Four months after The Guardian and other European media outlets revealed the world's leading carbon credit certifier sold worthless offsets to major corporations, the head of Washington-based Verra has stepped down. 

"I am writing to let you know that after nearly 15 fantastic years as the CEO of Verra, I have decided to step down," Verra's CEO, David Antonioli, wrote in a LinkedIn post last week. He's leaving the role after dominating the multi-billion dollar carbon offset market for years and certifying over a billion dollars in credits through its verified carbon standard (VCS). 

French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that NATO should offer “concrete and tangible security guarantees” to Ukraine as the alliance is debating what to offer Kyiv at a NATO summit that will be held in Vilnius this July.

Macron acknowledged it’s unlikely that Ukraine can obtain full NATO membership, as all 31 members would need to agree, but called for an upgrade to the alliance’s relationship with Kyiv.

“I’m not sure we will have a consensus…for full-fledged membership. Let’s be clear,” Macron said at the GLOBSEC forum in Slovakia, according to Defense One. “I think we have to build something between the security provided to Israel and a full-fledged membership … I think we need to talk concrete and tangible security guarantees.”

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party continues to soar higher in the polls, with nearly one out of five German voters saying they would vote for the party, according to an INSA poll conducted for the Bild newspaper.

The poll shows that 10.9 million people, or 18 percent of the population, would vote for the AfD. It also shows that 15.7 million people, or 26 percent of the population, said they were open to voting for the party.

The poll places the AfD in third place, just behind the Social Democrats (SPD), who are at 20 percent. The Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) are in first at 28 percent. The Greens, meanwhile, have crashed to their lowest polling result since 2018 and now stand at 13 percent.

The commander of the Czech Republic’s armed forces said the North Atlantic alliance and Russia are on the path to a direct war. The general described the potential war as the “worst-case scenario” but emphasized that it remains a distinct possibility. 

General Karel Rehka, the chief of the Czech armed forces general staff, told his country’s parliament on Monday about the potentiality of a war between NATO and Russia. “No one wants it at all, but it is not impossible. It is necessary to stop saying that this is not possible, because it is simply possible. It can happen and it is necessary to prepare for it in the long run,” he said. 

“We view war between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance as the worst-case scenario, but it is not impossible,” Rehka continued. “It is possible… [Russia] is currently on a course towards a conflict with the Alliance.”

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan traveled to Saudi Arabia and met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan the Crown Prince of the UAE, and India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval earlier this month. The White House stated the meeting was to “advance their shared vision of a more secure and prosperous Middle East region interconnected with India and the world,” which is undoubtedly an effort to rebut recent moves by China in the Middle East like the détente China brokered between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The UAE and the Southern Movement

Dave DeCamp reported on how the Saudis have reiterated that all sides are intent on peace, but it is unclear when a deal will be made. The report also highlights how the Southern Transitional Council signed a national charter to restore the 1990 borders in a new bid to split Yemen between the northern and southern regions. The Southern Movement was around long before the Houthis took over Sanaa, and they have tried to separate from Yemen since the country reunified in 1990.

Let’s be clear about one thing: seditious conspiracy isn’t a real crime to anyone but the U.S. government.

To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, the charge levied against Stewart Rhodes who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for being the driving force behind the January 6 Capitol riots, one doesn’t have to engage in violence against the government, vandalize government property, or even trespass on property that the government has declared off-limits to the general public.

To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, one need only foment a revolution.

This is not about whether Rhodes deserves such a hefty sentence.

This is about the long-term ramifications of empowering the government to wage war on individuals whose political ideas and expression challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

This is about criminalizing political expression in thoughts, words and deeds.

US policy toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) increasingly is designed to limit that country’s power and influence. Two goals stand out. One is to induce Washington’s allies, both in Europe and East Asia, to reduce their economic connections to the PRC. Although that strategy falls short of advocating comprehensive “decoupling,” it does seek to reduce Beijing’s leverage against the democratic West in such crucial areas as computer chips and pharmaceuticals. The second prominent element in Washington’s approach is to secure greater allied backing for a firm policy to support Taiwan’s efforts to preserve its de facto independence from the PRC.

2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has once again blasted the United States government for lying to the public and to the world about Ukraine, while calling out the Military Industrial Complex in particular.

It's not the first time. Earlier this month an avalanche of mainstream media headlines condemned his take when he told UnHerd the following: "We should have listened to Putin over many years. We made a commitment to Russia, to Gorbachev, that we would not move NATO one inch to the east. Then we went in, and we lied."

More recent speaking engagements wherein he utters unpopular truths on Ukraine have gone viral this week. In one of them, he tells an audience at a campaign event, "Our government is lying to us about it. The media is going on with the lie…It’s a laundering operation for the Military Industrial Complex."

Among Kennedy's chief talking points is that the country needs a "mature conversation" on the conflict, but that the American public is not getting that.

Interestingly, he said that while many Americans are moved by compassion for the Ukrainian people, including his son who actually early on went to fight within Ukraine's foreign legion, Washington has been deceptive in selling Americans on the billions in defense aid poured into the conflict.

The Biden administration’s attempt to thaw U.S.-Chinese relations has hit a significant snag.

The Chinese government said Monday that it has declined a U.S. request for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Li Shangfu, after Beijing had said several times that no meeting will be forthcoming as long as Li remains under U.S. sanctions. 

There have been no direct communications between top military officials from the two governments for the last six months, and the hoped-for meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore was supposed to be the way to begin repairing ties. Contrary to President Biden’s statement in Japan last week that U.S.-Chinese ties would begin improving “very shortly,” the two sides seem as far apart as ever. 

More than 1 million F-35 spare parts worth at least $85 million have gone missing over at least the last five years, according to a new Government Accountability Office report criticizing the program’s supply tracking.

Auditors said that because the government doesn’t have its own system tracking those parts, officials may not truly know how many spare parts are actually in the global spares pool, where they are, or their total value.

As a result, “the full quantity and value of these [lost] spare parts may be significantly higher” than the 1 million tally determined by the main contractor, Lockheed Martin, the document reads.

And disagreements between Defense Department offices and the main F-35 contractor, Lockheed Martin, over how to categorize missing parts are holding up the government’s effort to create its own reliable system to keep track of the parts, the GAO report states.

India wants to “elevate” defence ties and push trade with Cambodia, said Indian President Droupadi Murmu during a visit by Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni this week.

It was the first visit by a monarch from the South-east Asian kingdom in over six decades.

Ms Murmu, who hosted a banquet for the King on Tuesday evening at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President’s official residence, said India is keen to increase defence ties and noted “there is great potential for further growth in trade and investment between India and Cambodia”, according to a government statement.

The last visit by a Cambodian king was in 1963 when the current king’s late father, King Norodom Sihanouk, was in India.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who met King Sihamoni on Tuesday, hoped for “a new chapter” in India-Cambodia ties.

The prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, held secret talks with the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhunzada, during the month of May in order to discuss alleviating the tension between the Afghan government and the international community, a source familiar with the meeting told Reuters on 31 May.

The talks signify “a new willingness by Afghanistan’s rulers to discuss ways to end their isolation,” Reuters writes.

The meeting took place on 12 May in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar.

It is reportedly the first time the “reclusive” Taliban leader holds a meeting with a foreign official.

The anonymous source told Reuters that the government of US President Joe Biden was informed of the meeting and is “coordinating on all issues discussed,” including “furthering dialogue with the Taliban.”

It added that among the topics discussed, the Qatari prime minister raised the issue of the Taliban’s ban on female employment and education, which Al-Thani stressed “the need to end.”

On 12 May, a video of the Cuny University of New York (Cuny) School of Law’s commencement ceremony was removed from its YouTube page hours after the graduation. 

Students and activists said it was because Fatima Mohammed, the student speaker at the ceremony, brought attention to Palestine and spoke about fundamental problems in policing.  

A day after Middle East Eye’s story was published, the video was put back online. But once it was, elected officials and those with influence have been posting it on social media, calling out the young woman.

“City University of New York class day speaker slanders Israel & enthusiastically celebrates antisemitism. Cheers on open borders & releasing violent criminals from jail. And decries the ‘fascist NYPD.’ This is a LAW school. Paid for with tax dollars,” US Senator Ted Cruz wrote on Twitter on Sunday under a video of the speech.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) refuses to hand over requested communications between Hunter Biden and then-Vice President Joe Biden’s staff.

Just The News reports that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by America First Legal (AFL) has been rejected by NARA, which is claiming an exemption that allegedly includes communications between the president and his advisors, as well as communications between advisors.

On Wednesday, AFL released the emails that it had received from NARA, which were heavily-redacted. Despite handing over some emails, NARA confirmed the existence of additional communications that it refused to release.

One of the points of interest in AFL’s request is an email from Hunter Biden’s business partner at the time, Eric Schwerin, sent to the Office of the Vice President (OVP), concerning an alleged “China Lunch” that took place ahead of an official visit from Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2011. NARA claimed that releasing this particular email “would disclose confidential advice between the President and his advisors, or between such advisors.”

Webmaster addition: FBI, Secret Service, and now the National Archives! Could they make it any more obvious that Biden has something to hide?

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has announced that he will send soldiers to the United States border with Mexico, joining a growing list of Republican US state leaders to do so.

In a directive on Wednesday, Youngkin authorised the deployment of 100 members of the Virginia National Guard and 21 support personnel, contributing to a trend of border militarisation that has been decried by human rights groups.

After nearly three years of promises, the Army is still yet to deliver a long-awaited regulation to standardize how the service works to prevent and respond to suicide.

An Army spokesperson acknowledged the holdup in producing a dedicated suicide prevention regulation, saying in an email that the service is “working urgently but deliberately to complete this effort.“ Army Times reported previous delays, as well as how the service blocked public access to a report cited in an April 2022 story about the wait.

The most recent self-imposed deadline is the end of June, according to written testimony that the service’s top leaders gave to Congress in May.

This time, the delay is due in part to the Defense Department releasing the recommendations of the DoD’s Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee. The group released its report in February, and the delay is likely intended to align the Army’s guidance with the committee’s recommendations.

“Covidism: Contagious Deception” is the most comprehensive documentary on COVID-19 as it thoroughly analyzes both the scientific and political aspects of this terrible crisis.

The documentary was written and produced by Bonum Vincit (pseudonym), an independent Bulgarian film producer who prefers to remain anonymous.

It took the author almost 3 years and thousands of hours of meticulous research to make the movie.

Part 1 carefully examines how authorities worldwide have been gaming the numbers regarding cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the alleged coronavirus.

Part 1 also explains how health officials actively suppressed safe and effective treatments for Covid-19, while employing deadly protocols for hospital patients.

A calamity of even greater cataclysmic proportions and consequences is either soon to break out in the war in Ukraine or sanity somehow finally will prevail against all odds, with all the combatants suddenly finding a way to end the conflict without continuing to kill themselves and, in the process, potentially all the rest of us.

America’s Neo-Con radicals and their allies in the world can feel the war slipping out of the grasp of their control, even in spite of the gross billions of taxpayer monies stolen from the citizenry of the entire Western World, without their approval or express permission; not to mention the massive amounts of military weaponry paid for by the citizens themselves for their own nation’s safety and protection, rather than shipped off to the Ukraine Armed Forces without any popular vote, plebiscite or referendum of any kind.

Citizens and politicians alike in the West remain asleep at the wheel for all intents and purposes of all the monies and weaponry that have been used so far to endlessly fund literally all the materials of war, as well as the infrastructure of Ukrainian society itself; of which the majority of monies never reach the people or armed combatants themselves because the monies are continually being clandestinely siphoned off to war profiters, oligarchs, black-market dealers and politicians. The Corrupt Game of War continues to be played out, while everyone just shrugs their shoulders, shakes their heads and looks the other way, like helpless deer, frozen in the glare of the on-coming lights and the potential grizzly death that awaits.

There are some interesting comments in Russia to Iran’s development of nuclear military capabilities. See this.

Izvestia calmly notes that Iran’s successfully tested Khaibar missile can deliver a 1.5 ton nuclear warhead over 2,000 km and has capabilities against electronic countermeasures. Izvestia then adds, that Iran can have a nuclear warhead “in 2-3 years”.

Also, Izvestia notes that there will be no JCPOA. On the prospects of this, Izvestia argues that a nuclear Iran is no cause for worry and will “safeguard friends” of Iran (of which Russia is one).

This news comes as reports emerge that Iran has completed a new nuclear facility which is 90 m underground – out of the reach of even the US’ strongest bunker buster bombs. Neither JCPOA nor US-Israeli conventional bombs can stop the Iranian nuclear program. As Izvestia dryly observes, the Iranian military nuclear program has “left the technical phase” and is already a political reality.

Target Corporation is partnering with a K-12 education group which focuses on getting districts to adopt policies that will keep parents in the dark on their child’s in-school gender transition, providing sexually explicit books to schools for free, and integrating gender ideology at all levels of curriculum in public schools, Fox News Digital uncovered.

“GLSEN leads the movement in creating affirming… and anti-racist spaces for LGBTQIA+ students. We are proud of 10+ years of collaboration with GLSEN and continue to support their mission,” Target said. The retail giant provides annual donations to GLSEN. 

GLSEN calls for gender ideology to be integrated into all classes, even math. It provides educators instructions on how they can make math “more inclusive of trans and non-binary identities” by including “they/them” pronouns in word problems. 

In another example, GLSEN recommended that teachers intervene if students are making graphs about sex and gender to ensure it includes the ideology supported by GLSEN. “When students are creating their own surveys, if they want to include data for biological sex, teachers need to be sure they include both intersex and other as choices.”

“[A]nd if the students want to include data for gender, a variety of choices need to be included, such as agender, genderfluid, female, male, nonbinary, transman, transwoman, and other,” a lesson plan continued. 

GLSEN also spotlighted recommendations from a teacher who discussed incorporating gender ideology into science.

British intelligence agencies are facing a new investigation over their alleged complicity in the torture of two Saudi men at CIA “black sites” prior to their detention at Guantanamo Bay.

In separate legal cases, the two men accuse British intelligence agencies of conspiring with US officials in a CIA-run “secret detention, torture and interrogation programme” in the aftermath of the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in the US in 2001.

Lawyers representing the two men, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, have filed complaints with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a court that hears allegations of wrongdoing by the UK’s security services.

In a key judgment, judges last week unanimously agreed that the tribunal would consider Hawsawi’s complaint, rejecting arguments by the British government that it did not have jurisdiction in the case. They said the case raised issues “of the gravest possible kind”.

Sudan’s military suspended its participation in talks with a paramilitary force it’s been battling for weeks for control of the northeastern African country, a military spokesman said Wednesday.

The development was a blow to the United States and Saudi Arabia, who have been mediating between the two sides. The conflict has plunged Sudan into chaos.

Brig. Nabil Abdalla, a spokesperson for the Sudanese armed forces, told The Associated Press that the move is a protest against the Rapid Support Forces’ “repeated violations” of the humanitarian cease-fire, including their continued occupation of hospitals and other civilian infrastructure in the capital, Khartoum.

Sudan descended into chaos after fighting erupted in mid-April between the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. The fighting has killed at least 866 civilians and wounded thousands more, according to the Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties. The toll could be much higher, the medical group had previously said.

Webmaster addition: It's looking like all of Africa is being destabilized so that its vast untapped natural resources may be plundered!