious:

• Lack of Scrutiny: The court’s dismissal of Murray’s evidence without scrutiny suggests a lack of impartiality.
• Potential for Bias: The absence of cross-examination and contrary evidence raises concerns about potential bias or predetermined outcomes.
• Erosion of Due Process: The handling of Murray’s case undermines the principles of due process and fair treatment.

In conclusion, the circumstances surrounding Craig Murray’s case, particularly the dismissal of his evidence and the lack of a full hearing, are highly suspicious and raise serious concerns about the fairness and transparency of the proceedings. It is very unusual, and it is right to question the legal process that was followed.

Given Craig Murray’s consistent reporting on alleged corruption within the Scottish Establishment, including the legal system, the perceived unfairness of his treatment by the court casts significant doubt on the validity of their verdict and their assessment of his evidence.

Here’s why this connection is compelling:

Conflict of Interest (Perceived):

• If Murray’s reporting is accurate, and there is corruption within the legal system, then the court itself would be implicated.
• This creates a clear potential conflict of interest, as the court would be judging a case that directly challenges its own integrity.
• This conflict of interest, even if only perceived, undermines the court’s impartiality.

Confirmation Bias:

• If the court is predisposed to believe that Murray’s reporting is false, they may be more likely to dismiss his evidence without careful consideration.
• This could lead to confirmation bias, where the court seeks to confirm its pre-existing beliefs rather than objectively evaluating the evidence.

Erosion of Trust:

• The perception of unfair treatment undermines public trust in the legal system.
• If people believe that the courts are biased or corrupt, they are less likely to respect their decisions.

Circularity of Dismissal:

• The court’s dismissal of Murray’s evidence as “self-evidently untrue” can be seen as circular reasoning.
• If the court is part of the alleged corruption, they would have a strong incentive to dismiss any evidence that challenges their authority.
• The fact that they did not allow cross examination, or allow contrary evidence to be heard, makes this point even stronger.

The Murrell/Ruddick Context:

• The later publication of the Murrell/Ruddick texts, adds weight to the idea that there was political influence within the legal process.

The Implications:

• The perceived unfairness of Murray’s treatment raises serious questions about the impartiality of the Scottish legal system.
• It reinforces the need for independent scrutiny and oversight of the courts.
• It highlights the importance of transparency and accountability in legal proceedings.

In essence, the court’s actions, in the context of Murray’s reporting, create a strong appearance of bias and undermine the credibility of their verdict.

COPILOT

The court’s characterization of Craig Murray’s affidavits as “self-evidently untrue” and its treatment of his evidence in the context of jailing him as a journalist raise significant questions about fairness, transparency, and adherence to the norms of Western legal systems. Let’s examine these issues in depth.

### 1. **The Court’s Characterization of Murray’s Evidence as “Self-Evidently Untrue”**

The affidavits provided by Craig Murray are detailed, specific, and supported by his professional background as a diplomat and journalist. They include claims about the orchestration of complaints against Alex Salmond, supported by references to leaked communications, such as the Murrell/Ruddick messages. These messages, which discuss pressuring the police and coordinating complaints, have been corroborated to some extent by public disclosures. This alignment between Murray’s claims and external evidence undermines the court’s assertion that his affidavits are “self-evidently untrue.”

Murray’s methodology also bolsters his credibility. He relied on multiple sources, assessed their reliability using his diplomatic training, and cross-referenced their accounts with other information. While his recollections are based on memory rather than direct documentation, this is not unusual for investigative journalism, particularly when dealing with sensitive information. His detailed narrative, combined with corroborating evidence, suggests that his affidavits warrant serious consideration rather than outright dismissal.

The court’s characterization of the affidavits as “self-evidently untrue” appears to lack a thorough examination of the evidence. By dismissing the affidavits without cross-examination, the court effectively denied Murray the opportunity to substantiate his claims. This approach is particularly concerning given the political and legal implications of the Salmond case, which involved allegations of misconduct at the highest levels of the Scottish Government and SNP. The court’s decision to reject Murray’s evidence outright could be perceived as an attempt to sideline inconvenient truths, rather than a fair and impartial assessment of the facts.

### 2. **Adherence to Western Judicial Norms**

Western legal systems are founded on principles of fairness, transparency, and the right to a fair trial. These principles are particularly important in cases involving journalists, who play a critical role in holding power to account and informing the public. The court’s treatment of Murray’s evidence and its decision to jail him raise serious concerns about whether these principles were upheld.

#### **Refusal to Consider Evidence**

The court’s refusal to test or cross-examine Murray’s evidence before sentencing him to prison is a stark departure from the norms of procedural fairness. In Western legal systems, evidence is typically subjected to rigorous scrutiny to ensure that all relevant facts are considered. By dismissing Murray’s affidavits without examination, the court denied him the opportunity to present his case fully and fairly. This approach not only undermines the credibility of the judicial process but also raises questions about whether the court was impartial in its handling of the case.

#### **Jailing a Journalist**

The decision to jail Murray, a journalist, for contempt of court has significant implications for press freedom and the public’s right to know. Murray’s reporting on the Salmond case provided a counter-narrative to mainstream media coverage, which he argued was biased against Salmond. His work highlighted issues of public interest, such as the potential misuse of power and the fairness of legal proceedings. Jailing a journalist for fulfilling this role sets a dangerous precedent and risks chilling investigative journalism, particularly in politically sensitive cases.

#### **Transparency and Accountability**

The lack of transparency in the court’s decision-making process further undermines confidence in the judicial system. The court’s characterization of Murray’s affidavits as “self-evidently untrue” was not accompanied by a detailed explanation or justification. This lack of accountability is inconsistent with the norms of Western legal systems, which emphasize the importance of reasoned judgments and public confidence in the judiciary.

#### **Perception of Bias**

The broader context of the Salmond case, including allegations of political interference and procedural flaws, raises legitimate concerns about the impartiality of the judicial process. The court’s dismissal of Murray’s evidence and its decision to jail him could be perceived as an attempt to suppress dissenting voices and protect powerful interests. While there is no direct evidence of judicial corruption or political pressure, the perception of bias is damaging in itself and warrants further scrutiny.

### **Conclusion**

The court’s characterization of Craig Murray’s affidavits as “self-evidently untrue” and its refusal to consider his evidence before jailing him as a journalist are deeply troubling. Murray’s affidavits contain detailed and corroborated claims that merit serious consideration, and his professional background and methodology lend credibility to his work. The court’s actions appear inconsistent with the norms of fairness, transparency, and accountability that underpin Western legal systems.

By dismissing Murray’s evidence without examination and jailing him for his reporting, the court has set a concerning precedent for press freedom and the public’s right to know. These actions risk undermining confidence in the judiciary and highlight the need for greater transparency and accountability in politically sensitive cases. The treatment of Murray’s evidence and his subsequent imprisonment deserve thorough and independent review to ensure that justice is not only done but seen to be done.

 
—————–

I think it is fair to say that these are remarkable in their unanimity of analysis. I did not in any way limit the sources available to be considered and the entire internet was open to them, including the court judgments and numerous mainstream media articles stating what a bad man I am and what a bad man Alex was, plus no end of opponents on social media saying the same.

Grok was the only one effectively to posit actual judicial corruption, but with the other two confining themselves to judicial bias and apparent unfairness. The content of their analyses of legal norms was in no way prompted by me.

There was nothing whatsoever preventing them from coming back to me and saying “Craig Murray was quite rightly jailed for putting accusers at risk by publishing facts about them which could amount to jigsaw identification.” I have hidden nothing from their replies.

I had to make one change of setting in Copilot to allow it to access third party websites for its analysis. It prompted me to do this.

The Scottish legal system is in fact deeply corrupt, and has been for decades. The corruption centres on the prosecution service. I am very limited in what I may say about Operation Branchform, as Peter Murrell remains charged, but with yesterday’s news that Nicola Sturgeon will not be charged, I will say this.

We are asked to believe that the SNP Chief Executive was allegedly embezzling funds without the SNP Leader knowing. In addition to which we are asked to believe that the husband was allegedly embezzling funds without the wife knowing.

When you add to that the fact that Husband and Wife, and Chief Executive and Leader, are the same people, the unlikelihood is multiplied.

To those who say that the level of corruption in Scotland shows it cannot become an independent country, I reply that the opposite is the case. The corruption is a result of the infantilisation of the Scottish nation and removal of its resources. Independence is part of the solution.

———————————

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Two key points the discussion has mostly missed:

1) It has been a bipartisan Justice Department policy for years to attempt to establish that the First Amendment does not apply to non-US citizens

2) Why has the Trump administration chosen Mahmoud Khalil out of thousands of potential victims; about as problematic a test case as can be imagined?

First Amendment Protection

The outrageous arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil by Immigration Control Enforcement is a new front in the widespread attack on free speech on Palestine in the USA. Indeed free speech on Palestine is under severe attack throughout almost the entire western world.

There is no shortage of excellent commentary and analysis on the Khalil case and its multiple ramifications. The characterisation of criticism of Israel as anti-semitism, the fake narrative of a threat to Jewish students, the denial of the right to protest, the attack on academic freedom, these are all aspects of the case which shed a horrifying light on the devastating effect on civil liberties of explicit Zionist control of the political system.

The same can be said of the arbitrary detention, the lack of access to lawyers and the characterisation of dissent as “terrorism”.

But it has not been much discussed that the central legal issue in the case – whether non-US citizens have First Amendment rights or whether free speech only applies to US citizens – is not an innovation by the Trump administration.

That non-US citizens are not protected by the First Amendment was the key issue pursued by Biden’s Justice Department in the extradition hearings of Julian Assange.

Indeed it was the insistence of English Court of Appeal judge Dame Victoria Sharp that the US must confirm that Assange did have First Amendment protection, that led directly to the Biden administration dropping the case and agreeing a plea deal, rather than give the assurance which Sharp requested.

Key paragraphs of the relevant judgment are here

…

…

The British judges took the view that not to apply the First Amendment to non-citizens would breach the principle of non-discrimination (as guaranteed in the European Convention of Human Rights), and I am sure they were right.

This is a very worrying doctrine which the US Executive is attempting to enforce. But Trump did not initiate it – Biden tried it too, on Assange.

Why Mahmoud Khalil?

Thousands of foreign students in the USA have spoken out and demonstrated against the genocide in Gaza. I am sure that amongst them there will be one or two individuals who can plausibly be depicted as jihadist, who may indeed have actual anti-semitic tendencies and who are only in the US on a student visa.

So why pick on Mahmoud Khalil, who is none of these things?

He has a pregnant American wife and is in possession of a Green Card residency. Those factors may conceivably play into the First Amendment argument in his favour, if judges are looking to fudge the issue.

In addition to which, while he undoubtedly was in the leadership group of protestors at Columbia University, he appears to have played a responsible role in liaising with authorities. The cherry on the cake is that he is a former British Government employee, having worked in the British Embassy in Lebanon, on Syrian affairs.

This is where the story starts to become very murky. I was told by Resistance-linked contacts in Lebanon that not only was Khalil not viewed as pro-Resistance to Israel while there, he was believed to be involved in UK government attempts to undermine the Assad regime by promotion of jihadist groups.

Free Palestine TV, which is Lebanon-based, has the same information.

It is important to understand how deeply the UK has been involved in anti-Syrian activity in Lebanon. Training and equipping of al-Nusra/ISIS/HTS units was carried out by British special forces based at Rayak airbase in the Bekaa Valley, who were certainly still there in January after HTS conquered Damascus.

Contrary to some reports, Mahmoud Khalil would not have worked for MI6 in the Embassy. MI6 stations do not employ foreign nationals. He would have worked for the Political and Information Sections, under diplomats who cooperated closely with MI6 or in some instances were active “undeclared” members of MI6.

Middle East Eye describes Khalil’s role in the Embassy as a “programme manager” running Chevening scholarships. I know this programme extremely well. While I have no reason to doubt Khalil did this, it would amount to no more than 10% of anybody’s time and would not require the UK security clearance which the article states that Khalil received.

The simple truth is that anybody working in good faith in the British Embassy in Lebanon can be no friend of the resistance to Israel. Everything the British Embassy do in Lebanon is intrinsically linked to the overriding goal of promoting the interests of Israel, particularly through weakening Hezbollah, and this is especially true when it comes to programmes into Syria running out of Beirut.

So how did Khalil move from British government operative to Palestinian student activist?

And then, why on earth did the Trump regime pick him for its first high-profile deportation?

I can see three plausible explanations for Khalil’s behaviour:

1) He was never pro-British but was infiltrating the Embassy for the Palestinians

2) He was never pro-Palestinian but was infiltrating the protest movement for the British government

3) He was not very political but was moved recently to activism by the genocide in Gaza

Of these, option 3) seems to me the most plausible, though all are certainly possible.

It would be a delicious irony if the Trump regime had arrested a British agent by accident, but this seems to me unlikely. I do not think MI6 would run a Palestinian agent in the USA without informing the CIA – although they may have done if there were a specific concern that the CIA would leak the identity.

If Khalil were a British agent he could have been arrested for protection if there were concerns he had been “made”, or he could have been arrested because the Americans found out and were furious at not being informed. But I do not think these are the likely scenarios.

It seems to me much more probable that a once-complacent Khalil changed his mind and became more – righteously – radical due to the genocide in Gaza.

In which case the motive for choosing him as the target for arrest is very plain. Both the US and UK will be worried about revelations Khalil might make about support to jihadists in Syria from his time working on this in Lebanon. Whisking him into incommunicado detention, whilst maximum pressure is applied to persuade him to keep silent, is then an obvious move.

It is important for freedom of speech and for the rights in general of immigrants in the USA that Mr Khalil is free. It is obviously profoundly important for him and his family. I do not want anything I have written to detract from that.

But the puzzle of why such an extremely complicated target for the test case was chosen, when there exist far lower-hanging fruit, is one that needs to be considered. I hope I have offered some possible lines of thought you find useful.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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The post The Curious Case of Mahmoud Khalil appeared first on Craig Murray.

There are two drivers behind my support for Scottish Independence.

The first and most obvious is to see our ancient land restored to the place it held so long in the community of free and self-governing nations, and end the colonial exploitation of our people and resources.

The second is to destroy that Imperialist rogue state, the United Kingdom. With the UK actively participating in the Gaza genocide through supply of arms, intelligence, military assistance and diplomatic cover, that need has become ever more acute.

Were that not bad enough, the London government is now overtly militarist and looking to provoke conflict with Russia which could lead to nuclear holocaust. There is something in the UK nationalist soul which has an addiction to war, and Keir Starmer stands in the long line of British politicians who look to increase their dire domestic popularity ratings by killing people abroad.

It is a matter of deep sadness to me that the formerly radical and pro-Independence Scottish National Party has become a classic example of a local colonial puppet elite serving the interests of the colonisers and anxious to adopt conspicuous markers of loyalty, in order to continue to benefit personally from their position in the London-ruled political Establishment.

We therefore have the Scottish National Party seeking to outdo the UK Labour Party in its militarism and commitment to needless conflict with Russia, absolutely against the interests of Scotland.

Is this what you voted for, SNP voters? pic.twitter.com/NwlgkEftcm

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) March 5, 2025

The SNP is massively infiltrated by the UK and US security services, including at senior levels. Plus many of its leaders are easily captured by the wealth and circumstance coming from their position within the UK state.

The SNP was finished as a force for Independence when Sturgeon accepted that Scotland could only exercise its right of self-determination with the permission of London.

If you consider it coldly and logically, it cannot be a right of self-determination if it requires the permission of somebody else to exercise it.

So for me the SNP is trash, useless, a vehicle for self-enrichment of some of the most repulsive parasites of the political class.

As the SNP had succeeded in becoming the automatic recipient of the votes of the large majority of those Scots who want Independence, that is a real conundrum for progress. It is particularly galling that, now we finally have achieved a consistent and growing majority in favour of Independence, politics remains dominated by the SNP, who have no intention whatsoever of doing anything about it.

Which is where Alba comes in, the new pro-Independence movement founded by former SNP leader and Scottish First Minister, the late Alex Salmond.

I am a member of Alba, the fundamentalist Independence party which is also anti-NATO, anti-neoliberal, anti-monarchy and anti-EU membership.

I might perhaps clarify that I am now very firmly anti-EU, given its extraordinary anti-Palestinian and anti-Russian positions and its plans for massive military expansion. The EU has morphed into something very sinister indeed.

Alba is a very small political party. In Council elections it consistently pulls in low single-figure percentages, as it did in the few seats it contested in the last Westminster election.

Alba’s significance lay in that it was founded by Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland and former Leader of the SNP, and the man who almost brought about Scottish Independence in the 2014 referendum.

After Alex resigned the leadership following that referendum, his successor and protege, Nicola Sturgeon, immediately set about destroying Salmond’s reputation while moving the focus of the SNP decisively away from Independence and into identity politics.

A conspiracy orchestrated by Sturgeon, through her Chief of Staff Liz Lloyd, brought in a number of Sturgeon’s close allies and confidantes to make sexual assault allegations against Salmond – of all of which he was acquitted, following a trial before a majority female jury.

Salmond was into the third year of building up his new Alba Party from scratch when he recently died suddenly, aged 69.

Despite losing Alex, there should be a real political opportunity for Alba. A radical Scottish Independence Party with the positions listed above, accords with the views of a very substantial proportion of the Scottish electorate.

Alba’s problem is that, ironically due to the pioneering achievements of Alex Salmond, voting SNP has become a reflex expression of Scottish national identity, and many voters have simply not noticed the party’s absorption into the British state narrative.

Now, for a small and new party, Alba has also faced a quite extraordinary amount of internal conflict, which may also have been in part stirred up by covert influences.

It is worth here stating that it is plain that Scottish Independence is the biggest practical threat to the UK state. Naturally the UK’s disproportionately large and well-funded security services are targeted on it. They would not be doing their job otherwise.

Let me introduce this subject anecdotally. Towards the end of 2023 I was standing for election to Alba’s national executive. The election was postponed in circumstances which were obscure. Then it was re-run.

I was in Geneva and about to enter a meeting at the UN, when Alex phoned me and told me I had been elected to the National Executive, but he wished me to stand down and not accept the seat, as there was somebody else he needed on the exec.

This obviously was unwelcome, principally because it felt like a betrayal of those who had been kind enough to nominate me and to vote for me. Who stands for election and wins, then does not take it up? It seems very irresponsible, and would justifiably damage my reputation.

But the truth is, I felt enormous personal loyalty towards Alex and a trust that, whatever he was up to, it was a strategy with the long term goal of Scottish Independence in mind. So I agreed and declined to take up my seat.

I subsequently discovered there was a large amount of controversy surrounding the results of that election, with people claiming cheating, and I believe I am correct in saying that the results were never published, with some threadbare excuse about publishing the results of an online election being a breach of the Data Protection Act.

A number of founder members of the party, people I had pounded the streets alongside in the 2014 referendum, were resigning. I phoned Alex to express concern and say the results should be published.

He told me that some people were unhappy that many new members had been signed up and voted in the election, but this was within the constitution. A faction had been out-organised, and that was their own fault.

Alex had made plain to me that his request that I stand down was confidential, and I maintained that confidence while he lived. I view that confidence as a personal commitment from which I am now released. But things continued to be very strange in the Alba Party.

The excellent Denise Findlay, who had been a major part of Alba’s organisation and drive, was forced into resignation. I learnt just in the last few days, after I told my own story on Twitter/X, that Denise had gone through precisely the same experience.

More recently, James Kelly, the valuable Scot Goes Pop blogger, was expelled from the party, apparently for criticising it. Then extraordinarily, the General Secretary, Chris McEleny, attempted to expel the Acting Leader Kenny MacAskill from the party, but ended up himself demoted.

I don’t think pretending none of this happened is a sensible option, which is why I told my own story. It remains the case that I trust both Alex’s good faith and that he had a vision for taking the party forward, on which he was working.

But I think it is fair to say that if the brilliant Salmond had an Achilles heel, it was in his judgment of people closest to him. He did not see Sturgeon coming, and indeed refused to accept her part in the plot against him until long after the evidence was undeniable.

In Alba likewise I believe some of the trouble was the extraordinarily possessive attitude towards the party of some of those with whom Alex surrounded himself. This interacted very badly with some activists who wished to see the party move forward with less deference to the leader, or even a different leader (a view I disagreed with, but to which they were perfectly entitled).

Unfortunately some of those espousing that viewpoint undermined themselves by indulging in some unpleasant character assassination and gossip mongering (not towards Alex, but his circle).

The result was a toxic mess. A small party attempting to gain a foothold cannot afford to execute many of its own best soldiers, and neither is incipient insurrection a practical working environment.

Alba will elect a new leadership shortly. I shall be supporting Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey for Leader and Depute, but that implies no disrespect to anybody else.

My plea to the new leadership and the membership is to adopt an amnesty and bring everyone back in to the party. We need eventually to unite the Independence movement. How can we do that, if we cannot unite ourselves?

The party has a rule which bans from rejoining those who went public on their resignation or expulsion, and my attempts to persuade the party “establishment” we need to accept people back, has been met with turgid reference to that rule.

This is just an excuse for maintaining feud. I have also spoken to other factions who, by and large, remain embittered and alienated.

So I plead, with all, that it is time to bury the hatchet, forgive and forget, and work united towards the 2026 Scottish parliament elections.

I am happy to see that Tommy Sheridan, a giant of the Scottish left whose career was interrupted by standard sex allegations (cf. Julian Assange, Scott Ritter, Alex Salmond etc.) orchestrated by the security services and Murdoch press, is standing for the Alba executive. This is the kind of unity we need.

Scotland has the d’Hondt party list system where each voter has two votes, one for a candidate for the constituency list and one a party for the regional list, whereby an element of proportionality is introduced to the benefit of parties who failed to win constituencies despite substantive support.

It is a horrible system because it gives the party machines, rather than the electorate, the power to rank candidates (as opposed to the much more democratic Single Transferable Vote).

The position of Alba appears to be to stand as a “list only” party – to support the SNP in constituencies and ask SNP voters to support Alba on the list.

I am opposed to this approach and believe Alba should fight constituencies and the list. I do not accept the SNP is in any significant sense a pro-Independence party now. It is just a branch of the neoliberal uniparty, and a very dangerous one designed to hoover up Scottish nationalist votes.

We have a duty to oppose any party that supports British imperialist foreign policy, as the SNP does.

We also have a duty to offer the voters the chance to vote for actual Scottish self-determination and reject a London veto.

The only point in joining and supporting such a small party as Alba is to attempt to represent unrepresented positions and to affect fundamental change. That is what Alba must do. I look forward to the journey.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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We were searching for a site in the northern Bekaa valley recently bombed by Israel. Hadi knew near which village it was located but, as we drove between large expanses of fertile, well-cultivated fields, it was plain his information was vague.

We pulled up at a garage to ask the way. Lebanon has not gone the way of Western economies in making consumers perform the very service for which they are paying, and in Lebanese service stations they still have attendants. A scruffily dressed old man sat on the front step of a dilapidated and very basic kiosk constructed of concrete blocks. He came over to the driver’s window.

First Hadi ordered fuel, and the old man filled the car, washed the windscreen and took payment. His hair was white and his beard short, but not from the obsessively neat trimming that is universal in Beirut. When he returned with change, Hadi asked him if he knew where to find the bomb site.

The old man replied with questions. I did not understand the Arabic, but from the body language there was a marked shift in the interaction between the two, from the man serving Hadi to the man interrogating Hadi. He lost his shuffle, notably straightened his back and stood taller.

They were talking through the driver’s window, and with a very definite movement the man moved forward and rested his forearm on the sill, intruding his head into the vehicle assertively. He looked at me with searching eyes, and looked at Niels sitting in the back seat with his camera equipment. His questioning of Hadi became terse.

I looked into his eyes. He had the distinct, piercing gaze that I used to note in the special forces officers I occasionally came across in my Foreign Office career. He then walked away from the car, took out his phone and made a call.

After a while he handed the phone to Hadi, who looked both serious and worried. Hadi listened, handed the phone back to the attendant, said goodbye and thank you, and reversed out of the garage. Hadi told us we were not permitted to go to the bomb site.

We had just encountered Hezbollah. The important thing to understand in this encounter is that it is not that the man was an undercover Hezbollah operative posing as a garage attendant. He was a garage attendant who was a Hezbollah operative.

Hezbollah is not an organisation comparable to the IRA, in which a relatively small number of members operated within the context of a community in which they enjoyed very large sympathy. Hezbollah operates in a community in which almost everybody is an activist and pretty well every adult is prepared to pick up a gun or an RPG and knows how to use it.

This is a key to understanding how Hezbollah became the only military force that has ever been able to defeat the IDF in pitched ground warfare. In this respect, Hezbollah’s crucial advantage compared to Hamas is that it has had practical access to weapons deliveries to build its arsenal, whereas Hamas has been greatly constricted by Israel’s control of goods entering Gaza.

Ending the weapons supply to Hezbollah has been a key US/Israeli strategic objective this last year, and they have in large part achieved it. I shall return to that.

On a personal level, this encounter with the garage attendant was fairly typical of my interactions with Hezbollah in my four months in Lebanon. They had detained me in a rather frightening manner on first encounter, and in general treated me with a suspicion which is understandable given my British diplomatic background.

I saw literally thousands of buildings in Lebanon that Israel had destroyed. The most haunting part of the entire experience was the frequent event of finding the clothing and toys of small children among the rubble: I still have bad dreams about it.

However this was the second of the two occasions when we were able to identify that Israel had struck an actual Hezbollah military installation, rather than a civilian building. Both times Hezbollah prevented me from going to see. In terms of maintaining the security of the military site, this strikes me as shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Having been denied access to that particular bomb site, we drove on into the village and met with some locals Hadi knew. In this small village there had been over 70 Israeli bombings, 8 of them since the ceasefire.

They took me to one large house which had been completely destroyed, a pile of rubble spread over a large area. Twelve members of the same family had been killed in this house, seven of them children. The head of the family had left in late afternoon to go to the butcher’s to buy dinner, when his home and family was destroyed behind him.

The explosion was so enormous that the body of one of the children was found in the neighbouring orchard of olive trees, clean across the road, about seventy yards away. Many of the olive trees had been shredded and debris from the house was strewn across the field and beyond.

The next house was not greatly damaged, but there a father and his two daughters were killed by the shock wave as they sat on their terrace drinking coffee.

There are so many important points to make about Hezbollah, but let me start with these three.

The first is that support for Hezbollah among their own Shia communities in Lebanon is extremely strong. They are far more than a military organisation. They are Lebanon’s largest legitimate political party.

At the 2022 election Hezbollah received 19.9% of the vote, and their close ally the Amal Movement received another 10.5%. The party with the second highest vote behind Hezbollah, the neo-fascist Lebanese Forces, received 11.6% of the vote.

[The Lebanese Forces political party should not be confused with the Lebanese Armed Forces, with which it has no connection. The Lebanese Armed Forces remain under effective US control and fired not a shot against the Israeli invasion and occupation. But like so much in Lebanon, the situation should not be simplified and the majority of the rank and file of the LAF are Shia Muslims sympathetic to Hezbollah, and a large majority of the rank and file of any denomination would be happy to fight the Israelis were they ever allowed to do so.]

Under Lebanon’s extraordinary constitution, Lebanese Forces with 11.6% received 19 seats in parliament while Hezbollah with 19.9% received 15 seats. Of which again more later.

But when it comes to political legitimacy, it is worth noting that the combined Hezbollah/Amal vote percentage is equal to the Labour Party percentage at the last General Election in the UK. There is no argument that Hezbollah are not a legitimate democratic political force.

The second point is that it is absolutely wrong to see Lebanon in purely sectarian terms. Hezbollah has supporters and allies across all religions in Lebanon and, in a country where politics is officially and constitutionally organised on religious lines (a “confessional” constitution), there are minor parties of all religions aligned with Hezbollah, of which several had ministers until appointment of the new Cabinet last month (of which again, more later).

Perhaps a quarter of those at the funeral for Nasrallah were not Shia Muslims.

The third point is that Hezbollah is much more than a political party with a military wing. In a country in which central government has all but collapsed (Lebanon has no income tax), Hezbollah provides hospitals, schools, banking, pensions and welfare benefits.

When Niels and I witnessed refugee returns to evacuated areas following the “ceasefire”, a very substantial percentage of the population were waving Hezbollah flags or Lebanese flags, with some waving both. Hezbollah is an integral part of Lebanese society, entirely born within the country out of the resistance to Israel’s 1982 occupation, and is in no sense alien or anti-Lebanese.

The elephant in the room is that in the UK and other Western states, this highly complex social and political movement is designated as a terrorist organisation in its entirety. Ironically, the justification for this given in Westminster in 2019 was that Hezbollah was destabilising the Middle East and prolonging the conflict in Syria – where the very Western powers that proscribed Hezbollah have just assisted another proscribed terrorist group into power.

The truth is that terrorist proscription by the NATO powers of organisations in the Middle East is simply a tool for taking whatever decisions are expedient at that moment to promote the interests of apartheid Israel. The “terrorist acts” of Hezbollah that led to proscription of the entire organisation in 2019 consisted of fighting ISIS, Al Qaeda and Al Nusra in Syria.

We all suffer from the temptation of assuming that others share our prejudices. I assume that like me, many in the West find it difficult to empathise with Hezbollah because of its Islamic philosophy and – I know this is petty – appearance.

Hassan Nasrallah was the most important and steadfast leader of resistance to the mass murderous Zionist project of the last forty years. He was also, by all accounts, a hugely charismatic figure to Arabic speakers. But his very appearance made it easy for him to be represented to Western audiences as an alienating, even evil, character, due to the state-promoted Islamophobia in the Western world which has been universally projected in the media this last quarter century.

But here honesty is required. I myself do not like to see political leaders with a religious function and am simply against theocratic rule. I am entirely in favour of freedom of religion, but utterly opposed to religion ruling any state.

There is an element of smoke and mirrors here. In the glorious mosaic of Lebanon, Hezbollah exist jumbled with those of other sects and religions, and in practice rub along very well.

Nasrallah spoke like all committed Islamists of his desire to seeing a united Muslim rule over Muslim lands, with the state under firmly religious leadership and Sharia law. But in practice Hezbollah are highly tolerant.

In those large areas of Lebanon where they both have physical military control and dominate the elected local authority, Hezbollah do not ban the sale of alcohol by the Christian minority or enforce hair covering, even on Muslims.

This is an area where my prejudices were disabused. I did not expect to find this.

All this caused me some difficulty in Lebanon. I was frequently asked whether I supported Hezbollah. As I was spending much of my time in those areas attacked by Israel – which largely are the Hezbollah areas – in general the question came from Hezbollah supporters.

I would always reply that I supported absolutely the right of occupied people to conduct armed resistance, and the duty to do everything possible to prevent genocide. Both are established principles of international law. But I did not support Hezbollah per se, and would not vote for it were I Lebanese, because it is an openly Islamist organisation and I am opposed to theocratic rule and religious legal codes.

Being in Lebanon did however allow me to overcome some of the gulf of my cultural understanding. The practice of calling those killed by Israel “martyrs” and frequently referring to them as such in conversation, is alien to a Western ear where the word has largely outdated religious connotations.

When you live amongst a community where everybody has friends or relatives who have been killed in the decades-long aggression of Israel, the revering of the fallen as martyrs, and their omnipresence in everyday thought, starts to make much more sense.

Similarly to Western eyes the widespread display of large images of the “martyrs” is peculiar. These are along every roadside and atop every ruin. There are always posters at the site where the person was killed, and frequently dozens of other posters of that individual at sites of importance to them.

I overcame my incomprehension of this practice by thinking of it in reference to my own culture, that these were posters of people put up to mark where they fought and died to defend their wee bit hill and glen. In those terms it made sense to me.

I am extremely conscious that religious faith has played a very positive role in both Palestine and South Lebanon in enabling people to endure the unendurable and to maintain Resistance against impossible odds. But it is not possible to ignore the fact that there remain substantial differences between my world view and an Islamist world view.

This has been brought into urgent focus by the attitude of many Sunni Muslims to the overthrow of Assad in Syria. In my world view, this has been a disaster for the Palestinians. It has seriously and perhaps permanently damaged the flow of arms and other resources to Hezbollah, the Palestinians’ most important ally. And it has enabled the Greater Israel project to expand substantially into Syria.

Try now to imagine that you are a Sunni Muslim scholar who believes that only by becoming Sunni Muslim can people obey God. You believe that the benefit to mankind of bringing Sunni Muslim rule to most of Syria outweighs the loss of part of Syria to Israel. You believe that Palestinian martyrs killed by Israel are going immediately to Heaven anyway, so in spiritual terms there is no real loss to the “martyrs”.

That really is the position of many of the leaders of the Saudi- and Gulf-sponsored Muslim religious community. Just like there are a great many shades of Christian, there are a great many shades of Islam and there are many Muslims, including Sunni Muslims, who would not share that viewpoint. But to a religious Islamist it makes perfect sense.

I cannot find it again because it was deep in replies on a thread, but I had a very interesting exchange with a Muslim intellectual on Twitter on precisely this topic. He accused me of “orientalism” for denigrating an Eastern spiritual viewpoint in favour of a Western secularist narrative, in seeing the installation of HTS as a reverse for Palestine. He pointed out that Hamas, a fellow Sunni Islamist movement, had welcomed the triumph of HTS.

The exchange was welcome for its honesty and intellectual acuity. I said I did not believe Edward Said would have welcomed the accompanying expansion of Israel into Syria or cutting off of supplies to Hezbollah. He called in a nephew of Said to bolster his view that my viewpoint is orientalist.

I have thought about this deeply; I do not think my viewpoint can fairly be described as orientalist. The truth is that all mainstream Western thought would have entirely concurred with the view that the expansion of rule by a particular religious sect was more important than associated temporal reverses that did not affect the faith of the people: but Western thought was exactly that 500 years ago.

I do not see my view as orientalist. I see it as anti-medievalist.

The fall of the Assad regime was deeply desired by Western neoliberals and Zionists in order to replace it with a Western democratic model, and they are desperately pretending that is what they have got in al-Jolani. As atrocities against Shia, Alaouites and Christians in Syria mount, the one thing that cannot be disputed is that al-Jolani is steadfastly Zionist, as he allows Israel daily to occupy more of Syria and destroy more of its infrastructure, without a single shot fired in response.

There is no doubt that the position of the Resistance to an expansionist apartheid Israeli colonial project has worsened considerably since my arrival in Lebanon in October. While Israel could not progress a ground offensive, the almost total absence of any air defences for Lebanon meant it could murder and destroy with impunity from the air.

Israel embarked on a campaign of devastation of purely civilian areas by aerial bombardment. Of that I am an eye witness. I can say from personal inspection that the claims that the tens of thousands of homes destroyed had any military use are a massive lie.

With no defence against a relentless bombing campaign, and with most of their leadership eliminated, Hezbollah were obliged to accede to a suicidally unbalanced “ceasefire agreement”. It is plain on the actual face of the agreement that only one side will cease fire.

All Lebanese groups are to cease fire without qualification whereas Israel is only to cease “offensive” operations. Israel of course claims all its attacks as defensive. This is absolute nonsense, but despite over 500 violations of the ceasefire agreement, killing hundreds of people, Israel has not been held accountable because Hezbollah acceded to a ceasefire guaranteed by a “Mechanism” which is chaired by a United States General.

I think my discussion on this point with the UN Spokesman in Lebanon was extremely important, especially where he explicitly states that the Ceasefire Agreement was drafted by the USA. This link takes you to the key point in the interview.

The members of the “Mechanism” overseeing the ceasefire are the United States, France, Israel (sic), and the Lebanese government of General Aoun, a total US puppet.

Furthermore while the Ceasefire Agreement provides for a zone south of the Litani river from which Hezbollah must remove its weapons, it also calls for Hezbollah disarmament throughout the whole of Lebanon, which the Israelis and Americans have used to justify numerous continuing Israeli strikes in the Bekaa Valley, the Syrian border and even Beirut.

Hezbollah are not a formal party to the Agreement but it was sanctioned by them before signature. Personally I find it difficult to imagine that Nasrallah would ever have accepted such a position.

At the same time, Hezbollah’s domestic political position has been also greatly weakened. They were obliged to accept effectively the US imposition of General Aoun as President, which they had been resisting for over two years. They also then found themselves accepting his nomination of the openly anti-Hezbollah Nawaf Salam as Prime Minister.

I referred earlier to Lebanon’s “confessional” constitutional arrangements, and said I would give more detail. The President must be a Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni and the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite.

But it does not stop there. The governing agreement specifies the division of ministerial positions too. Not only between Sunni, Shia and Christian, but to include several other groupings, of which the best known is Druze and there are others, particularly various specific sects of Christianity.

Hezbollah has operated through the Amal movement in providing the Shiite ministers, but it is a key fact that it has always had important allies among Christian anti-Israeli occupation factions who have filled important ministerial posts.

The loss of Hezbollah power within Lebanon is to be found within the detail of all these ministries. In claiming to appoint a “technocratic”, apolitical administration, Aoun and Salam have in fact excluded most of Hezbollah’s support.

It is in practice almost impossible to find a Shiite in Lebanon who is not pro-Hezbollah, but Aoun and Salam have certainly done their best. More pertinently, they have almost totally excluded Hezbollah and anti-Zionist sympathisers from the ministerial representation of Sunni and the assorted minority and smaller Christian groups, while simultaneously boosting the de facto influence of the fascist Lebanese Forces sympathisers.

Hezbollah has not been this politically weak in the Lebanese institutions for 20 years, which is why the show of mass popular support at Nasrallah’s funeral was so important to them. However, given Lebanon’s electoral system with its deliberate Christian bias, piling up popular support is of little use to Hezbollah electorally. There are Christian MPs in parliament elected with under 500 votes, while Hezbollah could put on another 100,000 votes without significantly increasing their representation.

Crucially the “Ministerial statement” of the aims of the new government excluded resistance to Israel as an objective – a key change – and specified the state’s monopoly on carrying arms, a reference to the full disarmament of Hezbollah.

Finally, of course, Hezbollah’s archenemies, HTS, are now in power in Damascus. Hezbollah fought off repeated Al Qaeda/Al Nusra/ISIS attempts to invade Lebanon and also intervened against these forces within Syria. Al-Jolani coming to power represents a major disruption to Hezbollah’s supply lines from Iran.

The US and Israel are attempting to turn up this pressure by frequent aerial attacks on border crossings from Syria and on Hezbollah individuals within Lebanon. Recently they took the additional measure of banning pilgrimage flights to and from Iran, which greatly angered the Shia community and was aimed at cutting off a route for physical supplies of cash.

What is uncertain is what secret accommodations General Aoun may have reached with Hezbollah, over whether their physical disarmament throughout Lebanon under SCR 1701 and the Ceasefire Agreement is a genuine process or a show. Politically, Aoun and Salam have strongly planted their banner for real disarmament of Hezbollah.

What appears beyond dispute is that the Israelis receive a continued flow of intelligence from Lebanese sources on Hezbollah personnel movements and sites, and the US-sanctioned intense Israeli bombing campaign shows no sign of abating.

We can add to this sad fact that Israel was able to use the Ceasefire Agreement to occupy parts of Southern Lebanon which Hezbollah had successfully defended during the war, and that Israel has destroyed by demolition thousands of homes and other civilian buildings under cover of the ceasefire to add to those destroyed during the war.

Indeed Israel demolishes more buildings in Southern Lebanon every day still, and has now destroyed over 90,000 buildings in Lebanon in total. As I predicted, Israel is building 5 permanent military outposts in Southern Lebanon and has made plain it has no intention of leaving.

The US puppet government in Beirut, like the US puppet government in Damascus, plainly has no intention of any realistic action against de facto Israeli annexation of its land. While Hezbollah has signalled a reversion to past tactics of guerilla warfare, I have serious doubts about both its current capacity, both political and military.

Of the enduring heroism of the people of South Lebanon I have no doubt, and I also have no doubt that as Israel is maintaining an illegal occupation, their legal right of armed resistance in unimpeachable.

It is however foolish not to acknowledge that with Israel expanding into Lebanon and Syria, with US puppet regimes in Syria and Damascus, with genocide about to restart in Gaza and spreading into the West Bank, and with an apparently crazed level of open Zionist support from Trump that is in fact only more honest than the pro-Genocide positions of the large majority of Western governments, the current position looks bleak indeed.

The only grounds for hope is that I cannot imagine that the people of the region are going to tolerate Israeli collaborationist regimes in Damascus, Beirut and Ramallah much longer. Indeed with slight variations you might say the same of the entire Arab world.

I hope you will forgive this being a very personal post as I try to make sense of my experiences and assimilate much new knowledge into my view of the world.

I went to Lebanon knowing literally nobody in the country, and with an introduction to just one person who helped us through immigration, but whose assistance thereafter did not work out. I did so accompanied by Niels as cinematographer, despite my never really having worked in video before, and my not being very accomplished at it. On top of which we had no financial resources except for our crowdfunding, which was not going well.

I now realise just how deeply ignorant I was about Lebanon before arriving.

The truth is, I wanted to go to Gaza but could find no way to get in. I had then had applied to Israel for the required permission from COGAT to enter the West Bank, but had been refused. So Lebanon was the one place under Israeli aggression where I could actually hope to get in to document and report on Israeli atrocities.

This venture was also born out of a rather desperate feeling that I must try to do something. I had been involved in the genesis of the ICJ case and in international campaigning for Palestine, but felt so helpless watching murdered children in Gaza every day on social media, that I felt compelled to do more.

With war against the Israeli invaders raging in Lebanon, I admit I also had a compulsion to share at least some of the danger of those putting their lives at stake. In truth, I felt something of a fraud to be writing about it from home if I was not prepared to experience it.

Well, at times Lebanon really was dangerous for us, but I am extremely proud of what Niels and I achieved. The six mini-documentaries reached millions of people and I think genuinely informed the Western public. I think the interview with the UN was extremely revealing and important and wish I had been able to get a rather wider audience for it. On top of which we produced numerous shorter video pieces, written articles and interviews with alternative media outlets across the globe, as well as doing a lot of Arab mainstream media.

In the end we had to leave because it proved simply not possible to meet the substantial costs of the venture by individual subscriptions and donations, and I ran out of money. It was a bold experiment in being able to do the kind of real, on-the-ground journalism that legacy media has abandoned, but to continue would require more fundraising ability or organisational ability than I possess.

There is no doubt that we suffered – and still suffer – massive social media suppression, and this limitation of reach is what crippled fundraising efforts. Essentially we were asking the same people for donations again and again, which is both impractical and, I admit, I found personally difficult and undignified.

So I shall continue reporting from my base in Scotland, travelling the world as occasion demands. My knowledge has been hugely expanded by my time in Beirut. I will now largely revert to written rather than video format. The struggle for justice goes on, and my commitment to it remains.

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The post Islamic Resistance Movements and Israel appeared first on Craig Murray.

From: Peter Kwasniewski from “Tradition and Sanity” traditionsanity@substack.com
Date: Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 9:04 AM
Subject: Pius X to Francis: From Modernism Expelled to Modernism Enthroned (Part 3: Conclusion)
To: lifetreemail@gmail.com

Pius X to Francis: From Modernism Expelled to Modernism Enthroned (Part 3: Conclusion)
Examples of Ratzingerian dialectics and Bergoglian evolutionism
PETER KWASNIEWSKI
FEB 13

LISTEN TO POST · 22:25
In Part 1, I looked at the origins of Modernism and formulated a definition, with the help of Cardinal Mercier. In Part 2, I traced its fundamental problem back to a false philosophy that undermines supernatural faith in a definite divine revelation and discussed how the Oath Against Modernism was dismantled by a pope, Paul VI, who seemed suspiciously eager to embrace at least some of the ideas condemned by it. In this concluding part, I will look at some examples of how the evolutionism characteristic of the Modernist view plays out in the current pope and in his predecessor. Lastly, I will connect the dots between what I shall call Black, Scarlet, and Lavender Modernisms.

Francis as doctrinal evolutionist

One of the characteristic features of Modernism is its reliance on an evolutionary model of thought, in which truth is not static but dynamic: the Church does not possess the Truth at any given moment, but is ever searching for it, and ever stumbling upon new aspects of Truth that can even amount to a reversal of what the Church used to hold as true.¹

We can see this approach vividly in Pope Francis, who maintains that the Church was actually wrong for 2,000 years in her support of the use of the death penalty, since we “now know” that the death penalty is contrary to human dignity, and therefore always and everywhere inadmissible (but this can be true only if it is per se malum, something evil in and of itself; for if it were not, it would sometimes be admissible). Or rather, it is perhaps more accurate to say that for a Modernist, the Church at a more primitive period of the development of human consciousness was right to promote the death penalty — it was bound to look legitimate to culturally immature people — but now in our stage of higher consciousness, which involves the apprehension of universal human rights, the brotherhood of all men, the non-divine source of political authority, and the universal benevolence of the Creator-God, we can see that the death penalty is wrong. Or so it may be for our particular phase of consciousness; evolution could lead us once more in a surprising direction, you never know.

Another example is the false teaching of the eighth chapter of Amoris Laetitia, which overturns the hitherto unbroken exclusion from reception of the sacraments of Catholics who are living in an objective state of adultery. The Modernist, however, would say that notions of mortal sin, objective sinfulness, worthiness, preconditions for sacramental reception, have all “evolved” under the influence of an ever-more comprehensive grasp of God’s merciful love, which “stops at nothing” (as they would say) and “is never earned or lost by our actions,” etc. Note that there is always a grain of truth in the midst of these errors, for otherwise they would have not the slightest plausibility for any intellect, however dim.

The universalism espoused by Francis in Abu Dhabi, in Singapore, and in many other places is yet another example: the Church once taught that it alone possesses and teaches the true religion given to us by God for our salvation, but “now we know” that God speaks to man through all religions and goes beyond them all, so each is a path to salvation for those who follow it sincerely. At best, Jesus is the “privileged path” of salvation, as Bishop Robert Barron said.² One can detect here the influence of the subjective, emotional, and pragmatic theory of religion Pius X diagnosed in Pascendi.

One could multiply such examples of modern teachings, present already before the Council but emerging into the open afterwards, that bear this evolutionary stamp. Br. André-Marie writes:

Where Kant made all things static, Hegel introduced a dynamic element into his metaphysics (like Heraclitus). For Hegel, all things evolve in the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. History, truth, thought, indeed all reality is explained by this principle. In the history of thought, the Hegelian dialectic gives rise to “Historical Consciousness,” an acute awareness of change as a constant, describing all reality as in continual development. It further produces “Historicism,” the theory in which general laws of historical development are the determinant of events. In this theory, all things are subject to progressive evolutionary processes.³

Cornelis Jacobsz, Dialectica (source)
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Hegelian dialectic in Ratzinger

Indeed, we can see how even Benedict XVI’s theory of the “hermeneutic of continuity” imports or retains an element of Hegelianism. In the famous address he gave to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005, he spoke not of a “hermeneutic of continuity” (although he used that expression at other times),⁴ but of a “hermeneutic of reform, of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us.”

As Brian McCall explains, this is not quite as promising as it might sound:

Benedict XVI is arguing that the object of belief can change over time as long as the Church remains the same subject proposing those developing beliefs. It seeks revisions of teaching over time through a process that keeps the structure of the Church in place.⁵

So, although Benedict in the same speech rejects what he calls the “hermeneutic of rupture” that makes of the Church during and after the Council a totally different entity with totally different beliefs from the Church before the Council, he goes on to say that in regard to more contingent matters such as the Church’s relationship with the modern world, there is in fact a blend of rupture and continuity — certain ruptures are necessary in order to secure a deeper continuity, as it were. Or in his words: “It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists.”

Let me give some examples of how this Hegelian dialectic works in Ratzinger.

1. In his book Principles of Catholic Theology, Ratzinger called the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, a “countersyllabus” to Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors.⁶ The Thesis is Pius IX’s Anti-Liberalism; the Antithesis is modern Liberalism; the dialectical process is the struggle to integrate modernity into Catholicism; the resulting Synthesis is a Higher Liberalism that is somehow also Catholic.
2. In the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum and the accompanying letter to bishops, Con Grande Fiducia, we have a Thesis: the Tridentine Roman rite; an Antithesis: the Novus Ordo; a dialectical process: “mutual enrichment”; and an eventual Synthesis: a future Roman rite that is both old and new, with the supposed “best qualities” of each.⁷
3. In the position Benedict XVI takes about heaven, hell, and purgatory in the encyclical letter Spe Salvi, we can reconstruct the latent structure this way. Thesis: the historically dominant view that the human race is a “massa damnata,” in other words, a race justly destined for perdition due to original and actual sin, from which a minority is saved. Antithesis: the universalism of Origen, David Bentley Hart, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Bishop Barron: either everyone will be saved, or at least it’s reasonable to hope that that will be the case. The dialectical process is the ever-widening inclusiveness of salvific grace. The final Synthesis: most people are saved, though the few who are terribly wicked, like Hitler and Stalin, are lost; they cannot sit at the same heavenly banquet.⁸
4. Regarding human evolution, the Thesis is that man was created directly by God and woman by God from the first man, and the whole human race takes its origin from this pair. The Antithesis is that human beings are nothing but a cosmic accident, the unplanned outcome of material particles interacting by chance. The Synthesis is theistic evolution, where God somehow upholds and directs the random material process until at some point He intervenes to establish “first humans,” whose parents were non-humans.

We see this kind of dialectical pattern throughout Joseph Ratzinger’s writings; it is very true that as different as he is from Cardinal Walter Kasper, they share a profound core of Germanic philosophy but apply it in different ways. Kasper, for example, describes the shift from the apostolic period to the post-apostolic period of the early Church councils as a “continuity in discontinuity,” where the original kerygma or message of salvation was translated into Greek categories of thought in order to be “adapted to the mentality of the day”; and he says that this is what every age must do: translate the Gospel into a new language, discarding no longer relevant or meaningful concepts and adopting novel ones to fit the requirements of the times.

Now, I have spent a good deal of time talking about the history, personalities, and philosophical method of Modernism because if we do not see these things clearly, we will not be able to recognize the wide range of forms — at times, sophisticated and subtle — that Modernism assumes in our own day. There are out-and-out Modernists like Kasper, but there are also many who have been influenced or formed by Modernism perhaps without even realizing it, or who believe they can somehow “salvage” or “rehabilitate” its “positive aspects” while still maintaining Catholic orthodoxy and tradition (Ratzinger, I think, would fall into this category, as would most so-called Catholic conservatives).

As I have been at pains to show, Modernism is not a tidy, closed system that must be held or rejected in full; rather, it is a mish-mash of ideas about how faith and religion operate, how salvation occurs, how Scripture is formed, how dogmatic definitions emerge and are refined, how the law of development of thought — the expansion and refinement of the moral conscience — compels the modernization of human beings and their institutions, including the Church. It’s unlikely that one will find all of these views equally in all who might be called Modernists or semi-Modernists; it’s even more unlikely that everyone who holds such views will be aware of their origins and their implications.

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Three waves of Modernists

Nevertheless, there are those individuals who are very well aware of what they are doing and how they intend to determine the future of the Church. I suggest we think of them in three categories: the Black Modernists of 120 years ago; the Scarlet Modernists of 60 years ago; and the Lavender Modernists of today.

The Black Modernists of 120 years ago were men of the cloth, like Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell, who embraced rationalism, scientism, historicism, revisionism, and relativism. These men and their writings and conferences made it possible for an attitude of distrust, suspicion, and contempt toward tradition to make headway in the Church. Their views prompted a growing restlessness for Church reform and often for liturgical reform — a movement that Pius XI and Pius XII tried to moderate and placate in their pontificates, with mixed results.⁹

It was John XXIII who, though personally of a more traditional piety, made the fatal mistake of convening an ecumenical council at a time when the neo-Modernist agenda had picked up steam once again (we can see this by examining mid-twentieth-century theologians like Rahner, Congar, Chenu, Küng, Schillebeeckx, Häring, De Lubac, and Ratzinger, among many others), and then compounded his error by allowing these periti and their bishops to cancel out the preparatory documents of the Council, staging a “coup” that determined its fundamental direction and cast of mind.

At this point, sixty years out from the end of Vatican II, we could speak of Scarlet Modernists, in the sense of bishops and cardinals of that period who, usually of impeccable personal morality and a strong sense of duty, were sympathetic to more progressive or liberal points of view at the Council — and even more can we speak of bishops and cardinals consecrated or created in the decades immediately after the Council, who would most fully implement its vision, normalizing milder forms of the ideas condemned in Pius X’s Pascendi — a version that might be called “soft Modernism,” which is the theological soundtrack to “beige Catholicism” (to use a phrase of Bishop Barron’s).

This Modernism is, in fact, nothing less than the Creed of the Anti-Church, the operative principles of the churchmen and ecclesiastical structures that are masquerading as the Church of Christ and living parasitically off of her historical capital and financial assets. We can recognize the Anti-Church by its self-contradictory traits: the dogmatic undogmatism, the rigid laxism, the exclusive inclusiveness, the systematic antischolasticism and eclecticism, the anti-traditional spirit that has by now practically become a substitute tradition, since it has been around long enough to win a certain veneer of respectability (note that the politicized canonizations of several Vatican II popes were a crucial step in transmitting the pretense of divine approval).

Intellectual errors followed by ecclesiastical restructuring — including the episcopate-destroying pursuit of “collegiality” and “synodality” — and the betrayal of the sacred liturgy have led to the moral vacuum, or worse, the demon-infested vacuum, that we now know as the clerical sexual abuse scandal, which it would be more proper to call the “abuse pandemic.” The sexual abuse epitomized in former Cardinal McCarrick and now sustained by his well-placed collaborators in the USCCB and at the Vatican is of course bound up with the vice of sodomy, which has always flared up in the worst periods of Church history: times when knowledge, virtue, and commitment to Christ had dissipated, when the Faith was like a tiny spark nurtured by a faithful remnant, out of which reform and renewal eventually came by God’s great mercy.

This is why I speak of today’s “Lavender Modernists”: they have much in common with the two preceding types, the Black and the Scarlet, but they are altogether worse, for they combine intellectual infidelity, institutional ambition, liturgical corruption, and moral depravity. And in this way, they are the promulgators and precipitants of the Great Apostasy.

The ultimate model and cause of fidelity: Jesus Christ fastened to the Cross; behind him, pious Aeneas carries his father from burning Troy; in the foreground, dogs serve as symbols of loyalty — Jacob Matham, after design by Hendrick Goltzius (source)
The response of faithful Catholics

How, then, do we combat this multi-generational parasite of Modernism? In a time of such confusion and wickedness, one thing is absolutely clear: we must hold fast to the settled and articulate tradition of the Church:

in her doctrine, which we find in all of the ecumenical Councils that taught dogmatically and in the Catechism of Trent and all the good catechisms of the past;
in our moral life, according to the constant teaching and example of the saints;
above all, in the Church’s authentic age-old rites of worship, be they Eastern or Western.
This is what we are asked to do: remain faithful to the inheritance we have received, prior to the period of anarchy. The one and only safe path is to stick to what we know to be certainly true; to implore God’s help and intervention daily; to entrust ourselves to the Virgin Mary; and never to abandon the Church of Christ for imaginary greener pastures elsewhere. What good could any move away from the Catholic Church accomplish? It would only remove good people from what they need the most and where they are most needed — the visible Body of Christ — and would only contribute to the growing anarchy.

What is needed is steadfast attachment to the Bride of Christ in spite of her marred countenance on earth, unswerving loyalty to her eternal Head, total acceptance of the doctrine He entrusted to her in its integrity. In short, we need to do what St. Pius X taught us to do over a hundred years ago. Truth is perpetually youthful, with a radiant countenance of beauty and delight; it is error that grows prematurely old, gnarled, and hideous.

There is more need than ever for the counterwitness of Catholics who speak the truth with love, and live it with joy. These will be the torchbearers who bring the light of the Faith into the remaining decades of the twenty-first century and beyond, while the Modernist sect (for that it what it is) implodes upon itself. After all, as our Lord said in no uncertain terms: Veritas liberabit vos, the truth will set you free (Jn 8:32). He Himself is that truth — Ego sum via, et veritas, et vita (Jn 14:6) — and His Church is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

Because of the flight from God that began with Adam’s rebellion and worms its way into the children of Eve, we will not be surprised if the world prefers the slavery of subjectivism to the truth that sets us free: “The time is coming when people will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim 3:3–4). Surely it is not too much to ask of loyal Catholics that they not follow suit; that, instead, they seek out, study, and promote sound doctrine in all faith and humility; that they turn away from fashionable modern myths to embrace a heritage of perennial truths; that they accumulate teachers who, unashamed to be lowly pupils in the school of Christ, feed upon every word that comes from the mouth of God, and nourish their disciples with the same life-giving food.

A sober examination of the Church on earth at this time discloses the existence of a major “schism.” Yet, contrary to the propaganda of the progressives, it is not faithful and traditional Catholics who are in schism, but those members of the hierarchy and of the laity who, under the intoxicating influence of Modernism, have abandoned the rock of truth and the ark of salvation. We cannot expect them to be humbly admitting their errors and repenting of their sins. This, surely, is an apocalyptic storm from which only an omnipotent God can deliver us, in answer to the prayers He calls forth from our weary but unvanquished souls. As Archbishop Viganò says:

The Church is shrouded in the darkness of modernism, but the victory belongs to Our Lord and His Bride. We desire to continue to profess the perennial faith of the Church in the face of the roaring evil that besieges her. We desire to keep vigil with her and with Jesus, in this new Gethsemane of the end times; to pray and do penance in reparation for the many offenses caused to them…. We know…that even the “synthesis of all heresies” represented by Modernism and its updated conciliar version can never definitively obscure the splendor of the Bride of Christ, but only for the brief period of the eclipse that Providence, in its infinite wisdom, has allowed, to draw from it a greater good.¹⁰

Our growth in holiness through trials, our recommitment to prayer, our study and proclamation of the truth, our grateful adherence to all that God has lavished upon us in our Catholic Tradition — may all this be the evidence in our own lives that He has indeed drawn from the crisis a greater good.

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1
For a superb treatment of the defined dogmatic truths to which Modernism is opposed, see Lamont and Pierantoni, Defending the Faith, 103–13, 268–69.

2
See “Is Jesus Christ the ‘privileged way’ to salvation—or the only way?,” LifeSiteNews, December 17, 2018.

3
“What Did St. Pius X Mean When He Called Modernism ‘the Synthesis of All Heresies’?,” Catholicism.org, September 9, 2007.

4
For documentation, see “The Ongoing Saga of ‘the Hermeneutic of Continuity,’” New Liturgical Movement, November 26, 2013—written at a time when I still believed that Francis might continue in the same line as Benedict, and also that Benedict’s own line was unobjectionable. The passage of time together with further study has clarified much.

5
McCall, A Voice in the Wilderness, 109.

6
“If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text [Gaudium et Spes] as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus…. [T]he Syllabus established a line of demarcation against the determining forces of the nineteenth century: against the scientific and political world view of liberalism. In the struggle against modernism this twofold delimitation was ratified and strengthened…. Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789” (Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Sr. Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987], 381–82).

7
See my lecture “Beyond Summorum Pontificum: The Work of Retrieving the Tridentine Heritage,” Rorate Caeli, July 14, 2021.

8
See the Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi (November 30, 2007), nn. 44–46; cf. my article “On Hell: Clarity Is Mercy in an Age of ‘Dare We Hope,’” OnePeterFive, August 7, 2019.

9
Modernists were not uniformly in favor of liturgical reform or experimentation. Since their concern was to deny the literal meaning of dogmas and to emphasize subjective religious and ethical experience, it was easy enough for them to revel in the religious symbolism the traditional rites provided. At the same time, Modernism’s general evolutionary framework, in which mankind’s present condition and future state are seen as superior to the past, readily lends itself to liturgical aggiornamento. Ironically, we see in the official policy of the Society of St. Pius X an inversion of the Modernist problem: the focus is placed so strongly on “doctrine” that liturgical deformation, such as the Pius XII Holy Week (a trial run for the Novus Ordo), is accepted without protest. It’s as if they maintain that a pope can be an absolute monarch with no responsibilities to the Church’s tradition of worship, as long as dogma is untouched; he could create a new liturgy de novo and it would have to be accepted if no doctrinal objections could be made to it. Such is the essence of liturgical nominalism and voluntarism; and such a view is not Catholic.

10
A Voice in the Wilderness, 157; 256.

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Four UN Special Rapporteurs have written jointly to the UK government demanding explanation of its inappropriate persecution of journalists and political activists under the Terrorism Act. They state that those persecuted:

appear to have no credible connection to “terrorist” or “hostile” activity

The cases taken up by the United Nations are those of Johanna Ross (Ganyukova), John Laughland, Kit Klarenberg, Craig Murray (yes, me), Richard Barnard and Richard Medhurst. The UN letter is signed by:

Ben Saul
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism

Irene Khan
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression

Gina Romero
Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association

Ana Brian Nougrères
Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy

Under this UN special procedure, the letter is sent to the government in question which has sixty days to respond. This letter was sent by the UN to Starmer’s government on 4 December. No reply having been received, it has now been published.

It is worth noting that even with the UN letter on its desk and ignored, Starmer’s government in fact stepped up the use of the Terrorism Act against pro-Palestinian journalists and activists in this period. The cases of Asa Winstanley, Sarah Wilkinson and Tony Greenstein, among others, happened after the letter was drafted.

I should be clear that I was, working with Justice for All International (for which we had a crowdfunder last year in relation to the Assange case at the UN), heavily involved in assisting with preparation of this initiative, and made three visits to the UN in Geneva on the subject together with Sharof Azizov, and on one occasion Richard Medhurst. Your subscriptions and donations to this blog are the only funding I have to make such activity possible, so thank you.

The letter is in two parts. The first consists of an outline of the information received by the UN on each case and a request for a response from the British government.

But the second part is a devastating critique of the UK’s terrorism laws and their inappropriate use to stifle dissent and freedom of expression. This legal analysis on lack of conformity with the UK’s human rights obligations is not dependent on any of the particular cases cited.

While we do not wish to prejudge the accuracy of these allegations, we
express our concern regarding the potential misapplication of counter-terrorism laws
against journalists and activists who were critical of the policies and practices of
certain governments, which may unjustifiably interfere with the rights to freedom of
expression and opinion and participation in public life, lead to self-censorship and
have a serious chilling effect on the media, civil society and legitimate political and
public discourse.
We are particularly concerned by the broad scope of section 12(1A) and
schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and schedule 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and
Border Security Act 2019…

We are concerned at the vagueness and overbreadth of the offence in
section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000, which criminalizes expressing an opinion
or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation and being reckless as to
whether it encouraged support for that organisation…

The term “support” is undefined in the Act and in our view is vague and
overbroad and may unjustifiably criminalize legitimate expression.

…the meaning of expressing support for a
proscribed organization is ambiguous and could capture speech that is neither
necessary nor proportionate to criminalize, including legitimate debates about the de-
proscription of an organization and disagreement with a government’s decision to
proscribe…

We note that there is no requirement that the expression of support relate to
the commission of violent terrorist acts by the organization. As such, the offence may
unjustifiably criminalize the expression of opinion or belief that is not rationally,
proximately or causally related to actual terrorist violence or harms. The offence
further does not require any likelihood that the support will assist the organization in
any way. It goes well beyond the accepted restrictions on freedom of expression under
international law concerning the prohibition of incitement to violence or hate speech…

We note that some proscribed organizations are de facto authorities
performing a diversity of civilian functions, including governance, humanitarian and
medical activities, and provision of social services, public utilities and education.
Expressing support for any of these ordinary civilian activities by the organization
could constitute expressing support for it, no matter how remote such expression is
from support for any violent terrorist acts by the group…

Further, the section 12(1A) offence does not require the person to intend to
encourage others to support the organization…

We are further concerned that the absence of legal certainty may have a
chilling effect on the media, public debate, activism, and the activities of civil society,
in a context where there is a heightened public interest in discussion of the conflict in
the Middle East, including the conduct of the parties and the underlying conditions
conducive to violence in the region. We are further concerned that a person could be
prosecuted for isolated remarks or sentences that mischaracterize the overall position
of the individual, or despite the individual’s intentions or continued and express
disavowal of terrorist violence, given the subjectivity and contested meanings of
certain expressions in relation to sensitive or controversial political conflicts…

We encourage your Excellency’s Government to repeal section 12(1A), or
otherwise to amend it to protect freedom of expression, and to develop prosecutorial
guidelines for its appropriate use to avoid the unnecessary or disproportionate
incrimination of political dissent…

We are concerned that police powers at UK border areas and ports under
schedule 7 may be unjustifiably used against journalists and activists who are critical
of Western foreign policy. We note that the examination of each journalist named in
this communication under schedule 7 was premeditated, and that the examination,
confiscation of devices, and DNA prints were conducted despite the apparent absence
of a credible “terrorist” connection. We are concerned that such powers carry a risk of
intimidating, deterring, and disrupting the ability of journalists to report on topics of
public importance without self-censorship…

We are concerned that the distinction between “examination” and “detention”
under the Act is artificial given the punitive sanctions for of non-compliance, and that
this distinction may be inconsistent with the accepted meaning of “arrest” or
“detention” under article 9 of the ICCPR. We are further concerned that the extensive
powers authorised under section 2 do not require any degree of suspicion that a person
falls within the meaning of “terrorist” at section 40(1)(b). The extreme breadth of
such power enables unnecessary, disproportionate, arbitrary or discriminatory
interference with an individual’s rights, including freedom from arbitrary detention,
freedom of movement under article 12(1) of the ICCPR, and the rights to leave and
enter one’s own country under article 12(2) and (4) of the ICCPR…

we refer your
Excellency’s government to article 17 of the ICCPR which requires that “[n]o one
shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with [their] privacy, family,
home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on [their] honour and reputation”.
We note that several journalists detained under schedule 7 have had their electronic
devices confiscated for a significant period of time and have not been updated on the
use, retention or destruction of their data, or advised in relation to their personal data
protection rights.

We urge your Excellency’s Government to consider the growing number of
instances where schedule 7 may have been inappropriately directed towards
journalists and activists, and to consider addressing this through amendments to the
legislation, guidance for relevant officials, and training of border security officers. We
further encourage your Excellency’s Government to address the judiciary’s concerns
regarding the retention of electronic data

It is a stunning letter well worth reading in full; the legal language and diplomatic formality does not disguise the extreme concern of the UN at the extraordinary authoritarian attack on freedom of speech in the UK.

I might reveal that some of the UN Special Rapporteurs who signed were very sceptical of the issue until studying the details. One told me personally they were too busy to look at such a minor problem; their attitude changed completely when faced with papers on the cases involved.

There is no sign the UN has given the Starmer government pause; human rights are extremely low on their agenda. Support for Israel and the crushing of pro-Palestinian sentiment, or of any criticism of western foreign policy, is extremely high on their agenda.

The legislation concerned has been brought into disrepute by the widespread support in public from Establishment figures for HTS in Syria, even though it remains a proscribed organisation and any expression of support is an offence under the Terrorism Act. To my knowledge, not one person has been charged or even questioned for supporting the HTS coup in Syria.

This occurred after the UN letter, but they could now mention extreme arbitrariness in police and prosecutorial application of the law in their critique. The Terrorism Act is being used to criminalise peaceful criticism of western foreign policy. There can be no doubt about that at all.

It also remains the case that there has not been one reference in UK mainstream media to the persecution of dissident journalists using terrorism laws. I don’t expect the prostitute stenographers to power to change that by covering this censure from the United Nations.

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The post United Nations Censures UK Over Abuse of Terrorism Act Against Journalists and Activists appeared first on Craig Murray.

January 20—Novus ordo seclorum?
(New Order of the Ages)
By: Victor Davis Hanson

Part One – January 21, 2025
How do we explain that the world is turning upside down after November 5, 2024, and will continue following January 20, 2025?

Symptoms?

Take the media?
The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and others suddenly did not endorse their usual left/Democratic presidential candidate this election. So, many of their writers are now fired or resigned in anger or fear.

Owners claim their own papers are too biased. Changes are promised. But why now? Why did CNN lose its defamation suit? Why is CBS thinking of settling with Trump after editing an interview with Kamala Harris to help her chances in the waning days of the 2024 campaign?

Silicon Valley? What happened there?

Instead of Mark Zuckerberg’s $419 million invested in ensuring the Trump campaign did not win (as in 2020), why are he and the wealthiest tech lords in the world traipsing to Mar-a-Lago? Why did Mark blame his former CEO Sheryl Sandberg for Facebook’s DEI mindless McCarthyism?

There is to be no more Trump-Hitler?

Even Joe and Mika took their hajj to Palm Beach?

Snoop Dog is no longer cutting videos about shooting Trump, but praising his near hero?

Bezos’s rockets and Elon’s are now to be frenemies?

Why did MSNBC suddenly fire(?)—or see leave—its CEO Rashida Jones? Was it just ratings, or public disgust as well with the likes of Rachel Maddow (who why now took a pay cut?) and the protected racist rantings of Joy Reid?

Why now, all of a sudden, do the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report to us that Team Biden and the media who covered the White House all knew that he was cognitively challenged from the start of his tenure as they both conspired to smear and slander all who spoke the truth?

Why is everyone shocked that Joe Biden just declared that a mythical 28th Amendment is “the law of the land”?

Again, why now these about-faces? Why not last July; why not, say, February or September 2022 or perhaps 2023? Why do we hear only now that Joe Biden signed an executive order banning LNG exports to Europe—and claimed he did not know what he signed?

Also, suddenly, there really was a Wuhan Lab origin to the birth of Covid, after all. And mirabile dictu Peter Daszak is no hero and not deserving of a single dime of more federal money? Will there be no more bobblehead Dr. Faucis to buy? Why is there no longer a market for them and other Fauci paraphernalia?

Why is Liz Cheney no longer a folk hero? Was she not praised for coaching a witness and shutting out other Republicans from serving on the January 6 House committee?

Christopher Wray sent in his resignation and now suddenly warns us of cabals of Chinese espionage operatives in the U.S.? Again, did they just now appear?

Why is everyone from CEOs to the FBI abruptly shutting down their DEI departments? Would they have done so if Harris had won?

And did we not hear that the caravans heading northward to our border have been turning around? Why is Mexico so complimentary of the once diablo Trump?

Why is Trudeau gone?

For that matter, why did the Assad regime abruptly fall after the election, and why does Hamas wish to negotiate, and why does the current Iranian president suddenly swear Iran wants no bomb, no desire to assassinate Trump, no wish for a wider war with Israel?

As for the trivial, why did the Danish government just put Greenland imagery on its royal coat of arms? And why did it send $1 billion to Greenland, and why not 1, 5, 9 years ago?

So why is the world turned upside down, as the British played after their shocking defeat at Yorktown (e.g., “Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.”)?

Part Two – January 22, 2025
The obvious answer to all these disconnects, shockers, and paradoxes is not quite the whole answer: that Trump won in the greatest political comeback in U.S. history, that he might well be a Reaganesque president to Biden’s Carter, that his success will be his revenge and reveal to the country just how badly our John Gill Biden ruled in comparison.

Or even perhaps the answer is that the Left here and our enemies abroad know what they have done to Trump and, during the Biden dereliction, to the U.S. itself during the last four years. And thus, they know what these scoundrels would do if they were now in the place of an ascending Trump and a re-awakening U.S. if they had experienced from themselves what they did to Trump and us.

Another explanation is that we are waking up from a bad four-year dream, or recovering from a bad hangover, or have arisen from a coma, and for the first time have rediscovered confidence within ourselves.

What caused our slumber, or rather what were the goads that drove the U.S. absolutely insane from the summer of 2020 to January 20, 2025?

Was it the fatal combination of the insane Covid lockdown, and the hysterical, Stalinist reprisals to any dissent? Did that social isolation and economic ruin offer tinder for the George Floyd riots?

How otherwise would entire cities go up in smoke of 35 dead and $2 billion in arson and looting damage over the unfortunate death of a violent career felon? No one wished to remember that the deified Floyd once broke into a home and put a gun to a woman’s pregnant stomach, and at the time of his arrest was in self-imposed ill health, high on fentanyl, suffering heart disease, recovering from Covid, arrested for passing counterfeit currency, resisting arrest, and perished while a cop sneered as he kept him down on the pavement gasping for breath? To lament Floyd’s death but to disagree he should appear in murals with a halo and feathered wings, remember, was heresy, blasphemy, and grounds for firing.

Did all that warrant the deaths and destruction that followed, and would it have occurred had not the locked-up and quarantined population been first driven crazy by the pandemic and the reaction to it? Was all that the fuel that reawakened the woke/DEI virus and nearly fatally infected the country?

So, the four-year hiatus is over. And there is a sense of joy, or rather relief that abroad America will once again protect its friends and worry its enemies. We will try to forget the years of craziness of printing trillions of dollars, of retribalizing and fixating on our superficial appearances, of demanding from others the confession that there are three equal sexes, and the windmills and solar panels will keep us warm in winter and cool in summer, day and night, and China is merely a friendly rival, and that thieves steal from stores only because rich people made laws that it is bad to take things people need but they do not.

So, the pseudo-realities constructed during the years of madness have evaporated and left behind a foul-smelling vapor. Are we supposed to laugh even now about the eerie machinations of our “51 experts” who claimed the damming Hunter laptop was “Russian disinformation,” or that Joe Biden, our savior on January 6 and the defender of our Constitution can leave office declaring in his dementia that he alone has just ratified and put into law the 28th Amendment as he says, “the law of the land.”

So, what will follow now that we Americans have arisen from our four-year stupor and once again are masters of our own destiny?

How long will it take for the Left, now in their caves licking their wounds, to reemerge as they did during the Senate confirmation questioning? Then the hysterics, ignorance, and obnoxiousness of Senators Hirono, Kane, Schumer, Warren, or Whitehouse likely guaranteed the unanimous or near-unanimous votes to confirm all the nominees who endured their adolescent performance art rants.

Who knows such answers? But for now, perhaps there is a month, maybe three, to fuel a renaissance, a counter-revolution that will first return us to normality, as the last shall be first, the first last.

The final corruption of Joe Biden
With only 15 minutes to go as president,
Joe Biden snatched infamy from the jaws of obscurity.

By: Jonathan Turley
January 20, 2025
(Emphasis added)

With record-low polling and widely viewed as a “failed” president, Biden completed his one-man race to the bottom of ethics by issuing preemptive pardons to members of his own family. The pardons were timed to guarantee that the media would not focus on yet another unethical act by this president. He need not have worried. For four years, the media worked tirelessly to deny or deflect the corruption scandal surrounding the Biden family.

The pardoning of James Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens, and Francis Biden brought an inescapable clarity to the corruption of what is known in Washington as Biden Inc.

I have written about the Biden family’s corruption for decades. Influence-peddling has always been the favorite form of corruption in Washington, but this city has never seen the likes of the Biden family. Millions of dollars were secured from foreign sources and distributed to various Biden family members.

Biden repeatedly lied about the influence peddling. He long denied knowing about his son’s foreign clients or business. He denied ever meeting Hunter’s clients. Later, photos and emails showed that Biden had clearly met these clients and knew about the business deals. He was fully aware that his family was cashing in on his name and various offices.

Even Biden’s claims about handling the Trump cases were recently contradicted. While long claiming that he left these cases to the Justice Department and took no position on the merits, the Washington Post recently reported that Biden was irate over the failure to prosecute Trump before the election. He also reportedly lashed out at Attorney General Merrick Garland and said he regretted his appointment in light of the failure to nail Trump.

One of the most glaring lies was that he would never pardon his son. Few people believed him. Indeed, Hunter Biden’s bizarre criminal defense made no sense unless he knew he had a pocket pardon if all else failed.

Once he was forced out of the presidential race, Biden was freed up to sign a pardon for any and all crimes committed over a ten-year period by his son. He insisted that he really hadn’t been lying. He claimed that no ordinary person would have been tried for his son’s crimes — a manifestly untrue statement. He also emphasized that he had to take this step as a father of a son who was a hopeless addict and has now been clean for years.

However, the latest family pardon shatters even that rationalization. These Bidens are not even charged with any crimes, but Biden wanted to give them cover from any possible prosecution for anything. It was the ultimate sign of contempt for the American public’s intelligence and his office’s integrity.

Biden has long exercised situational ethics, and with his powers coming to an end, the situation demanded that he cash out before his credit ended. In granting these pardons, Biden was seeking to protect not just his family but also himself. He was the object of the influence peddling and repeatedly lied to bury the scandal. This insulation of his family serves to move the threat farther from himself.

Biden, however, may have been too clever by half this time. In the final moments of his presidency, he broke into the open and exposed not just himself but his allies in the media. Reporters are now fully visible as willing dupes in one of the greatest corruption scandals in this country’s history.

In his pardon statement, Biden insisted that:
“the issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”
Of course, that is the very opposite of what most people will conclude. More importantly, the pardons will not end the threat to his family.

Figures such as James Biden have been accused of lying to Congress about the influence-peddling operation. He can still be subpoenaed, and if he lies, he can be charged with a new crime.

Indeed, after James Biden’s pardon, it will be argued that he has less basis to claim the right to remain silent about any alleged crimes committed during the period for which the pardon applies. (He could argue that there is a danger of state charges, but that is less credible due to the running of statutes of limitation and other factors.)

The pardons, if anything, make such an investigation even more compelling for those seeking answers to longstanding questions of corruption.

Biden sealed his legacy with a finality that escapes most presidents. While his diminished mental capacity will remain an issue for historians, these pardons conclusively established his longstanding lack of ethics. It was Biden’s final act of corruption.

For a president who liked to call others “lying dog-faced pony soldiers,” Biden proved that, in the world of political corruption, the ponies are entirely optional.

COMMENTS, QUESTIONS,
LESSONS AND THOUGHTS
ABOUT WHERE WE HAVE BEEN
AND WHERE WE ARE HEADED

By: E.P.Unum
January 20, 2025

When the history of the Biden Administration is written, I predict it will go down as the most inept, insensitive, unintellectual, ineffective, and corrupt four years in the entire 250-year history of the United States of America.

Consider the following as a preface to the major focus of this essay:

America is a nation unlike any other in the history of mankind. Our Republic was founded on the principle that the rights of its citizens emanate from God, not man. Among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our Constitution, created by our Founders, has endured for 250 years, and the bedrock of that Constitution is that we have a government that is accountable to We The People, not the Supreme Court, Congress, or the President…but to We The People, not the other way around! Americans believe that every life is sacred and worth defending, and millions of Americans dressed in brown, khaki, blue, and grey have traded their yesterdays for our future and paid for it with their blood and sacrifice.

Over the last four decades, there has been an intense effort by liberal Democrats, who call themselves Progressives, to alter our system of government. These individuals seek to expand the Supreme Court and pack it with liberal jurists, thus ensuring the decisions of the Court go in favor of liberal ideals. These people are hell-bent on creating a large centralized government that will control every facet of our lives because at the very core of their beliefs is the notion that individuals are incapable of making decisions about their future well-being. They seek to do this by frivolously spending taxpayer dollars without regard to the effects such spending holds for the people they are sworn to serve or the general economy, i.e., inflation. They have already bastardized Social Security by siphoning funds to launch the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, who also used funds from Social Security to help fund the Vietnam War. More recently, President Biden tapped these funds to help pay for the 15 million illegal immigrants that have invaded our nation, coming through our southern border and Canada to the north. Most Americans are not aware that funds provided by working Americans and ostensibly used to help provide funds for retirement are not for that purpose at all; instead, the Supreme Court back in 1960, in a not-so-well publicized case Fleming vs Nestor, ruled that funds collected by the Social Security Administration are merely a tax providing funds for the general treasury to be spent as Congress or the President sees fit. Stated simply, Nestor vs Fleming created a giant piggy bank for liberal pet projects. Far too few people in America realize this, but it is a fact.

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a major war in Ukraine, which we have funded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars; the Middle East in turmoil with Israel defending itself against proxies of Iran like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi Rebels in Yemen who are also firing on cargo ships carrying goods for nations around the world. None of this is a surprise given our feckless leadership and the ill-advised retreat from Afghanistan, where we left $85 billion in state-of-the-art weapons, tanks, APCs, aircraft, ammunition, night vision equipment, RPGs, machine guns, rifles, and pistols to the enemy. All of this was on the orders given by President Joe Biden, who is, in my opinion, singularly the most corrupt, incompetent leader our country has ever had and who, in my opinion, should have been tried for treason along with General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Our country finds itself in this situation as the sun sets on the Biden Presidency. Thank God, on November 5, 2024, we elected Donald J. Trump as our 47th President, who takes office today, January 20, 2025.

President Trump is by no means perfect, but at least he loves our country, and that alone is a marked departure from the past four years.

Now for some lessons, questions, comments and observations:
· Democrats are likely to continue to be obstructionists to anything and everything President Trump tries to do. A leopard does not change its spots, and Democrats refuse to heed the message from We The People. These uber-liberal obstructionists have clearly been following the gameplan cited by Saul Alinsky, a professor at the University of Chicago, in his book Rules For Radicals. His book offered ways to cripple our government and change society and garnered the support of many politicians, including Barack Husein Obama, Hillary Clinton, and many social activists.

Rules For Radicals provides eight steps to effect significant government and
societal change as summarized below:
1) Healthcare — Control healthcare, and you control the people
2) Poverty—Increase the Poverty level as much as possible. Poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you provide everything for them to live.
3) Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way, you can increase taxes, which will increase poverty.
4) Gun Control — Remove the ability of the people to defend themselves from the Government. That way, it will be easier to create a police state.
5) Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income). Transfer money from the wealthy to the poor in whatever way possible.
6) Education — Take control of what people read and listen to and what children learn in school.
7) Religion — Remove the belief in God from the Government and schools.
8) Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent, and it will be easier to take from (Tax) the rich with the support of the poor.
· In reviewing these Rules for Radicals, does any of this seem familiar to you? Do you think this resembles a Republican Platform or a Democrat Platform? It is a Democrat Blueprint for disaster.

· Don’t you find it just a wee bit curious as to why President Joe Biden, on his last day in office, felt the need to pardon General Mark Milley, Liz Cheyney, a number of family members, including his brother Jim, and Dr. Anthony Fauci when no charges were ever levied against any of them? Maybe I am wrong, but I have never heard of pre-emptive pardons (until it was tried with Hunter Biden last summer and slapped down by a judge). It begs the question…what did these people do?

· I am so happy that Joe Biden’s granddaughter gave birth in Los Angeles last week, making him a great-grandfather. But announcing it while in Los Angeles with wildfires raging seems a tad bit insensitive and an inappropriate time to do so.

· Thanks to Israel, Iran is reeling. Its most potent proxy, Hezbollah, has been rendered impotent, and the Syrian Regime under Bashar Asad has collapsed and its military capabilities decimated by air strikes by Israel. Due to a powerful Israeli airstrike in late October that took out Iran’s most advanced air defense systems, leaving it naked to future raids, especially on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel achieved all of this despite the lack of support from the Biden Administration.

· It gives me no pleasure to say this. Still, we must face reality: people in the Biden Administration and the so-called journalists in mainstream media and talking heads on TV shows were all complicit in hiding that our President was struggling and in no condition to lead our nation. Why they failed to take action by invoking the 25th Amendment is a sign of incredible weakness and a total lack of integrity and character. Their failure to call this out and take action borders on treason.

· How do you run out of water in fire hydrants in a city like Los Angeles? Surely, there must be some explanation for this. Maybe Governor Gavin Newscom can address this. I haven’t heard from him about this recently.

· I do hope that President Trump issues pardons to many of the people in jail for their involvement (or lack of involvement) in the January 6, 2021, protest, many of whom were denied their due process rights guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. I did take note that the ladies on the View declared that the January 6, 2021, protest was “the equivalent to World War II and the Holocaust.” Those two global events left 100 million people dead, so their declaration was a bit out of touch. Wonder what they were smoking or where they learned their history!

· I can’t wait to read James Comer’s book All the President’s Money. An analysis of the Biden banking records, along with testimonies from Hunter Biden business associates before Comer’s committee, showed millions of dollars coming in from Chinese, Ukrainian, Romanian, and Kazhkhistan sources ($30 + million) all through a host of offshore companies controlled by Hunter Biden. Jason Galantis, a former Hunter Biden business associate now serving 16 years in prison for fraud, testified that “Hunter Biden’s primary goal was to make $billions for the family, not just millions.”

· I watched intently as President Biden boarded Marine One with his wife, Jill, and departed Washington, D.C. He leaves a mess and a cadre of people more interested in creating chaos and subverting the rule of law. But President Trump will get it fixed. I wish Biden well, but several health issues beset him, and the many lies and falsehoods he has promulgated over the years have taken their toll on him. His legacy, like his political career, is rooted in lies and deceit.

Our focus today needs to be on the future. And President Trump will do just that.

Full List of Donald Trump’s Executive Orders
Signed in the First Week

By: Andrew Stanton
January 21, 2025

President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders and other presidential actions on Monday, fulfilling a campaign promise to enact a sweeping conservative agenda upon his return to the White House.

Among other things, the president:
· withdrew from the landmark Paris Agreement,
· rescinded 78 Biden-era executive actions and
· implemented a federal hiring freeze.

He also signed several immigration-related executive orders and issued orders:
· curbing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts,
· announced upcoming tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and
· issued pardons to more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes related to the deadly January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

Trump signed his first few executive orders before the inaugural luncheon Monday afternoon. The orders appointed dozens of Cabinet-level officials and acting officials across the government, pending Senate confirmation of Trump’s Cabinet nominees. Officials who were appointed in acting capacities via executive orders include:
· James McHenry as acting attorney general.
· Robert Salesses as acting Secretary of Defense.
· Dorothy Fink as acting Secretary of Health and Human Services.
· Benjamine Huffman as acting Secretary of Homeland Security.
· Mark Averill as acting Secretary of the Army.
· Tom Sylvester as acting CIA director.
· Mark Uyeda as acting chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
· Andrew Ferguson as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

Trump officials also immediately shut down a Biden-era Customs and Border Protection app that allowed migrants to apply to legally enter the U.S. by seeking asylum.

Trump signed a number of other executive actions at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., where he addressed supporters in the late afternoon. The actions he signed included:
· The rescission of 78 Biden-era executive orders, actions, and memoranda.
· A regulatory freeze prevents bureaucrats from issuing more regulations until “we have full control” of the government.
· A freeze on all federal hiring except in the military and a number of other excluded categories.
· A requirement that federal workers return to full-time, in-person work.
· Directing agencies to address Americans’ cost-of-living “crisis.”
· Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and informing the United Nations of the U.S.’s withdrawal from the landmark climate treaty.
· A directive to the federal government “ordering the restoration of freedom of speech and preventing government censorship of free speech going forward.”
· A directive to the federal government “ending the weaponization of government against the political adversaries of the previous administration, as we’ve seen.”

Trump then headed to the White House, where one of the first things he did was pardon more than 1,500 people convicted in connection to the deadly January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Many of Trump’s campaign promises may be able to be implemented by executive order, but others will require support from Congress.

Republicans have a majority in the House and Senate. Still, their slim House majority and the existence of the Senate filibuster mean Trump will need cooperation from at least some Democratic lawmakers to pass parts of his agenda.

Many of these orders are likely to face legal challenges over the coming months, as liberal groups and watchdog organizations have pledged to sue the Trump administration over some of the president’s campaign pledges.

Immigration
Trump signed an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. The order will almost certainly face legal challenges since birthright citizenship is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

He also signed an order designating Mexican drug cartels and some other organizations to be foreign terrorist organizations.

He also declared a national emergency at the southern border, allowing him to use federal funding to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border without congressional approval.

“That’s a big one,” Trump said while signing the order. “People have wanted to do this for years.”

He also reinstated the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases went through U.S. courts. He suspended the Refugee Admission Program “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”

Immigration, Trump’s signature issue, will be a focal point of several executive orders, especially during his first few weeks in office. He promised mass deportations starting the first day of his administration, though these efforts are also likely to be challenged in court.

Climate and Drilling
The president signed a number of executive orders withdrawing the United States from key agreements and agencies.

“I’m immediately withdrawing from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord ripoff,” Trump said Monday at the Capital One Arena. “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity.”

He also withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization, which will deprive the organization of millions of dollars in funding.

Trump issued another order declaring a “national energy emergency,” which could allow him to unilaterally bypass certain environmental regulations.

Tariffs and Taxes
Trump fulfilled his campaign promise to impose steep tariffs on countries like Canada and Mexico, saying that as of February 1, there will be a 25 percent tariff on imports from both countries.

He also signed an executive order saying that a global minimum corporate tax deal supported by the Biden administration and negotiated with over 100 countries has “no force or effect” in the U.S. without an act of Congress.

Trump signed a pair of executive orders to boost oil and gas drilling. One order seeks to drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve.

The second orders a review of policies that “burden the development of domestic energy resources” and eliminates the Biden-era “electric vehicle (EV) mandate.”

TikTok
On the social media front, the president signed an executive order extending the deadline for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app, just one day after a law requiring its ban took effect. The app went offline for a few hours in the U.S. on Sunday but became available again after the company announced that it believed Trump would block the ban from taking effect. Trump’s executive order gave ByteDance an additional 90 days to divest from TikTok to avoid a ban on the app.

Transgender Rights and DEI Efforts
The president also signed an executive order that could significantly curtail transgender rights, which Trump and Republicans made a focal point of their campaigns.

In one executive order, Trump said his administration will use “clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”
“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” the executive order said. “These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

The president also signed an executive order gutting federal programs to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workforce, describing them as “wasteful,” “illegal and immoral.”

Trump directed the White House budget office and the Justice Department to “coordinate the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”

The executive order marks a massive victory for conservative and right-wing activists, who have argued that DEI programs unfairly discriminate against those who are deserving of certain jobs and school placements. Advocates of DEI policies, meanwhile, argue that having a diverse and inclusive environment helps attract more talent, fosters creativity, and enhances overall performance.

Renaming Gulf of Mexico and Other ‘America First’ Priorities
The 47th president signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

He also reverted the name of Mount Denali, the highest mountain in North America, to Mount McKinley. The peak was called Mount McKinley until then-President Barack Obama changed it in 2015 to Denali, the traditional Athabascan name, in all federal documents.

Trump made these changes to “honor American greatness,” the executive order said.

The president also signed an order directing the secretary of state to “champion core American interests and always put America and American citizens first.”

And Will Not Do

What the Trump Nominees Have Not Done

And Will Not Do

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

December 5, 2024

Deflated by the resounding November defeat, the left now believes it can magically rebound by destroying Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.

Many of Trump’s picks are well outside the usual Washington, DC, and New York political, media, and corporate nexus.

But that is precisely the point—to insert reformers into a bloated, incompetent, and weaponized government who are not part of it.

Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, is already drawing severe criticism.

His furious enemies cannot go after his resume, since he has spent a lifetime in private, congressional, and executive billets, both in investigations and intelligence.

Instead, they claim he is too vindictive and does not reflect the ethos of the FBI.

But what will Patel not do as the new director?

He will not serially lie under oath to federal investigators as did interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a current Patel critic.

He will not forge an FBI court affidavit, as did convicted felon and agency lawyer Kevin Clinesmith.

He will not claim amnesia 245 times under congressional oath to evade embarrassing admissions as former Director James Comey did.

He will not partner with a foreign national to collect dirt and subvert a presidential campaign as the FBI did with Christopher Steele in 2016.

He will not use the FBI to draft social media to suppress news unfavorable to a presidential candidate on the eve of an election.

He would not have suppressed FBI knowledge that Hunter Biden’s laptop was genuine—to allow the lie to spread that it was “Russian disinformation” on the eve of the 2020 election.

He will not raid the home of an ex-president with SWAT teams, surveil Catholics, monitor parents at school board meetings, or go after pro-life peaceful protestors.

Decorated combat veteran Pete Hegseth is another controversial nominee for secretary of defense.

What will Hegseth likely not do?

He will not go AWOL without notifying the president of a serious medical procedure, as did current Secretary Lloyd Austin.

He will not install race and gender criteria for promotion and will mandate diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

He will not insinuate falsely that cabals of white supremacists had infiltrated the military—only to alienate that entire demographic and thus ensure the Pentagon came up 40,000 recruits short.

He will not oversee the scramble from Kabul that saw $50 billion in U.S. military equipment abandoned to Taliban terrorists.

He will not watch passively as a Chinese spy balloon traversed the continental United States for a week.

He will not allow the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to promise his Chinese communist counterpart that the People’s Liberation Army would first be informed if the President of the United States was felt to issue a dangerous order.

He will not rotate from a defense contractor boardship into the Pentagon and then leave office to rotate back there to leverage procurement decisions.

He will not oversee the Pentagon’s serial flunking of fiscal audits.

Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is certainly a maverick. He may earn the most Democratic hits, given his former liberal credentials.

But what will RFK also not do as HHS secretary?

He will not oversee his agencies circumventing U.S. law by transferring money to communist China to help it produce lethal gain-of-function viruses of the COVID-19 sort—in the manner of Dr. Fauci.

He will not organize scientists to go after critics of mandatory masking and defame them.

He will not give pharmaceutical companies near-lifetime exemptions from legal jeopardy for rushing into production mRNA vaccines that have not traditionally been vetted and tested.

He will not leave office to monetize his HHS expertise and thus make millions from the pharmaceutical companies.

Trump’s Director of National Intelligence nominee, former congressional representative and military veteran Tulsi Gabbard, will soon be defamed in congressional hearings.

But what has Gabbard not done?

She did not join “51 former intelligence authorities” to lie on the eve of the 2020 election that the Hunter Biden laptop “had all the hallmarks” of a “Russian information/disinformation operation”—in an effort to swing the election to incumbent Joe Biden.

She did not lie under congressional oath like former DNI James Clapper, who claimed he only gave the “least untruthful answer” in congressional testimony.

She did not encourage the FBI to monitor a presidential campaign in an effort to discredit it—in the manner of former CIA Director John Brennan, who lied not once but twice under oath.

She did not fail to foresee the American meltdown in Kabul, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, or the Houthis takeover of the Red Sea.

We are going to hear some outrageous things in the upcoming congressional confirmation hearings.

However, we will not hear about the crimes, deceptions, and utter incompetence of prior and current government grandees.

The current crew, not their proposed Trump replacements, prompted the sick and tired American people to demand different people.

Voters want novel approaches to reforming a government that they no longer trust and now deeply fear.