Monday 25th of November 2024

where to next? a fascist democracy run by siemens, intel, amazon, meta, google et al......?

The CEO of one of the world’s leading tech conferences was forced to resign after criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza. He was quickly replaced by one of the industry’s most prominent US government-affiliated regime change specialists. 

Europe’s biggest tech conference, Web Summit, has appointed a veteran US regime-change operative named Katherine Maher as its new CEO, just days after founder Paddy Cosgrave stepped down from the position following an industry-wide backlash to his suggestion that Israel forces have carried out “war crimes” in their ongoing assault of Gaza.

 

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Cosgrave’s future at Web Summit had been in doubt since October 13, when he sparked pro-Israel outrage after tweeting that “war crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies.” Industrial and tech behemoths including Siemens, Intel, Amazon, Meta and Google subsequently declared that they wouldn’t be attending this year’s conference, which is slated to take place in Lisbon, Portugal from November 13 to 16.

In a statement published October 30, Web Summit’s new CEO, Katherine Maher, said that in recent weeks, the company’s “purpose was overshadowed by the personal comments of the event’s founder and former CEO, Paddy Cosgrave.” But she insisted that “today Web Summit is entering its next phase.”

If Maher’s recent corporate experience is any indication, that “next phase” will be decidedly less adversarial in its relationship with Western governments and tech juggernauts. A telegenic 40-year-old internet activist, Maher has occupied positions at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, and the National Democratic Institute, a US intelligence cutout. 

As The Grayzone reported, she eventually rose to CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation and helped preside over the transformation of Wikipedia — once branded a “people’s encyclopedia” — into an information weapon wielded by the national security establishment. 

In 2017, Maher participated in a special event hosted by the US State Department and entitled “Wikipedia in a Post-Fact World.

She currently serves on the US State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, and is the chair of the board of directors at the Signal Foundation, the US government-funded outfit behind the encrypted messaging app Signal. Millions of dollars of the initial funding used to create the application were delivered via the Open Technology Fund, an offshoot of CIA-founded propaganda mill Radio Free Asia. According to her LinkedIn profile, Maher served on the board of Open Technology Fund until 2019 as well. 

Maher is also a Young Global Leader at the Davos-based World Economic Forum, and a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project, which grooms Democratic Party political upstarts as pro-war hawks. The Truman project currently features Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and former CIA Director Leon Edward Panetta as Emeritus Members.

A prominent Tunisian activist named Slim Amamou, who briefly served as Secretary of State for Sport and Youth in the transitional Tunisian government, wrote in 2016 that “Katherine Maher is probably a CIA agent,” citing her numerous visits to Tunisia “under multiple affiliations” since 2011.

When Maher complained, “seriously, Slim? You’ve welcomed me in your home,” Amamou shot back: “you gave me the impression that you were not who you claimed to be back then.”

 

A look at Maher’s Twitter history reveals that she also spent time in Libya in the immediate aftermath of NATO’s disastrous regime change war. While the US government importedplaneloads full of regime change activists like Maher to conduct “democracy training” and other frivolous activities, ISIS and Al Qaeda were busy taking over entire regions of the country.

The stage for Maher’s rise to CEO of WebSummit was set a year before the controversy of Cosgrave’s comments on Israel.

Back in November 2022, the conference scrapped planned addresses by the Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate following direct pressure from Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his wife, Olena Zelenska, who threatened to pull the plug on her own keynote address and publicly drag the conference if the offending speakers were not immediately disinvited.

Organizers quickly folded, but it seems the perceived slight was never forgotten. One of Maher’s first acts after assuming leadership over Web Summit was to ‘like’ a LinkedIn postby a company called Ukrainian Tech Ecosystem announcing that a “Ukrainian delegation” is now preparing “to visit Web Summit after its CEO announces resignation.”

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/31/regime-change-web-summit-ceo-israeli-war-crimes/

 

 

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THE LIST OF SPEAKERS IS INTERESTING — INCLUDING CHELSEA MANNING AND STELLA ASSANGE....

 

textbook genocide....

The director of the UN’s human rights office (OHCHR) in New York, Craig Mokhiber, has resigned from his post, citing the body’s failure to properly address the Israel-Palestine crisis. Instead of doing its job, the UN has “surrendered to the power of the US” and given in to the “Israeli lobby,” while the “European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase,” the senior official argued.

“Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it,”Mokhiber said in a letter to UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Volker Turk, published on Tuesday.

The official squarely described the ongoing Israeli action in the Gaza Strip as “genocide,”acknowledging that this word “has often been subject to political abuse.” 

“But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology … leaves no room for doubt or debate,” Mokhiber argued.

This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.

The governments of the US, the UK, and “much of Europe are wholly complicit in the horrific assault,” not only through a mere failure to fulfill their international obligations but by “actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities,” Mokhiber stated. The “cover” is further reinforced by “Western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent,” which has been “continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred,” he stressed.

Mokhiber believes the UN used to have “principles” and “authority” rooted in the body’s “integrity,”such as during apartheid in South Africa, but it has lost all of the above over the years. The UN has repeatedly failed to stop genocides, Mokhiber noted, listing events in Rwanda and Bosnia, the genocide of the Yazidis by the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), and the Rohingya in Myanmar as examples.

In recent decades, key parts of the UN have surrendered to the power of the US and to the fear of the Israel Lobby, to abandon these principles, and to retreat from international law itself. We have lost a lot in this abandonment, not least our own global credibility. But the Palestinian people have sustained the biggest losses as a result of our failures,” he stated.

To fix the situation, the UN should “learn from the principled stance taken in cities around the world in recent days as masses of people stand up against the genocide, even at risk of beatings and arrest,” he suggested. Apart from that, he called upon the body to drop the “illusory two-state solution,” advocating the creation of a “single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine,” which would ensure the “dismantling” of Israel, described by the official as a “deeply racist, settler-colonial project.”

 

https://www.rt.com/news/586302-un-official-gaza-resignation/

 

 

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palestinian poet....

For nearly twenty years the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series has worked with the University of Vermont to bring writers, activists, and public intellectuals to Burlington, Vermont to lead timely, politically engaged conversations. In a chilling move that echoes similar decisions by right-wing Republican governors across the country, the UVM administration has canceled the fall lecture, which was to feature Palestinian poet, Mohammed El-Kurd, less than a week before the event was scheduled to take place. Haymarket Books is proud to join the lecture series and their other co-sponsors and to provide a virtual platform for this important talk.

Mohammed El-Kurd is an award-winning poet, writer, journalist and organizing from Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine. He is the Palestinian correspondent for The Nation and a Civic Media Fellow at the University of Southern California. Mohammed will talk about the representation and misrepresentation of Palestinians in the U.S.

https://mronline.org/2023/10/30/palestine-women-and-children-and-the-politics-of-appeal/

 

 

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free Julian now!!!!

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson visited Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at London’s Belmarsh Prison on Thursday, Carlson revealed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) later that day.

The American journalist included a photo of himself walking with Assange’s wife, Stella Moris. The post garnered positive reactions from activists who have collaborated with Wikileaks in the past, including Mega founder Kim Dotcom and former British MP George Galloway. 

While Carlson did not elaborate on the nature of his visit, media commentary suggested it was an interview for Carlson’s popular self-titled show on X. He previously interviewed Assange’s father and brother for a Fox News segment in 2021, and again earlier this year. 

https://www.rt.com/news/586588-tucker-carlson-assange-belmarsh-visit/

 

LET'S HOPE THAT THE FIRST THING THE WEB SUMMIT DOES IS TO ASK FOR THE RELEASE OF JULIAN ASSANGE...

 

HERE ARE TWO OF THE SPEAKERS AT THIS WEB SUMMIT:

 

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