Ukraine Rushes to Recruit From Prisons After Suffering Hundreds of Thousands of Casualties
Since the start of the war, Ukraine has lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers who have been killed or wounded, according to German newspaper Welt. The prominent newspaper reports the seriousness of the situation is shown by the fact that the Ukrainian army is already recruiting in prisons, as it is still unable to fill the gaps at the front.
In addition to a shortage of modern fighter jets and ammunition, a shortage of soldiers is a central problem for Ukraine’s war effort.
Behind the prison walls, the Ukrainian army has found something that is rare in the country: volunteer fighters for the frontline. Since May, 2,800 prisoners have been released and are now serving as soldiers, the Ukrainian justice ministry told Welt when contacted.
BREAKING: ????
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) June 21, 2024
Germany’s Rheinmetall scores record-breaking €8.5 billion order for artillery shells.
The defense firm says many of these shells will go to Ukraine, while the rest will be used to replenish Germany’s depleted artillery stocks.
The new order alone is more than… pic.twitter.com/acmaHyBW28
A total of 10,000 to 20,000 men and women in prison could join the army as part of the recruitment program, estimates Ukrainian Justice Minister Denis Malyuska.
Recruitment from the prison population is possible through a new law adopted by the Ukrainian parliament in May. Under this law, prisoners can be released on parole early to join the Ukrainian armed forces under contract. This includes, for example, convicted drug traffickers, perpetrators of violent crimes, and certain homicide offenders.
Finland’s defense industry is reaping dividends from the war in Ukraine, using the conflict as a testing ground for its new weaponry, a senior defense official has claimed. https://t.co/05TjtXFclG
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) June 10, 2024
Prison No. 14 in Odessa, southern Ukraine, is one of the prisons where the army has been looking to recruit reinforcements since May. Volunteers have been promised proper training for the frontline and a monthly salary of around 100,000 hryvnias, the equivalent of just under €2,500. This is about the same as the standard military salary in Ukraine. Those who are deployed in assault brigades at the front earn the equivalent of €2,750 a month.
The use of released criminals in this war is nothing new. Russia has been replenishing its own ranks with prisoners since the summer of 2022. In the battle for the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut alone, thousands of convicts were seriously wounded or killed in 2023.
Putin to Send Russian Children to North Korean Summer Camps
Russian President Vladimir Putin is planning to send children from his Movement of the First Youth organization to a summer camp in North Korea, where they will be expected to polish statues of leaders and undergo enforced exercise routines.
Grigory Gurov, the head of the Movement of the First Youth, announced the plan as part of the military pact that Putin and Kim signed in Pyongyang on June 19. Kim gifted Putin a luxury car during his visit to Pyongyang, and in return, Putin promised to send children from the Movement of the First Youth to the Songdowon camp.
(Related: North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Russia’s Vladimir Putin sign mutual defense treaty.)
The Movement of the First Youth, established by Putin in 2022 shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, seeks to instill Kremlin ideology among Russian youth. Its members, easily recognizable by their red berets and neck scarves, are often seen carrying flags at official ceremonies. Meanwhile, the Songdowon camp, built by Kim II-sung, the grandfather of dictator Kim Jong-un, in 1960, is a peculiar mix of a boarding house with frequent blackouts, early wake-ups and roll calls, combined with a Disney-themed water park.
Artem Samsonov, a former Communist Party official who visited the camp in 2015, provided a vivid description of the camp on the Livejournal blogging platform. He recounted children waking at 6:30 a.m. to clean the area in front of the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il statues, using special pads to polish the statues.
Samsonov, who was later imprisoned in 2022 for molesting a child, detailed a tightly packed schedule for the children, including enforced exercise, state-approved lessons, cleaning and evening discos. He also mentioned that the food at the camp was consistent, with “soup, rice, potatoes” always on the menu.
“We received special attention and were given not brooms but special pads and were allowed to wipe the statue itself,” he wrote next to photographs of Russian children polishing a stone plinth.
Meaning to say, this initiative is the latest indication of strengthening ties between Russia and North Korea as they prepare for any potential invasion. The treaty obligates the signatories to provide “military and other assistance with all means in their possession without delay” if either nation faces an armed invasion.
Russian parents voice concerns about sending children to North Korea
The plan has sparked a wave of concern among Russian parents, who have taken to social media to voice their worries.
One parent humorously suggested that the only way to escape the camp would be to “walk through the jungle to South Korea.” Another user attempted to reassure skeptics, sharing her positive experience at Songdowon in 2017, which she claimed was better than a Russian youth camp in occupied Crimea.
“Compared to Artek, it’s a good camp,” she said. “It has the same pools, water parks, stadiums, just with a different culture and completely without the internet.”
But then, Gurov tried to assuage these worries and stated: “We will now form our delegation. Conditions there are good.”
Learn more about the increasing animosity between the Western world and Russia, North Korea and their allies at WWIII.news.
Federal Judge Refuses to Allow Media into Courtroom at Sentencing of Christian Pro-Lifers in Nashville
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (LifeSiteNews) — A federal judge is refusing to allow media and the public into the courtroom at the sentencing of Christian pro-life rescuers in the Nashville FACE Act trial. Sentences for four pro-lifers are being handed down July 2 and 3, with two more pro-lifers set to be sentenced in late September.
Today, July 2, Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee, the Christian husband and father of 11 who was arrested at gunpoint at his family home in 2022, received his sentence at 2 pm. Tomorrow, July 3, Calvin Zastrow will be sentenced at 1 pm, Coleman Boyd at 2 pm, and Dennis Green at 3 pm. Chester Gallagher and Heather Idoni will be sentenced in the same case in late September.
The six pro-life rescuers were convicted in January 2024 for participating in a March 2021 rescue at the Carafem Health Center Clinic in Mt. Joliet, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. The guilty verdict came in spite of the fact that, just a year and a half later, the same facility was forced to stop committing abortions to comply with Tennessee’s pro-life legislation after the June 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Defendant Calvin Zastro alerted LifeSiteNews to federal Judge Aleta Trauger’s refusal to admit media and the wider public into the courtroom this week for sentencing. Asked why he thought this was so, Zastro told LifeSiteNews, “Because they don’t want their evil deeds to be known.”
The pro-life advocate denounced the courtroom exclusion as “unlawful” and called on fellow pro-life Americans to contact the judge in complaint. “That would be a time for a rapid response, for 100 people to call the judge and say, that ain’t right,” he said. “They’re going to set up another courtroom where they’re going to allow people in to watch. We might have video, but we’ll have audio feed there. But still, that’s not a lawful court proceeding if they deny public people from being in there to watch at the sentencing.”
Denouncing the DOJ’s tactic of intimidation toward pro-life Christians, Zastro said, “They raid you and then they threaten you with 11 years in prison to try and make you afraid and get you to comply. And then they think they’re nice when they don’t give you the max. Well, that’s not what normal Americans think.”
The max sentence for each pro-lifer is 11 years and a $350,000 fine. The potential decade-long prison sentence comes from the combined charges of violating the infamous pro-abortion FACE Act and “conspiring against rights,” a tactic the DOJ used in the Washington, D.C., FACE Act trials, which just concluded in May with all defendants receiving a prison sentence, despite the urgent medical needs of several elderly Christian pro-life grandmothers and women, who have already suffered gross mistreatment and torture behind bars.
In the present Nashville FACE Act case, the DOJ recommended the minimum 15 months for most of the pro-lifers for their peaceful protection of the lives of the unborn.
When asked what he might say to the judge and the courtroom at tomorrow’s sentence, Zastro told LifeSiteNews he was going to “trust the Holy Spirit to give me the word at the moment.”
“But my heart is to declare the glories of Christ and the humanity of the preborn children,” he insisted. “I’m not going to ask for mercy for myself. I’m not going to whine and fuss and cry. That’s not me.”
Zastro said he had been pressured even by his lawyer, who is appointed by the court, to take a plea deal, which he adamantly refused as “unacceptable.”
“They offered us a plea bargain deal that was unacceptable to the rule of law or my conscience,” he said. “And so, nobody took the deal.”
READ: Pro-life leaders demand Congress repeal FACE Act after new convictions in Tennessee
Compliance with the present Biden abortion regime, Zastro said, would be giving in to the government’s tactic of “fear, and intimidation, and ‘we’re in control’, and ‘you bow to us’.” “To me that would be saying Caesar is Lord. That’s what they want,” he said.
He also confirmed that LifeSite’s coverage of the abuse suffered by Heather Idoni at the hands of the U.S. Marshalls and the Federal Bureau of Prisons – whom Congress called out for gross medical neglect – was effective in remedying her urgent situation, in which she was being denied needed diabetes medication and prescribed medication for her heart following a stroke in April. The stroke came after extended solitary confinement with the lights kept continually on several months prior.
“The awareness you brought to Heather’s case when she was in the D.C. jail has followed through. But it’s bittersweet because they’ve always taken care of her meds, but the gals she’s transported with, they don’t take care of their meds. So, they don’t want bad press from abusing Heather, but they’ll abuse the other people that don’t have connections, that don’t get in the media. They’ll abuse them.”
READ: LifeSite letter to Congress: DOJ is torturing pro-lifers jailed in DC FACE Act trials
Zastro also said he was confident that he would not immediately be thrown behind bars because the DOJ wants to prosecute him further in several other FACE Act trials for involvement in other pro-life rescues.
“They want to keep me out,” he said. “In fact, the prosecution recommended I not go straight to prison so they can get me in Detroit and in Little Rock. And then also I’m being sued under FACE for the Fort Myers rescue. So, they’re going to try and keep me busy for a while.”
The contact info for Judge Aleta Trauger, who is pronouncing sentence over the Nashville pro-life rescuers at the Federal District Courthouse for the Middle District of Tennessee is below:
District Judge Aleta A. Trauger
Courtroom 6C
Chambers, Suite 6325
Staff Information:
Courtroom Deputy (615) 736-7157
Court Reporter Roxann_Harkins@tnmd.uscourts.gov
Chambers (615) 736-7143 (voice)
Chambers (615) 736-7156 (fax)
Blinken Bets Big on AI to Combat ‘Misinformation’
The current US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, has revealed that his department is testing AI-based tools as a way to fight “misinformation.”
In conversation with the State Department’s chief data and AI officer Matthew Graviss, he cited a number of initiatives – such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Washington’s Enterprise AI Strategy as the foundations for the ultimate goal – using AI to “advance our foreign policy.”
The second part of the push to equip the State Department with AI tools is to – “strengthen this institution.”
According to Blinken, his department is a leader within the government when it comes to testing and “harnessing” the technology. Some reports speak about this as combating whatever happens to be considered foreign disinformation.
And while on the subject of meddling, the Washington Times says AI tests are “part of an ambitious media monitoring and analysis project that spans the globe.”
As sinister as that may sound, packaging the message as the need to combat (only) “foreign disinformation” certainly makes the policy more palatable at home, where the department’s past activity features in congressional probes into government-orchestrated online censorship.
This scrutiny is presented as something hindering the Department of State’s “anti-disinformation” work – while the tools now in development are quite openly described as a possible different means “to pursue the same goals.”
Blinken’s remarks reveal how the technology is used seemingly innocuously as a (translation and summarization) tool “in multilateral organizations;” but then he praised the ability of AI-powered tools to make mass surveillance (“monitoring”) cover a much larger number of media, making its scope and scale “vast,” as the report put it.
And also – combat “disinformation” – which Blinken quite dramatically refers to as “one of the poisons in the international system today.”
“We have one program that we’re using that is able to basically ingest a million articles every day from around the world — to be able to do that in a couple hundred countries in over a hundred languages — and then immediately translate, synthesize and give you a clear picture of what’s happening in the information space immediately,” the secretary is quoted as saying.
But given the scale of the operation, and the shortcomings of the current limitations of AI – those in the know might wish Blinken good luck with the accuracy and reliability of getting that “immediate, clear picture.”
However, when the “AI weapon” is pointed at online platforms as a means of identifying and censoring “disfavored” speech, it is objectively more likely to be efficient.
And the State Department is no stranger to such – strange given its mission – activities: after all, it is the home of the investigated-by-Congress and highly controversial Global Engagement Center.
UN Declares War on Free Speech to Censor The Truth, Subvert Accountability, Control Populations
Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations, (UN) just released the globalist’s latest game-plan for population control, surveillance and censorship. The game-plan, titled Global Principles for Information Integrity, seeks to put an end to “harmful misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech” online, all while “upholding human rights such as the freedom of speech.”
Guterres presented the game-plan with a sense of urgency, commanding governments, technology companies, the media and advertisers to take control and establish official narratives, while quashing opposition voices. The UN supports Big Tech’s algorithmic control over the information stream online and seeks to control online speech further. A global body of elites seek to delete what they believe is the disinformation, and they seek to discredit and demonetize the voices of dissent. All the censorship coming from global power systems is war on free speech, but it’s also a war on truth, so that these power systems cannot be held to account for their abuses.
UN’s information surveillance and control system seeks to centralize censorship for global domination
The UN is erecting an information surveillance and control system that crafts authoritarian narratives that limit access to life saving knowledge. These control systems not only censor, but they train people what to say, how to behave, and what to think. The UN wants to create a world of simps who surrender their sovereignty and bow down to manipulative and abusive entities and false authorities.
These algorithms or automated review processes will be programmed to filter and remove content deemed objectionable or politically sensitive. This can include blocking websites, social media posts, or entire platforms that criticize the government, promote dissent, or discuss sensitive topics like human rights abuses or political opposition.
In times of political unrest or during manufactured crises, governments may impose internet shutdowns or restrict access to specific websites or social media platforms. This tactic effectively silences dissenting voices, prevents the spread of information about protests or the abuses of governments, and limits the ability of citizens to communicate and organize. Examples of this tyranny were observed on the Facebook social media platform, when Meta targeted and shut down community groups that discussed COVID-19 vaccine injury. Any opposition to vaccine mandates were derided as “misinformation” and any groups that organized for medical freedom were algorithmically shut down or their reach was severely restricted.
Furthermore, surveillance technologies can be used to monitor online activities in real time, tracking individuals’ digital footprints, and identify dissenting voices or activists. This surveillance creates a chilling effect, deterring individuals from expressing controversial opinions or participating in political discourse online.
By manipulating search results, governments and pharmaceutical companies can influence search engine algorithms to prioritize or bury certain information about cures for infectious disease, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic illnesses. By controlling what information surfaces at the top of search results, pharmaceutical companies can shape public perception, suppress alternative viewpoints, or promote propaganda and official narratives to keep people sick and coming back for more drugs and vaccines that don’t work.
UN will abuse their power to command narratives and skirt accountability for totalitarian actions
Governments may enact laws and regulations that impose restrictions on digital content, such as requiring platforms to remove “harmful” or “offensive” content. These laws can be vague and broadly interpreted, allowing authorities to target journalists, activists or ordinary citizens who express dissenting views. This was seen in the U.S. under the Biden regime’s targeting of the so-called “disinformation dozen” who were removed from and demonetized across social media platforms. The Biden regime also crafted a “do not promote list” for books that discussed the topic of vaccination. The federal government coerced one of the biggest book distributors – Amazon – to restrict access to these books.
Authorities may selectively target journalists, human rights defenders, activists or members of marginalized communities with harassment, intimidation or legal threats. This creates a climate of fear and self-censorship, where individuals refrain from expressing dissenting opinions or advocating for social change. The UN can throttle internet speeds or block communication channels such as messaging apps or VoIP services during periods of unrest and uncertainty. This restricts the ability of individuals to communicate securely, share information or coordinate protests or activism.
Like its predecessors, these UN-backed information control systems will be implemented without transparency or accountability, and there will be no due process for their targets. This lack of oversight allows those in power to manipulate information flows without public scrutiny, exacerbating the impact of censorship on democratic processes and civil liberties.
With this move, the UN and its military alliances are practically declaring war on the press, on research analysts and independent journalism.
Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Texas’ Online Digital ID Mandate
The Supreme Court has today announced it would review a legal challenge against a Texas statute mandating digital ID verification of any websites and apps that could be deemed “harmful to minors.” The law is usually cited in relation to pornographic material but the broad term “harmful to minors” can be applicable across many websites, preventing people from interacting with a website without first uploading their ID.
This legal battle revolves around Texas’ age verification bill, introduced in 2023.
The law also compels these sites to present health warnings concerning the alleged psychological dangers associated with pornography consumption. Notably, this labeling requirement does not yet extend to search engines or social media platforms.
Related: The 2024 Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda
Websites that fail to comply with the law face steep fines, including daily civil penalties of up to $10,000 and, if a minor accesses restricted content, potential fines from the Texas attorney general up to $250,000 per instance.
Texas is not alone in implementing such regulations; similar laws are currently active in seven other states and are set to be introduced in more states soon.
The Free Speech Coalition, along with several adult website operators, filed a lawsuit against the bill. Their legal argument is that the law infringes on First Amendment rights. A federal district court initially halted the law’s enforcement just before its implementation on September 1, 2023.
Mandatory digital ID requirements for website and social media use raise significant concerns about the chilling effect on free speech. These requirements can deter online participation due to privacy fears, and undermine anonymity vital for activists and whistleblowers. Such policies may also lead to self-censorship, as users might avoid sharing controversial opinions out of fear of being easily traced. Additionally, implementing digital IDs poses complex legal, technical, and logistical challenges that could result in bureaucratic errors and data breaches. The major Big Tech ID verification AU10TIX was recently reported to have suffered a data leak, though the company says it hasn’t seen evidence of any user data being exploited.
The majority of the panel at the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit concluded that the Texas law is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography,” using the least stringent rational-basis review standard, and thus did not violate the First Amendment. In contrast, Judge Patrick Higginbotham dissented, arguing that the law necessitates strict scrutiny due to its content-based restrictions on adult access to protected speech.
As the 5th Circuit allowed its decision to stand, the Free Speech Coalition and the affected websites escalated the matter to the Supreme Court. Their appeal emphasized the contradiction between the 5th Circuit’s decision and established Supreme Court precedents regarding sexual content and expression. They argue that the law unduly burdens adults’ constitutional rights by requiring the disclosure of personal information, thus increasing the risk of data breaches and privacy violations.
Texas officials defend the legislation, asserting it as a reasonable measure to protect minors from sexually explicit materials and not an undue burden on the porn industry.