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Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Videos that will confirm that we are living in the strangest and the most horrific of times.

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Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Some reading on our dystopian present ............. May 28, 2024

 

https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/israeli-missile-attack-turns-refugee-camp-into-rafah-hellscape/

Israeli Missile Attack Turns Refugee Camp Into Rafah Hellscape

• May 27, 2024

 

 On Sunday, Israel launched multiple missile strikes on a “safe zone” in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah. The explosions –which could be heard miles away– ignited a massive fire that swept rapidly through the encampment trapping many people in their tents where they were burned alive. The ghoulish scenes from the site appeared almost immediately on a number of social media channels where millions of viewers were able to see the effects of Israel’s murderous onslaught firsthand. Many of the videos that appeared on Twitter are almost too painful to watch. In one particularly horrible clip, a bearded man holds up the headless remains of a toddler who was blown to bits minutes earlier.

 

Another video shows desperate parents and neighbors trying to extract the charred bodies of their children from the rubble while the flames flicker in the background ..........................

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https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/24/icj-orders-israel-stop-rafah-attack/

ICJ Orders Israel Stop Rafah Attack

 

Israel’s assault against Rafah must stop “immediately” to prevent genocide from being committed, the International Court of Justice ruled on Friday. 

In an 18-page legally binding ruling, it said:

“The Court considers that, in conformity with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, Israel must immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Israel must also allow “unimpeded access” to “any commission of inquiry, fact-finding mission or other investigative body mandated by competent organs of the United Nations to investigate allegations of genocide,” the 15 judge court ruled in a 13-2 decision. ..............

 

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https://reduxx.info/norwegian-bdsm-activist-behind-who-decision-to-remove-transvestic-fetishism-and-sadomasochism-from-psychiatric-diagnoses/

Reduxx can reveal that the man who led a decades-long campaign pressuring the World Health Organization (WHO) to destigmatize fetishism, sadomasochism, and fetishistic transvestism, which is now included under the transgender umbrella, was a celebrated gay rights activist who ran a BDSM dungeon in Oslo. Svein Skeid, who passed away in December 2020, led the fetish rights campaign group Revise F65, which lobbied the WHO for decades and achieved their goal in 2018.

Skeid, renowned in Norway as a leading gay rights advocate, founded the Revise F65 committee in 1996 as a subsidiary of the National Association for Lesbian and Gay Liberation, or LLH, which has since become a trans activist group known as The Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity (Foreningen for kjønns- og seksualitetsmangfold – FRI)............................

 

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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/from_covid_19_to_campus_protests_how_the_police_state_muzzles_free_speech

 

 

From COVID-19 to Campus Protests: How the Police State Muzzles Free Speech

 

“Politicians of both parties want to use the power of government to silence their foes. Some in the university community seek to drive it from their campuses. And an entire generation of Americans is being taught that free speech should be curtailed as soon as it makes someone else feel uncomfortable.”—William Ruger, “Free Speech Is Central to Our Dignity as Humans

The police state does not want citizens who know their rights.

Nor does the police state want citizens prepared to exercise those rights.

This year’s graduates are a prime example of this master class in compliance. Their time in college has been set against a backdrop of crackdowns, lockdowns and permacrises ranging from the government’s authoritarian COVID-19 tactics to its more recent militant response to campus protests.

Born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, these young people have been raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass surveillance state; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulnerable by the blowback from a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.............

 

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https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/court-lets-lawsuit-over-refusal-give-dying-woman-ivermectin-proceed

 


"...Mount Sinai South Nassau in New York City was twice forced to give COVID-19 patient Deborah Bucko, who was close to death after the system’s normal treatment failed, ivermectin under court order. Mrs. Bucko’s condition improved after she began taking ivermectin.

However, the system stopped the second round of treatment before the prescription ended, and Mrs. Bucko then died....

 
 
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As the ICC seeks arrests, I ask those who facilitated the Gaza slaughter: what were you thinking?

 
As the international criminal court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, officially seeks arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, a question must be asked of the politicians and media outlets that legitimised Israel’s western-backed destruction of Gaza, which is one of the great crimes of our age: what were you thinking?

The arrest warrant requests detail, firstly, how three Hamas leaders should be held criminally responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination, murder and hostage-taking. Their guilt is incontrovertible, and no cause justifies such depraved crimes against civilians.

But there is a distinction to be made. For while Hamas’s crimes were obscene and indefensible, the prosecutor’s proposed charges against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, describe atrocities that were directly facilitated by cheerleader politicians, most notably in the US, UK and Germany, and legitimised by multiple media outlets................

 

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https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-slow-motion-execution-of-julian

The Slow-Motion Execution of Julian Assange Continues

The ruling by the High Court in London permitting Julian Assange to appeal his extradition order leaves him languishing in precarious health in a high-security prison. That is the point.

 
May 21, 2024
 
The decision by the High Court in London to grant Julian Assange the right to appeal the order to extradite him to the United States may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. It does not mean Julian will elude extradition. It does not mean the court has ruled, as it should, that he is a journalist whose only “crime” was providing evidence of war crimes and lies by the U.S. government to the public. It does not mean he will be released from the high-security HMS Belmarsh prison where, as Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, after visiting Julian there, said he was undergoing a “slow-motion execution.” ................
 
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Monday, May 20, 2024

Informative videos on several hot topics ..... May 2024

 

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Some interesting stuff you might have missed reading in May, 2024


https://open.substack.com/pub/starkrealities/p/george-washington-warned-against


As war rages in Gaza, the intensifying debate over the US-Israel relationship spotlights a political paradox: Those Americans who view George Washington with deepest reverence — that is, would-be “conservatives” — are often the ones who most zealously violate the central tenet of his foreign policy philosophy.

Specifically, their fierce devotion to the State of Israel defies Washington’s admonition against “passionate attachments” to other countries — attachments that, he said, inevitably lead America “astray from its duty and its interest.”

That’s not to say that excessive advocacy for Israel is confined to the American right: As demonstrated by President Biden’s backing of Israel’s destruction of Gaza, the championing of policies that serve Israel to America’s detriment also runs rampant among establishment Democrats.

Regardless of your position on the political spectrum, Washington’s foreign policy advice merits your attention, and the US-Israel relationship serves as a case study that validates his warnings about the many evils that spring from “habitual fondness” for a foreign nation...including one that didn’t exist when his warnings were issued................

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https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/israeli-american-council/

T he Israeli-American Council has worked in tandem with Israeli intelligence agencies for years. Last month, its leaders vowed to shut down the encampment at UCLA.

James Bamford
 
  t was time to fight back on America’s college campuses. And the little known Israeli-American Council (IAC), an organization with close ties to Israeli intelligence, and made up mostly of Israeli expats, decided that it would lead the nationwide charge. On Sunday, April 28, as members of the group arrived on UCLA’s grass-covered Dickson Plaza, the IAC’s CEO, Elan Carr, took the stage. A Republican politician, former member of the National Council of AIPAC, and special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism in the Trump administration, he had little regard for anyone who disparaged Israel. In the past, he had compared the call for an economic boycott of Israel to actions by the Nazis. And he has said that the group Jewish Voice for Peace, whose members were taking part in the protest, “openly traffics in anti-Semitism.”
 
Among those addressing a crowd of Israeli-flag-waving counterprotesters, with the encampment holding the pro-Palestinian demonstrators directly behind them, was Israel’s Consul General to the Pacific Southwest, Israel Bachar. Also speaking was Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. Then came Carr, who announced that the fight had begun. “We will take back our streets. We will take back our campuses from Columbia University to UCLA and everywhere in between,” he said. The question is, given IAC’s long history of close links to Israeli intelligence organizations, for whom are they taking the campuses back?.....

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https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/the-trouble-with-world-government-5649684

 

The Trouble With World Government

 By Jeffrey A. Tucker

5/14/2024
 Well, at least that’s one setback for world government.

A court in Australia has told the government’s own eSafety Commission that Elon Musk is correct: One country cannot impose censorship on the world. The company X, formerly known as Twitter, must obey national law but not global law.

Mr. Musk seems to have won a very similar fight in Brazil, where a judge demanded not just a national but global takedown. X refused and won. For now.

This really does raise a serious issue: How big of a threat are these global government institutions?

Dreamy, dopey, and often scary intellectuals have dreamed of global government for centuries. If you are rich enough and smart enough, the idea seems to be the perennial temptation. The list of advocates includes people who otherwise have made notable contributions: Albert Einstein, Isaac Asimov, Walter Cronkite, Buckminster Fuller, and many others...................

 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html

The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel

After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.

  This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.

 

By the end of October, it was clear that no one was going to help the villagers of Khirbet Zanuta. A tiny Palestinian community, some 150 people perched on a windswept hill in the West Bank near Hebron, it had long faced threats from the Jewish settlers who had steadily encircled it. But occasional harassment and vandalism, in the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, escalated into beatings and murder threats. The villagers made appeal after appeal to the Israeli police and to the ever-present Israeli military, but their calls for protection went largely unheeded, and the attacks continued with no consequences. So one day the villagers packed what they could, loaded their families into trucks and disappeared..............

 

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https://mishtalk.com/economics/shocking-headline-of-the-day-germany-to-re-introduce-slavery/

 Shocking Headline of the Day: Germany to Re-Introduce Slavery

Young Germans will have to choose between the Bundeswehr (military service) and unpaid social service work. Libertarians to a person, will call this slavery, because that is what it is.

Germany to Re-Introduce Slavery

Please consider the Eurointelligence headline story Germany to Re-Introduce Slavery

The headline might be bordering on the hysterical, but the big idea in German politics right now is to re-introduce the general draft. This is not happening because Germany expects to be at war. It is not about the military at all. Under the plans, young people, male and female, can choose between the Bundeswehr or a year of forced labour in the social services, essentially uncompensated.

The main reason we see is that their fiscal rules have depleted them with the resources to fund the Bundeswehr and critical social services like old-age care. For example, there is a big row going on right now within the coalition currently between Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, and Christian Lindner, over Pistorius’ demands for another €6bn for the Bundeswehr. The discussions on the reintroduction of the draft are at an early stage. They won’t affect the current budget dispute. But it could go some way to fix the Bundeswehr’s budget issues.

The SPD leader Lars Klingbeil sugar-coated the idea as giving young people an opportunity to serve the state at one point in their lives. Another underlying assumption is that young people are infinitely stupid. German high school goes until the age of 19. This is higher than elsewhere because German children do not start school until they are 6. With a year of enforced military or social services, they won’t start their studies or apprenticeship until they are 20. A Bachelor’s degree takes three, but this is usually not sufficient. So they will be 24 or 25 when they hit the labour market. This puts them at a distinct disadvantage to young people elsewhere.

We expect mass emigration as a result. Young Ukrainian men who try to escape the draft often do so at the risk of their lives. Romanian police have discovered bodies of young Ukrainians trying to swim through the Tisa river into Romania. Young Germans won’t have to swim through the Rhine. They can just go anywhere within the Schengen area, and study where they like. For a country that is facing structural labour shortages, the re-introduction of the draft is about the worst policy decision imaginable. The smart people will leave.

The political support is strengthening. The FDP has called for it. The SPD is also now in favour. The CDU says it is open to a discussion. The AfD will naturally support it. The Greens and the Left Party are opposed, but that won’t be enough to stop it.

Not an “Opportunity”

What’s being proposed is not an opportunity. It’s a mandate for servitude.....................

 

 

Some reading lest we forget the Covid tyranny we were subjected to for almost 3 long years

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/civil-liberties-report-police-pandemic-quebec-1.5625250

Majority of Canada's $13M in pandemic fines were issued in Quebec, report finds

Marginalized groups tended to bear the brunt of police and bylaw action

 Colin Perkel · The Canadian Press · Posted: Jun 24, 2020

 

Authorities in some provinces ramped up often arbitrary law enforcement to help curtail the COVID-19 pandemic rather than rely on a purely public health approach, according to a report released Wednesday.

The main problem, the report finds, is that marginalized or other vulnerable groups tended to bear the brunt of police and bylaw action.

"This report proves that we've got an ugly ticketing pandemic, replete with COVID carding and racial profiling, in central and eastern Canada," Michael Bryant, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said in a statement.

"Somehow a public health crisis has been twisted into a public order crisis."

Provinces across the country issued emergency orders with hefty penalties for violations in March, including closures of public spaces and physical distancing measures. Ticketing soon followed.

In one example cited in the report, a man walking his dog in Ottawa was fined $880 for standing in the wrong place. A bylaw officer in the city also tackled a man walking through a park with his daughter. He ended up with a bruised lip and a fine of more than $2,000..............

 

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https://theccf.ca/release-documents-reveal-details-of-police-misuse-of-covid-19-database/

Documents reveal details of Ontario police misuse of COVID-19 database

:September 29, 2020

TORONTO: The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) is releasing a document obtained through Freedom of Information legislation that outline specific details of police services misuse of a COVID-19 database.

“This document reveals a shocking misuse of personal health information by police,” said CCF Litigation Director, Christine Van Geyn. “Police were caught using the COVID-19 database to look up names unrelated to active calls, to do wholesale postal code searches for COVID-19 cases, and to even do broad based searches outside officers’ own cities. There is no rationale for this abuse. We have filed a complaint with the Ontario Privacy Commissioner for violations of the Personal Health Information Protection Act, and with the Ontario Independent Police Review Director for officer misconduct.”

In a letter addressed to “All Chiefs of Police”, an official at the Solicitor General’s Office laid out the results of an audit of the use of the COVID-19 database by officers. In the letter, the Solicitor General’s Office stated that “many searches of the portal do not appear to be consistent with the ministry’s instructions or the restrictions on the use of the information subject to O. Reg. 120/20 set out in the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act.”...............

 

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https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/using-drones-fight-covid-19-slipperiest-all-slopes

 

 Using Drones to Fight COVID-19 is the Slipperiest of All Slopes

May 5, 2020
 

As governments search in vain for a technological silver bullet that will contain COVID-19 and allow people to safely leave their homes, officials are increasingly turning to drones. Some have floated using them to enforce social distancing, break up or monitor places where gatherings of people are occurring, identify infected people with supposed “fever detecting” thermal imaging, or even assist in contact tracing by way of face recognition and mass surveillance.

Any current buy-up of drones would constitute a classic example of how law enforcement and other government agencies often use crises in order to justify the expenditures and negate the public backlash that comes along with buying surveillance equipment. For years, the LAPD, the NYPD, and other police departments across the country have been fighting the backlash from concerned residents over their acquisitions of surveillance drones. These drones present a particular threat to free speech and political participation. Police departments often deploy them above protests, large public gatherings, and on other occasions where people might practice their First Amendment-protected rights to speech, association, and assembly......

 

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https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-52055201

 

Coronavirus: Peak District drone police criticised for 'lockdown shaming'

A force that released drone footage of people walking in the Peak District has been accused of "nanny policing".

Derbyshire Police filmed people in pairs rambling in the Curbar Edge area of the beauty spot on Wednesday.

Officers said travelling to remote areas for exercise did not count as "essential travel" as permitted under government lockdown rules.

UK civil liberties group Big Brother Watch branded the move "sinister" and "counter-productive".

The 90-second clip, shot by the force's drone unit, showed people walking their dogs and taking photos............

 

 

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8652566/

Abstract

Drones have been widely used by public authorities during the COVID‐19 pandemic for pandemic‐related problems. As an innovative tool with a wide range of potentialities, they have been deemed suitable for an exceptional situation marked by the persistence of social distance. Yet, the turn to new technology to solve complex problems is a political decision that has broad societal implications, especially in the context of declared states of emergency. In the article we argue that the extensive use of drones by national authorities during the COVID‐19 pandemic has generated a new socio‐technical assemblage of actors, technologies and practices. Building on the three main uses of drones as responses to specific pandemic‐related challenges (disinfection, delivery, and surveillance), we analyse the actors and the practices involved in this new socio‐technical assemblage. From the empirical material, we explore potential effects of drone uses on key issues such as the technology regulatory processes, public acceptance, and security and safety concerns.

Short abstract

As new technologies become more advanced, the epistemic gap between technology developers, on the one hand, and technology users and regulators, on the other hand, widens, bringing along societal implications that are increasingly unnoticed.

Policy Implications

  • Accelerating regulation to allow civilian drones to fly more in civilian airspace during the pandemic cannot reduce safety and privacy protection standards.
  • As drone technology is continuously evolving and is potentially exposed to function creep and function expansion dynamics, its societal, ethical and legal implications should be continuously reviewed.
  • The public and the civil society – and not just end‐users and developers – must be consulted and involved in the processes of regulating new technology and their integration in our societies.
  • The social and political impacts of technology must be debated publicly and politically, as the reliance on technology to solve complex problems often has wide societal implications beyond the specific problem at stake.

The fight against the COVID‐19 pandemic has mobilized national resources of all types – human, material, political and financial – on a large scale worldwide......................

 

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Monday, May 13, 2024

On how Canadian students are brainwashed into becoming future Manchurian candidates; the assault on First Amendment of the US Constitution by its enemies; Hind's Hall and how to be super cool this summer.

 

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/05/toronto-school-promoting-israeli-military-deemed-charity/

 

Toronto school promoting Israeli military deemed ‘charity’

Canada’s largest private high school recently organized a genocide solidarity trip in which students cooked for Israeli soldiers. In a sane world, the school’s charitable status would be revoked.
 

At the start of March, 36 students at TanenbaumCHAT, Canada’s largest private high school, traveled to a state that has slaughtered 15,000 children over the past seven months. The Toronto high school described it as a “Solidarity Mission to Israel.” In its description of the trip, the school reports that students were “BBQ-ing for soldiers on an army base”.

The group also met privately with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who reportedly told them, “You are here — the first school since 7/10 — standing with us, and we stand with you. There are many voices against us, but I say to you all, be proud, stand strong. Together we will prevail.”

The students who participated in the “Solidarity Mission” reported back to the entire school about visiting a state committing genocide........

 

 

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https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/the-enemy-is-among-us/

The Enemy Is Among Us?
Anti-genocide groups are being targeted by media and government

• May 2, 2024

 Well friends, the verdict is in! If you are opposed to Israel’s slaughter of something like forty thousand Palestinians, mostly women and children, or the clearly enunciated plans by that nation’s government to ethnically cleanse the rest of historic Palestine, making the developing Eretz or Greater Israel a legally Jewish state, and are prepared to protest or speak up about it, then you are an antisemite Jew-hater and probably even a holocaust denier. If you are a student demonstrating against the slaughter you are increasingly being referred to by talking heads and the media as a pro-Hamas terrorist. That you must be condemned and sanctioned or even criminalized as a consequence of the labels is only fair in a country that apparently has come to believe that Jews and Israel, uniquely, cannot be criticized due to their cited ad nauseam victimhood and their anointment by God no matter what the First Amendment to the US Constitution relating to freedom of speech might say. After all, it’s just an old piece of paper though it might strike some as a bit odd that a group of people carrying out a genocide are being given a pass while those trying to stop it are being beaten, going to jail and, in some cases, being denied that degree they earned from four years at college................

 

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https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/opposing-the-war-machine-is-cool

 

Opposing The War Machine Is Cool Again, And The Empire's Getting Nervous

 

American rapper Macklemore has released a single titled “Hind’s Hall”, the name given to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall by anti-genocide protesters in honor of the six year-old Hind Rajab who was murdered in Gaza by Israeli forces. The artist says all proceeds from the track will go to UNRWA.

The song with its accompanying video is such a scathing indictment of the US-backed destruction of Gaza that Google-owned YouTube promptly age-restricted it. Macklemore attacks Biden, the brutal police crackdowns on protesters, the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, US politicians and the Israel lobby, with lines that will haunt you for days like “The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied.” 

This marks the first really mainstream artist to take on this issue in their chosen medium with a track intended for widespread circulation. It probably won’t be the last. Opposing the Gaza genocide is quickly moving from the right thing to do to the cool thing to do, which is a major problem for the empire......

Videos: A holocaust survivor speaks his mind on the genocide going on in our timeline and Trudeau's brother thinks his older sibling is lovable and blames the covid tyranny we experienced from his lovable brother was due to the mass formation hypnosis as put forth by Desmet Mathias

 

 

 

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Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Videos dealing with the horrors and the craziness of our times. ...... May 7, 2024

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Monday, May 6, 2024

Informative articles on Ukraine; Gaza; Surrogate mothers and surrogacy; US weapons killing Lebanon's health workers; Israel's censorship of truth in media; etc.

The last article by T.P. Wilkinson made me think of  Elon Musk as the "Unbecoming American" because that's how I think of the boss of Twitter.  He's become the king of hypocrites, IMO. 

 

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68961719

 

The children hear the dogs snarling outside, just beyond the flimsy plastic of the tent.

The seven children of Rehab Abu Daqqa crowd around their mother. She is the last safe harbour in their lives. They have shared things, these children and their mother, which cannot be communicated to those who have not seen the things they have seen. Is there a word to express what a child feels knowing that just a few yards away, animals are dragging a body from a grave?

The vocabulary of childhood is inadequate amid the horrors of this emergency cemetery in Rafah.

Scared is the word Rehab Abu Daqqa uses. 

 That is accurate. But there is more to it, she knows. The children have seen dogs eating the bodies. A human leg lying by a fence. So yes they are scared. But revolted too, and uncomprehending. The children who once had a home, went to school, lived according to the established rhythms of their family and community, are now refugees in a place that reeks of death.

"This morning the dogs took out a body from one of the graves and were eating it," Rehab Abu Daqqa says. "From night until dawn the dogs do not let us sleep… our children keep holding on to me because of how scared they are.".....

 

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https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/04/30/what_10_years_of_us_meddling_in_ukraine_have_wrought_spoiler_alert_it_wasnt_democracy_1027411.html

 

What 10 Years of U.S. Meddling in Ukraine Have Wrought (Spoiler Alert: Not Democracy)


 

April 30, 2024

 This account of U.S. interference in Ukraine, which can be traced to fateful decisions made by the Obama administration, including then-Vice President Biden and his top aides, is based on often overlooked public disclosures. It also relies on the personal testimony of Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat and Democratic Party-tied political consultant who worked closely with U.S. officials to promote regime change in Ukraine. 

Although he once welcomed Washington’s influence in Ukraine, Telizhenko now takes a different view. “I'm a Ukrainian who knew how Ukraine was 30 years ago, and what it became today,” he says. “For me, it's a total failed state.” In his view, Ukraine has been “used directly by the United States to fight a [proxy] war with Russia” and “as a rag to make money for people like Biden and his family.”

The State Department has accused Telizhenko being part of a "Russia-linked foreign influence network." In Sept. 2020 it revoked his visa to travel to the United States. Telizhenko, who now lives in a western European country where he was granted political asylum, denies working with Russia and says that he is a whistleblower speaking out to expose how U.S. interference has ravaged his country. RealClearInvestigations has confirmed that he worked closely with top American officials while they advanced policies aimed at severing Ukraine’s ties to Russia. No official contacted for this article – including former CIA chief John Brennan and senior State Department official Victoria Nuland – disputed any of his claims............

 

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https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/eu-parliament-votes-to-define-surrogacy-as-human-trafficking/


EU Parliament Votes To Define Surrogacy As Human Trafficking

 

 

The European Parliament on Tuesday voted by a very large majority in favour of adding—as a minimum—the practice of surrogacy to its legal definition of human trafficking.

The vote counted 563 in favour, 7 against, and 17 abstentions, demonstrating the existence of a very broad consensus on condemning the practice of surrogacy among members of the European Parliament, whatever their political persuasion.

This was a revision of the 2011 European directive on trafficking in human beings, which will now include “the exploitation of surrogate motherhood,” as well as illegal adoption and forced marriage. The revision was initiated by MEP François-Xavier Bellamy, who is once again heading the list for the French centre-right Les Républicains party, a member of the European People’s Party (EPP).

To coincide with the vote, Bellamy organised a conference at the European Parliament on the issue of surrogacy in association with Olivia Maurel, a Frenchwoman who was herself born through surrogacy, now the spokesman for the Casablanca Declaration, the international organisation to ban surrogacy. Bernard Garcia Larrain, the Declaration’s coordinator, was at her side.................

 

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/06/israel-airstrike-lebanon-us-weapons-international-law/

 

Israeli airstrike that killed seven health workers in Lebanon used US munition, analysis reveals

Mon 6 May 2024  

Israel used a US weapon in a March airstrike which killed seven healthcare workers in southern Lebanon, according to a Guardian analysis of shrapnel found at the site of the attack, which was described by Human Rights Watch as a violation of international law.

Seven volunteer paramedics, aged between 18 and 25, were killed in the 27 March attack on an ambulance center belonging to the Lebanese Succor Association in the town of al-Habariyeh in south Lebanon on 27 March.

The Guardian examined the remnants of a 500lb Israeli MPR bomb and a US-manufactured Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) recovered by first responders from the scene of the attack. Pictures of the shrapnel sent by the Guardian were further verified by Human Rights Watch and an independent arms expert.......

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https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/06/israel-bans-al-jazeera-journalists-network/

Israel Bans Al Jazeera Journalists, Network

By Juan Cole
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Committee to Protect Journalists on Sunday condemned the Israeli cabinet’s decision to ban the Al Jazeera news network in Israel. The network’s office was closed and its equipment was confiscated. Israeli cable channels were forced to delete Al Jazeera from their offerings, and even its website has been blocked for Israeli residents. Since Israeli news channels do not show the effects of the government’s total war on Gaza civilians, the Qatar-based channel had been one of the few sources of comprehensive coverage of the Gaza campaign for those Israelis who know English or Arabic.

On April 1, the Israeli parliament, dominated by the country’s far right parties, passed a law permitting the government to halt the broadcast of foreign channels in Israel “if the content is deemed to be a threat to the country’s security during the ongoing war.” Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi called Al Jazeera an “incitement channel” and a “mouthpiece of Hamas.” It was a ridiculous charge for anyone who actually watches the live stream of Al Jazeera English.

Carlos Martinez de la Serna, the New York-based director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said, “CPJ condemns the closure of Al-Jazeera’s office in Israel and the blocking of the channel’s websites. This move sets an extremely alarming precedent for restricting international media outlets working in Israel. The Israeli cabinet must allow Al-Jazeera and all international media outlets to operate freely in Israel, especially during wartime.”..........


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https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/05/dont-get-me-started/
 

Don’t Get Me Started

Unbecoming American

Where must we start? Every day, we start today

A disagreement or a criticism, before it turns into a fight, or a fight which might be reduced to a mere disagreement or criticism: Where we start or end is the frontier between phrases and fists. It really is that simple. The only way to prove any idea to be false is to kill everyone who holds it. At least that is certainly one of the more popular ways to resolve incoherence between verbal and non-verbal behaviour. My temperament at the end of the 18th calendar week was shaped considerably by the recognition that the disputes which dominate the public debate, gaols and battlefields, not to mention the queues of suffering, have been quite successfully reduced to exchanges between those armed with fighter-bombers, assault rifles, judges and police and those whose principal responses are restricted to hide and/or die.................

 

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