As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel
This
summer, one of my lectures was protested by far-right students. Their
rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century
history – and overlapped with mainstream Israeli views to a shocking
degree
By Omer Bartov
n 19 June 2024, I was scheduled to give a lecture at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Be’er Sheva, Israel.
My lecture was part of an event about the worldwide campus protests
against Israel, and I planned to address the war in Gaza and more
broadly the question of whether the protests were sincere expressions of
outrage or motivated by antisemitism, as some had claimed. But things
did not work out as planned.
When I arrived at
the entrance to the lecture hall, I saw a group of students
congregating. It soon transpired that they were not there to attend the
event but to protest against it. The students had been summoned, it
appeared, by a WhatsApp message that went out the day before, which
flagged the lecture and called for action: “We will not allow it! How
long will we commit treason against ourselves?!?!?!??!!”
The
message went on to allege that I had signed a petition that described
Israel as a “regime of apartheid” (in fact, the petition referred to a
regime of apartheid in the West Bank). I was also “accused” of having
written an article
for the New York Times, in November 2023, in which I stated that
although the statements of Israeli leaders suggested genocidal intent,
there was still time to stop Israel from perpetrating genocide. On this,
I was guilty as charged. The organiser of the event, the distinguished
geographer Oren Yiftachel, was similarly criticised. His offences
included having served as the director of the “anti-Zionist” B’Tselem, a globally respected human rights NGO.
As
the panel participants and a handful of mostly elderly faculty members
filed into the hall, security guards prevented the protesting students
from entering. But they did not stop them from keeping the lecture hall
door open, calling out slogans on a bullhorn and banging with all their
might on the walls........
Truth, reality, tradition and freedom: our resistance to the great uprooting
Posted on
She has a background in radical ecology and calls for a new 21st
century resistance that goes beyond the “stale and dusty categories” of
“right” and “left”. [1]
What is at stake today, she says, is the very future of humanity,
with a historic clash taking place between “two opposing visions of the
world, of the living, of nature, of human beings”. [2]
“There are no more excuses. We can no longer wait for those who do
not want to understand, those who pursue marginal projects, those who do
not have a total and clear-cut critique of every aspect and every
fundamental element in the transhumanist project”. [3]
“We need to find a firm shore: that line of resistance for those of
us who are determined to remain anchored to reality, in defence of
humanity and in defence of all that is living”. [4]
“Let’s form alliances to repel the transhumanist vanguard”....................
In this harrowing
interview, a US doctor describes his recent experiences working in a
Gazan hospital, where he treated children with horrific, often fatal,
injuries.
When Feroze Sidhwa, a 42-year-old trauma and
critical-care surgeon at San Joaquin General Hospital in Northern
California, signed up for a medical mission to work in a hospital in Gaza
for two weeks, he knew he would have to take his own medical supplies.
So he travelled with about 750lb of luggage on his British Airways
flights from San Francisco to Heathrow and onward to Cairo. Everyone in
his group took “tons of stuff”: a colleague, Mark Perlmutter, an
orthopaedic surgeon, took hundreds of pounds of orthopaedic implants.
The mission went to Gaza with the World Health Organisation; the call
for volunteers was distributed by the Society for Critical Care
Medicine, which is how Sidhwa found out about it. He has degrees from
the University of Texas and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
His father was born in Karachi, Pakistan, a few months before the
Partition, and his mother was also born there, two years later. They are
Parsis.
The European Hospital in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Strip,
Sidhwa told me in an interview on 30 July, was considered to be the best
hospital in Gaza. Yet what he found on arrival was a disaster: in terms
of medical supplies, “what we took is...............
Only a Failing US Empire Would Be So Blind as to Cheer Netanyahu and his Genocide
Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become
by Jonathan Cook / August 5th, 2024
There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of
Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is
guaranteed dozens of standing ovations from the vast majority of its
elected representatives.
That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States.
On
Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered
as he slowly made his way – hailed at every step as a conquering hero –
to the podium of the US Congress.
This was the same Netanyahu who has overseen during the past 10 months the slaughter– so far – of some 40,000 Palestinians, around half of them women and children. More than 21,000 other children are reported missing, most of them likely dead under rubble.
It
was the same Netanyahu who levelled a strip of territory – originally
home to 2.3 million Palestinians – that is expected to take 80 years to rebuild, at a cost of at least $50bn.
It was the same Netanyahu who has destroyed
every hospital and university in Gaza, and bombed almost all of its
schools that were serving as shelters for families made homeless by
other Israeli bombs.
It was the same Netanyahu whose arrest is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
for crimes against humanity, accused of using starvation as a weapon of
war by imposing an aid blockade that has engineered a famine across
Gaza.
It was the same Netanyahu whose government was found
last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have been
intensifying Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people in an
act of long-term aggression.
It was the same Netanyahu whose
government is standing trial for committing what the ICJ, the world’s
highest judicial body, has termed a “plausible genocide”.
And yet,
there was just one visible protester in the congressional chamber.
Rashida Tlaib, the only US legislator of Palestinian heritage, sat
silently grasping a small black sign. On one side it said: “War
criminal”. On the other: “Guilty of genocide”.
One person among hundreds mutely trying to point out that the emperor was naked................
“Finance
Minister Bezalel Smotrich implies he believes that blocking
humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is ‘justified and moral’ even if it
causes 2 million civilians to die of hunger, adding however that the
international community won’t allow this to happen.
“‘We are
bringing in aid because there is no choice,’ Smotrich says at a
conference in Yad Binyamin hosted by the Israel Hayom outlet. ‘We can’t,
in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2
million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified
and moral until our hostages are returned.’”
Liberal
supporters of the state of Israel often talk about Israel’s Naziesque
far right leaders like Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir like they’re some
kind of fringe element in Israeli society, when really they’re both
high-level officials in the Israeli government and play a crucial role
in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Just the other day..............
“Welcome to Hell” is a report on the abuse and
inhuman treatment of Palestinians held in Israeli custody since 7
October 2023. B’Tselem collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians held
during that time and released, almost all with no charges. Their
testimonies reveal the outcomes of the rushed transformation of more
than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a
network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of
policy. Facilities in which every inmate is deliberately subjected to
harsh, relentless pain and suffering operate as de-facto torture camps.
"We were taken to Megiddo. When we got off the bus, a soldier said to us: "Welcome to hell."
From the testimony of Fouad Hassan 45, from Qusrah in Nablus District..................
Joining
a search for an Israeli teen who disappeared in the West Bank, I
experienced first-hand the blood-drenched reality of nowhere land
By: Idan Yaron
In
mid-April this year, I underwent a kind of existential experience in
the heart of darkness – in the physically and morally obscure expanse
bordering Greater Israel, which was promised to our forebears: in the
hills of what can be called Judea-Samaria, among the most majestic yet
bleakest places on the face of the earth. It wasn't sparked by some sort
of external threat – from distant Iran, which lies in western Asia, or
from the Houthis in northwest Yemen – but rather by a far more concrete
and worrisome threat, a threat from within, emanating from our wild
east. For many, it is indeed an internal threat but one that's perceived
as remote and estranged: It's relegated to the margins of consciousness
and the psyche,....
Lecture of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the 33rd Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp
Source: Cabinet Office Of The Prime Minister
Good morning Summer Camp and other Guests.
The first piece of good news is that my visit this year was not
accompanied by the same kind of brouhaha as last year’s: this year we
have not received – I have not received – a diplomatic démarche from
Bucharest; what I received was an invitation to a meeting with the Prime
Minister, which took place yesterday. Last year, when I had the
opportunity to meet the Prime Minister of Romania, I said after the
meeting that it was “the beginning of a beautiful friendship”; at the
end of the meeting this year, I was able to say “We’re making progress”.
If we look at the figures, we are setting new records in economic and
trade relations between our two countries. Romania is now Hungary’s
third most important economic partner. We also discussed with the Prime
Minister a high-speed train – a “TGV” – linking Budapest to Bucharest,
as well as Romania’s membership of Schengen. I have undertaken to put
this issue on the agenda for the October Justice and Home Affairs
Council meeting – and, if necessary, for the December Council meeting –
and to take it forward if possible.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We have not received a démarche from Bucharest, but – to prevent us
getting bored – we have received one from Brussels: they have condemned
the Hungarian peace mission efforts. I have tried – without success – to
explain that there is such a thing as Christian duty. This means that
if you see something bad in the world – especially something very bad –
and you receive some instrument for its correction, then it is a
Christian duty to take action, without undue contemplation or
reflection............................
.............................. Some part of me still wanted to believe that these people may still be
completely misled — that perhaps they don’t know about the 15,000
children that have been killed. Maybe they haven’t seen what I’ve seen —
the little girl with her face falling off, the boy with a missing head,
the child with no legs, the mother unwilling to wash her children’s
blood off her hands because it is all that is left of them. Maybe they
haven’t seen it at all. As thunderous applause rang out for the
murderer, there were thousands of people outside trying to signal to the
millions of people in Palestine that their turmoil isn’t being ignored.
They were pepper sprayed, beaten, and arrested by cops that were
trained in Israel..............................................
As we approach the ten month mark of the slaughter in Gaza, it’s time to
peel back the layers of deception surrounding October 7th, the Israeli
response, and the true meaning of this conflict. We must call things by
their right name. The Gaza holocaust must end.........
The Grayzone’s publication of an embarrassing phone call with a
National Endowment for Democracy VP triggered an institution-wide
meltdown at the US government’s regime change laboratory. Following the
call, the group’s founding president privately admitted the “fiasco”
exposed major “problems beneath the polished surface.”
Now, leaked emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal the organization
has since descended into chaos, with two senior officials fired due to
the fiasco, and remaining staff engaged in civil war between the neocon
old guard and the “woke” new generation hired to replace them.
– Senior NED management is currently in complete disarray, with two
high-ranking staffers fired due to their handling of The Grayzone’s
phone call, and founding president Carl Gershman isolated and
marginalized by those who took his place.
– What began as a bitter dispute over the decision to engage with
The Grayzone ultimately devolved into a full-fledged culture war that
pitted the group’s neoconservative founders against its more liberal
recent hires, derided by the neocon old guard as “woke flakes” obsessed
with “microaggressions” and compulsory DEI trainings.
– One of the fired NED staffers, neocon Michael Allen, accused his
progressive boss of a “clear campaign of harassment, marginalization and
victimization,” and fretted over her allowing NED staff to attend
pro-Palestine rallies. He was so incensed by his dismissal that he
threatened to reveal the details of his firing to the “many mailing
lists of key decision-makers and opinion-formers that I have built and
retained over the years” if he did not receive a substantial settlement.
Read a collection of the NED files exclusively obtained by The Grayzone here
Through its lavish funding of
anti-government opposition groups in countries where Washington has
sought regime change, the US government-funded NGO known as the National
Endowment for Democracy, or the NED, earned a reputation over its four
decades in existence as an “overt operator” doing the work the CIA used to do in the shadows.
Critics have long pointed to the destabilizing effects of NED’s meddling in places like Nicaragua,Venezuela,Ukraine, and Haiti,
where the Endowment has systematically undermined elected governments
which undertook policies seen as violating the Washington Consensus.
They referenced documents demonstrating the group’s origins in
the Central Intelligence Agency of Ronald Reagan, and cited quotes by
NED founders and Gershman himself boasting about their orchestration of
coups and color revolutions..................
Solidarity as a Monolith of Love against Zionist Evil
In
this era of internet and instant communication, information on the
monstrous crimes of Zionism is available for people who make an effort
to be aware. Take that information and apply open-minded skepticism. Ask
whether the evidence substantiates the information and its narrative.
Israeli
Jews are carrying out genocide against Palestinians (something that has
been ongoing for decades). Eliminating a grouping of people from
existence is heinous enough, but there is also the horrific matter of
what happens to the victims of Zionists before they are killed.
Redacted interviewed Dan Cohen of Uncaptured Mediato report
a bloodlust where Israelis are torturing and raping Palestinian
prisoners, and that Israeli protestors are in the streets claiming
Israelis have a right to rape these prisoners.
Aligned With Israel’s Propaganda Strategy’: BBC Correspondent Challenges the BBC Director General
Last November, we reported
on an incisive and courageous email that had been sent on 24 October
2023 to Tim Davie, the BBC’s Director General, by Rami Ruhayem, a
Beirut-based BBC correspondent. Basing his arguments on considerable
evidence and rational analysis, Ruhayem was highly critical of the BBC’s
pro-Israel coverage of Gaza since the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.
A former journalist for the Associated Press, Ruhayem has worked as a journalist and producer for BBC Arabic and the BBC World Service since 2005. He wrote:
‘Words like “massacre”, “slaughter”, and “atrocities” are being
used—prominently—in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at
all, in reference to actions by Israel.
‘When the BBC uses such language selectively, with the standard of
selection being the identity of the perpetrators/victims, the BBC is
making a statement—albeit implicit. It implies that the lives of one group of people are more valuable than the lives of another.’ (Our emphasis)
As we pointed out at the time, this is extremely serious. The
state-mandated BBC News organisation is essentially channelling Israeli
propaganda that excuses its war crimes while demonising Israel’s
victims, the Palestinian people.
Similar points were made in a 2,300-word letter
sent in November 2023 to Al Jazeera by eight BBC journalists who,
fearing reprisals, requested anonymity. They accused the BBC of:
‘failing to tell the story of the Israel-Palestine conflict
accurately, investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims
compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in
coverage.’
They said that the BBC is guilty of a ‘double standard in how
civilians are seen’, given that it is ‘unflinching’ in its reporting of
alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine..............
26 July 2024 09:02 BST
| Last update:7 hours 20 mins ago
Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become
There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza,
where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guaranteed dozens of
standing ovations from the vast majority of its elected
representatives.
That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and
cheered as he slowly made his way - hailed at every step as a conquering
hero - to the podium of the US Congress.
This was the same Netanyahu who has overseen during the past 10 months the slaughter - so far - of some 40,000 Palestinians, around half of them women and children. More than 21,000 other children are reported missing, most of them likely dead under rubble.
It was the same Netanyahu who levelled a strip of territory -
originally home to 2.3 million Palestinians - that is expected to take 80 years to rebuild, at a cost of at least $50bn...............
The uncounted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza being killed by Israel
-by Eva Karene Bartlett *(blog title updated from original published; blog version slightly longer)
Earlier this month, the Lancet published an article estimating
that the total number of Palestinian civilian deaths caused directly
and indirectly by Israeli attacks since October 2023 could be nearly
five times higher than the official death toll, and could reach “up to 186 000 or even more.”
It noted that “this would translate to 7.9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.”
According to the piece, the latest available count of Palestinians
killed – 37,396 – is far too low, based on the fact that it is still
unknown how many more lie under the rubble, how many are missing but not
accounted for among the dead, and how many will perish due to
starvation, dehydration, or diseases.
“Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be
many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as
reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases,” it noted.
However, even this Lancet estimate of nearly 200,000 dead might be
only half the actual number of Palestinians killed, according to some
counts...............
No. 2024/57 19 July 2024 Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem The Court gives its Advisory Opinion and responds to the questions posed by the General Assembly THE HAGUE, 19 July 2024. The International Court of Justice has today given its Advisory Opinion in respect of the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. It is recalled that, on 30 December 2022, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted resolution A/RES/77/247 in which, referring to Article 65 of the Statute of the Court, it requested the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on the following questions:
“(a) What are the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures? (b) How do the policies and practices of Israel referred to . . . above affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all States and the United Nations from this status?” In its Advisory Opinion, the Court responds to the questions posed by the General Assembly by concluding that:
the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful;
the State of Israel is under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible;
the State of Israel is under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities, and to evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
the State of Israel has the obligation to make reparation for the damage caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned in the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
international organizations, including the United Nations, are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and
the United Nations, and especially the General Assembly, which requested the opinion, and the Security Council, should consider the precise modalities and further action required to bring to an end as rapidly as possible the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Reasoning of the Court After concluding that it has jurisdiction to render the requested opinion and that there are no compelling reasons for it to decline to give an opinion (paras. 22-50), the Court recalls the general context of the case (paras. 51-71) and addresses the scope and meaning of the two questions posed by the General Assembly (paras. 72-83). The Court then assesses the conformity.....................
Israeli Newspaper Confirms IDF Employed 'Hannibal Directive' on October 7
IDF soldiers were reportedly ordered to "turn the area around the border fence into a killing zone."
by Jake Johnson
The Israeli newspaper Haaretzreported Sunday
that Israel's military repeatedly employed a protocol known as the
"Hannibal Directive" during the October 7 Hamas-led attack in an attempt
to prevent the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers—even if it meant putting
the lives of army captives and civilians at risk.
Haaretz
found based on documents and interviews with soldiers and senior
Israeli officers that Hannibal—an operational order developed in 1986
that "directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into
captivity" by enemy militants—was used "at three army facilities
infiltrated by Hamas, potentially endangering civilians as well."
During the first hours of the Hamas-led attack, according to Haaretz, Israeli soldiers were given an order: "Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza."....
Bombshell NYT Expose Details War Crimes By American-Led Volunteer Force In Ukraine
The last many weeks (or even months) of Ukraine coverage by
mainstream media has seen a major shift. One might observe that Western
reporters are actually starting to do their jobs for a change, and
digging into to 'inconvenient' truths and stories which a year ago no
outlet would have touched amid the general pro-Kyiv euphoria.
A military correspondent with The New York Times has issued the newest bombshell report this weekend which shines a spotlight on not just Ukrainian troops but American and foreign fighters who've volunteered with pro-Kyiv forces and have committed potential war crimes. The report, titled Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit,
reveals how US troops are participating in units which conduct
extra-judicial killings of Russians who have legitimately surrendered.
Much of the eyewitness accounts come from a German volunteer identified as Caspar Grosse, a medic in an all-foreign unit led by an American who says he witnessed clear war crimes and that his conscience has forced him to speak out...................
I guess you remember how a
few years ago, the media called everyone who refused to wear a mask or
get vaccinated a ‘grandma killer’. To protect the elderly, to save every
minute of their lives – that was all what mattered.
Here is something to think about: Last week, I stumbled upon an article in a Dutch mainstream newspaper
which declared in a technical and deliberate way that the ‘mysteriously
persisting excess death’ has certain advantages: it saves the state
hundreds of millions of costs of taking care for old people. I checked
my calendar. An April fools’ joke maybe? No – it was no joke..............
Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential
Published:July 05, 2024
By June 19, 2024, 37 396 people had been
killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli
invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as
reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses,
comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry,
The Ministry has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people
dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from
reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably
degraded the detailed data recorded previously. Consequently, the Gaza
Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies
among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35 091
deaths were unidentified.
Some
officials and news agencies have used this development, designed to
improve data quality, to undermine the veracity of the data. However,
the number of reported deaths is likely an underestimate. The
non-governmental organisation Airwars undertakes detailed assessments of
incidents in the Gaza Strip and often finds that not all names of
identifiable victims are included in the Ministry's list.
Armed
conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from
violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to
be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such
as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total
death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this
conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of
food, water, and shelter; the population's inability to flee to safe
places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few
humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.
In
recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the
number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four
indirect deaths per one direct death
to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that
up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current
conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of
2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the
Gaza Strip. A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death
toll was 28 000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be
between 58 260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85 750
deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024.10...............
b
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“The situation there is more horrific
than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.” This is how
Khaled Mahajneh describes the Sde Teiman detention center
as the first lawyer to visit the facility. More than 4,000 Palestinians
whom Israel arrested in Gaza have been held at the military base in the
Naqab/Negev since October 7; some of them have subsequently been
released, but most remain in Israeli detention.
Mahajneh, a Palestinian citizen of
Israel, was initially approached by Al Araby TV, which was seeking
information about Muhammad Arab, a reporter for the network who was
arrested in March while covering the Israeli siege of Al-Shifa Hospital
in Gaza City. “I contacted the Israeli army’s control center, and after
providing them with a photo and an ID card of the detainee, as well as
my official power of attorney document, I was informed that [Arab] was
being held at Sde Teiman and that he could be visited.”
When Mahajneh arrived at the base on
June 19, he was required to leave his car far away from the site, where
an army jeep was waiting to transport him inside. This was “something I
had never encountered on any previous visit to any prison,” he told
+972. They drove for about 10 minutes through the facility — a sprawling
network of trailers — before arriving at a large warehouse, which
contained a trailer guarded by masked soldiers.....
A trans-identified male has been found guilty of rape after sexually
attacking a woman during a night out. Lexi Secker, previously known as
Alexander Secker, was said to have committed the crime when he was
“living as a man.”
The assault is said to have taken place in Blunsdon, Wiltshire, in
April of 2023. While details are extremely limited, it is known that
Secker began identifying as woman in the period between the assault and
his court hearings.
But in a statement on the arrest, Wiltshire Police referred to Secker
as a “person convicted of rape,” adding that he was recorded as a male
by police but “tried as a woman” in court.
In subsequent coverage by the BBC, feminine pronouns were
used for Secker. A photo of the criminal was noticeably absent from
reports on the conviction, which had sparse details on the incident
beyond noting he had been remanded into custody awaiting sentencing............
Earlier this month, the Canadian Parliament’s National Security and Intelligence Committee (NSICOP) released an 84-page, special report on alleged foreign interference in Canada’s “democratic processes and institutions”.
Initially, the committee delivered its special report to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on March 22 of this year.
As a result of mounting controversy around allegations of foreign
interference in Canada, NSICOP then publicly released a heavily redacted
version of its special report.
How can an evidence-free report be “damning”?
Predictably, Canada’s corporate media described the report as “shocking“, “explosive” and “damning“. They did so despite the fact (which the media ignored) that the report is totally devoid of evidence.
I’ve read the report twice. I did so from the perspective of a
litigator. That is, to assess whether NSICOP’s allegations were
supported by persuasive evidence, I brought to bear my extensive
experience in evaluating evidence........
In
2007, Orlando residents were furious to discover that an FBI informant
had organized a neo-Nazi rally through one of the city’s mostly black
neighborhoods a year earlier.
“To come into a
predominantly black community, which could have resulted in great harm
to the black community? I would hate to be part of a game,” Orlando City
Councilwoman Daisy Lynum said at the time, calling for a “full-scale investigation” into the matter.
However, an FBI agent testified that his informant participated in the event, but didn’t organize it. The city’s uproar passed without a public investigation, full-scale or otherwise—until now.
Thanks to a trove of previously unpublicized law enforcement records and interviews with several players involved, Headline USA can reveal that the Orlando neo-Nazi rally was indeed organized by the FBI.
The Orlando event also seems to have been part of a larger program to
hold Nazi rallies across the country. And according to FBI records, the
bureau sponsored those events despite knowing they led to an increase in
the number of card-carrying Nazis in America.
Moreover, the FBI’s Nazi rallies led to a much larger operation to target right-wing groups. Dubbed “Primitive Affliction,”
the operation featured a motorcycle front group, rogue undercover
agents, Outlaw bikers, Satanists, bomb-makers and a fugitive on the lam
in Mexico.......
High Court Rules Ultra-Orthodox Men Are Subject to Draft, Threatening Netanyahu’s Coalition
The ultra-orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s government condemned the ruling
Israel’s high court ruled
that men in the ultra-Orthodox community are subject to conscription on
Tuesday. The community, known as the Haredim, is politically powerful,
subsidized by the citizenry, and until now had been unaffected by the
mass mandatory enlistment. This is a heavily contentious issue as more
than 600 Israeli soldiers have been killed and thousands more wounded in
Gaza, and the ruling could spell trouble for Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s fragile ruling coalition.
The court’s decree, which was unanimously supported by all nine
justices, says “At the height of a difficult war, the burden of
inequality is more than ever acute.” It also stipulates that, if they
refuse military service in the absence of a formal exemption,
ultra-Orthodox men studying at Yeshivas will lose their taxpayer
funding.
The secular and non-Orthodox population including men and women have
long been subject to mandatory enlistment, “[serving] three and two
years respectively as well as reserve duty until around age 40,” the Associated Press notes.
Naturally, they view the previous status quo as discriminatory.
Whereas, for decades, the Haredim have vehemently opposed military
service while enjoying their exemption. The dispute has boiled over now
as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been bogged down in the Gaza
slaughter campaign, while concurrently Tel Aviv seems ready to
drastically escalate the burgeoning war with Lebanon.
Opposition parties on the left and right have praised the
long-awaited change in policy. The Movement for Quality Government
issued a statement calling the high court decision “a historic triumph
for the rule of law and the principle of equal military service burden.”
The same party led the petition to the court and has now implored
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to immediately draft Haredi men.....................
By Roman Shumov, aRussian historian focused on conflicts and international politics
The Prigozhin paradox: What was Russia’s Wagner PMC and how did its June 23 mutiny happen?
The now fighting group was the stuff of legend
before it came out of the shadows. Then like Icarus it flew too close to
the Sun
On June 23, 2023, one of the most mysterious events in modern Russian
history kicked off. Units of PMC Wagner – at the time a highly
combat-ready but also historically unusual component of the Russian
Armed Forces – withdrew from the theater of operations in Ukraine.
Restaurateur and musician
The
story of the Wagner mutiny cannot be told without the story of the
people behind the creation of the PMC. The main figure is Yevgeny
Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg businessman who rose from humble beginnings
to become a wealthy tycoon. His youth was turbulent, and in the early
1990s, as the USSR collapsed, he went into business, far removed from
military affairs. Prigozhin was a restaurateur. He started by selling
hot dogs, but quickly acquired money and ambition and began to open
restaurants in St. Petersburg to suit all tastes and budgets. By the end
of the 1990s, Prigozhin ran a chain of restaurants and a catering
company, and was well known to the establishment of the city on the
Neva. When Vladimir Putin, also from St. Petersburg, became president of
Russia, Prigozhin found more success. He was involved in organizing
catering in schools and then in the army, construction and other
projects. The businessman tried to keep a low profile, but in the 2010s
became increasingly involved in politics.......
It
takes a profound cruelty to support raining tens of thousands of tons
of military explosives onto a giant concentration camp full of children.
It takes outright malignant narcissism to expect everyone to accept
this, and to act wounded and indignant when they don’t.
Zionism
is like the exact opposite of people who identify as “spiritual but not
religious”; it’s religion stripped bare of all spirituality until it’s
nothing but a shitty political ideology that’s ultimately really about
land, western imperialism, and geostrategic control.
People feel
called to religion because there’s something in all of us that tells us
this world isn’t quite what it seems, like there’s some wondrous mystery
lurking just below the surface (really what they’re experiencing is an
uncomfortable dissonance with the delusion of egoic consciousness and an
impulse to try and awaken from it, but that’s a story for another
time). So they look to their religion to tell them how to have a living
spirituality that gives them what they’re craving, and, if they are
involved in certain Christian or Jewish sects, they’ll be told that they
can obtain what they long for by getting passionately engaged on issues
regarding the military and geopolitical objectives of a small country
on the other side of the planet.
