A federal judge in Canberra has sentenced whistleblower David McBride to five years and eight months for exposing Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. Australia is such a tyrannical police state.
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I don’t spend my time attacking the US war machine because I have any special love for Hamas, Iran, Russia, China, or any other power. I do it because the US empire is quantifiably the most destructive and tyrannical force on this planet, by an extremely massive margin.
No other power has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions and displacing them by the tens of millions. No other power is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, starving people around the world with blockades and economic sanctions, staging proxy wars, color revolutions and coups all over the earth, and working to destabilize and destroy any nation anywhere on this planet who dares to defy its dictates.
Only the US empire is doing this. No other power comes anywhere remotely close.
That’s as murderous and tyrannical as it gets. Propaganda-addled empire simps sometimes try to act like it’s strange and suspicious that I spend all my time criticizing the US war machine, when what’s actually strange and suspicious is that everyone else does not.
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The US State Department is justifying continued US support for Israel’s Gaza assault despite its own acknowledgement of evidence of Israeli war crimes, claiming there’s been a “substantial increase” in efforts to get aid into Gaza. It makes this claim days after Israel shut down the most crucial entry point of aid into Gaza, which remains closed.
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It’s hilarious how imperial spinmeisters keep trying to convince young people that it will be those who opposed a genocide who will have to worry about their futures. Israel apologists are aggressivelyhammeringthisline “If you protest against Israel employers won’t hire you!” You idiots, young people know they live in a world where opposing a genocide can hurt your job prospects. That’s why they’ve decided to change the world.
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Besides October 2023, the all-time month with the most searches for the word “Nakba” is May 2024, when one artist released a song containing the line “the Nakba never ended”. You want to know why the kids are pushing celebrities to oppose the Gaza genocide? That’s why.
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I am so done listening to people bitch about Gen Z. After watching what superstars and leaders these kids have been on Gaza these last seven months, we shouldn’t be asking how we can guide them, we should be asking how they can guide us.
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One of the many reasons it’s absurd to say a Jewish person from New York has more of a claim to Palestine than the Palestinians because the New Yorker is “indigenous” to the land is that their argument depends on expanses of time that have no relevance to the human lifespan. Claiming you had ancestors there 500 or 1,000 or 2,000 years ago is a moot point, because vast stretches of time like that have no meaningful personal relevance to a species that only lives about eighty years, whereas there are survivors of the Nakba still alive today.
If an event is so far back in history that you don’t personally experience its reverberations and its consequences, then it’s not recent enough to have any personal relevance to you. American descendants of slavery can rightly claim that slavery is personally relevant to them for example, because that population is still experiencing the reverberations and consequences of that historical event. Some white guy in New York who happens to share a religion with people who lived in Palestine a few millennia ago cannot make the same claim.
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Ironically if Biden was really the anti-Israel Hamas lover that Republicans claim he is and if Trump was really the pro-Russia isolationist that Democrats claimed he was, we wouldn’t be seeing the horrors in Gaza and Ukraine that we’re seeing today.
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When I escaped from an abusive relationship which got very abusive as I was trying to leave, my ex went around telling everyone we knew that his abuse wasn’t what it looked like and it was actually quite complicated. Just like Israel and its apologists are doing right now.
That’s just what abusers do when people start calling their obvious abuse what it is, whether you’re talking about interpersonal or international affairs. You see bloodthirsty swamp monsters like John Bolton using the “it’s complicated” talking point all the time, because if you look at the raw data of the US war machine’s behavior it’s very clearly an extremely abusive and destructive force.
Imperial narrative managers work hard to make the depravity of the empire sound a lot more complicated than it is so that people will assume it’s best left to the authorized “experts”. And because of how locked down our rulers have the information ecosystem it often works; people look at things like Israel-Palestine and assume it must be very complicated, because if it was as simple as it looks then surely their government and their media would not be so supportive of Israel.
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The World Health Organization’s (WHO) General Assembly, the World Health Assembly (WHA) representing all 194 member states, will take place in Geneva, from 27 May to 1 June 2024.
During that crucial week, the WHA is expected to vote on the controversial “Pandemic Treaty” and the new revised International Health Regulation (IHR, last revision 2005). With two thirds of the countries yes-vote, the treaty and the new IHR would be approved. This would give the WHO, more precisely, the WHO’s Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, full power in matters of health and climate change over and above individual member countries health sovereignty.
Yes, climate change too, because climate change (the hoax) is pretended to also be responsible largely for human and animal health.
This approval would be creating a One World Health — in, maybe soon to come, a One World Government.
They are both on top of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) and the UN’s agendas. The WEF/ UN alliance signed in June 2019, is officially to ‘accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, which is equivalent to the WEF’s Great Reset, that ends in “You will own nothing but will be happy”.
Dr. Tedros was put into this WHO Director General (DG) position by Bill Gates, one of the WHO’s largest donors. The WHA just rubber-stamped Tedros into the WHO-DG position. Mr. Tedros is pursued for criminal activities in his home country, Ethiopia.
Funding for UN agencies’ budgets usually comes from member countries set contributions. The case of WHO is quite different. WHO is funded up to 87% (the precise percentage depends on the year) by the private sector, of which Big Pharma including the infamous NGO, GAVI (the “Vaccination Association”), with their offices just across the drive-way from WHO – and other interest groups, like Big Tech, Big Finance and Bill Gates and more.
Therefore, WHO, created in 1948 as a Rockefeller initiative, is not a real UN agency.
Gates, Rockefeller, Rothschild foundations are known for their eugenist agendas. They are supporting WHO.
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According to Article 55 of the WHO’s IHR, the final text to be voted on (Pandemic Treaty and revised IHR) should have been distributed to all member countries four months ahead of the WHA, i.e. on 27 January 2024. That did not happen. As of today, no official distribution of the final texts has taken place.
Still, the fear is that despite this WHO Constitutional shortcoming the vote will take place, even if muddled through behind closed doors, as has happened in the past, in particular during the most secretive negotiations for these two technocratic and world-dictatorial agreements. It is said, unwilling country representatives (in most cases they are countries’ respective Health Ministers), maybe coerced, or exchanged for more willing participants.
The proposed amendments (Pandemic Treaty and IHR) among other threats to public freedom, stand to:
Require surveillance of online information and censorship of information deemed “misinformation.”
Require health documents that could be used to restrict access and travel.
Force extreme lockdown measures.
Allow the WHO to declare a “public health emergency of international concern” at will.
According to a “Global Health Policy” article, published on 1 April 2024, there is a possibility that the vote will be “postponed” – or “indefinitely deferred” – or set up for new negotiations, due to potentially insufficient votes. This is what they say:
“What are possible outcomes of the agreement negotiations?”
“WHO member states are expected to vote on the final text of the agreement during the WHA meeting this year, which starts on May 27, 2024. It is also possible that before then, member states decide to delay the vote to allow for more negotiating time. They may also choose to halt the process temporarily or permanently if sufficient agreement cannot be reached. If member states vote in favor, the agreement would be adopted as one of several different types of international legal agreements allowed under the WHO Constitution. Which form it takes is the subject of ongoing negotiations at the International Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), but possibilities include a “treaty”, a “regulation” or a “resolution” / ”decision,” each of which has specific characteristics and implications.”
Dr. Meryl Nass, who has been thoroughly following the WHO “Pandemic Treaty / IHR” negotiating process, and founder and President of “Door to Freedom”, explains in a 16-min video, Why the WHO’s New Plan Should Worry Everyone. See video below.
Technocracy News further explains the wider implications of the new WHO treaty and IHR agreements, if they were to be approved. See this.
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Just in – on a more positive outlook, Dr. Meryl Nass, explains that according to latest accounts22 Attorneys-General in the US have told Joe Biden that the WHO will not be making public policy in their States. See this.
Simultaneously, US Senators Drop another Bombshell on the World Health Organization. In a shocking but positively surprising turn of events, all Republican senators (49), led by Senator Ron Johnson, have formally urged President Joe Biden to withdraw his support in expanding the WHO’s pandemic authority. For more on Senator Ron Johnson, see this.
Given these last-minute new circumstances and turns of events – it is possible that WHO / WHA will decide not to vote in their end-May 2024 Assembly, but to bring the new documents – Pandemic Treaty and revised IHR – to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2024.
What would happen there is uncertain. Even if the UNGA might vote for the new sovereignty-killing agreements, the vote might have to go to the UN Security Council (UNSC), where there is a chance that at least one of the veto countries might vote against it.
However, it is too soon to declare “victory”. The defeat of the planned WHO health tyranny – One Health Order – is not yet certain. For sure, the fight is far from over. But as the public at large is gaining more insight and awakening due to these recent events, hopes are that this Globalist agenda item in the Globalist’s plan to subdue the world into a One World Government under a One Health System – may be overturned.
It is still a Warning – but also a Big Hope. Collective Hope may have a tremendous impact on world events.
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Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Between 2008 and 2022, land prices nearly doubled throughout the world and tripled in Central-Eastern Europe. In the UK, an influx of investment from pension funds and private wealth contributed to a doubling of farmland prices from 2010-2015. Land prices in the US agricultural heartlands of Iowa quadrupled between 2002 and 2020.
Agricultural investment funds rose ten-fold between 2005 and 2018 and now regularly include farmland as a stand-alone asset class, with US investors having doubled their stakes in farmland since 2020.
Meanwhile, agricultural commodity traders are speculating on farmland through their own private equity subsidiaries, while new financial derivatives are allowing speculators to accrue land parcels and lease them back to struggling farmers, driving steep and sustained land price inflation.
Top-down ‘green grabs’ now account for 20% of large-scale land deals. Government pledges for land-based carbon removals alone add up to almost 1.2 billion hectares, equivalent to total global cropland. Carbon offset markets are expected to quadruple in the next seven years.
These are some of the findings published in the new report ‘Land Squeeze’ by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES), a non-profit thinktank headquartered in Brussels.
The report says that agricultural land is increasingly being turned into a financial asset at the expense of small- and medium-scale farming. The COVID-19 event and the conflict in Ukraine helped promote the ‘feed the world’ panic narrative, prompting agribusiness and investors to secure land for export commodity production and urging governments to deregulate land markets and adopt pro-investor policies.
However, despite sky-rocketing food prices, there was, according to the IPES in 2022, sufficient food and no risk of global food supply shortages. Despite the self-serving narrative pushed by big agribusiness and land investors, there has been no food shortage. The increased prices were due to speculation on food commodities, corporate profiteering and a heavy reliance on food imports.
At the same time, carbon and biodiversity offset markets are facilitating massive land transactions, bringing major polluters into land markets. The IPES notes that Shell has set aside more than $450 million for offsetting projects. Land is also being appropriated for biofuels and green energy production, including water-intensive ‘green hydrogen’ projects that pose risks to local food production.
In addition, much-needed agricultural land is being repurposed for extractive industries and mega-developments. For example, urbanisation and mega-infrastructure developments in Asia and Africa are claiming prime farmland.
According to the IPES report, between 2000 and 2030, up to 3.3 million hectares of the world’s farmland will have been swallowed up by expanding megacities. Some 80% of land loss to urbanisation is occurring in Asia and Africa. In India, 1.5 million hectares are estimated to have been lost to urban growth between 1955 and1985, a further 800,000 hectares lost between 1985 and 2000, with steady ongoing losses to this day.
In a December 2016 paper on urban land expansion, it was projected that by 2030, globally, urban areas will have tripled in size, expanding into cropland. Around 60% of the world’s cropland lies on the outskirts of cities, and this land is, on average, twice as productive as land elsewhere on the globe.
This means that, as cities expand, millions of small-scale farmers are being displaced. These farmers produce the majority of food in developing countries and are key to global food security. In their place, we are seeing the aggregation of land into large-scale farms and the spread of industrial agriculture and all it brings, including poor food and diets, illness, environmental devastation and the destruction of rural communities.
Funds tend to invest for between 10 and 15 years and can leave a trail of long-term environmental and social devastation and serve to undermine local and regional food security. Returns on investments trump any notions of healthy food, food security or human need.
The IPES notes that, globally, just 1% of the world’s largest farms now control 70% of the world’s farmland. These tend to be input-intensive, industrial-scale farms that the IPES says are straining resources, rapidly degrading farmland and further squeezing out smallholders. Moreover, agribusiness giants are pursuing monopolistic practices that drive up costs for farmers. These dynamics are creating systematic economic precarity for farmers, effectively forcing them to ‘get big or get out’.
Factor in land degradation, much of which is attributable to modern chemical-intensive farming practices, and we have a recipe for global food insecurity. In India, more than 70% of its arable land is affected by one or more forms of land degradation.
Also consider that the Indian government has sanctioned 50 solar parks, covering one million hectares in seven states. More than 74% of solar is on land of agricultural (67%) or natural ecosystem value (7%), causing potential food security and biodiversity conflicts. The IPES report notes that since 2017 there have been more than 15 instances of conflict in India linked with these projects.
Nettie Wiebe, from the IPES, says:
“Imagine trying to start a farm when 70% of farmland is already controlled by just 1% of the largest farms – and when land prices have risen for 20 years in a row, like in North America. That’s the stark reality young farmers face today. Farmland is increasingly owned not by farmers but by speculators, pension funds and big agribusinesses looking to cash in. Land prices have skyrocketed so high it’s becoming impossible to make a living from farming. This is reaching a tipping point – small and medium scale farming is simply being squeezed out.”
Susan Chomba, also from the IPES, says that soaring land prices and land grabs are driving an unprecedented ‘land squeeze’, accelerating inequality and threatening food production. Moreover, the rush for dubious carbon projects, tree planting schemes, clean fuels and speculative buying is displacing not only small-scale farmers but also indigenous peoples.
Huge swathes of farmland are being acquired by governments and corporations for these ‘green grabs’, despite little evidence of climate benefits. This issue is particularly affecting Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. The IPES notes that some 25 million hectares of land have been snapped up for carbon projects by a single ‘environmental asset creation’ firm, UAE-based ‘Blue Carbon’, through agreements with the governments of Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia and Liberia.
According to the IPES, the ‘land squeeze’ is leading to farmer revolts, rural exodus, rural poverty and food insecurity. With global farmland prices having doubled in 15 years, farmers, peasants, and indigenous peoples are losing their land (or forced to downsize), while young farmers face significant barriers in accessing land to farm.
The IPES calls for action to halt green grabs and remove speculative investment from land markets and establish integrated governance for land, environment and food systems to ensure a just transition. It also calls for support for collective ownership of farms and innovative financing for farmers to access land and wants a new deal for farmers and rural areas, and that includes a new generation of land and agrarian reforms.
Capital accumulation based on the financialisation of farmland accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis. However, financialisation of the economy in general goes back to the 1970s and 1980s when we witnessed a deceleration of economic growth based on industrial production. The response was to compensate via financial capitalism and financial intermediation.
Professor John Bellamy Foster, writing in 2010, not long after the 2008 crisis, states:
“Lacking an outlet in production, capital took refuge in speculation in debt-leveraged finance (a bewildering array of options, futures, derivatives, swaps, etc.).”
The neoliberal agenda was the political expression of capital’s response to the stagnation and involved four mechanisms: the raiding and sacking of public budgets, the expansion of credit to consumers and governments to sustain spending and consumption, frenzied financial speculation and militarism.
With the engine of capital accumulation via production no longer firing on all cylinders, the emergency backup of financial expansion took over. Foster notes that we have seen a shift from real capital formation in many Western economies, which increases overall economic output, towards the appreciation of financial assets, which increases wealth claims but not output.
Farmland is being transformed from a resource supporting food production and rural stability to a financial asset and speculative commodity. An asset class where wealthy investors can park their capital to further profit from inflated asset prices. The net-zero green agenda also has to be seen in this context: when capital struggles to make sufficient profit, productive wealth (capital) over accumulates and depreciates; to avoid crisis, constant growth and fresh investment opportunities are required.
The IPES report notes that nearly 45% of all farmland investments in 2018, worth roughly $15 billion, came from pension funds and insurance companies. Based on workers’ contributions, pension fund investments in farmland are promoting land speculation, industrial agriculture and the interests of big agribusiness at the expense of smallholder farmers. Workers’ futures are tied to pension funds, which are supporting the growth and power of global finance and the degradation of other workers (in this case, cultivators).
Sofía Monsalve Suárez, from the IPES, states:
“It’s time decision-makers stop shirking their responsibility and start to tackle rural decline. The financialisation and liberalisation of land markets is ruining livelihoods and threatening the right to food. Instead of opening the floodgates to speculative capital, governments need to take concrete steps to halt bogus ‘green grabs’ and invest in rural development, sustainable farming and community-led conservation.”
Unfortunately, ordinary people cannot depend on ‘decision-makers’ and governments to bring about such change. Ordinary people themselves have always had to struggle for change and improvements to their lives. Groups across the world are fighting back, and the IPES report provides some inspiring examples of their achievements.
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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order
We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.
El secretario general de la Asociación de Trabajadores del Estado (ATE), Rodolfo Aguiar, denunció hoy el recorte de las jubilaciones y la implementación por el presidente Javier Milei de un ajuste brutal sobre el empleo público.
Durante una movilización de ese sindicato frente a la sede de la multinacional Techint (productora de acero) en esta capital, Aguiar aseveró que el plan económico de la actual gestión está destruyendo la vida de todos los ciudadanos y señaló que es en empresas de ese tipo donde se toman las verdaderas decisiones.
El superávit fiscal que anuncia el Gobierno es falso. Demandamos la inmediata convocatoria a paritarias (negociaciones) y un aumento salarial que en una sola cuota permita recuperar todo el poder adquisitivo perdido desde que asumió La Libertad Avanza, afirmó.
Además, indicó que una reforma laboral incluida en la llamada Ley Ómnibus es absolutamente regresiva y recuerda a la década de los años 1970 cuando los gobiernos de facto pretendieron echar a los trabajadores.
La protesta de esta jornada fue acordada durante un plenario con la participaron de más de mil delegados de todo el país, quienes definieron también realizar una movilización cuando sea votado ese paquete de normativas en el Senado.
ATE condena las políticas de ajuste implementadas por el Ejecutivo, la pulverización de los salarios y jubilaciones, el desmantelamiento de áreas completas del Estado, el cierre de organismos y programas esenciales para la promoción y protección de derechos, el despido de trabajadores sin justificación y el incremento exponencial de la pobreza y la indigencia.
Además, denuncia “los ataques a la salud, la educación, la ciencia, la cultura y el bienestar humano; la destrucción de la producción y la pequeña y mediana empresa, la eliminación de subsidios y políticas de protección; la entrega de la soberanía nacional regalando los recursos naturales y áreas estratégicas”.
También se pronuncia en contra del proyecto Ley Bases y Puntos de Partida para la Libertad de los Argentinos (Ómnibus), el cual otorga facultades durante un año a Milei bajo el pretexto de la declaración de una emergencia en materia administrativa, económica, financiera y energética.
Por otra parte, la organización sindical demanda la anulación de un protocolo antiprotestas y del decreto de necesidad y urgencia 70/23, el cual reforma o elimina más de 300 normativas.
El mandatario argentino participará en la cumbre ultraderechista.
El presidente de Argentina, Javier Milei, partió este jueves a España para reforzar su alianza política con el partido ultraderechista Vox.
La gira, que no es oficial ya que no incluye actividades de Estado, se lleva a cabo después de los insultos que Milei profirió al presidente español Pedro Sánchez en repudio a las declaraciones de uno de sus ministros.
En ese clima de tensión bilateral, Milei apoyará a Vox con miras a las elecciones del Parlamento Europeo que se llevarán a cabo del 6 al 9 de junio.
🇦🇷🇪🇸 | MILEI A ESPAÑA
Hoy a las 15 horas Milei estará viajando a España para cumplir con su agenda programada. pic.twitter.com/SjrHkhBNup
Con ese fin, el presidente argentino decidió suspender la reunión de gabinete de este jueves para preparar su viaje a Madrid, en donde el próximo fin de semana Vox realizará la cumbre Europa Viva 24, que estará encabezada por su líder, Santiago Abascal.
Durante ese evento el partido ultraderechista dará a conocer su programa político para las elecciones europeas. Se prevé la participación de 10.000 personas, entre ellas invitados internacionales además de Milei.
En ese sentido, sorprendió la cancelación de último minuto de la premier italiana Giorgia Meloni.
Agenda
La relación entre Abascal y Milei comenzó el año pasado, durante las campañas presidenciales del país sudamericano. Después, el español viajó a Buenos Aires para la toma de posesión de Milei el pasado 10 de diciembre.
Desde entonces, han mantenido un frecuente intercambio de mensajes en las redes sociales.
Por ello, el dirigente español convocó a la cumbre de Vox a Milei, quien desde que ganó las elecciones se convirtió en una de las figuras más populares de la ultraderecha a nivel internacional.
Milei partió la tarde de este jueves junto con su hermana y secretaria general de la presidencia, Karina Milei. Se prevé que arribarán a Madrid la mañana del viernes. Por la tarde, presentará su libro ‘El camino del libertario’ en el auditorio del diario La Razón.
Al día siguiente se reunirá con empresarios españoles en una cita en la que también participará el embajador de Argentina en España, Roberto Bosch Estévez, y luego se encontrará con Abascal.
El domingo por la mañana, Milei ofrecerá su discurso en la cumbre de Vox y después viajará de regreso a Buenos Aires.
El gobierno francés decretó el estado de emergencia en el archipiélago de Nueva Caledonia, en Melanesia, donde cuatro personas han muerto. Macron convocó un nuevo consejo de defensa esta mañana y propuso a la administración colonial una reunión por videoconferencia.
A 17.000 kilómetros de París, Nueva Caledonia se encuentra ahora en medio de un levantamiento anticolonial como no se había conocido desde los años ochenta, una situación considerada “insurreccional” por el Alto Comisionado de la República en Nueva Caledonia, Louis Le Franc.
El gobierno francés ha enviado cuatro escuadrones móviles de la Gendarmería y refuerzos de las unidades de intervención de la policía nacional, que se suman a los 1.800 miembros del aparato represivo que ya están desplegados en el Archipiélag.
Macron también ha enviado al ejército para proteger el puerto y el aeropuerto de Numea y ha prohibido la red social TikTok. Además, el estado de emergencia restringe la libertad de circulación y de reunión.
“Nuestra prioridad absoluta es el retorno al orden y a la calma”, declaró ayer el Primer Ministro francés, Gabriel Attal, en la apertura de una reunión interministerial de crisis con el ministro de Interior, Gerald Darmanin, el de Justicia, Eric Dupond-Moretti, y el ministro del Ejército, Sebastien Lecornu.
“Toda violencia es intolerable y será objeto de una respuesta implacable para garantizar el restablecimiento del orden republicano”, dijo un portavoz del Presidente de la República, que tuvo que suspender dos viajes a Normandía debido al levantamiento antocolonial.
Macron convocó una primera reunión del consejo de defensa y seguridad nacional sobre la insurrección en la isla. Está prevista una segunda reunión para hoy.
La crisis que estalló hace tres días por una reforma del organismo electoral local impugnada por los independentistas kanakos, que temen quedar permanentemente en minoría. El proyecto de ley prevé abrir el voto en las próximas elecciones provinciales a todos los ciudadanos que residan en Nueva Caledonia desde hace diez años, es decir, 25.000 votantes más.
El Frente Kanako Socialista de Liberación Nacional exige su retirada para preservar las condiciones para la obtención de un acuerdo político entre los kanakos y la metrópoli.
Un centro para el destierro de los presos políticos
Nueva Caledonia es una colonia francesa de ultramar, ubicada en el Océano Pacífico. Fue conquistada militarmente por Napoleón III a mediados del siglo XIX, convirtiéndose en un centro de deportación.
En total, 22.542 condenados a trabajos forzados y 3.796 multireincidentes fueron confinados en el Océano Pacífico. Además de los presos comunes, tras la feroz represión desatada por la Comuna de París, llegaron otros 4.253 revolucionarios presos. Louise Michel estuvo desterrada durante siete años en Nueva Caledonia.
Según el Código Penal de 1810, la pena de deportación “consiste en ser transportado y permanecer de por vida en un lugar determinado por el gobierno, fuera del territorio continental del Imperio”. En 1872 la Asamblea Nacional ratificó el destierro de los insurgentes de la Comuna de París. Después de cinco meses de travesía encerrados en jaulas en los buques de guerra, los condenados eran desembarcados en la Isla de los Pinos.
Unos años antes Francia había firmado un tratado con un jefe local de la tribu kuniés que habitaba la Isla y empezó a trasladar a los miembros autóctonos de un lado de la costa al otro para alojar a los desterrados.
Fue la primera de una larga serie de expolios, que dieron lugar a varias revueltas locales que desembocaron en la insurrección de 1878 contra el saqueo de tierras para alojar a los convictos. Los kanakos se organizaron para oponerse a la administración colonial y la rebelión duró diez meses. Más de 1.200 kanakos murieron.
La segunda ola colonial
La implementación de una política de cantones por parte de la metrópli francesa alimentó el clima insurreccional. Al relegar a los kanakos a las reservas indígenas, la administración colonial quería fomentar la llegada de nuevos colonos asignándoles las tierras más fértiles.
Surgió una segunda ola de emigrantes para revitalizar la colonia mediante la creación de una sociedad artificiosa que, además de los autóctonos, debía combinar a los libres con los proscritos. Eran ciudadanos de primera y de segunda (súbditos), donde los kanakos no eran considerados como ciudadanos franceses y, como tales, carecían de la mayoría de las libertades políticas.
El código sometía a los nativos a trabajos forzados, les prohibía la circulación nocturna, les imponía la requisa de sus bienes, así como impuestos y un conjunto de medidas represivas y expoliadoras.
En 1931 Francia cerró el último centro penitenciario que tenía en Nueva Caledonia, la Cuarta República le adjudicó la condición de “territorio de ultramar” y en 1957 toda la población obtuvo el derecho al voto.
En la década de los setenta, una nueva ola de emigración amplió la brecha entre los metropolitanos y los kanakos, que empezaron a exigir la devolución de las tierras robadas.
En 1998 se aprobaron los Acuerdos de Noumea, que reformaron la Constitución francesa y organizaron una transferencia gradual de competencias de la metrópoli a las instituciones caledonias. Los acuerdos también exigían la convocatoria de un referéndum de autodeterminación antes de 20 años.
En 2018 el 56,7 por cien de los vecinos se opuso a la independencia, como consecuencia del peso de la población metropolitana y los emigrantes que votaron a favor de la unidad con la metrópoli.
El político ucraniano Andriy Derkatch denuncia en una entrevista con la agencia bielorrusa de noticias Belta (*) que para cerrar la causa penal contra la empresa Burisma en Ucrania, asociada a la familia de Biden, se pagó un soborno de 6 millones de dólares a la policía.
Una parte de la mordida estaba destinada a un “ejército de drones” para el ejército ucraniano, añade Derkatch. Los jefes de los servicios especiales ucranianos no ocultan en sus entrevistas “que realizan actividades con fondos extrapresupuestarios en efectivo”.
“El dinero fue transferido a disposición de la unidad militar de la Dirección General de Inteligencia (GUR) para llevar a cabo actividades terroristas. Después de eso, el Nord Stream explotó […] y hubo una serie de explosiones. Comenzaron los ataques terroristas”, asegura.
No hay duda de que “los socios de la familia Biden participaron en la financiación de actividades terroristas, evadiendo la responsabilidad por la corrupción y el blanqueo de dinero en territorio ucraniano”, subraya Derkatch.
Según el político, la unidad militar de la Dirección General de Inteligencia del Ministerio de Defensa de Ucrania cobró un soborno de 6 millones de dólares para cerrar un caso penal contra Burisma por decisión judicial. La mayor parte de estos fondos se destinó al “ejército de drones” de las tropas ucranianas.
“Un ejército de drones significa pérdida de vidas, no se trata sólo de ataques a infraestructuras. Todas las cadenas de suministro de armas para la Dirección General de Inteligencia (GUR) del Ministerio de Defensa de Ucrania proceden de empresas estadounidenses. Vemos a los patrocinadores trabajando en esa dirección”, señala.
“Para nosotros está muy claro que la familia Biden, los socios de la familia Biden, son participantes comprobados en la financiación de actividades terroristas. Ahora la tarea de las autoridades investigadoras es describir, probar y presentar cargos procesalmente, mediante acciones de investigación”, añade Derkatch.
“Hemos rastreado casi todos los movimientos de fondos a través de la empresa Burisma y las transferencias de fondos a través de Morgan Stanley a la empresa Rosemont Seneca”, una empresa propiedad del hijo de Biden, donde recibió el dinero. “Todas las transacciones están a disposición del Congreso [de Estados Unidos], que está utilizando documentos que implican a asociados de la familia del presidente estadounidense Joe Biden en la financiación del terrorismo para probar el tráfico de influencias”, afirma el antiguo diputado ucraniano.
La causa penal abierta contra Burisma fue investigada bajo la dirección del fiscal general de Ucrania, Viktor Shokin, en 2014-2016. “Solo se cerró alrededor de 2020, y en un momento el monto del soborno fue de 50 millones de dólares. Tenemos estos documentos en los informes de los fiscales que supervisaron este proceso sobre los 6 millones de dólares en efectivo que fueron transferidos a las autoridades ucranianas para cerrar el caso Burisma. La persona que transfirió estos fondos fue filmada. Se trataba de uno de los empleados de la empresa Burisma, el director jurídico de Burisma, Andrei Kitcha”.
Los sistemas de defensa antiaérea de Rusia han interceptado102 vehículos aéreos no tripuladossobre distintas regiones del país, incluida Crimea, la noche de jueves a viernes,comunicóel Ministerio de Defensa.
Según el órgano militar, 51 de los drones fueron destruidos sobre Crimea, 44 sobre la región de Krasnodar, seis sobre la provincia de Bélgorod y uno sobre la provincia de Kursk. Por su parte, la aviación marítima y patrulleras de la Flota del Mar Negro eliminaron seis lanchas ucranianas no tripuladas.
En marzo de 2022 Mateusz Morawiecki, entonces primer ministro del Partido Ley y Justicia (PiS), inició una campaña publicitaria #StopRussiaNow en Polonia. El objetivo era refrendar lo evidente ante la Unión Europea y los países de la OTAN, para que no hubiera dudas: en la Guerra de Ucrania el agresor es Rusia.
El coste de la publicidad en el mayor portal de noticias en línea de un estado miembro de la OTAN, Onet, no era insignificante: casi 23 millones de zlotys (5,7 millones de dólares).
Ahora la Oficina de Auditoría Superior de Varsovia informa al portal que una gran parte de los fondos gastados en la campaña han sido malversados. “Estamos preparando un informe sobre este caso para la fiscalía”, añadieron.
Como suele ocurrir, mientras el gobierno del PiS mantuvo las riendas, la porqueria se guardó bajo el felpudo. Pero todo cambio en diciembre, cuando llegó la coalición del primer ministro Donald Tusk y empezó a sacar los trapos sucios de sus antecesores. A partir de entonces la Auditoría se interesó por la campaña de intoxicacion, pero sólo porque era una cuestión de dinero.
Según la investigación de Onet, Morawiecki confió la campaña al banco Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK), que adjudicó un contrato a dedo a Tak Bardzo (TBG), una agencia de publicidad relativamente poco conocida con sede en Varsovia.
El chiringuito TBG está dirigido por Paulina Palka, cuyo marido Piotr es un político del PiS asociado a Andrzej Duda, el presidente de la República.
Luego TBG utilizó a otras dos empresas vinculadas al partido gobernante: Ixodes y 1450. La agencia incluso pagó 90.000 zlotys por servicios jurídicos a una empresa propiedad de su fundador, Rafal Sikora.
A TBG le cobraron 15,4 millones de zlotys (3,88 millones de dólares), pero la contabilidad del chiringuito muestra que sólo se gastaron 2,8 millones de zlotys en compras de medios en línea, que se suponía que representaban la mayor parte del contrato.
El otro subcontratista, Ixodes, recibió 4 millones de zlotys por servicios que incluían la conducción de vehículos de marca por las capitales europeas y la creación de un sitio web, stoprussianow.eu (http://www.stoprussianow.eu/), que acabó desapareciendo apenas cinco meses después de su lanzamiento.
Los costes de la campaña fueron exorbitantes, dijo a Onet un ejecutivo de relaciones públicas polaco que pidió permanecer en el anonimato, añadiendo que las sumas involucradas equivalían al presupuesto anual de un cliente mediano.
“Dada la importancia del presupuesto para las actividades de promoción y las disposiciones del contrato y de la oferta, se puede decir claramente que nos enfrentamos a una mala gestión a gran escala”, afirmó la fuente de Onet.
Los resultados oficiales de la auditoría se esperan para junio, pero es obvio que quienes saquean el dinero de su propio pueblo, los chorizos, no son moralmente aptos para iniciar campañas de ningún tipo contra ningún país del mundo.
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Der Friedensstifter 