• https://www.foxnews.com/tech/secret-phone-surveillance-program-is-spying-on-millions-americans
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    WWW.FOXNEWS.COM
    A secret phone surveillance program is spying on millions of Americans
    An obscure surveillance program has been secretly collecting and analyzing domestic phone records. The program is called Domestic Analytical Services.
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  • Can You Feel The Earth Shaking?
    Normals Are Stepping Up All Over the World. Everything is Shifting. The Evidence follows:

    elizabeth nickson

    Did you hear the roar on the streets when Milei won Argentina? It built and built, and then everyone was out on the streets shouting, from windows, inside shops, houses. It is the future, all over the world. The Netherlands on Friday. Same same. Universal rejoicing.

    Absurdistan does a solid line in doom, but our firmly held first principle is that every single one of us should be two or three times as rich, with massively increased scope and ability to do the things we want to do. Defeating the criminal cartel that runs Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Government, Big Tech and Big Charity will light up the galaxy if not the universe. And….this. Especially this:


    Unlike almost everyone in the media, Absurdistan knows regulation is the principal reason we are hornswoggled serfs. Even Trump’s team was surprised at the economic boom that came from his mild de-regulation; they thought tax relief was the key. It was important, none of us should be paying more than 25% in taxes, if that, but the regulation! You have no earthly idea how fiendish it has become until you start a business or require permission to create anything in the material world. Few journalists ever do that, the most they do is join a bank in “communications”, design an app or website, do PR, or ‘consult’. They are virtually, to a man or woman, children in the real world. So no one reports on the most brutal crippler of every man, woman and child on earth. Equally, virtually no writer I read has any grasp on the ingenuity, the creativity, the strength of the ordinary man. They all seem to think we need guidance from them, which is laughable. They have screwed up everything so utterly, we teeter daily on the edge of fiscal catastrophe

    .


    Bloomberg reports on Milei victory
    When Vivek Ramaswamy proposed instantly firing 50% of federal bureaucrats on Day One, I stood on my office chair and cheered.

    When Javier Milei tore strips of paper representing government ministries off the whiteboard, I had to go out and run around the house a few times.


    sheer heaven
    Africa is not limited by anything but confiscatory corrupt government, as asserted by Magatte Wade in her new book. Wade should be running things in Africa, which is polluted by commies, plutocrats, crooked multinationals, ravening bureaucrats, corrupt politicians and the brutalist green movement. The Chinese would stun the world if they could get rid of the vicious predatory communist regime that enslaves every man, woman and child. And not in the sense that they are “taking over”.


    The mop-up will take decades. But unpicking the bad regs and shooing the bad legislators off to permanent exile, prosecuting the army of government thieves, and creating a multi-polar world, will be more absorbing than our endless self-cherishing, self-indulgence. Have we not all shopped enough? We have powerful enemies, but they are fully aware of how destructive they have been, their guilt written on their exhausted pouchy faces.

    Trump is a symptom, not a cause

    People fighting the Borg wish for leaders but this is not a movement that requires leadership by anyone but each and every one of us. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. This is multi-headed, like Medusa, representing tens, hundreds of millions of individuals saying NO. Real politicians like Mike Johnson, Geert Wilders, Pierre Poilievre, Javier Milei, and Danielle Smith are listening to us and stepping up.

    I annoy even myself when I repeat this, but I come from a family that has been in ‘the New World’ since 1630: Puritans, Revolutionaries, infrastructure builders, town fathers and mothers. I own ten thousand pages of their records and can tell you at concrete level assurance, that one of cities they founded, Vancouver, would not be riven by Asian criminal cartels washing most of the drug money in North America through our real estate and casinos, if my great aunt and uncle were alive. They, that generation and those before, didn’t run their cities via government, they ran it through civil society, their churches and charities and cultural clubs and they told government what to do. What they decided upon, collectively, became law. Law wasn’t made by witless, inexperienced, childless men and women who move from college straight to government, it was made by those who engaged with life fully. On their block, in their neighborhood, in their city. They knew where every sparrow fell. And, by the way, my family married into Indian bands and were officers on the Underground Railroad. Everything academia and publishing tells you about the founding is arrant propaganda meant to strip you of self-respect and power.


    Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, threw away engagement and our current enslavement, our stasis, our stuck-ness, is the result. Not really our fault. We were brainwashed and mind controlled by military level psy-ops, run out of the CIA, the Tavistock Clinic and the cursed Club of Rome. Reclaiming that power is our responsibility going forward. It is the future. No one gets to go back to sleep. I wrote about our collective brainwashing extensively in August. Here is one piece:

    They Break Every Family, Every Town, Every Country

    They Break Every Family, Every Town, Every Country
    This is the second in an August series about the Head of the Snake, an examination of the cabal that is behind the Great Reset, the Covid and Global Warming hoaxes, and every profit-bonanza war of the last thirty, if not 500 years, but especially Ukraine. They call themselves by a proliferation of names: the Olympians, the Elect, Bilderbergers, the 300, demi-gods, the Black Nobility, other silly secret names that must not be spoken. They are secret because their intent is evil. They practice the occult – foolish and irresponsible – they are “Masons” of the crazy branch, a cult that operates entirely in the dark and entirely for themselves. They are as power-hungry as Hillary Clinton and far more corrupt than she or Biden or his dreadful son. They have been around for a thousand years, laughably tracing their bloodlines back to Sumer and the Pharaohs and they think that is important. In fact, who they are is Hunter Biden, he is their id, the visual manifestation of their disgusting de…

    Read full story

    Herewith a roundup of our recent victories in no particular order of importance. Many (not all) are courtesy of kevinfernandes82 on Instagram, who does yeoman work aggregating daily the many wins by populists across the world; I heartily recommend a follow to fight off despair.

    I am only describing the wins of the past ten days, and I edited out dozens. Each win represents hundreds to thousands to millions of people who stood up and took back their power.

    Politics


    Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom won a groundbreaking victory this week.

    Libertarian Javier Milei won in Argentina, promising to strip government of many ministries.

    All of Spain on the streets calling for end to Socialism. Retired Generals call for coup to get rid of socialist Prime Minister


    .

    Danielle Smith declares that the Trudeau Liberals are a lawless government and it’s time to assert the constitution

    Bloc Quebecois calls for abolition of Governor General’s office as expenses soar 11%. This office is King Charles’s grift and a mechanism of British Round Table control. Crown land is our land, not his.

    The restaurant that kicked out GOP Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she worked for Trump closes its doors.

    CEO of DeSantis super PAC resigns.

    The Conservative Party of Canada has not polled this high since the 1950’s. It outpolls the Liberals and NDP among under 30’s.

    Rudy Giuliani states that Zelensky has photographs of Hunter Biden that could bring down the Democratic Party and has been using them to blackmail Biden.

    A Republican has just beat a Democrat in the Mayoral race in Charleston, South Carolina for the first time since 1877.

    Farmers in France spray government buildings with cow manure to protest increases in charges and taxes.

    Former Black Voices for Trump wins against left-wing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, as a Fulton County judge rejects a bid to lock him up over his social media posts

    4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down part of Maryland’s laws regulating handguns.

    Putin blames the U.N.: “Due to the sabotage of U.N. decisions which clearly provide for the creation and peaceful coexistence of two independent and sovereign states, more than one generation of Palestinians has been brought up in an atmosphere of injustice.”

    Italian court convicts 207 people in Mafia maxi-trial.

    U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson releases 40,000 hours of security footage of January 6th.

    Trump has considerably more support among young voters than Joe Biden according to a new NBC poll.

    Ex-Massachusetts senator facing 28 federal charges in connection with COVID fraud investigation.

    Asian-American residents of Brighton Park Chicago are furious about illegal migrants coming to their neighbourhood. 87% voted for Biden.

    One hundred police called out after protest surrounds Trudeau at restaurant. “You have blood on your hands”, call protestors referring to the vaccine mandates.

    German constitutional court strikes down plan of left-green-liberal government: rules they may not use 60B euros intended for Covid, for climate and energy measures.

    The Crown dropped charges against a pizza parlour owner for not closing down his restaurant during covid. The hearing lasted ten minutes and the verdict greeted with cheers.

    The Irish riot after an Algerian migrant injures three children. WEFer immigration policy is on the chopping block in every country.

    The Grotesque Sexualization of the Culture is Winding Down


    Biden Pentagon official overseeing the department managing elementary schools has been arrested in a human trafficking sting in Georgia.

    Prime Minister-Elect Javier Miles and Sound of Freedom Producer Eduardo Verastegui just signed and agreement to end all human trafficking operations in Argentina.

    Andrew Cuomo sued for sexual harassment by former executive assistant.

    GOP donor Harlan Crow’s brother is accused of financing a 100-person sex trafficking ring.

    Bad Boy Label President sued for sexual assault, negligence.

    TikTok, X and Meta CEOs to face Congressional Hearing Over Child Sexual Exploitation.

    Cuba Gooding Jr hit with two civil suits related to NYC sexual assaults

    American Idol coach, and Interscope Records founder, Jimmy Iovine sued over sexual misconduct and abuse.

    NYC Mayor Eric Adams accused of sexual assault in 1993 in new legal filing

    Jeremy Fox sued for sexual assault in NYC restaurant.

    Axl Rose sued over sexual assault by former Penthouse model.

    Julia Ormond sues Harvey Weinstein, CAA and Disney for sexual battery and enabling sexual assault.

    Model claims photographer Terry Richardson raped her, sold it as art.

    Jeffrey Epstein’s multimillionaire friend accused of sexually harassing stepdaughter.

    The ex-mayor of College Park, Maryland has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material. Democrat, White House guest pled guilty to 100 counts.

    Authorities allege Binance allowed bad actors to freely transact on the platform, enabling everything from child sex abuse to terrorist financing. Binance CEO steps down, Binance pays $4.3B in fines.

    A federal judge in California certified a class action lawsuit against Pornhub/MindGeek/Aylo on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims abused for profit.

    “I’m at a loss”. Trudeau governments experts upset by foot-dragging over online harms law. Trudeau is widely believed to participate in violent sexual activities.

    P Diddy settles with Cassie over abuse and trafficking, but not before his reputation is destroyed. Two more women charge choking and rape.

    Saskatchewan Party MLA charged with soliciting sexual services kicked out of government caucus.

    Stacey Abram’s brother-in-law arrested for attacking 16-year-old, human trafficking in Tampa.

    Peter Nygard convicted on four counts of sexual assault.

    World Health Organization paid sexual abuse victims in the Congo $250US each.

    John Podesta’s friend, who debunked Pizzagate, arrested for raping toddlers.

    Media/culture


    CBC admits to making multiple censorship appeals to social media platforms, so many that they say they ‘couldn’t really analyze each one correctly’.

    Big Box stores ditching self-checkout citing theft and customer preference.

    Conservatives reject Canada-Ukraine trade bill.

    The International Cricket Council bans transgender women from women’s cricket.

    Bell Media tells CRTC its priorities are backwards during Online Streaming Act hearing.

    Javier Milei announces the closure of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Equality in 21 days.

    The Director of the University of Alberta’s sexual violence center has been removed from her position after she endorsed an open letter that denied allegations of rape and sexual violence by Hamas terrorists during the October massacre.

    Elon Musk is donating all X Corp revenue from advertising and subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza.

    Morning Joe admits Ukraine has lost the war against Russia.

    Fauci admits Covid vaccine causes myocarditis in young men.

    China welcomes Arab and Muslim foreign ministers for talks on ending war in Gaza.

    X surpasses Instagram and Facebook by a significant margin in driving traffic through Google.

    Elon Musk and X file lawsuit against Media Matters. Penalties both civil and criminal.

    Ken Paxton of Texas opens investigation into Media Matters for fraud.

    Truth Social filed defamation lawsuit against twenty media companies.

    Canadians have stopped caring about climate change.

    Texas Attorney General Paxton has sued Pfizer.

    Marjorie Taylor Greene questions whether Nancy Pelosi orchestrated January 6th.

    Trump releases doctor letter touting health and weight loss on Biden’s birthday.

    The Iowa Board of Regents has voted to abolish DEI in all State Universities.

    Rumble under ‘major DDoS attack after CEO pledged to join Elon Musk to fight woke censorship.

    An official UK inquiry panel reports that Boris Johnson was bamboozled by Covid data.

    Sam Altman of OpenAI fired. Reinstated and two women board members let go.

    Sam Bankman Fried convicted. Faces decades in prison.

    Italy bans production and sale of lab grown meat.

    Trans Activist company behind Miss Universe has filed for bankruptcy.

    A female boxer in Canada withdrew from a championship match after learning she was set to fight a trans-identified male.

    Financial

    As I reported here last week, Net-Zero and ESG are on their deathbed in every country but the most insane.

    CNBC fires staff dedicated to covering climate change.

    19 Republican Attorneys General are going after the big banks for closing accounts and discriminating against customers over political/religious beliefs

    Trudeau’s billion-dollar Green Slush Fund’s head resigns, after it is discovered she funnelled $200K to her own company.

    Hong Kong bankers have lots of free time and anxiety as global dealmaking sinks.

    Bank of Canada’s Macklem says interest rates may be high enough to tame inflation.

    Bank of Canada reports that Canadians don’t need digital currency and don’t want it.

    SEC Commissioner says “there’s no reason for us to stand in the way of a Spot Bitcoin ETF.

    Russia, the most sanctioned country in the world will end the year with a $75 Billion profit. The US, the most indebted country in the world, will end 2023 with a lost of $@ Trillion.

    Luxury houses tied to China’s Evergrande chairman seized by creditor. Chairman placed under police surveillance.

    Argentine stock market up 20% after Milei’s election

    South Africa to chair BRICS extraordinary joint meeting on the situation in Gaza.

    Mortgage rates decline for the first time in two years.

    Inflation declines in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. to lowest in two years.

    Dutch Central Bank has prepared for a new Gold Standard.

    Republicans building case against Antony Fauci. New emails show Fauci adviser suggesting he destroyed records.

    Jim Jordan issues subpoena to Bank of America for sharing customer’s private financial information with the FBI.

    Australian clamps down on migrants with criminal convictions.

    BLM activist Jayden X found guilty on all seven counts for his actions on January 6th.

    Decline in local U.S. news outlets is accelerating.

    Canada Media Fund admits subsidizing newspapers and news channels didn’t stop decline.

    Ghost busses uncovered filled with FBI agents dressed as Trump supporters on January 6th.

    Pfizer stock hits three year low, down 50% from 2021.

    Disney loses $40B from DeSantis pulling special treatment.

    Voter Fraud


    A federal judge in Georgia has ordered a trial for the case against Dominion machines.

    Trump declares he will bring everything to light, including the 2020 election fraud, concluding we need same day voting and paper ballots.

    Kim Phuong Taylor found guilty of 51 counts related to voter fraud in the election of her husband, Jeremy Taylor

    Fulton County, Georgia acknowledges that 3,600 ballots from the 2020 election audit were duplicated. Discrepancy turned over the the GA Attorney General for investigation.

    Obama-appointed federal judge just ruled against voting machines in Georgia.

    Maricopa County Elections Department has admitted they improperly certified the voting machines that failed on Election Day. Sixty percent of the machines failed.

    Trump: “We have so much evidence of election fraud, and I look forward to introducing it in my trials.”

    Colorado judge keeps Trump on 2024 primary ballot as latest 14th Amendment case falters.

    South Carolina implements Voter ID.

    Meta allows ads saying 2020 election was rigged on Facebook and Instagram.

    Stacey Abrams’ voting organization, overseen by Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock (who stole his seat), is facing serious allegations of financial fraud.

    Arizona Governor Katies Hobbs’ Election Task Force concluded that then-Secretary of State Hobbs engaged in election interference in 2022 by preventing Arizonans from voting while running her own election for governor.

    Wisconsin legislature has passed two constitutional amendment proposals that seek to prohibit noncitizen voting and the use of private money (ZuckBucks) to conduct elections.

    ZuckerBucks banned in 32 states.



    All this in fewer than ten days. The future should be blinding you right about now.

    \

    Much of the mainstream news/propaganda is designed to oppress, depress and disempower you. Even independent journalism falls into despair all too often. I fight that with every fibre of my ability. I disagree. I do not think we are lost. I don’t think there is a new dark age ahead. I think quite the opposite.

    Again, I am grateful for all the subscriptions, paid and otherwise last week. “Put a chick in it” was enormously popular. When you like, subscribe and pay, I know where to go next with my writing. Thank you especially for the founding memberships and the people who send money via PayPal, and $20 bills from Thailand - you make a huge difference. Again, I keep my prices low so if you are not rich, you can afford to support me and others. If you are rich, consider a founding membership…cheaper in the long run!

    https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/can-you-feel-the-earth-shaking?utm_medium=ios
    Can You Feel The Earth Shaking? Normals Are Stepping Up All Over the World. Everything is Shifting. The Evidence follows: elizabeth nickson Did you hear the roar on the streets when Milei won Argentina? It built and built, and then everyone was out on the streets shouting, from windows, inside shops, houses. It is the future, all over the world. The Netherlands on Friday. Same same. Universal rejoicing. Absurdistan does a solid line in doom, but our firmly held first principle is that every single one of us should be two or three times as rich, with massively increased scope and ability to do the things we want to do. Defeating the criminal cartel that runs Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Government, Big Tech and Big Charity will light up the galaxy if not the universe. And….this. Especially this: Unlike almost everyone in the media, Absurdistan knows regulation is the principal reason we are hornswoggled serfs. Even Trump’s team was surprised at the economic boom that came from his mild de-regulation; they thought tax relief was the key. It was important, none of us should be paying more than 25% in taxes, if that, but the regulation! You have no earthly idea how fiendish it has become until you start a business or require permission to create anything in the material world. Few journalists ever do that, the most they do is join a bank in “communications”, design an app or website, do PR, or ‘consult’. They are virtually, to a man or woman, children in the real world. So no one reports on the most brutal crippler of every man, woman and child on earth. Equally, virtually no writer I read has any grasp on the ingenuity, the creativity, the strength of the ordinary man. They all seem to think we need guidance from them, which is laughable. They have screwed up everything so utterly, we teeter daily on the edge of fiscal catastrophe . Bloomberg reports on Milei victory When Vivek Ramaswamy proposed instantly firing 50% of federal bureaucrats on Day One, I stood on my office chair and cheered. When Javier Milei tore strips of paper representing government ministries off the whiteboard, I had to go out and run around the house a few times. sheer heaven Africa is not limited by anything but confiscatory corrupt government, as asserted by Magatte Wade in her new book. Wade should be running things in Africa, which is polluted by commies, plutocrats, crooked multinationals, ravening bureaucrats, corrupt politicians and the brutalist green movement. The Chinese would stun the world if they could get rid of the vicious predatory communist regime that enslaves every man, woman and child. And not in the sense that they are “taking over”. The mop-up will take decades. But unpicking the bad regs and shooing the bad legislators off to permanent exile, prosecuting the army of government thieves, and creating a multi-polar world, will be more absorbing than our endless self-cherishing, self-indulgence. Have we not all shopped enough? We have powerful enemies, but they are fully aware of how destructive they have been, their guilt written on their exhausted pouchy faces. Trump is a symptom, not a cause People fighting the Borg wish for leaders but this is not a movement that requires leadership by anyone but each and every one of us. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. This is multi-headed, like Medusa, representing tens, hundreds of millions of individuals saying NO. Real politicians like Mike Johnson, Geert Wilders, Pierre Poilievre, Javier Milei, and Danielle Smith are listening to us and stepping up. I annoy even myself when I repeat this, but I come from a family that has been in ‘the New World’ since 1630: Puritans, Revolutionaries, infrastructure builders, town fathers and mothers. I own ten thousand pages of their records and can tell you at concrete level assurance, that one of cities they founded, Vancouver, would not be riven by Asian criminal cartels washing most of the drug money in North America through our real estate and casinos, if my great aunt and uncle were alive. They, that generation and those before, didn’t run their cities via government, they ran it through civil society, their churches and charities and cultural clubs and they told government what to do. What they decided upon, collectively, became law. Law wasn’t made by witless, inexperienced, childless men and women who move from college straight to government, it was made by those who engaged with life fully. On their block, in their neighborhood, in their city. They knew where every sparrow fell. And, by the way, my family married into Indian bands and were officers on the Underground Railroad. Everything academia and publishing tells you about the founding is arrant propaganda meant to strip you of self-respect and power. Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, threw away engagement and our current enslavement, our stasis, our stuck-ness, is the result. Not really our fault. We were brainwashed and mind controlled by military level psy-ops, run out of the CIA, the Tavistock Clinic and the cursed Club of Rome. Reclaiming that power is our responsibility going forward. It is the future. No one gets to go back to sleep. I wrote about our collective brainwashing extensively in August. Here is one piece: They Break Every Family, Every Town, Every Country They Break Every Family, Every Town, Every Country This is the second in an August series about the Head of the Snake, an examination of the cabal that is behind the Great Reset, the Covid and Global Warming hoaxes, and every profit-bonanza war of the last thirty, if not 500 years, but especially Ukraine. They call themselves by a proliferation of names: the Olympians, the Elect, Bilderbergers, the 300, demi-gods, the Black Nobility, other silly secret names that must not be spoken. They are secret because their intent is evil. They practice the occult – foolish and irresponsible – they are “Masons” of the crazy branch, a cult that operates entirely in the dark and entirely for themselves. They are as power-hungry as Hillary Clinton and far more corrupt than she or Biden or his dreadful son. They have been around for a thousand years, laughably tracing their bloodlines back to Sumer and the Pharaohs and they think that is important. In fact, who they are is Hunter Biden, he is their id, the visual manifestation of their disgusting de… Read full story Herewith a roundup of our recent victories in no particular order of importance. Many (not all) are courtesy of kevinfernandes82 on Instagram, who does yeoman work aggregating daily the many wins by populists across the world; I heartily recommend a follow to fight off despair. I am only describing the wins of the past ten days, and I edited out dozens. Each win represents hundreds to thousands to millions of people who stood up and took back their power. Politics Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom won a groundbreaking victory this week. Libertarian Javier Milei won in Argentina, promising to strip government of many ministries. All of Spain on the streets calling for end to Socialism. Retired Generals call for coup to get rid of socialist Prime Minister . Danielle Smith declares that the Trudeau Liberals are a lawless government and it’s time to assert the constitution Bloc Quebecois calls for abolition of Governor General’s office as expenses soar 11%. This office is King Charles’s grift and a mechanism of British Round Table control. Crown land is our land, not his. The restaurant that kicked out GOP Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she worked for Trump closes its doors. CEO of DeSantis super PAC resigns. The Conservative Party of Canada has not polled this high since the 1950’s. It outpolls the Liberals and NDP among under 30’s. Rudy Giuliani states that Zelensky has photographs of Hunter Biden that could bring down the Democratic Party and has been using them to blackmail Biden. A Republican has just beat a Democrat in the Mayoral race in Charleston, South Carolina for the first time since 1877. Farmers in France spray government buildings with cow manure to protest increases in charges and taxes. Former Black Voices for Trump wins against left-wing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, as a Fulton County judge rejects a bid to lock him up over his social media posts 4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down part of Maryland’s laws regulating handguns. Putin blames the U.N.: “Due to the sabotage of U.N. decisions which clearly provide for the creation and peaceful coexistence of two independent and sovereign states, more than one generation of Palestinians has been brought up in an atmosphere of injustice.” Italian court convicts 207 people in Mafia maxi-trial. U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson releases 40,000 hours of security footage of January 6th. Trump has considerably more support among young voters than Joe Biden according to a new NBC poll. Ex-Massachusetts senator facing 28 federal charges in connection with COVID fraud investigation. Asian-American residents of Brighton Park Chicago are furious about illegal migrants coming to their neighbourhood. 87% voted for Biden. One hundred police called out after protest surrounds Trudeau at restaurant. “You have blood on your hands”, call protestors referring to the vaccine mandates. German constitutional court strikes down plan of left-green-liberal government: rules they may not use 60B euros intended for Covid, for climate and energy measures. The Crown dropped charges against a pizza parlour owner for not closing down his restaurant during covid. The hearing lasted ten minutes and the verdict greeted with cheers. The Irish riot after an Algerian migrant injures three children. WEFer immigration policy is on the chopping block in every country. The Grotesque Sexualization of the Culture is Winding Down Biden Pentagon official overseeing the department managing elementary schools has been arrested in a human trafficking sting in Georgia. Prime Minister-Elect Javier Miles and Sound of Freedom Producer Eduardo Verastegui just signed and agreement to end all human trafficking operations in Argentina. Andrew Cuomo sued for sexual harassment by former executive assistant. GOP donor Harlan Crow’s brother is accused of financing a 100-person sex trafficking ring. Bad Boy Label President sued for sexual assault, negligence. TikTok, X and Meta CEOs to face Congressional Hearing Over Child Sexual Exploitation. Cuba Gooding Jr hit with two civil suits related to NYC sexual assaults American Idol coach, and Interscope Records founder, Jimmy Iovine sued over sexual misconduct and abuse. NYC Mayor Eric Adams accused of sexual assault in 1993 in new legal filing Jeremy Fox sued for sexual assault in NYC restaurant. Axl Rose sued over sexual assault by former Penthouse model. Julia Ormond sues Harvey Weinstein, CAA and Disney for sexual battery and enabling sexual assault. Model claims photographer Terry Richardson raped her, sold it as art. Jeffrey Epstein’s multimillionaire friend accused of sexually harassing stepdaughter. The ex-mayor of College Park, Maryland has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material. Democrat, White House guest pled guilty to 100 counts. Authorities allege Binance allowed bad actors to freely transact on the platform, enabling everything from child sex abuse to terrorist financing. Binance CEO steps down, Binance pays $4.3B in fines. A federal judge in California certified a class action lawsuit against Pornhub/MindGeek/Aylo on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims abused for profit. “I’m at a loss”. Trudeau governments experts upset by foot-dragging over online harms law. Trudeau is widely believed to participate in violent sexual activities. P Diddy settles with Cassie over abuse and trafficking, but not before his reputation is destroyed. Two more women charge choking and rape. Saskatchewan Party MLA charged with soliciting sexual services kicked out of government caucus. Stacey Abram’s brother-in-law arrested for attacking 16-year-old, human trafficking in Tampa. Peter Nygard convicted on four counts of sexual assault. World Health Organization paid sexual abuse victims in the Congo $250US each. John Podesta’s friend, who debunked Pizzagate, arrested for raping toddlers. Media/culture CBC admits to making multiple censorship appeals to social media platforms, so many that they say they ‘couldn’t really analyze each one correctly’. Big Box stores ditching self-checkout citing theft and customer preference. Conservatives reject Canada-Ukraine trade bill. The International Cricket Council bans transgender women from women’s cricket. Bell Media tells CRTC its priorities are backwards during Online Streaming Act hearing. Javier Milei announces the closure of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Equality in 21 days. The Director of the University of Alberta’s sexual violence center has been removed from her position after she endorsed an open letter that denied allegations of rape and sexual violence by Hamas terrorists during the October massacre. Elon Musk is donating all X Corp revenue from advertising and subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza. Morning Joe admits Ukraine has lost the war against Russia. Fauci admits Covid vaccine causes myocarditis in young men. China welcomes Arab and Muslim foreign ministers for talks on ending war in Gaza. X surpasses Instagram and Facebook by a significant margin in driving traffic through Google. Elon Musk and X file lawsuit against Media Matters. Penalties both civil and criminal. Ken Paxton of Texas opens investigation into Media Matters for fraud. Truth Social filed defamation lawsuit against twenty media companies. Canadians have stopped caring about climate change. Texas Attorney General Paxton has sued Pfizer. Marjorie Taylor Greene questions whether Nancy Pelosi orchestrated January 6th. Trump releases doctor letter touting health and weight loss on Biden’s birthday. The Iowa Board of Regents has voted to abolish DEI in all State Universities. Rumble under ‘major DDoS attack after CEO pledged to join Elon Musk to fight woke censorship. An official UK inquiry panel reports that Boris Johnson was bamboozled by Covid data. Sam Altman of OpenAI fired. Reinstated and two women board members let go. Sam Bankman Fried convicted. Faces decades in prison. Italy bans production and sale of lab grown meat. Trans Activist company behind Miss Universe has filed for bankruptcy. A female boxer in Canada withdrew from a championship match after learning she was set to fight a trans-identified male. Financial As I reported here last week, Net-Zero and ESG are on their deathbed in every country but the most insane. CNBC fires staff dedicated to covering climate change. 19 Republican Attorneys General are going after the big banks for closing accounts and discriminating against customers over political/religious beliefs Trudeau’s billion-dollar Green Slush Fund’s head resigns, after it is discovered she funnelled $200K to her own company. Hong Kong bankers have lots of free time and anxiety as global dealmaking sinks. Bank of Canada’s Macklem says interest rates may be high enough to tame inflation. Bank of Canada reports that Canadians don’t need digital currency and don’t want it. SEC Commissioner says “there’s no reason for us to stand in the way of a Spot Bitcoin ETF. Russia, the most sanctioned country in the world will end the year with a $75 Billion profit. The US, the most indebted country in the world, will end 2023 with a lost of $@ Trillion. Luxury houses tied to China’s Evergrande chairman seized by creditor. Chairman placed under police surveillance. Argentine stock market up 20% after Milei’s election South Africa to chair BRICS extraordinary joint meeting on the situation in Gaza. Mortgage rates decline for the first time in two years. Inflation declines in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. to lowest in two years. Dutch Central Bank has prepared for a new Gold Standard. Republicans building case against Antony Fauci. New emails show Fauci adviser suggesting he destroyed records. Jim Jordan issues subpoena to Bank of America for sharing customer’s private financial information with the FBI. Australian clamps down on migrants with criminal convictions. BLM activist Jayden X found guilty on all seven counts for his actions on January 6th. Decline in local U.S. news outlets is accelerating. Canada Media Fund admits subsidizing newspapers and news channels didn’t stop decline. Ghost busses uncovered filled with FBI agents dressed as Trump supporters on January 6th. Pfizer stock hits three year low, down 50% from 2021. Disney loses $40B from DeSantis pulling special treatment. Voter Fraud A federal judge in Georgia has ordered a trial for the case against Dominion machines. Trump declares he will bring everything to light, including the 2020 election fraud, concluding we need same day voting and paper ballots. Kim Phuong Taylor found guilty of 51 counts related to voter fraud in the election of her husband, Jeremy Taylor Fulton County, Georgia acknowledges that 3,600 ballots from the 2020 election audit were duplicated. Discrepancy turned over the the GA Attorney General for investigation. Obama-appointed federal judge just ruled against voting machines in Georgia. Maricopa County Elections Department has admitted they improperly certified the voting machines that failed on Election Day. Sixty percent of the machines failed. Trump: “We have so much evidence of election fraud, and I look forward to introducing it in my trials.” Colorado judge keeps Trump on 2024 primary ballot as latest 14th Amendment case falters. South Carolina implements Voter ID. Meta allows ads saying 2020 election was rigged on Facebook and Instagram. Stacey Abrams’ voting organization, overseen by Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock (who stole his seat), is facing serious allegations of financial fraud. Arizona Governor Katies Hobbs’ Election Task Force concluded that then-Secretary of State Hobbs engaged in election interference in 2022 by preventing Arizonans from voting while running her own election for governor. Wisconsin legislature has passed two constitutional amendment proposals that seek to prohibit noncitizen voting and the use of private money (ZuckBucks) to conduct elections. ZuckerBucks banned in 32 states. All this in fewer than ten days. The future should be blinding you right about now. \ Much of the mainstream news/propaganda is designed to oppress, depress and disempower you. Even independent journalism falls into despair all too often. I fight that with every fibre of my ability. I disagree. I do not think we are lost. I don’t think there is a new dark age ahead. I think quite the opposite. Again, I am grateful for all the subscriptions, paid and otherwise last week. “Put a chick in it” was enormously popular. When you like, subscribe and pay, I know where to go next with my writing. Thank you especially for the founding memberships and the people who send money via PayPal, and $20 bills from Thailand - you make a huge difference. Again, I keep my prices low so if you are not rich, you can afford to support me and others. If you are rich, consider a founding membership…cheaper in the long run! https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/can-you-feel-the-earth-shaking?utm_medium=ios
    ELIZABETHNICKSON.SUBSTACK.COM
    Can You Feel The Earth Shaking?
    Normals Are Stepping Up All Over the World. Everything is Shifting. The Evidence follows:
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  • Israel Has Asked Meta And TikTok To Remove 8,000 Posts Related To Hamas War
    Israel says its takedown requests to social media companies have increased 10-fold since the start of the war. Ninety-four percent of the content was removed.

    Thomas BrewsterNov 14, 2023,
    TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Telegram told to take down Hamas posts by Israel
    Social media companies are having to deal with a massive influx of takedown requests around the Israel-Hamas war.
    getty
    Meta and TikTok have received over 8,000 requests from Israel to remove content related to the Hamas conflict that they allege violate the companies’ policies, according to the Israeli state prosecutor’s office. The agency says 94% of the content across major social sites that it flagged has been taken down.

    Israel’s prosecutor’s office said it had requested the removal of content that incited violence and terrorism, as well as any promotion of groups widely designated as terrorists, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. It also asked that several songs praising Hamas that “served as soundtracks for thousands of videos on TikTok,” be taken down. TikTok, which told Forbes its policy was to remove all pro-Hamas content as soon as it’s identified, removed the videos playing the songs.

    Policies for moderating violative content differ across platforms, but Google, TikTok and Facebook all ban material that promotes or is produced by terror groups, including Hamas, which has been designated as such by the U.S. government. Violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on ethnicity, nationality, race or religion are also banned.

    “There is a significant challenge with Telegram’s cooperation.”

    Hadar Katz, spokesperson for Israel’s state prosecutor’s office
    Nearly 60% of 9,500 total content takedown requests from the prosecutor’s office to major social sites were to Facebook and Instagram’s parent company. That was compared to 26% to TikTok, according to data provided by the agency. Ten percent of those requests were directed at X, formerly known as Twitter; requests sent to YouTube and Telegram both fell under 5%. The government agency told Forbes that its takedown requests to all the social media giants has increased by 10-fold since the Hamas attacks.

    Israel’s prosecutor’s office told Forbes that Telegram, which was used by Hamas-linked accounts to share gruesome footage from the October 7 attacks and the subsequent war, does not appear to have complied its requests. “There is a significant challenge with their cooperation,” said Hadar Katz, a spokesperson for the office.

    Meta, Telegram and Twitter hadn’t responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. But Google’s YouTube said it had seen an influx of violative content on the platform since the war began. “Following the terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel and the escalated conflict now underway in Israel and Gaza, we have removed tens of thousands of harmful videos and terminated hundreds of channels,” spokesperson Sarah Colvin-Rowley added.

    Tech companies regularly receive demands from governments to remove material. In its most recent transparency report, TikTok reported it had received nearly 2,300 requests in the second half of 2022, 82 of which were from Israel, compared to just 11 from the U.S. and 335 from Russia. Google, meanwhile, received 60,000 requests in the first half of 2023, 223 from Israel, 359 from the U.S., and a massive 36,000 from Russia. Meta doesn’t release information on removal requests.

    Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website. Send me a secure tip.
    I'm a senior writer for Forbes, covering security, surveillance and privacy. I'm also the

    ...


    https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/11/13/meta-and-tiktok-told-to-remove-8000-pro-hamas-posts-by-israel/
    Israel Has Asked Meta And TikTok To Remove 8,000 Posts Related To Hamas War Israel says its takedown requests to social media companies have increased 10-fold since the start of the war. Ninety-four percent of the content was removed. Thomas BrewsterNov 14, 2023, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Telegram told to take down Hamas posts by Israel Social media companies are having to deal with a massive influx of takedown requests around the Israel-Hamas war. getty Meta and TikTok have received over 8,000 requests from Israel to remove content related to the Hamas conflict that they allege violate the companies’ policies, according to the Israeli state prosecutor’s office. The agency says 94% of the content across major social sites that it flagged has been taken down. Israel’s prosecutor’s office said it had requested the removal of content that incited violence and terrorism, as well as any promotion of groups widely designated as terrorists, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. It also asked that several songs praising Hamas that “served as soundtracks for thousands of videos on TikTok,” be taken down. TikTok, which told Forbes its policy was to remove all pro-Hamas content as soon as it’s identified, removed the videos playing the songs. Policies for moderating violative content differ across platforms, but Google, TikTok and Facebook all ban material that promotes or is produced by terror groups, including Hamas, which has been designated as such by the U.S. government. Violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on ethnicity, nationality, race or religion are also banned. “There is a significant challenge with Telegram’s cooperation.” Hadar Katz, spokesperson for Israel’s state prosecutor’s office Nearly 60% of 9,500 total content takedown requests from the prosecutor’s office to major social sites were to Facebook and Instagram’s parent company. That was compared to 26% to TikTok, according to data provided by the agency. Ten percent of those requests were directed at X, formerly known as Twitter; requests sent to YouTube and Telegram both fell under 5%. The government agency told Forbes that its takedown requests to all the social media giants has increased by 10-fold since the Hamas attacks. Israel’s prosecutor’s office told Forbes that Telegram, which was used by Hamas-linked accounts to share gruesome footage from the October 7 attacks and the subsequent war, does not appear to have complied its requests. “There is a significant challenge with their cooperation,” said Hadar Katz, a spokesperson for the office. Meta, Telegram and Twitter hadn’t responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. But Google’s YouTube said it had seen an influx of violative content on the platform since the war began. “Following the terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel and the escalated conflict now underway in Israel and Gaza, we have removed tens of thousands of harmful videos and terminated hundreds of channels,” spokesperson Sarah Colvin-Rowley added. Tech companies regularly receive demands from governments to remove material. In its most recent transparency report, TikTok reported it had received nearly 2,300 requests in the second half of 2022, 82 of which were from Israel, compared to just 11 from the U.S. and 335 from Russia. Google, meanwhile, received 60,000 requests in the first half of 2023, 223 from Israel, 359 from the U.S., and a massive 36,000 from Russia. Meta doesn’t release information on removal requests. Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website. Send me a secure tip. I'm a senior writer for Forbes, covering security, surveillance and privacy. I'm also the ... https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/11/13/meta-and-tiktok-told-to-remove-8000-pro-hamas-posts-by-israel/
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    Israel Has Asked Meta And TikTok To Remove 8,000 Posts Related To Hamas War
    Israel says its takedown requests to social media companies have increased 10-fold since the start of the war. Ninety-four percent of the content was removed.
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  • Why So Many Countries Followed China’s Lockdown Example
    Ron Brown
    A novel coronavirus that was 10 times deadlier than the flu had gripped the world in 2019. Without a compass to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic, all lessons learned from previous viral pandemics were thrown out the window. The World Health Organization was adamant, “This is not the flu.” Tony Fauci terrified the US House of Representatives with forecasts of disaster. Global populations were defenseless without a vaccine for the novel coronavirus that no one had ever seen before. The only viable defense at the time was to shut down the world.

    China took the lead in lockdowns. Media exported from China showed people dropping dead in the streets. Caskets were piling up. Doors to buildings were sealed to lock in tenants. Throughout the panic, all reasonable alternative assessments of risks from the viral outbreak were ignored, censored, or rejected.

    Nevertheless, I wondered whether a video of a person falling down in the street was really representative of the entire population. Were caskets piling up largely due to families fearing to claim them because of contamination with the virus? I noticed that the front doors to my local mall in Ontario, Canada had also been sealed, just like in China apartment buildings, but this was only to control access through a single entrance to the building, not to seal in customers.

    My first clue that the emergency response to the outbreak of the coronavirus didn’t seem to make sense was when I heard Fauci tell television audiences that if our response seems to be overreacting, then we are probably doing the right thing. What? Since when is overreacting ever the right thing to do? Do generals win wars by overreacting?

    I looked at the numbers that Fauci had presented to the US House of Representatives concerning case and infection fatalities of the coronavirus. They were backwards! His 10-times deadlier prediction was simply a made-up number! This was in March 2020. By May 2020 it was obvious that people were NOT dying at the inflated rate Fauci had predicted.

    I published a paper on Fauci’s coronavirus mortality overestimations: Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation. But when I mentioned all this to my friends, they responded that the lower than predicted deaths just proved the lockdowns were working. Fauci was off the hook. Back to China.

    WHO/China Joint Mission on Covid-19

    The answer to why countries followed China’s lockdowns is simple. They were told to do so by the World Health Organization (WHO). Why did the WHO tell them to do that? You might want to ask Dr. Bruce Aylward, the Director of the WHO/China Joint Mission on Covid-19 investigating the coronavirus outbreak.

    Aylward noticed a precipitous drop in novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) in China during February 2020. This was before China adopted WHO’s name of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). Upon seeing China’s surveillance data, Aylward announced the spectacular findings to the world and told the world to do what China has done and lock down. But he appeared to make a fundamental epidemiological error by wrongly assuming that the association of China’s lockdowns with lower deaths proved the lockdowns were working (just like my friends had told me).

    Soon after in March 2020, China published its latest case definitions for NCP (Covid-19). In a nutshell, the definitions showed that no one could be declared to have died of the disease unless they had viral pneumonia (a severe acute respiratory illness), and only if no other virus normally associated with viral pneumonia was present, except SARS-CoV-2.

    Coinfections with the coronavirus were not acceptable criteria, and what should have been a broad surveillance case definition with high sensitivity to monitor the spread of the virus within the population narrowed down considerably into an overly specific diagnostic case definition. That pretty much sealed the deal to declare Covid-19 deaths in only single digits for many months during the pandemic throughout China. This super-low outcome impressed Dr. Bruce Aylward enough in February 2020 to implore the world to lock down. Did we ever!

    In the meantime, other countries used case and death definitions that went to the opposite extreme of China’s narrow diagnostic definitions, disseminating overinflated surveillance numbers without adjusting the numbers to remove bias. Even Fauci eventually admitted that reported cases and deaths counted WITH the coronavirus are much higher than cases and deaths counted FROM the coronavirus. Ironically, the WHO had previously published material on the correct use and interpretation of surveillance and diagnostic definitions in infectious disease outbreaks. Aylward didn’t appear to get the memo.

    There is more to the story. Was this even really a novel coronavirus, or just a novel genetic sequence of the coronavirus showing greater detail than previously available? China supposedly received updated genetic sequencing technology in late 2019. They had abandoned surveillance of SARS in 2003 for lack of technology.

    Now they were back in business again by the end of 2019. The team of virologists that reported the genetic sequence of the virus in Wuhan noted that it would be necessary to investigate the epidemiological evidence to guide infection control responses. Who has time for that? Shut it down!

    If the novel coronavirus isn’t really so novel, this would explain why the lockdowns didn’t work. We had already known that lockdowns don’t work in other viral pandemics. Even China eventually gave up its Zero Covid Policy after it was obvious that lockdowns weren’t working. My friends owe me some explanations to justify their lockdown views. Maybe Fauci isn’t off the hook after all.

    For more information on biases in Covid-19 case and death definitions, see my peer-reviewed article with cited references: Biases in COVID-19 Case and Death Definitions: Potential Causes and Consequences.

    Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
    For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone Institute Article and Author.

    Your financial backing of Brownstone Institute goes to support writers, lawyers, scientists, economists, and other people of courage who have been professionally purged and displaced during the upheaval of our times. You can help get the truth out through their ongoing work.


    https://brownstone.org/articles/why-so-many-countries-followed-chinas-lockdown-example/
    Why So Many Countries Followed China’s Lockdown Example Ron Brown A novel coronavirus that was 10 times deadlier than the flu had gripped the world in 2019. Without a compass to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic, all lessons learned from previous viral pandemics were thrown out the window. The World Health Organization was adamant, “This is not the flu.” Tony Fauci terrified the US House of Representatives with forecasts of disaster. Global populations were defenseless without a vaccine for the novel coronavirus that no one had ever seen before. The only viable defense at the time was to shut down the world. China took the lead in lockdowns. Media exported from China showed people dropping dead in the streets. Caskets were piling up. Doors to buildings were sealed to lock in tenants. Throughout the panic, all reasonable alternative assessments of risks from the viral outbreak were ignored, censored, or rejected. Nevertheless, I wondered whether a video of a person falling down in the street was really representative of the entire population. Were caskets piling up largely due to families fearing to claim them because of contamination with the virus? I noticed that the front doors to my local mall in Ontario, Canada had also been sealed, just like in China apartment buildings, but this was only to control access through a single entrance to the building, not to seal in customers. My first clue that the emergency response to the outbreak of the coronavirus didn’t seem to make sense was when I heard Fauci tell television audiences that if our response seems to be overreacting, then we are probably doing the right thing. What? Since when is overreacting ever the right thing to do? Do generals win wars by overreacting? I looked at the numbers that Fauci had presented to the US House of Representatives concerning case and infection fatalities of the coronavirus. They were backwards! His 10-times deadlier prediction was simply a made-up number! This was in March 2020. By May 2020 it was obvious that people were NOT dying at the inflated rate Fauci had predicted. I published a paper on Fauci’s coronavirus mortality overestimations: Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation. But when I mentioned all this to my friends, they responded that the lower than predicted deaths just proved the lockdowns were working. Fauci was off the hook. Back to China. WHO/China Joint Mission on Covid-19 The answer to why countries followed China’s lockdowns is simple. They were told to do so by the World Health Organization (WHO). Why did the WHO tell them to do that? You might want to ask Dr. Bruce Aylward, the Director of the WHO/China Joint Mission on Covid-19 investigating the coronavirus outbreak. Aylward noticed a precipitous drop in novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) in China during February 2020. This was before China adopted WHO’s name of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). Upon seeing China’s surveillance data, Aylward announced the spectacular findings to the world and told the world to do what China has done and lock down. But he appeared to make a fundamental epidemiological error by wrongly assuming that the association of China’s lockdowns with lower deaths proved the lockdowns were working (just like my friends had told me). Soon after in March 2020, China published its latest case definitions for NCP (Covid-19). In a nutshell, the definitions showed that no one could be declared to have died of the disease unless they had viral pneumonia (a severe acute respiratory illness), and only if no other virus normally associated with viral pneumonia was present, except SARS-CoV-2. Coinfections with the coronavirus were not acceptable criteria, and what should have been a broad surveillance case definition with high sensitivity to monitor the spread of the virus within the population narrowed down considerably into an overly specific diagnostic case definition. That pretty much sealed the deal to declare Covid-19 deaths in only single digits for many months during the pandemic throughout China. This super-low outcome impressed Dr. Bruce Aylward enough in February 2020 to implore the world to lock down. Did we ever! In the meantime, other countries used case and death definitions that went to the opposite extreme of China’s narrow diagnostic definitions, disseminating overinflated surveillance numbers without adjusting the numbers to remove bias. Even Fauci eventually admitted that reported cases and deaths counted WITH the coronavirus are much higher than cases and deaths counted FROM the coronavirus. Ironically, the WHO had previously published material on the correct use and interpretation of surveillance and diagnostic definitions in infectious disease outbreaks. Aylward didn’t appear to get the memo. There is more to the story. Was this even really a novel coronavirus, or just a novel genetic sequence of the coronavirus showing greater detail than previously available? China supposedly received updated genetic sequencing technology in late 2019. They had abandoned surveillance of SARS in 2003 for lack of technology. Now they were back in business again by the end of 2019. The team of virologists that reported the genetic sequence of the virus in Wuhan noted that it would be necessary to investigate the epidemiological evidence to guide infection control responses. Who has time for that? Shut it down! If the novel coronavirus isn’t really so novel, this would explain why the lockdowns didn’t work. We had already known that lockdowns don’t work in other viral pandemics. Even China eventually gave up its Zero Covid Policy after it was obvious that lockdowns weren’t working. My friends owe me some explanations to justify their lockdown views. Maybe Fauci isn’t off the hook after all. For more information on biases in Covid-19 case and death definitions, see my peer-reviewed article with cited references: Biases in COVID-19 Case and Death Definitions: Potential Causes and Consequences. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone Institute Article and Author. Your financial backing of Brownstone Institute goes to support writers, lawyers, scientists, economists, and other people of courage who have been professionally purged and displaced during the upheaval of our times. You can help get the truth out through their ongoing work. https://brownstone.org/articles/why-so-many-countries-followed-chinas-lockdown-example/
    BROWNSTONE.ORG
    Why So Many Countries Followed China’s Lockdown Example ⋆ Brownstone Institute
    If the novel coronavirus isn’t really so novel, this would explain why the lockdowns didn’t work. We had already known that lockdowns don’t work in other viral pandemics. Even China eventually gave up its Zero Covid Policy after it was obvious that lockdowns weren’t working.
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  • According to the Kenyan Daily Post, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s role in assisting the Kenyan government in its development and rollout of a government-backed digital ID program was announced after a recent series of “closed-door meetings” with Kenyan President William Ruto. https://vigilantnews.com/post/bill-gates-pushes-digital-id-for-newborns-in-kenya-as-critics-warn-of-surveillance-risk
    According to the Kenyan Daily Post, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s role in assisting the Kenyan government in its development and rollout of a government-backed digital ID program was announced after a recent series of “closed-door meetings” with Kenyan President William Ruto. https://vigilantnews.com/post/bill-gates-pushes-digital-id-for-newborns-in-kenya-as-critics-warn-of-surveillance-risk
    VIGILANTNEWS.COM
    Bill Gates Pushes Digital ID for Newborns in Kenya as Critics Warn of Surveillance Risk
    The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is continuing its global push to support government-backed digital ID programs — this time setting its sights on Kenya.
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  • Were the Hamas Attacks in Israel a False Flag?
    activistpost (78)


    By Scott Lazarowitz

    The October 7th Hamas attack on Israelis has been referred to as "Israel's 9/11," which gives us good reason to believe that it was probably another false flag psy-op.

    Some people really do believe it was a false flag, i.e., that the Israeli regime allegedly knew that it was being planned and let it happen.

    As Paul Craig Roberts notes, how could Israel's Mossad intelligence agency not know this was being planned? Don't Israeli intelligence and military have the most sophisticated and comprehensive monitoring and surveillance of the Israeli sheeple and of Palestinians and of Hamas?

    The planning allegedly was going on for 2 years. Really?

    And there were warnings from other countries or intelligence agencies, including Egypt who had warned the Israelis of a terrorist attack being planned, warnings ignored.

    In any event, the official narrative of "surprise" attack is just not believable. A possible motive for a false flag op as reported by Jonathan Cook is a planned expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai which is controlled by Egypt, an ethnic cleansing plan allegedly under way since at least 2007, according to Cook.

    Many people dismiss such allegations as "conspiracy theory." But would it really be that surprising that government-employed losers would intentionally allow a terrorist attack to occur, and for the sake of implementing a plan of ethnic cleansing of an entire population whose presence is inconvenient?

    After all, government bureaucracies generally attract psychopaths. The worst of the worst, as F.A. Hayek had noted.

    And now we are learning that there is a high probability that many of the Israelis killed on October 7th were killed by the Israeli military (IDF) itself, possibly as high as 80% of the Israeli deaths, according to Scott Ritter. And Ron Unz described the IDF as possibly "trigger-happy Apache pilots". It has also been difficult for Israeli authorities to distinguish between many killed Israeli and Palestinian bodies.

    But there is some history that is important here. The fact that Israel contributed to the creation of the Hamas organization is quite relevant to the allegation of false flag ops.

    Justin Raimondo noted that the Israelis promoted the organization that later became Hamas for the purposes of discouraging Palestinians from supporting the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat as well as to cause blowback.

    In a conscious effort to undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization and the leadership of Yasser Arafat, in 1978 the government of then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin approved the application of Sheik Ahmad Yassin to start a “humanitarian” organization known as the Islamic Association, or Mujama. The roots of this Islamist group were in the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, and this was the seed that eventually grew into Hamas – but not before it was amply fertilized and nurtured with Israeli funding and political support.

    Begin and his successor, Yitzhak Shamir, launched an effort to undercut the PLO, creating the so-called Village Leagues, composed of local councils of handpicked Palestinians who were willing to collaborate with Israel – and, in return, were put on the Israeli payroll. Sheik Yassin and his followers soon became a force within the Village Leagues. This tactical alliance between Yassin and the Israelis was based on a shared antipathy to the militantly secular and leftist PLO: the Israelis allowed Yassin’s group to publish a newspaper and set up an extensive network of charitable organizations, which collected funds not only from the Israelis but also from Arab states opposed to Arafat.

    ...

    This “blowback” principle applies to Hamas not only insofar as Israel was involved in funding and encouraging Mujama, but also, after the consolidation of Hamas as an armed group, due to Israeli military policy. The much-touted “withdrawal,” which amounts to Israel giving up Gaza while strengthening its hand elsewhere in the occupied territories, has been grist for the radical Islamist mill, as has the Wall of Separation and the attempt to quash the vote in East Jerusalem. Israel’s relentless offensive against its perceived enemies – first Fatah, now Hamas and Islamic Jihad – has created a backlash and solidified support for fundamentalist extremist factions in the Palestinian community.

    And see this and this.

    Besides the Israeli regime helping to foster an Islamic extremist terrorist group, Hamas, Al-Qaeda was also partially trained and funded by CIA.

    See "MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'" on the Guardian and "Mainstream Media Finally Reports on U.S. Funding of Terror" on The New American for info.

    Those examples of government-employed buffoonery have been a decades-long part of Western governments' history of exploiting the more primitive Islamic cultures toward the end of Western regimes' foreign policy goal of "creating monsters to destroy" to justify the expansion of the national security (sic) state and all its tax-funded largess.

    Another example, in 2017 Islamic State or ISIS claimed responsibility for the London stabbing attack that killed 8 and injured 48 people. According to British historian Mark Curtis, author of Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, one of the 3 attackers had allegedly been "trained by U.K. and U.S. ‘liaison’ officers,” as part of a "covert" op in Libya, as other terrorists get trained to fight in Syria against the regimes the U.S. and U.K governments don't like. Western regimes train would-be terrorists, who then go on to commit acts of ... terrorism. And on and on.

    So Western government bureaucrats, especially in the U.S. and U.K., have a history of radicalizing Muslims. As I wrote in this 2017 blog post,

    In this article, Curtis states that the Manchester bombing was blowback from “overt and covert actions of British governments.” And Nafeez Ahmed in this article says that the “terrorists who rampaged across London on the night of 3 June were part of a wider extremist network closely monitored by MI5 for decades. The same network was heavily involved in recruiting Britons to fight with jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya.”

    You see, this government bureaucrat-type of idiocy, attempting to manipulate and control hostile factions in society, seems to result in blowback.

    Do bureaucrats never learn from their past mistakes? Or do "intelligence" and "national security" bureaucrats just like blowback?

    Why would bureaucrats like blowback? Because of the bureaucrats' extravagant government budgets at taxpayer expense. As I have maintained especially in this article, the involuntary, confiscatory income tax is the biggest enabler of government criminality ever. Removing the involuntary income tax is an "existential threat" to said government "security" apparatchiks.

    Other examples of murderous Western government actions that have resulted in catastrophic blowback include President George H.W. Bush's 1991 starting a whole new war of aggression against Iraq, even though Iraq was not a threat to the U.S.

    In 1991 the U.S. military bombed and destroyed Iraqi civilian water and sewage treatment centers and then imposed sanctions on the Iraqis, which prevented the Iraqis from rebuilding, which forced the Iraqi civilian population to have to use untreated water, which led to skyrocketing disease and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents by the mid-1990s, and then hundreds of thousands more by the year 2000.

    The September 11th attacks in 2001 were clearly blowback from the decade of violence, bombings and murders by U.S. military in Iraq and the U.S. government's other invasions, occupations and support of repressive regimes leading up to that time.

    So, my question is, was the George H.W. Bush regime starting a whole new war in the Middle east in 1991 intentionally to cause the blowback of a 9/11 nature? Are bureaucrats that insane?

    What do you think is going to happen when you bomb and destroy people's water supply and sewage treatment centers? (Which the Israelis are doing to Gaza right now, by the way.)

    Another example of that insane motive could be that after 9/11, and after the younger President George W. Bush followed in his father's warmongering footsteps by starting another war of aggression in Iraq as well as a war in Afghanistan, during the mid-2000s the Bush administration helped Iraq and Afghanistan concoct new Constitutions.

    Not a Constitution promoting freedom and individual rights, mind you. Nope. The new Iraq Constitution, still in place, declared Iraq to be an Islamic state under repressive Sharia Law. Why would the Bush administration agree to this?

    The new Afghanistan Constitution was the same, although since 2021 Afghanistan now has no Constitution and an even more repressive society. Thanks, George W. Bush.

    Prior to the 1990s, the U.S. government armed Iraq and helped Saddam Hussein gas Iranians during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War. (If only the rulers had listened to George Washington!)

    Even further back, there were the hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. American "conservatives," foreign interventionists and neocons are still angry at Iran for taking Americans hostage in 1979 at the time of the Iranian Revolution, which itself was blowback for the CIA's supporting the Shah of Iran's repressive SAVAK police state and torture, which followed CIA's 1953 "Operation Ajax" coup in Iran (that was partly in the name of expropriating Iran's oil for the British).

    The U.S.-backed SAVAK police state kept Iranians in fear of their own government, much like what many Americans fear now thanks to the gestapo-like tactics of the Obama/Biden DOJ and FBI in Amerika.

    So, did U.S. government bureaucrats, CIA and Pentagon, intend to cause the radicalization of Islam believers in Iran during the 1950s, '60s and '70s?

    Iranians living in such repressive conditions in society as imposed by the American CIA-supported SAVAK had to have been a major contributor to the radicalizing of Iranians' Islamic religion, from the 1950s coup leading up to the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution.

    Since 1979 the Iranian opposition to the repressive Islamic regime, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), during the earlier years following the 1979 Revolution had been involved in terrorist acts of assassinations and bombings, and was listed as an official terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

    That is worth noting here, because U.S. government bureaucrats and their hangers-on had been caught giving paid speeches on behalf of the Iranian MeK, while the MeK was on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations.

    Meanwhile, other people mainly non-involved Muslims had been imprisoned for the crime of providing "material support for terrorism," as Glenn Greenwald pointed out in 2012.

    But some of the American statist lackeys who were supposedly "providing material support" for the officially designated terrorist organization MeK included, according to Greenwald, "Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, Michael Mukasey, Ed Rendell, Andy Card, Lee Hamilton, Tom Ridge, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, Michael Hayden, John Bolton, Louis Freeh -- and Fran Townsend," a bunch of neocons, interventionist apparatchiks and "national security" swamp creatures.

    And get this. In his subsequent article on the red-faced U.S. government's 2012 de-listing of the MeK as an official terrorist organization, Greenwald notes,

    What makes this effort all the more extraordinary are the reports that MEK has actually intensified its terrorist and other military activities over the last couple of years. In February, NBC News reported, citing US officials, that "deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by [MEK]" as it is "financed, trained and armed by Israel's secret service". While the MEK denies involvement, the Iranian government has echoed these US officials in insisting that the group was responsible for those assassinations. NBC also cited "unconfirmed reports in the Israeli press and elsewhere that Israel and the MEK were involved in a Nov. 12 explosion that destroyed the Iranian missile research and development site at Bin Kaneh, 30 miles outside Tehran".

    In April, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reported that the US itself has for years provided extensive training to MEK operatives, on US soil (in other words, the US government provided exactly the "material support" for a designated terror group which the law criminalizes).

    In other words, your tax dollars at work, folks.

    More info on the U.S. and Iranian MeK here.

    And if the October 7th Hamas attack really was an intentional false flag from the blowback of Israel's "open air imprisonment" of Gazans for 15 years, it could also have been allowed as an excuse for the government to expand even further the police state, the surveillance state cracking down even more on speech and on "disinformation," and on people who question the government's official narratives or who criticize the regime. And I mean in the U.S. not just Israel.

    Throughout the history of the West, the U.S., Israel, and other governments, false flag acts of violence have been planned and committed in order to blame the violence on others or effect in some desired central planning outcome.

    Washington's Blog, which apparently no longer exists, had this very detailed list (Wayback Machine link) of the many false flag ops admitted to by governments and militaries. For instance,

    The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews who were Holocaust survivors attempting to flee to safety in Palestine right after World War II, set up a fake group called “Defenders of Arab Palestine”, and then had the pseudo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings...

    Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed)...

    The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister...

    The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change...

    The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s through the 1980s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.

    As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security”...[Washington's Blog further expands on this item with several more links.]

    As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings...



    A Mossad agent admits that, in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist transmissions recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddafi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter...

    The U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo from the defense secretary – as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war.

    Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime, that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction...

    Washington's Blog included many more false flag ops by many countries' governments on the long list there.

    Israeli rulers allegedly seeking to expel the Arabs from their Jewish State is a possible motive for a false flag op. And possible motive by the Western central-planning regimes in keeping Gaza, Iran, Iraq and other Islamic-based cultures "oppressed," poor, primitive and repressive, and their populations angered and enraged at Western governments' manipulations and false flag ops, in my view, might be so that the U.S. and the West would continue to dominate economically and culturally, as well as for the greedy parasites in those governments to expropriate the oil and natural resources of those lands.

    And to justify the continuation of the greedy Western government bureaucrats' extravagant tax-funded budgets and high-off-the-hog largess, of course.

    Image: Anthony Freda Art

    Scott Lazarowitz is a libertarian writer and commentator. Please visit his blog.

    Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Follow us on SoMee, Telegram, HIVE, Minds, MeWe, Twitter - X, Gab, and What Really Happened.

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    https://hive.blog/war/@activistpost/were-the-hamas-attacks-in-israel-a-false-flag
    Were the Hamas Attacks in Israel a False Flag? activistpost (78) By Scott Lazarowitz The October 7th Hamas attack on Israelis has been referred to as "Israel's 9/11," which gives us good reason to believe that it was probably another false flag psy-op. Some people really do believe it was a false flag, i.e., that the Israeli regime allegedly knew that it was being planned and let it happen. As Paul Craig Roberts notes, how could Israel's Mossad intelligence agency not know this was being planned? Don't Israeli intelligence and military have the most sophisticated and comprehensive monitoring and surveillance of the Israeli sheeple and of Palestinians and of Hamas? The planning allegedly was going on for 2 years. Really? And there were warnings from other countries or intelligence agencies, including Egypt who had warned the Israelis of a terrorist attack being planned, warnings ignored. In any event, the official narrative of "surprise" attack is just not believable. A possible motive for a false flag op as reported by Jonathan Cook is a planned expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai which is controlled by Egypt, an ethnic cleansing plan allegedly under way since at least 2007, according to Cook. Many people dismiss such allegations as "conspiracy theory." But would it really be that surprising that government-employed losers would intentionally allow a terrorist attack to occur, and for the sake of implementing a plan of ethnic cleansing of an entire population whose presence is inconvenient? After all, government bureaucracies generally attract psychopaths. The worst of the worst, as F.A. Hayek had noted. And now we are learning that there is a high probability that many of the Israelis killed on October 7th were killed by the Israeli military (IDF) itself, possibly as high as 80% of the Israeli deaths, according to Scott Ritter. And Ron Unz described the IDF as possibly "trigger-happy Apache pilots". It has also been difficult for Israeli authorities to distinguish between many killed Israeli and Palestinian bodies. But there is some history that is important here. The fact that Israel contributed to the creation of the Hamas organization is quite relevant to the allegation of false flag ops. Justin Raimondo noted that the Israelis promoted the organization that later became Hamas for the purposes of discouraging Palestinians from supporting the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat as well as to cause blowback. In a conscious effort to undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization and the leadership of Yasser Arafat, in 1978 the government of then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin approved the application of Sheik Ahmad Yassin to start a “humanitarian” organization known as the Islamic Association, or Mujama. The roots of this Islamist group were in the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, and this was the seed that eventually grew into Hamas – but not before it was amply fertilized and nurtured with Israeli funding and political support. Begin and his successor, Yitzhak Shamir, launched an effort to undercut the PLO, creating the so-called Village Leagues, composed of local councils of handpicked Palestinians who were willing to collaborate with Israel – and, in return, were put on the Israeli payroll. Sheik Yassin and his followers soon became a force within the Village Leagues. This tactical alliance between Yassin and the Israelis was based on a shared antipathy to the militantly secular and leftist PLO: the Israelis allowed Yassin’s group to publish a newspaper and set up an extensive network of charitable organizations, which collected funds not only from the Israelis but also from Arab states opposed to Arafat. ... This “blowback” principle applies to Hamas not only insofar as Israel was involved in funding and encouraging Mujama, but also, after the consolidation of Hamas as an armed group, due to Israeli military policy. The much-touted “withdrawal,” which amounts to Israel giving up Gaza while strengthening its hand elsewhere in the occupied territories, has been grist for the radical Islamist mill, as has the Wall of Separation and the attempt to quash the vote in East Jerusalem. Israel’s relentless offensive against its perceived enemies – first Fatah, now Hamas and Islamic Jihad – has created a backlash and solidified support for fundamentalist extremist factions in the Palestinian community. And see this and this. Besides the Israeli regime helping to foster an Islamic extremist terrorist group, Hamas, Al-Qaeda was also partially trained and funded by CIA. See "MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'" on the Guardian and "Mainstream Media Finally Reports on U.S. Funding of Terror" on The New American for info. Those examples of government-employed buffoonery have been a decades-long part of Western governments' history of exploiting the more primitive Islamic cultures toward the end of Western regimes' foreign policy goal of "creating monsters to destroy" to justify the expansion of the national security (sic) state and all its tax-funded largess. Another example, in 2017 Islamic State or ISIS claimed responsibility for the London stabbing attack that killed 8 and injured 48 people. According to British historian Mark Curtis, author of Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, one of the 3 attackers had allegedly been "trained by U.K. and U.S. ‘liaison’ officers,” as part of a "covert" op in Libya, as other terrorists get trained to fight in Syria against the regimes the U.S. and U.K governments don't like. Western regimes train would-be terrorists, who then go on to commit acts of ... terrorism. And on and on. So Western government bureaucrats, especially in the U.S. and U.K., have a history of radicalizing Muslims. As I wrote in this 2017 blog post, In this article, Curtis states that the Manchester bombing was blowback from “overt and covert actions of British governments.” And Nafeez Ahmed in this article says that the “terrorists who rampaged across London on the night of 3 June were part of a wider extremist network closely monitored by MI5 for decades. The same network was heavily involved in recruiting Britons to fight with jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya.” You see, this government bureaucrat-type of idiocy, attempting to manipulate and control hostile factions in society, seems to result in blowback. Do bureaucrats never learn from their past mistakes? Or do "intelligence" and "national security" bureaucrats just like blowback? Why would bureaucrats like blowback? Because of the bureaucrats' extravagant government budgets at taxpayer expense. As I have maintained especially in this article, the involuntary, confiscatory income tax is the biggest enabler of government criminality ever. Removing the involuntary income tax is an "existential threat" to said government "security" apparatchiks. Other examples of murderous Western government actions that have resulted in catastrophic blowback include President George H.W. Bush's 1991 starting a whole new war of aggression against Iraq, even though Iraq was not a threat to the U.S. In 1991 the U.S. military bombed and destroyed Iraqi civilian water and sewage treatment centers and then imposed sanctions on the Iraqis, which prevented the Iraqis from rebuilding, which forced the Iraqi civilian population to have to use untreated water, which led to skyrocketing disease and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents by the mid-1990s, and then hundreds of thousands more by the year 2000. The September 11th attacks in 2001 were clearly blowback from the decade of violence, bombings and murders by U.S. military in Iraq and the U.S. government's other invasions, occupations and support of repressive regimes leading up to that time. So, my question is, was the George H.W. Bush regime starting a whole new war in the Middle east in 1991 intentionally to cause the blowback of a 9/11 nature? Are bureaucrats that insane? What do you think is going to happen when you bomb and destroy people's water supply and sewage treatment centers? (Which the Israelis are doing to Gaza right now, by the way.) Another example of that insane motive could be that after 9/11, and after the younger President George W. Bush followed in his father's warmongering footsteps by starting another war of aggression in Iraq as well as a war in Afghanistan, during the mid-2000s the Bush administration helped Iraq and Afghanistan concoct new Constitutions. Not a Constitution promoting freedom and individual rights, mind you. Nope. The new Iraq Constitution, still in place, declared Iraq to be an Islamic state under repressive Sharia Law. Why would the Bush administration agree to this? The new Afghanistan Constitution was the same, although since 2021 Afghanistan now has no Constitution and an even more repressive society. Thanks, George W. Bush. Prior to the 1990s, the U.S. government armed Iraq and helped Saddam Hussein gas Iranians during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War. (If only the rulers had listened to George Washington!) Even further back, there were the hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. American "conservatives," foreign interventionists and neocons are still angry at Iran for taking Americans hostage in 1979 at the time of the Iranian Revolution, which itself was blowback for the CIA's supporting the Shah of Iran's repressive SAVAK police state and torture, which followed CIA's 1953 "Operation Ajax" coup in Iran (that was partly in the name of expropriating Iran's oil for the British). The U.S.-backed SAVAK police state kept Iranians in fear of their own government, much like what many Americans fear now thanks to the gestapo-like tactics of the Obama/Biden DOJ and FBI in Amerika. So, did U.S. government bureaucrats, CIA and Pentagon, intend to cause the radicalization of Islam believers in Iran during the 1950s, '60s and '70s? Iranians living in such repressive conditions in society as imposed by the American CIA-supported SAVAK had to have been a major contributor to the radicalizing of Iranians' Islamic religion, from the 1950s coup leading up to the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution. Since 1979 the Iranian opposition to the repressive Islamic regime, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), during the earlier years following the 1979 Revolution had been involved in terrorist acts of assassinations and bombings, and was listed as an official terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. That is worth noting here, because U.S. government bureaucrats and their hangers-on had been caught giving paid speeches on behalf of the Iranian MeK, while the MeK was on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations. Meanwhile, other people mainly non-involved Muslims had been imprisoned for the crime of providing "material support for terrorism," as Glenn Greenwald pointed out in 2012. But some of the American statist lackeys who were supposedly "providing material support" for the officially designated terrorist organization MeK included, according to Greenwald, "Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, Michael Mukasey, Ed Rendell, Andy Card, Lee Hamilton, Tom Ridge, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, Michael Hayden, John Bolton, Louis Freeh -- and Fran Townsend," a bunch of neocons, interventionist apparatchiks and "national security" swamp creatures. And get this. In his subsequent article on the red-faced U.S. government's 2012 de-listing of the MeK as an official terrorist organization, Greenwald notes, What makes this effort all the more extraordinary are the reports that MEK has actually intensified its terrorist and other military activities over the last couple of years. In February, NBC News reported, citing US officials, that "deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by [MEK]" as it is "financed, trained and armed by Israel's secret service". While the MEK denies involvement, the Iranian government has echoed these US officials in insisting that the group was responsible for those assassinations. NBC also cited "unconfirmed reports in the Israeli press and elsewhere that Israel and the MEK were involved in a Nov. 12 explosion that destroyed the Iranian missile research and development site at Bin Kaneh, 30 miles outside Tehran". In April, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reported that the US itself has for years provided extensive training to MEK operatives, on US soil (in other words, the US government provided exactly the "material support" for a designated terror group which the law criminalizes). In other words, your tax dollars at work, folks. More info on the U.S. and Iranian MeK here. And if the October 7th Hamas attack really was an intentional false flag from the blowback of Israel's "open air imprisonment" of Gazans for 15 years, it could also have been allowed as an excuse for the government to expand even further the police state, the surveillance state cracking down even more on speech and on "disinformation," and on people who question the government's official narratives or who criticize the regime. And I mean in the U.S. not just Israel. Throughout the history of the West, the U.S., Israel, and other governments, false flag acts of violence have been planned and committed in order to blame the violence on others or effect in some desired central planning outcome. Washington's Blog, which apparently no longer exists, had this very detailed list (Wayback Machine link) of the many false flag ops admitted to by governments and militaries. For instance, The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews who were Holocaust survivors attempting to flee to safety in Palestine right after World War II, set up a fake group called “Defenders of Arab Palestine”, and then had the pseudo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings... Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed)... The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister... The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change... The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s through the 1980s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security”...[Washington's Blog further expands on this item with several more links.] As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings... A Mossad agent admits that, in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist transmissions recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddafi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter... The U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo from the defense secretary – as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war. Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime, that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction... Washington's Blog included many more false flag ops by many countries' governments on the long list there. Israeli rulers allegedly seeking to expel the Arabs from their Jewish State is a possible motive for a false flag op. And possible motive by the Western central-planning regimes in keeping Gaza, Iran, Iraq and other Islamic-based cultures "oppressed," poor, primitive and repressive, and their populations angered and enraged at Western governments' manipulations and false flag ops, in my view, might be so that the U.S. and the West would continue to dominate economically and culturally, as well as for the greedy parasites in those governments to expropriate the oil and natural resources of those lands. And to justify the continuation of the greedy Western government bureaucrats' extravagant tax-funded budgets and high-off-the-hog largess, of course. Image: Anthony Freda Art Scott Lazarowitz is a libertarian writer and commentator. Please visit his blog. Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Follow us on SoMee, Telegram, HIVE, Minds, MeWe, Twitter - X, Gab, and What Really Happened. Provide, Protect and Profit from what's coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. https://hive.blog/war/@activistpost/were-the-hamas-attacks-in-israel-a-false-flag
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    Were the Hamas Attacks in Israel a False Flag? — Hive
    The attack on Israelis has been called "Israel's 9/11," which gives us good reason to believe it was probably another false flag psy-op. by activistpost
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  • Chris Hedges: The Enemy From Within
    April 30, 2023

    You Are What They Eat – by Mr. Fish
    By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost

    America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored. Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East have disappeared into the vast cavern of historical amnesia. This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licenses the war machine to economically disembowel the country and drive the Empire into one self-defeating conflict after another. The militarists win every election. They cannot lose. It is impossible to vote against them. The war state is a Götterdämmerung, as Dwight Macdonald writes, “without the gods.”

    Since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. Military systems are sold before they are produced with guarantees that huge cost overruns will be covered. Foreign aid is contingent on buying U.S. weapons. Egypt, which receives some $1.3 billion in foreign military financing, is required to devote it to buying and maintaining U.S. weapons systems. Israel has received $158 billion in bilateral assistance from the U.S. since 1949, almost all of it since 1971 in the form of military aid, with most of it going towards arms purchases from U.S. weapons manufacturers. The American public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buys these same weapons systems on behalf of foreign governments. It is a circular system of corporate welfare.

    Between October 2021 and September 2022, the U.S. spent $877 billion on the military, that’s more than the next 10 countries, including China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined. These huge military expenditures, along with the rising costs of a for-profit healthcare system, have driven the U.S. national debt to over $31 trillion, nearly $5 trillion more than the U.S.’s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This imbalance is not sustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency. As of January 2023, the U.S. spent a record $213 billion servicing the interest on its national debt.

    The public, bombarded with war propaganda, cheers on their self-immolation. It revels in the despicable beauty of our military prowess. It speaks in the thought-terminating clichés spewed out by mass culture and mass media. It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation.

    Support our Independent Journalism — Donate Today!

    The intoxication of war is a plague. It imparts an emotional high that is impervious to logic, reason or fact. No nation is immune. The gravest mistake made by European socialists on the eve of the First World War was the belief that the working classes of France, Germany, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia and Great Britain would not be divided into antagonistic tribes because of disputes between imperialist governments. They would not, the socialists assured themselves, sign on for the suicidal slaughter of millions of working men in the trenches. Instead, nearly every socialist leader walked away from their anti-war platform to back their nation’s entry into the war. The handful who did not, such as Rosa Luxemburg, were sent to prison.

    A society dominated by militarists distorts its social, cultural, economic and political institutions to serve the interests of the war industry. The essence of the military is masked with subterfuges — using the military to carry out humanitarian relief missions, evacuating civilians in danger, as we see in the Sudan, defining military aggression as “humanitarian intervention” or a way to protect democracy and liberty, or lauding the military as carrying out a vital civic function by teaching leadership, responsibility, ethics and skills to young recruits. The true face of the military — industrial slaughter — is hidden.

    The mantra of the militarized state is national security. If every discussion begins with a question of national security, every answer includes force or the threat of force. The preoccupation with internal and external threats divides the world into friend and foe, good and evil. Militarized societies are fertile ground for demagogues. Militarists, like demagogues, see other nations and cultures in their own image – threatening and aggressive. They seek only domination.

    It was not in our national interest to wage war for two decades across the Middle East. It is not in our national interest to go to war with Russia or China. But militarists need war the way a vampire needs blood.

    After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev and later Vladimir Putin lobbied to be integrated into western economic and military alliances. An alliance that included Russia would have nullified the calls to expand NATO — which the U.S. had promised it would not do beyond the borders of a unified Germany — and have made it impossible to convince countries in eastern and central Europe to spend billions on U.S. military hardware. Moscow’s requests were rebuffed. Russia was made the enemy, whether it wanted to be or not. None of this made us more secure. Washington’s decision to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs by backing a coup in 2014 triggered a civil war and Russia’s subsequent invasion.

    But for those who profit from war, antagonizing Russia, like antagonizing China, is a good business model. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin saw their stock prices increase by 40 percent and 37 percent respectively as a result of the Ukraine conflict.

    A war with China, now an industrial giant, would disrupt the global supply chain with devastating effects on the U.S. and global economy. Apple produces 90 percent of its products in China. U.S. trade with China was $690.6 billion last year. In 2004, U.S. manufacturing output was more than twice China’s. China’s output is now nearly double that of the United States. China produces the largest number of ships, steel and smartphones in the world. It dominates the global production of chemicals, metals, heavy industrial equipment and electronics. It is the world’s largest rare earth mineral exporter, its greatest reserve holder and is responsible for 80 percent of its refining worldwide. Rare earth minerals are essential to the manufacture of computer chips, smartphones, television screens, medical equipment, fluorescent light bulbs, cars, wind turbines, smart bombs, fighter jets and satellite communications.

    War with China would result in massive shortages of a variety of goods and resources, some vital to the war industry, paralyzing U.S. businesses. Inflation and unemployment would rocket upwards. Rationing would be implemented. The global stock exchanges, at least in the short term, would be shut down. It would trigger a global depression. If the U.S. Navy was able to block oil shipments to China and disrupt its sea lanes, the conflict could potentially become nuclear.

    In “NATO 2030: Unified for a New Era,” the military alliance sees the future as a battle for hegemony with rival states, especially China. It calls for the preparation of prolonged global conflict. In October 2022, Air Force General Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, presented his “Mobility Manifesto” to a packed military conference. During this unhinged fearmongering diatribe, Minihan argued that if the U.S. does not dramatically escalate its preparations for a war with China, America’s children will find themselves “subservient to a rules based order that benefits only one country [China].”

    According to the New York Times, the Marine Corps is training units for beach assaults, where the Pentagon believes the first battles with China may occur, across “the first island chain” that includes, “Okinawa and Taiwan down to Malaysia as well as the South China Sea and disputed islands in the Spratlys and the Paracels.”.

    Militarists drain funds from social and infrastructure programs. They pour money into research and development of weapons systems and neglect renewable energy technologies. Bridges, roads, electrical grids and levees collapse. Schools decay. Domestic manufacturing declines. The public is impoverished. The harsh forms of control the militarists test and perfect abroad migrate back to the homeland. Militarized Police. Militarized drones. Surveillance. Vast prison complexes. Suspension of basic civil liberties. Censorship.

    Those such as Julian Assange, who challenge the stratocracy, who expose its crimes and suicidal folly, are ruthlessly persecuted. But the war state harbors within it the seeds of its own destruction. It will cannibalize the nation until it collapses. Before then, it will lash out, like a blinded cyclops, seeking to restore its diminishing power through indiscriminate violence. The tragedy is not that the U.S. war state will self-destruct. The tragedy is that we will take down so many innocents with us.

    NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.


    Chris Hedges

    Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

    He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He writes an online column for the website ScheerPost. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.

    https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/30/chris-hedges-the-enemy-from-within/
    Chris Hedges: The Enemy From Within April 30, 2023 You Are What They Eat – by Mr. Fish By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored. Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East have disappeared into the vast cavern of historical amnesia. This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licenses the war machine to economically disembowel the country and drive the Empire into one self-defeating conflict after another. The militarists win every election. They cannot lose. It is impossible to vote against them. The war state is a Götterdämmerung, as Dwight Macdonald writes, “without the gods.” Since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. Military systems are sold before they are produced with guarantees that huge cost overruns will be covered. Foreign aid is contingent on buying U.S. weapons. Egypt, which receives some $1.3 billion in foreign military financing, is required to devote it to buying and maintaining U.S. weapons systems. Israel has received $158 billion in bilateral assistance from the U.S. since 1949, almost all of it since 1971 in the form of military aid, with most of it going towards arms purchases from U.S. weapons manufacturers. The American public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buys these same weapons systems on behalf of foreign governments. It is a circular system of corporate welfare. Between October 2021 and September 2022, the U.S. spent $877 billion on the military, that’s more than the next 10 countries, including China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined. These huge military expenditures, along with the rising costs of a for-profit healthcare system, have driven the U.S. national debt to over $31 trillion, nearly $5 trillion more than the U.S.’s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This imbalance is not sustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency. As of January 2023, the U.S. spent a record $213 billion servicing the interest on its national debt. The public, bombarded with war propaganda, cheers on their self-immolation. It revels in the despicable beauty of our military prowess. It speaks in the thought-terminating clichés spewed out by mass culture and mass media. It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation. Support our Independent Journalism — Donate Today! The intoxication of war is a plague. It imparts an emotional high that is impervious to logic, reason or fact. No nation is immune. The gravest mistake made by European socialists on the eve of the First World War was the belief that the working classes of France, Germany, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia and Great Britain would not be divided into antagonistic tribes because of disputes between imperialist governments. They would not, the socialists assured themselves, sign on for the suicidal slaughter of millions of working men in the trenches. Instead, nearly every socialist leader walked away from their anti-war platform to back their nation’s entry into the war. The handful who did not, such as Rosa Luxemburg, were sent to prison. A society dominated by militarists distorts its social, cultural, economic and political institutions to serve the interests of the war industry. The essence of the military is masked with subterfuges — using the military to carry out humanitarian relief missions, evacuating civilians in danger, as we see in the Sudan, defining military aggression as “humanitarian intervention” or a way to protect democracy and liberty, or lauding the military as carrying out a vital civic function by teaching leadership, responsibility, ethics and skills to young recruits. The true face of the military — industrial slaughter — is hidden. The mantra of the militarized state is national security. If every discussion begins with a question of national security, every answer includes force or the threat of force. The preoccupation with internal and external threats divides the world into friend and foe, good and evil. Militarized societies are fertile ground for demagogues. Militarists, like demagogues, see other nations and cultures in their own image – threatening and aggressive. They seek only domination. It was not in our national interest to wage war for two decades across the Middle East. It is not in our national interest to go to war with Russia or China. But militarists need war the way a vampire needs blood. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev and later Vladimir Putin lobbied to be integrated into western economic and military alliances. An alliance that included Russia would have nullified the calls to expand NATO — which the U.S. had promised it would not do beyond the borders of a unified Germany — and have made it impossible to convince countries in eastern and central Europe to spend billions on U.S. military hardware. Moscow’s requests were rebuffed. Russia was made the enemy, whether it wanted to be or not. None of this made us more secure. Washington’s decision to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs by backing a coup in 2014 triggered a civil war and Russia’s subsequent invasion. But for those who profit from war, antagonizing Russia, like antagonizing China, is a good business model. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin saw their stock prices increase by 40 percent and 37 percent respectively as a result of the Ukraine conflict. A war with China, now an industrial giant, would disrupt the global supply chain with devastating effects on the U.S. and global economy. Apple produces 90 percent of its products in China. U.S. trade with China was $690.6 billion last year. In 2004, U.S. manufacturing output was more than twice China’s. China’s output is now nearly double that of the United States. China produces the largest number of ships, steel and smartphones in the world. It dominates the global production of chemicals, metals, heavy industrial equipment and electronics. It is the world’s largest rare earth mineral exporter, its greatest reserve holder and is responsible for 80 percent of its refining worldwide. Rare earth minerals are essential to the manufacture of computer chips, smartphones, television screens, medical equipment, fluorescent light bulbs, cars, wind turbines, smart bombs, fighter jets and satellite communications. War with China would result in massive shortages of a variety of goods and resources, some vital to the war industry, paralyzing U.S. businesses. Inflation and unemployment would rocket upwards. Rationing would be implemented. The global stock exchanges, at least in the short term, would be shut down. It would trigger a global depression. If the U.S. Navy was able to block oil shipments to China and disrupt its sea lanes, the conflict could potentially become nuclear. In “NATO 2030: Unified for a New Era,” the military alliance sees the future as a battle for hegemony with rival states, especially China. It calls for the preparation of prolonged global conflict. In October 2022, Air Force General Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, presented his “Mobility Manifesto” to a packed military conference. During this unhinged fearmongering diatribe, Minihan argued that if the U.S. does not dramatically escalate its preparations for a war with China, America’s children will find themselves “subservient to a rules based order that benefits only one country [China].” According to the New York Times, the Marine Corps is training units for beach assaults, where the Pentagon believes the first battles with China may occur, across “the first island chain” that includes, “Okinawa and Taiwan down to Malaysia as well as the South China Sea and disputed islands in the Spratlys and the Paracels.”. Militarists drain funds from social and infrastructure programs. They pour money into research and development of weapons systems and neglect renewable energy technologies. Bridges, roads, electrical grids and levees collapse. Schools decay. Domestic manufacturing declines. The public is impoverished. The harsh forms of control the militarists test and perfect abroad migrate back to the homeland. Militarized Police. Militarized drones. Surveillance. Vast prison complexes. Suspension of basic civil liberties. Censorship. Those such as Julian Assange, who challenge the stratocracy, who expose its crimes and suicidal folly, are ruthlessly persecuted. But the war state harbors within it the seeds of its own destruction. It will cannibalize the nation until it collapses. Before then, it will lash out, like a blinded cyclops, seeking to restore its diminishing power through indiscriminate violence. The tragedy is not that the U.S. war state will self-destruct. The tragedy is that we will take down so many innocents with us. NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report. Chris Hedges Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report. He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He writes an online column for the website ScheerPost. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto. https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/30/chris-hedges-the-enemy-from-within/
    SCHEERPOST.COM
    Chris Hedges: The Enemy From Within
    The war industry, a state within a state, disembowels the nation, stumbles from one military fiasco to the next, strips us of civil liberties and pushes us towards suicidal wars with Russia and Chi…
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  • November 15: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 40
    [email protected] November 15, 2023 al-Shifa, evacuation, gaza hospitals, hamas, humanitarian aid, Israel, West Bank
    November 15: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 40
    Northern Gaza on Wednesday morning, November 15 (photo)
    Hospital, humanitarian, evacuation, and hostage updates, West Bank deaths, US-Israel relationship, Jewish groups organize massive pro-Israel rally and more

    Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here. For more news, go here and here. Live broadcast news from the region is here.

    Some people are led to be skeptical of the Al Jazeera news network. However, the network has won several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award, among many other honors. The New York Times reports that “its reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.” it’s important to remember that all news sources may potentially have bias. For example, CNN uses anchors who used to work for the Israel Lobby, who have lifelong attachment to Israel, and who often exhibit pro-Israel spin and omission in their broadcasts. Similarly, Fox News is strongly influenced by Rupert Murdoch, who has a similarly strong attachment to Israel, and who may have fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular host, in part due to the host’s opposition to war and his pattern of failing to exhibit sufficient devotion to Israel).

    Latest statistics:

    Palestinian death toll: 10,980* (10,784 in Gaza** (including at least 4,630 children and 3,130 women), and at least 196 in the West Bank). *IAK does not yet include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation.

    Palestinian injuries: 30,076** (including at least 29,000 in Gaza** and 2,650 in the West Bank). **NOTE: it is impossible to offer an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. The Associated Press has reported ~32,000 in Gaza, while the UN number is somewhat lower. Our total for Gaza and the West Bank is based on the conservative figure.

    It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties. About 1.6 million people have been displaced; 3,600 are missing (1,755 children) and presumed to be under rubble.

    Israel has now killed more Palestinians in a little over a month than in all the previous 22 years combined.

    Reported Israeli death toll has been reduced to ~1,200*** (The Israeli spokesman said the original figure of deaths on March 7 was an “initial estimate” – 3 killed in West Bank, 51 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and ~5,400 injured). The names of the 1,162 identified (33 of them children) are here.

    ***NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers.

    Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
    Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

    Al Shifa hospital update: Israeli forces have raided al-Shifa Hospital, where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, following days of heavy attacks in the area surrounding the complex in Gaza City. Israel’s military said early on Wednesday morning that it was carrying out an “operation against Hamas in a specified area” at al-Shifa. Calling the assault a “targeted operation” on Gaza’s largest medical facility, it said the raid was based on Israeli and United States intelligence.

    Dozens of Israeli soldiers entered the facility while tanks were stationed in the yard of the medical complex. Dr Munir al-Bursh, the general director of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, said that Israeli forces searched the basement of al-Shifa and entered the surgical and emergency buildings within the complex.

    Inside the specialized surgeries building, the Israeli commandos are tearing apart all the partitions, destroying all the walls between rooms, going to the basement, and calling out people one by one and interrogating them.

    The soldiers are using loudspeakers ordering young men to surrender themselves. About 30 people taken outside were stripped of their clothes, blindfolded and surrounded by three tanks in the courtyard.

    Israeli forces have blown up a warehouse of medicine and medical devices in the hospital.

    Israel accuses Hamas, the group that governs Gaza, of using the hospital as a base. Hamas rejects the claim. Israel has not produced evidence to back up its assertion.

    Israel’s attacks on al-Shifa started just hours after a White House spokesperson said – without providing any evidence – that Washington has “information” that Hamas is using Gaza hospitals.

    RECOMMENDED READING: Don’t be fooled. Biden is fully signed up to ethnic cleansing in Gaza

    Is Israel creating propaganda? “The Israeli army is the only party controlling the scene inside the al-Shifa Medical Complex, amid a total media blackout. No third party or international organization was permitted to be present inside, which raises doubts about any Israeli narrative that would be released later,” Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement, adding, “Israeli allegations about the use of the al-Shifa Medical Complex for military purposes do not require extended hours of searching and raiding. Therefore, there are concerns that the army might be creating the scene that might be released later.” (08:55 GMT)

    Humanitarian update: UNRWA said it received around 23,000 liters of fuel from Egypt (half a tanker), though Israel has restricted its use to solely transporting aid from the Rafah crossing. “No fuel for water or hospitals. This is only 9 percent of what we need daily to sustain lifesaving activities,” said UNRWA director Thomas White. “Humanitarian aid must be delivered based upon need – not based upon conditions set by parties to a conflict.” This will be the first time since 7 October that fuel is allowed into Gaza.

    Although 91 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered from Egypt on 14 November, the distribution of supplies to shelters, clinics and other beneficiaries has largely come to a halt due to lack of fuel. Watch for an update on whether deliveries are made today.

    Evacuation update: On 14 November, for the twelfth consecutive day, the Israeli military opened a “corridor” along the main traffic artery between 9:00 and 16:00. OCHA’s monitoring team estimates that about 17,000-18,000 moved on 14 November, significantly less than in the previous days.

    Numerous reports indicate that Israeli forces have been carrying out arrests among internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing; there are also allegations of beating, stripping and other forms of violence. On 14 November, IDPs have reported that the Israeli army had established an unstaffed checkpoint where people are directed from a distance to go through two containers, where a surveillance system is thought to be installed. People are reportedly ordered to show their IDs and undergo what appears to be a facial recognition scan.

    Damage and destruction in Gaza: On 13 November, at about 23:00, Israeli airstrikes reportedly hit and destroyed 12 houses near the Jabalia services sports club (in the north), killing 31 Palestinians and injuring others. The following morning, at about 5:30, Israeli airstrikes reportedly hit two buildings in Khan Yunis (in the south), killing 13 Palestinians and injuring 20 others.

    In Jabalia refugee camp, several children who went out to fill water bottles were killed by Israeli shelling. (08:35)

    Israeli air raids on homes in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood over the past few days have killed at least 25 Palestinians, according to media reports. (07:55 GMT)

    Israeli artillery shelling targeted flour silos in al-Qarara, which was the only storage place for flour in Gaza; work has stopped at Al Salam Mill in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, after Israeli artillery bombed the only operating wheat mill. (10:55 GMT)

    Gaza’s two main telecommunications companies, Paltel and Jawwal, have warned of a “complete telecom blackout in the coming hours” in Gaza. “Main data centers and switches in the Gaza Strip are gradually shutting down due to fuel depletion,” the companies said in a joint statement.

    Over the past 24 hours, internally displaced persons staying outside the overcrowded shelters in the south have been affected by intermittent rainfall and related flooding, which have damaged or destroyed tents and makeshifts where they lived. Alongside lower temperatures, this is exposing people to increasing risk of disease.

    RECOMMENDED READING: Israel makes childhood in Gaza a living hell

    West Bank news: Israeli forces killed at least 8 Palestinians during an hours-long raid on Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank on Tuesday. Wafa reported:

    After 15 continuous hours of aggression by the Israeli occupation forces, people rushed to inspect what had happened in the camp. They were shocked by the extent of destruction caused intentionally to the streets, water, electricity and sewage lines, homes, and private and public commercial facilities.

    A young Palestinian man, Yamen Kamel Atiq, from Jenin, has succumbed to serious wounds he suffered after Israeli soldiers shot him after the army invaded Jenin on October 29.

    Occupation forces also shot Mohammad Abdul-Majid Halayqa, age 20 from the town of Shiokh. Israeli forces alleged that he had a knife. After shooting him multiple times, they left him bleeding on the ground and refused ambulances trying to reach him. The alleged knife was never found.

    Israeli bulldozers also destroyed a monument to late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Tulkarem, in the West Bank. (06:51 GMT) Tulkarem is in “Area A,” officially under full Palestinian control. Israeli forces are not supposed to enter Area A.

    RECOMMENDED READING: Israel settlers destroy drinking water network, trees in southern Hebron

    Hostage update: Israel’s Kan television station reported that a “children for children” proposal is being examined by Israel and Hamas in advanced talks mediated by Qatar and the US. One of the sources said the talks were ongoing and no final agreement has been reached. (03:30 GMT)

    The Hamas resistance group is currently holding about 240 prisoners, captured on October 7th for the purpose of a prisoner swap. Israel currently holds 7,000 Palestinians as political prisoners, at least 160 of them children) and has agreed to such a swap in the past.

    The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli population centres has continued over the past 24 hours, with no reported fatalities. (Information on rocket attacks is here.) It appears that the last time a rocket killed an Israeli was October 7, as reported by Ha’aretz. Ten Israelis were killed – 4 of them Palestinian Israelis.

    Israel news: In the last 24 hours, two Israeli soldiers were reportedly killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations to 51, according to official Israeli sources.

    Netanyahu has slammed Canada’s Justin Trudeau for saying the killing of women and children “has to stop”.

    The Knesset has passed a law granting honorary citizenship to non-Israelis killed by Hamas.

    RECOMMENDED READING: What media reports fail to tell you about October 7

    US ‘quietly’ ramping up weapons transfers to Israel: Citing an internal defense department list, Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon is “delivering on requests that include more laser-guided missiles for its Apache gunship fleet, as well as 155mm shells, night-vision devices, bunker-buster munitions and new army vehicles,” adding, “the arms are already being shipped or the Defense Department is working to make them available from stockpiles in the US and Europe.” (04:00 GMT)

    WATCH: Joe Biden, career defender of Israel’s crimes and impunity

    US-Israel tension: A new report by Bloomberg says the White House is getting increasingly frustrated with Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza as the civilian death toll mounts. Quoting several people familiar with conversations, the publication reported a widening rift between the close allies. It said US administration officials were having difficult conversations with their Israeli counterparts but their calls have been going unheeded.

    At the same time, President Joe Biden’s administration is still fulfilling Israel’s weapons requests, and so far hasn’t threatened any consequences against Israel. (09:20 GMT)

    Palestinian leader statement on US: By “accepting Israeli lies”, the US is “repeating the same mistake” it did in invading Iraq on the pretext of ridding the country of weapons of mass destruction, said Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. “It reminds us of the intelligence information that the United States had to justify attacking Iraq,” Barghouti said. [Israel partisans in the US government pushed this.]

    Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations organize a “vast show of solidarity with Israel” rally in Washington DC. Schools, synagogues and community centers sent buses of attendees – tens of thousands of people converged on the Mall, including politicians such as Chuck Schumer and Mike Johnson, new speaker of the House.










    https://israelpalestinenews.org/november-15-todays-news-on-palestine-israel-day-40/
    November 15: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 40 [email protected] November 15, 2023 al-Shifa, evacuation, gaza hospitals, hamas, humanitarian aid, Israel, West Bank November 15: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 40 Northern Gaza on Wednesday morning, November 15 (photo) Hospital, humanitarian, evacuation, and hostage updates, West Bank deaths, US-Israel relationship, Jewish groups organize massive pro-Israel rally and more Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here. For more news, go here and here. Live broadcast news from the region is here. Some people are led to be skeptical of the Al Jazeera news network. However, the network has won several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award, among many other honors. The New York Times reports that “its reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.” it’s important to remember that all news sources may potentially have bias. For example, CNN uses anchors who used to work for the Israel Lobby, who have lifelong attachment to Israel, and who often exhibit pro-Israel spin and omission in their broadcasts. Similarly, Fox News is strongly influenced by Rupert Murdoch, who has a similarly strong attachment to Israel, and who may have fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular host, in part due to the host’s opposition to war and his pattern of failing to exhibit sufficient devotion to Israel). Latest statistics: Palestinian death toll: 10,980* (10,784 in Gaza** (including at least 4,630 children and 3,130 women), and at least 196 in the West Bank). *IAK does not yet include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation. Palestinian injuries: 30,076** (including at least 29,000 in Gaza** and 2,650 in the West Bank). **NOTE: it is impossible to offer an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. The Associated Press has reported ~32,000 in Gaza, while the UN number is somewhat lower. Our total for Gaza and the West Bank is based on the conservative figure. It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties. About 1.6 million people have been displaced; 3,600 are missing (1,755 children) and presumed to be under rubble. Israel has now killed more Palestinians in a little over a month than in all the previous 22 years combined. Reported Israeli death toll has been reduced to ~1,200*** (The Israeli spokesman said the original figure of deaths on March 7 was an “initial estimate” – 3 killed in West Bank, 51 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and ~5,400 injured). The names of the 1,162 identified (33 of them children) are here. ***NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers. Hover over each bar for exact numbers. Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org Al Shifa hospital update: Israeli forces have raided al-Shifa Hospital, where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, following days of heavy attacks in the area surrounding the complex in Gaza City. Israel’s military said early on Wednesday morning that it was carrying out an “operation against Hamas in a specified area” at al-Shifa. Calling the assault a “targeted operation” on Gaza’s largest medical facility, it said the raid was based on Israeli and United States intelligence. Dozens of Israeli soldiers entered the facility while tanks were stationed in the yard of the medical complex. Dr Munir al-Bursh, the general director of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, said that Israeli forces searched the basement of al-Shifa and entered the surgical and emergency buildings within the complex. Inside the specialized surgeries building, the Israeli commandos are tearing apart all the partitions, destroying all the walls between rooms, going to the basement, and calling out people one by one and interrogating them. The soldiers are using loudspeakers ordering young men to surrender themselves. About 30 people taken outside were stripped of their clothes, blindfolded and surrounded by three tanks in the courtyard. Israeli forces have blown up a warehouse of medicine and medical devices in the hospital. Israel accuses Hamas, the group that governs Gaza, of using the hospital as a base. Hamas rejects the claim. Israel has not produced evidence to back up its assertion. Israel’s attacks on al-Shifa started just hours after a White House spokesperson said – without providing any evidence – that Washington has “information” that Hamas is using Gaza hospitals. RECOMMENDED READING: Don’t be fooled. Biden is fully signed up to ethnic cleansing in Gaza Is Israel creating propaganda? “The Israeli army is the only party controlling the scene inside the al-Shifa Medical Complex, amid a total media blackout. No third party or international organization was permitted to be present inside, which raises doubts about any Israeli narrative that would be released later,” Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement, adding, “Israeli allegations about the use of the al-Shifa Medical Complex for military purposes do not require extended hours of searching and raiding. Therefore, there are concerns that the army might be creating the scene that might be released later.” (08:55 GMT) Humanitarian update: UNRWA said it received around 23,000 liters of fuel from Egypt (half a tanker), though Israel has restricted its use to solely transporting aid from the Rafah crossing. “No fuel for water or hospitals. This is only 9 percent of what we need daily to sustain lifesaving activities,” said UNRWA director Thomas White. “Humanitarian aid must be delivered based upon need – not based upon conditions set by parties to a conflict.” This will be the first time since 7 October that fuel is allowed into Gaza. Although 91 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered from Egypt on 14 November, the distribution of supplies to shelters, clinics and other beneficiaries has largely come to a halt due to lack of fuel. Watch for an update on whether deliveries are made today. Evacuation update: On 14 November, for the twelfth consecutive day, the Israeli military opened a “corridor” along the main traffic artery between 9:00 and 16:00. OCHA’s monitoring team estimates that about 17,000-18,000 moved on 14 November, significantly less than in the previous days. Numerous reports indicate that Israeli forces have been carrying out arrests among internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing; there are also allegations of beating, stripping and other forms of violence. On 14 November, IDPs have reported that the Israeli army had established an unstaffed checkpoint where people are directed from a distance to go through two containers, where a surveillance system is thought to be installed. People are reportedly ordered to show their IDs and undergo what appears to be a facial recognition scan. Damage and destruction in Gaza: On 13 November, at about 23:00, Israeli airstrikes reportedly hit and destroyed 12 houses near the Jabalia services sports club (in the north), killing 31 Palestinians and injuring others. The following morning, at about 5:30, Israeli airstrikes reportedly hit two buildings in Khan Yunis (in the south), killing 13 Palestinians and injuring 20 others. In Jabalia refugee camp, several children who went out to fill water bottles were killed by Israeli shelling. (08:35) Israeli air raids on homes in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood over the past few days have killed at least 25 Palestinians, according to media reports. (07:55 GMT) Israeli artillery shelling targeted flour silos in al-Qarara, which was the only storage place for flour in Gaza; work has stopped at Al Salam Mill in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, after Israeli artillery bombed the only operating wheat mill. (10:55 GMT) Gaza’s two main telecommunications companies, Paltel and Jawwal, have warned of a “complete telecom blackout in the coming hours” in Gaza. “Main data centers and switches in the Gaza Strip are gradually shutting down due to fuel depletion,” the companies said in a joint statement. Over the past 24 hours, internally displaced persons staying outside the overcrowded shelters in the south have been affected by intermittent rainfall and related flooding, which have damaged or destroyed tents and makeshifts where they lived. Alongside lower temperatures, this is exposing people to increasing risk of disease. RECOMMENDED READING: Israel makes childhood in Gaza a living hell West Bank news: Israeli forces killed at least 8 Palestinians during an hours-long raid on Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank on Tuesday. Wafa reported: After 15 continuous hours of aggression by the Israeli occupation forces, people rushed to inspect what had happened in the camp. They were shocked by the extent of destruction caused intentionally to the streets, water, electricity and sewage lines, homes, and private and public commercial facilities. A young Palestinian man, Yamen Kamel Atiq, from Jenin, has succumbed to serious wounds he suffered after Israeli soldiers shot him after the army invaded Jenin on October 29. Occupation forces also shot Mohammad Abdul-Majid Halayqa, age 20 from the town of Shiokh. Israeli forces alleged that he had a knife. After shooting him multiple times, they left him bleeding on the ground and refused ambulances trying to reach him. The alleged knife was never found. Israeli bulldozers also destroyed a monument to late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Tulkarem, in the West Bank. (06:51 GMT) Tulkarem is in “Area A,” officially under full Palestinian control. Israeli forces are not supposed to enter Area A. RECOMMENDED READING: Israel settlers destroy drinking water network, trees in southern Hebron Hostage update: Israel’s Kan television station reported that a “children for children” proposal is being examined by Israel and Hamas in advanced talks mediated by Qatar and the US. One of the sources said the talks were ongoing and no final agreement has been reached. (03:30 GMT) The Hamas resistance group is currently holding about 240 prisoners, captured on October 7th for the purpose of a prisoner swap. Israel currently holds 7,000 Palestinians as political prisoners, at least 160 of them children) and has agreed to such a swap in the past. The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli population centres has continued over the past 24 hours, with no reported fatalities. (Information on rocket attacks is here.) It appears that the last time a rocket killed an Israeli was October 7, as reported by Ha’aretz. Ten Israelis were killed – 4 of them Palestinian Israelis. Israel news: In the last 24 hours, two Israeli soldiers were reportedly killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations to 51, according to official Israeli sources. Netanyahu has slammed Canada’s Justin Trudeau for saying the killing of women and children “has to stop”. The Knesset has passed a law granting honorary citizenship to non-Israelis killed by Hamas. RECOMMENDED READING: What media reports fail to tell you about October 7 US ‘quietly’ ramping up weapons transfers to Israel: Citing an internal defense department list, Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon is “delivering on requests that include more laser-guided missiles for its Apache gunship fleet, as well as 155mm shells, night-vision devices, bunker-buster munitions and new army vehicles,” adding, “the arms are already being shipped or the Defense Department is working to make them available from stockpiles in the US and Europe.” (04:00 GMT) WATCH: Joe Biden, career defender of Israel’s crimes and impunity US-Israel tension: A new report by Bloomberg says the White House is getting increasingly frustrated with Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza as the civilian death toll mounts. Quoting several people familiar with conversations, the publication reported a widening rift between the close allies. It said US administration officials were having difficult conversations with their Israeli counterparts but their calls have been going unheeded. At the same time, President Joe Biden’s administration is still fulfilling Israel’s weapons requests, and so far hasn’t threatened any consequences against Israel. (09:20 GMT) Palestinian leader statement on US: By “accepting Israeli lies”, the US is “repeating the same mistake” it did in invading Iraq on the pretext of ridding the country of weapons of mass destruction, said Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. “It reminds us of the intelligence information that the United States had to justify attacking Iraq,” Barghouti said. [Israel partisans in the US government pushed this.] Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations organize a “vast show of solidarity with Israel” rally in Washington DC. Schools, synagogues and community centers sent buses of attendees – tens of thousands of people converged on the Mall, including politicians such as Chuck Schumer and Mike Johnson, new speaker of the House. https://israelpalestinenews.org/november-15-todays-news-on-palestine-israel-day-40/
    ISRAELPALESTINENEWS.ORG
    November 15: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 40
    Hospital, humanitarian, evacuation, and hostage updates, West Bank deaths, US-Israel relationship, and more.
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  • The government has, with little oversight and few guidelines, been adding to its massive trove of data on Americans by buying commercially available information from third-party sources. #privacy #surveillance
    The government has, with little oversight and few guidelines, been adding to its massive trove of data on Americans by buying commercially available information from third-party sources. #privacy #surveillance
    WWW.ACTIVISTPOST.COM
    We the Exploited: The U.S. Government Buys and Sells Its Citizens for Profit and Power - Activist Post
    The U.S. government is selling us (or rather, our data) to the highest bidders. Here's how...
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  • Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson, Abu Obeida (1/2):

    38 days after the beginning of the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, our fighters continue to confront the enemy's Nazi forces and their vehicles, which are infiltrating Gaza City and Beit Hanoun from several directions.

    Our fighters are conducting surveillance operations and approaching enemy vehicles and the fortified positions of their soldiers. They maneuver in all areas of incursion, directing strikes to blow up tanks and armored vehicles, attacking enemy soldiers' fortification points in some buildings, and bombarding their gatherings with mortar shells and guided missiles, inflicting casualties and fatalities among the enemy ranks.

    In the last 48 hours, our fighters have managed to completely or partially destroy 20 military vehicles, including tanks and armored vehicles, in areas of enemy force infiltration. Additionally, our fighters attacked buildings where enemy soldiers are fortified with anti-fortification and anti-personnel shells.

    The invading occupation forces will remain under the strikes of the fighters at every step they take. The penetration of vehicles under the impact of destruction and indiscriminate bombing, as well as the prolongation of the war, will incur more losses for the enemy, and the price will be steep by the will and strength of Allah.

    The sick dreams of the zionist war leadership to eliminate our resistance in Gaza are an attempt to escape from the resounding defeat and the bitter reality they live in. These people, whose faces are covered in dust and shrouded in blackness, resemble their political and military future.

    We remind those who are delusional that Yitzhak Shamir once tried and vowed against our resistance, as did Rabin, who wished to wake up to find Gaza swallowed by the sea. Back then, our Brigades were just a few dozen fighters with light and individual weapons. Similarly, Sharon, promised you to end the Intifada within 100 days. All of these individuals have gone to the dustbins of history with a record filled with killing innocents. Our resistance remained, grew, and became greater. You, the killers, will not be luckier than them and will only achieve disappointment and downfall, by the will of Allah Almighty.

    Our absolute trust in the victory of Allah, the justice of our fight, and the sanctity of our battle, which is the mother of all battles, does not exempt every individual and group in our great nation from their duty towards Palestine and its cause. It is a trust in the necks of all Arabs, Muslims, and free people in the world.

    The hysteria that the occupation and its leaders are living in, fearing the movement of the resistance forces in our nation and its free people and its wide masses, is proof that this is the terrifying nightmare for the enemy. Let the enemy find you [our nation] where he fears.

    To all the free people of the world, we are watching your actions and see their great impact and how they cause confusion for the aggressing zionists.

    https://t.me/Reality_Theories/15613
    🚨🟢 Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson, Abu Obeida (1/2): — 38 days after the beginning of the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, our fighters continue to confront the enemy's Nazi forces and their vehicles, which are infiltrating Gaza City and Beit Hanoun from several directions. Our fighters are conducting surveillance operations and approaching enemy vehicles and the fortified positions of their soldiers. They maneuver in all areas of incursion, directing strikes to blow up tanks and armored vehicles, attacking enemy soldiers' fortification points in some buildings, and bombarding their gatherings with mortar shells and guided missiles, inflicting casualties and fatalities among the enemy ranks. In the last 48 hours, our fighters have managed to completely or partially destroy 20 military vehicles, including tanks and armored vehicles, in areas of enemy force infiltration. Additionally, our fighters attacked buildings where enemy soldiers are fortified with anti-fortification and anti-personnel shells. The invading occupation forces will remain under the strikes of the fighters at every step they take. The penetration of vehicles under the impact of destruction and indiscriminate bombing, as well as the prolongation of the war, will incur more losses for the enemy, and the price will be steep by the will and strength of Allah. The sick dreams of the zionist war leadership to eliminate our resistance in Gaza are an attempt to escape from the resounding defeat and the bitter reality they live in. These people, whose faces are covered in dust and shrouded in blackness, resemble their political and military future. We remind those who are delusional that Yitzhak Shamir once tried and vowed against our resistance, as did Rabin, who wished to wake up to find Gaza swallowed by the sea. Back then, our Brigades were just a few dozen fighters with light and individual weapons. Similarly, Sharon, promised you to end the Intifada within 100 days. All of these individuals have gone to the dustbins of history with a record filled with killing innocents. Our resistance remained, grew, and became greater. You, the killers, will not be luckier than them and will only achieve disappointment and downfall, by the will of Allah Almighty. Our absolute trust in the victory of Allah, the justice of our fight, and the sanctity of our battle, which is the mother of all battles, does not exempt every individual and group in our great nation from their duty towards Palestine and its cause. It is a trust in the necks of all Arabs, Muslims, and free people in the world. The hysteria that the occupation and its leaders are living in, fearing the movement of the resistance forces in our nation and its free people and its wide masses, is proof that this is the terrifying nightmare for the enemy. Let the enemy find you [our nation] where he fears. To all the free people of the world, we are watching your actions and see their great impact and how they cause confusion for the aggressing zionists. https://t.me/Reality_Theories/15613
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  • Section 702 is the controversial and much-abused mass #surveillance authority that expires in December unless Congress renews it. Now, we’re hearing about a rushed attempt to tie renewal to funding the government. We need to stop it.
    Section 702 is the controversial and much-abused mass #surveillance authority that expires in December unless Congress renews it. Now, we’re hearing about a rushed attempt to tie renewal to funding the government. We need to stop it.
    WWW.ACTIVISTPOST.COM
    Reauthorizing Mass Surveillance Shouldn’t be Tied to Funding the Government - Activist Post
    Section 702 is far too powerful, invasive, and dangerous to renew it cleanly as a matter of bureaucratic necessity.
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  • Is the proliferation of poor-quality products, services and talent part of a creative destruction process under the New Normal – leading to universal #surveillance?
    Is the proliferation of poor-quality products, services and talent part of a creative destruction process under the New Normal – leading to universal #surveillance?
    WWW.ACTIVISTPOST.COM
    Broken by Design: Why The Elites Want Everything and Everyone to Have an Expiration Date - Activist Post
    “They don’t make them like they used to anymore” is an ancient lament that has resonated through the ages in various forms.
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  • In an attempt to justify a pervasive #surveillance ecosystem, corporations often claim to de-identify our data. Is this a myth? #privacy
    In an attempt to justify a pervasive #surveillance ecosystem, corporations often claim to de-identify our data. Is this a myth? #privacy
    WWW.ACTIVISTPOST.COM
    Debunking the Myth of “Anonymous” Data - Activist Post
    For data brokers dealing in our personal information, our data can either be useful for their profit-making or truly anonymous, but not both.
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  • Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign?
    The scale of US intelligence support for Kiev’s murderous operations has been brought to light at a very interesting moment

    By Chay Bowes, journalist and geopolitical analyst, MA in Strategic Studies, RT correspondent

    Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign?
    As Ukraine slips quietly from the top of the Western media’s news agenda, fascinating insights into the granular nature of the CIA’s involvement in Kiev’s assassination program are being revealed. By the very same outlets that had previously suggested Ukraine was on a solo run with its slew of extrajudicial killings and terror attacks.

    Western media has routinely ignored the brutal exploits of Kiev’s successor to the KGB, the SBU. When they are reported upon, instead of calling out the illegal killing of journalists and activists, the press seeks to frame them as masterful operations of a band of freedom fighters administering tough justice to the “enemies of Ukraine.” A key element of that narrative was that while the US, British, and French intelligence services worked closely with the SBU, they didn’t have any direct control of its actions, particularly when those actions involved assassinating unarmed civilians. However, a recently published article in the Washington Post has now revealed that the CIA had, and continues to have, a central role in the group's most disturbing activities.

    Zelensky’s terror team: Why the West looks the other way when Ukraine’s secret murder squad kills journalists and activists READ MORE: Zelensky’s terror team: Why the West looks the other way when Ukraine’s secret murder squad kills journalists and activists
    A Washington Post article “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia” outlines a labyrinthine relationship between the two intelligence agencies, and while the CIA still maintains it doesn’t sanction particular operations, the details revealed in the telling article suggest that this is nothing more than the usual stock disclaimer which accompanies most of Langley's covert operations. The article is based on interviews with “more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, US and Western intelligence and security officials” and its revelations are both shocking and fascinating.

    One of the first claims it makes is that the relationship between the Ukrainian SBU and the CIA has been developing for decades with the latter working to “develop” Ukraine’s abilities to carry out sabotage and “operations” since at least 2014. The CIA has also been providing detailed intelligence, equipment and training to the SBU during that period and continues to spend “tens of millions” of dollars developing its capabilities. The sources quoted also confirm that the CIA even designed and built a new headquarters for the SBU in Kiev and currently share “levels of information and intelligence unthinkable” prior to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

    According to the Washington Post, the CIA also now maintains a significant presence in Kiev, not only in terms of men and materiel but also information flow, all of which suggests that despite maintaining an overt distance, the CIA is in fact intimately involved in all aspects of SBU operations including the planning and execution of operations outside the state.

    One such operation, and probably the most infamous carried out by the SBU since February 2022, was the assassination of Daria Dugina, daughter of prominent Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. The Washington Post article goes into great detail to outline the complexity of the “operation” performed by the SBU that resulted in the death of the unarmed 23-year-old non-combatant in a car bombing outside Moscow in August 2022. It tells of the use of a pet carrier to transport explosives into Russia, and of the surveillance of the deceased woman’s home by the assassin, who then fled across the border soon after the horrendous killing, which was cynically referred to by the SBU as a “liquidation.”

    The granular details outlined in the article suggest sources either within the CIA or SBU have now confirmed that their relationship, once presented as purely advisory and business-like, is in fact a deep and long-standing partnership. The article goes on to confirm the SBU’s involvement in several other targeted murders on Russian territory, including the assassination of Vladlen Tatarsky with a bomb in a crowded St. Petersburg cafe and the murder of ex-submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, who was shot in the back while jogging unarmed in a park in Krasnodar.

    The revealing article also refers to “uneasiness” in Kiev and Washington regarding the SBU’s penchant for this kind of assassination, noting concern that they could tarnish Ukraine’s image abroad especially among donor countries who recently admitted that without their help Ukraine would collapse within weeks.

    What is most interesting about this piece is probably not its confirmation that the CIA is intimately involved in the operations of the SBU, what’s most fascinating is why a newspaper widely recognized as itself having an intimate relationship with the CIA has suddenly decided to basically confirm what many analysts already knew when it comes to Langley and the SBU.

    Yesterday’s man: Why Ukraine’s Zelensky is in danger of being left behind by the US READ MORE: Yesterday’s man: Why Ukraine’s Zelensky is in danger of being left behind by the US
    The Washington Post’s revelation comes not only in the aftermath of the bloody Hamas incursion into Israel and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza but also as international attention, and more importantly, appetite to support Kiev, wanes. This shift in attention, not only in the media but also potentially in the scale of aid, bodes poorly for President Vladimir Zelensky's regime, as it faces increasing domestic pressures and war-weary neighbors.

    Couple this with the oncoming winter and the view looks increasingly grim for Zelensky even before mentioning Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and recent Russian battlefield gains. It now also looks inevitable that Ukraine will find itself playing second fiddle to an emerging political and potentially military crisis in the Middle East while competing for the vital US aid that keeps the Kiev regime afloat. Crucially, all of these woes offer a beleaguered NATO an opportunity to apply pressure on Zelensky to seek peace, potentially solving an increasingly difficult puzzle for Kiev’s backers as they head towards elections that will be decided by populations ever more vocal in their disdain for the conflict.

    So as Kiev’s woes compound and the world’s gaze shifts towards Gaza, it seems the truth about the West’s intimate relationship with the SBU is now being pulled out of the closet, not by a whistleblower or dissenting investigative journalist, but by a stalwart of the US intelligence community, the Washington Post. The question we should all be asking is why? How does this benefit or promote a Western 'victory' in Ukraine? The answer may well be that it’s not a victory that these revelations are supposed to facilitate. It’s more likely that it’s part of a strategy of edging Kiev towards accepting the undeniable reality that the entire US project in Ukraine is set to fail, and for Zelensky to seek accommodation before there’s nothing left to negotiate with.

    The task now is to end it as painlessly as possible for NATO and Kiev’s exhausted backers, and to move on to the next crusade, leaving a devastated and dysfunctional Ukraine to be consigned to the growing graveyard of bloody US foreign policy misadventures.

    The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

    You can share this story on social media:

    RT
    Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign? The scale of US intelligence support for Kiev’s murderous operations has been brought to light at a very interesting moment By Chay Bowes, journalist and geopolitical analyst, MA in Strategic Studies, RT correspondent Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign? As Ukraine slips quietly from the top of the Western media’s news agenda, fascinating insights into the granular nature of the CIA’s involvement in Kiev’s assassination program are being revealed. By the very same outlets that had previously suggested Ukraine was on a solo run with its slew of extrajudicial killings and terror attacks. Western media has routinely ignored the brutal exploits of Kiev’s successor to the KGB, the SBU. When they are reported upon, instead of calling out the illegal killing of journalists and activists, the press seeks to frame them as masterful operations of a band of freedom fighters administering tough justice to the “enemies of Ukraine.” A key element of that narrative was that while the US, British, and French intelligence services worked closely with the SBU, they didn’t have any direct control of its actions, particularly when those actions involved assassinating unarmed civilians. However, a recently published article in the Washington Post has now revealed that the CIA had, and continues to have, a central role in the group's most disturbing activities. Zelensky’s terror team: Why the West looks the other way when Ukraine’s secret murder squad kills journalists and activists READ MORE: Zelensky’s terror team: Why the West looks the other way when Ukraine’s secret murder squad kills journalists and activists A Washington Post article “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia” outlines a labyrinthine relationship between the two intelligence agencies, and while the CIA still maintains it doesn’t sanction particular operations, the details revealed in the telling article suggest that this is nothing more than the usual stock disclaimer which accompanies most of Langley's covert operations. The article is based on interviews with “more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, US and Western intelligence and security officials” and its revelations are both shocking and fascinating. One of the first claims it makes is that the relationship between the Ukrainian SBU and the CIA has been developing for decades with the latter working to “develop” Ukraine’s abilities to carry out sabotage and “operations” since at least 2014. The CIA has also been providing detailed intelligence, equipment and training to the SBU during that period and continues to spend “tens of millions” of dollars developing its capabilities. The sources quoted also confirm that the CIA even designed and built a new headquarters for the SBU in Kiev and currently share “levels of information and intelligence unthinkable” prior to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. According to the Washington Post, the CIA also now maintains a significant presence in Kiev, not only in terms of men and materiel but also information flow, all of which suggests that despite maintaining an overt distance, the CIA is in fact intimately involved in all aspects of SBU operations including the planning and execution of operations outside the state. One such operation, and probably the most infamous carried out by the SBU since February 2022, was the assassination of Daria Dugina, daughter of prominent Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. The Washington Post article goes into great detail to outline the complexity of the “operation” performed by the SBU that resulted in the death of the unarmed 23-year-old non-combatant in a car bombing outside Moscow in August 2022. It tells of the use of a pet carrier to transport explosives into Russia, and of the surveillance of the deceased woman’s home by the assassin, who then fled across the border soon after the horrendous killing, which was cynically referred to by the SBU as a “liquidation.” The granular details outlined in the article suggest sources either within the CIA or SBU have now confirmed that their relationship, once presented as purely advisory and business-like, is in fact a deep and long-standing partnership. The article goes on to confirm the SBU’s involvement in several other targeted murders on Russian territory, including the assassination of Vladlen Tatarsky with a bomb in a crowded St. Petersburg cafe and the murder of ex-submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, who was shot in the back while jogging unarmed in a park in Krasnodar. The revealing article also refers to “uneasiness” in Kiev and Washington regarding the SBU’s penchant for this kind of assassination, noting concern that they could tarnish Ukraine’s image abroad especially among donor countries who recently admitted that without their help Ukraine would collapse within weeks. What is most interesting about this piece is probably not its confirmation that the CIA is intimately involved in the operations of the SBU, what’s most fascinating is why a newspaper widely recognized as itself having an intimate relationship with the CIA has suddenly decided to basically confirm what many analysts already knew when it comes to Langley and the SBU. Yesterday’s man: Why Ukraine’s Zelensky is in danger of being left behind by the US READ MORE: Yesterday’s man: Why Ukraine’s Zelensky is in danger of being left behind by the US The Washington Post’s revelation comes not only in the aftermath of the bloody Hamas incursion into Israel and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza but also as international attention, and more importantly, appetite to support Kiev, wanes. This shift in attention, not only in the media but also potentially in the scale of aid, bodes poorly for President Vladimir Zelensky's regime, as it faces increasing domestic pressures and war-weary neighbors. Couple this with the oncoming winter and the view looks increasingly grim for Zelensky even before mentioning Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and recent Russian battlefield gains. It now also looks inevitable that Ukraine will find itself playing second fiddle to an emerging political and potentially military crisis in the Middle East while competing for the vital US aid that keeps the Kiev regime afloat. Crucially, all of these woes offer a beleaguered NATO an opportunity to apply pressure on Zelensky to seek peace, potentially solving an increasingly difficult puzzle for Kiev’s backers as they head towards elections that will be decided by populations ever more vocal in their disdain for the conflict. So as Kiev’s woes compound and the world’s gaze shifts towards Gaza, it seems the truth about the West’s intimate relationship with the SBU is now being pulled out of the closet, not by a whistleblower or dissenting investigative journalist, but by a stalwart of the US intelligence community, the Washington Post. The question we should all be asking is why? How does this benefit or promote a Western 'victory' in Ukraine? The answer may well be that it’s not a victory that these revelations are supposed to facilitate. It’s more likely that it’s part of a strategy of edging Kiev towards accepting the undeniable reality that the entire US project in Ukraine is set to fail, and for Zelensky to seek accommodation before there’s nothing left to negotiate with. The task now is to end it as painlessly as possible for NATO and Kiev’s exhausted backers, and to move on to the next crusade, leaving a devastated and dysfunctional Ukraine to be consigned to the growing graveyard of bloody US foreign policy misadventures. The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. You can share this story on social media: RT
    0 Comments 0 Shares 4494 Views
  • November 9: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 34
    Latest casualty figures for Palestine and Israel, humanitarian crisis & aid update, bombing update, hostage news, West Bank news.

    [email protected] November 9, 2023
    Gaza skyline Thursday, November 9th, following Israeli bombing (photo)
    Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here. For more news, go here and here. Live broadcast news from the region is here.

    Some people are led to be skeptical of the Al Jazeera news network. However, the network has won several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award, among many other honors. The New York Times reports that “its reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.” it’s important to remember that all news sources may potentially have bias. For example, CNN uses anchors who used to work for the Israel Lobby, who have lifelong attachment to Israel, and who often exhibit pro-Israel spin and omission in their broadcasts. Similarly, Fox News is strongly influenced by Rupert Murdoch, who has a strong attachment to Israel, and who may have fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular host, in part due to the host’s opposition to war and his pattern of failing to exhibit sufficient devotion to Israel).

    Latest statistics:

    Palestinian death toll: 10,271* (10,098 in Gaza** (including at least 4,324 children and 2,823 women), and at least 173 in the West Bank). *NOTE: The official UN death toll includes 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast. IAK does not yet include those deaths since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation.

    Palestinian injuries: 28,872** (including at least 26,475 in Gaza** and 2,397 in the West Bank). **NOTE: it is impossible to offer an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. The Associated Press has reported ~32,000 in Gaza, while the UN number is 26,475. Our total for Gaza and the West Bank is based on the conservative figure.

    It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties. About 1.5 million people have been displaced; 2,550 are missing (1,350 children) and presumed to be under rubble.

    Israeli death toll continues to be reported as ~1,400*** (3 killed in West Bank, 34 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and 5,431 injured).

    ***NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers.

    Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
    Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

    Humanitarian update: Turkey has sent 10 planes carrying 230 tons of humanitarian aid to El Arish airport for Gaza with the help of Egypt. (09:12 GMT)

    Palestinian mothers sheltering in schools and hospitals in central Gaza have reported children being dehydrated and severely underweight. The World Health Organization has said that more than 33,551 cases of diarrhea had been reported since mid-October, the majority of which were among children aged under five. (08:40 GMT)

    A total of 106 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza on 8 November, bringing the number of trucks that have entered Gaza since 21 October to 756. Prior to the start of hostilities, an average of 500 truckloads entered Gaza every working day. The entry of fuel, which is desperately needed to operate electricity generators to run life-saving equipment, remains banned by the Israeli authorities.

    On average, 160 people sheltering in UNRWA schools facilities share a single toilet and there is one shower unit for every 700 people.

    RECOMMENDED READING: Gaza children displaced by Israel’s war cling to toys in al-Shifa Hospital

    Evacuation from northern Gaza: Photos show thousands of civilians streaming out of northern Gaza after the Israeli army announced another four-hour evacuation corridor earlier today (Thursday). On Wednesday, it is estimated that at least 50,000 evacuated. Many residents have been resisting the idea of moving south, either due to the danger of crossing or due to the risks of being targeted in the south too.

    The UN estimated that up to 30,000 people have returned to their homes in the north after failing to find shelters as Israeli air strikes heavily bombarded areas in southern Gaza. (11:35 GMT)

    RECOMMENDED READING: US poised to give Israel $19 billion in aid this year

    Hostage update: Negotiations being brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the US are under way for a three-day humanitarian ceasefire in exchange for the release of about a dozen captives in Gaza.

    “Killing knowledge”: Israel has repeatedly attacked universities in Gaza, destroying years of work and research by Palestinian scholars and students. Scholars allege that this amounts to epistemicide, the killing of a knowledge system. “They [Israel] want to erase Palestinian existence from history, and that includes a targeting of Palestinians as a cultural group, as a group of people that produce knowledge,” said Muhannad Ayyash, a Palestinian professor in Canada. (09:40 GMT)

    Healthcare update: Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City has shut down “most operations” after running out of fuel and withstanding daily Israeli bombardments around the medical complex since Sunday.

    Eight hospitals have been bombed by Israeli forces in the past 3 days, and 18 hospitals have gone out of service since October 7, Gaza’s government media office said. “The bombing of hospitals is a war crime according to international humanitarian law, and is criminalized by 16 international agreements and UN resolutions that call for the protection of these health facilities,” it said. (08:40 GMT)

    RECOMMENDED READING: Genocide Unfolding

    Gaza bombings: An overnight Israeli bombardment on Jabalia refugee camp in the north and Sabra in western Gaza has killed dozens, based on reports from Al Jazeera Arabic and Palestinian news agency Wafa.

    Israeli attacks on Thursday damaged 2 mosques in Khan Younis, bringing the number of completely destroyed mosques since October 7 to 59 and partially destroyed ones to 136. (07:35 GMT)

    On 8 November, an UNRWA school in Gaza city sheltering thousands of displaced people was hit by an airstrike, resulting in dozens of Palestinians fatalities, according to initial reports.

    Among the deadliest incidents in the past 24 hours was an airstrike in Gaza city that reportedly killed 43 members of one extended family.

    RECOMMENDED READING: US media say Israel is retaliating. The facts show the opposite

    West Bank deaths: 10 Palestinians were killed and at least 14 others were injured by Israeli forces in a raid on Jenin city and refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said on Thursday. Israel’s military said it was conducting “counter-terrorism” raids in Jenin, but gave no further details.

    Earlier reports said that Israeli forces took up sniper positions, as the army moved from home to home in some areas, breaking walls and looking for armed fighters. (10:55 GMT)

    On Wednesday night, a Palestinian man was fatally shot through the heart by Israeli forces in Tabaka village of Hebron, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Zein Basravi.

    At least 173 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank since October 7, according to Palestinian health ministry figures.

    West Bank news: Amnesty International has condemned Israeli authorities for having “dramatically increased” their use of arbitrary detention, and for using emergency measures that “facilitate inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners,” while failing to investigate “incidents of torture and death in custody” since the start of the war.

    Israeli “thought policing”: Israel’s parliament has passed an amendment to the country’s counterterrorism law that introduces the “consumption of terrorist materials” as a new criminal offense.

    “This law is one of the most intrusive and draconian legislative measures ever passed by the Israeli Knesset since it makes thoughts subject to criminal punishment,” said Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. It warned that the amendment would criminalize “even passive social media use” amid a climate of surveillance and curtailment of free speech targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel.

    Ben Gvir statement: Israeli National Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote in a post on X, formerly twitter, saying that “the criticism internally and externally over ‘settler violence’ needs to completely disappear from public discourse.” The far-right minister said that it was time to change the doctrine on the subject, and that “everyone knows exactly who is being violent in Judea and Samaria,” citing a terror attack carried out on Wednesday in the West Bank against Jews.

    Ben Gvir’s statement contradicts the facts in the West Bank. Read about Israeli state violence in the West Bank here.

    RECOMMENDED READING: Israeli media: Palestinians recount settler, army torture amid surge in West Bank expulsions

    Israeli casualties: Several Israeli soldiers have died in northern Gaza, bringing the official number of military casualties within the army to 34.

    The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli population centers has continued over the past 24 hours, with no reported fatalities. (Information on rocket attacks is here.)

    RECOMMENDED READING: U.S. diplomats slam Biden’s Israel policy in leaked memo




    November 9: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 34 Latest casualty figures for Palestine and Israel, humanitarian crisis & aid update, bombing update, hostage news, West Bank news. [email protected] November 9, 2023 Gaza skyline Thursday, November 9th, following Israeli bombing (photo) Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here. For more news, go here and here. Live broadcast news from the region is here. Some people are led to be skeptical of the Al Jazeera news network. However, the network has won several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award, among many other honors. The New York Times reports that “its reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.” it’s important to remember that all news sources may potentially have bias. For example, CNN uses anchors who used to work for the Israel Lobby, who have lifelong attachment to Israel, and who often exhibit pro-Israel spin and omission in their broadcasts. Similarly, Fox News is strongly influenced by Rupert Murdoch, who has a strong attachment to Israel, and who may have fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular host, in part due to the host’s opposition to war and his pattern of failing to exhibit sufficient devotion to Israel). Latest statistics: Palestinian death toll: 10,271* (10,098 in Gaza** (including at least 4,324 children and 2,823 women), and at least 173 in the West Bank). *NOTE: The official UN death toll includes 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast. IAK does not yet include those deaths since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation. Palestinian injuries: 28,872** (including at least 26,475 in Gaza** and 2,397 in the West Bank). **NOTE: it is impossible to offer an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. The Associated Press has reported ~32,000 in Gaza, while the UN number is 26,475. Our total for Gaza and the West Bank is based on the conservative figure. It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties. About 1.5 million people have been displaced; 2,550 are missing (1,350 children) and presumed to be under rubble. Israeli death toll continues to be reported as ~1,400*** (3 killed in West Bank, 34 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and 5,431 injured). ***NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers. Hover over each bar for exact numbers. Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org Humanitarian update: Turkey has sent 10 planes carrying 230 tons of humanitarian aid to El Arish airport for Gaza with the help of Egypt. (09:12 GMT) Palestinian mothers sheltering in schools and hospitals in central Gaza have reported children being dehydrated and severely underweight. The World Health Organization has said that more than 33,551 cases of diarrhea had been reported since mid-October, the majority of which were among children aged under five. (08:40 GMT) A total of 106 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza on 8 November, bringing the number of trucks that have entered Gaza since 21 October to 756. Prior to the start of hostilities, an average of 500 truckloads entered Gaza every working day. The entry of fuel, which is desperately needed to operate electricity generators to run life-saving equipment, remains banned by the Israeli authorities. On average, 160 people sheltering in UNRWA schools facilities share a single toilet and there is one shower unit for every 700 people. RECOMMENDED READING: Gaza children displaced by Israel’s war cling to toys in al-Shifa Hospital Evacuation from northern Gaza: Photos show thousands of civilians streaming out of northern Gaza after the Israeli army announced another four-hour evacuation corridor earlier today (Thursday). On Wednesday, it is estimated that at least 50,000 evacuated. Many residents have been resisting the idea of moving south, either due to the danger of crossing or due to the risks of being targeted in the south too. The UN estimated that up to 30,000 people have returned to their homes in the north after failing to find shelters as Israeli air strikes heavily bombarded areas in southern Gaza. (11:35 GMT) RECOMMENDED READING: US poised to give Israel $19 billion in aid this year Hostage update: Negotiations being brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the US are under way for a three-day humanitarian ceasefire in exchange for the release of about a dozen captives in Gaza. “Killing knowledge”: Israel has repeatedly attacked universities in Gaza, destroying years of work and research by Palestinian scholars and students. Scholars allege that this amounts to epistemicide, the killing of a knowledge system. “They [Israel] want to erase Palestinian existence from history, and that includes a targeting of Palestinians as a cultural group, as a group of people that produce knowledge,” said Muhannad Ayyash, a Palestinian professor in Canada. (09:40 GMT) Healthcare update: Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City has shut down “most operations” after running out of fuel and withstanding daily Israeli bombardments around the medical complex since Sunday. Eight hospitals have been bombed by Israeli forces in the past 3 days, and 18 hospitals have gone out of service since October 7, Gaza’s government media office said. “The bombing of hospitals is a war crime according to international humanitarian law, and is criminalized by 16 international agreements and UN resolutions that call for the protection of these health facilities,” it said. (08:40 GMT) RECOMMENDED READING: Genocide Unfolding Gaza bombings: An overnight Israeli bombardment on Jabalia refugee camp in the north and Sabra in western Gaza has killed dozens, based on reports from Al Jazeera Arabic and Palestinian news agency Wafa. Israeli attacks on Thursday damaged 2 mosques in Khan Younis, bringing the number of completely destroyed mosques since October 7 to 59 and partially destroyed ones to 136. (07:35 GMT) On 8 November, an UNRWA school in Gaza city sheltering thousands of displaced people was hit by an airstrike, resulting in dozens of Palestinians fatalities, according to initial reports. Among the deadliest incidents in the past 24 hours was an airstrike in Gaza city that reportedly killed 43 members of one extended family. RECOMMENDED READING: US media say Israel is retaliating. The facts show the opposite West Bank deaths: 10 Palestinians were killed and at least 14 others were injured by Israeli forces in a raid on Jenin city and refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said on Thursday. Israel’s military said it was conducting “counter-terrorism” raids in Jenin, but gave no further details. Earlier reports said that Israeli forces took up sniper positions, as the army moved from home to home in some areas, breaking walls and looking for armed fighters. (10:55 GMT) On Wednesday night, a Palestinian man was fatally shot through the heart by Israeli forces in Tabaka village of Hebron, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Zein Basravi. At least 173 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank since October 7, according to Palestinian health ministry figures. West Bank news: Amnesty International has condemned Israeli authorities for having “dramatically increased” their use of arbitrary detention, and for using emergency measures that “facilitate inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners,” while failing to investigate “incidents of torture and death in custody” since the start of the war. Israeli “thought policing”: Israel’s parliament has passed an amendment to the country’s counterterrorism law that introduces the “consumption of terrorist materials” as a new criminal offense. “This law is one of the most intrusive and draconian legislative measures ever passed by the Israeli Knesset since it makes thoughts subject to criminal punishment,” said Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. It warned that the amendment would criminalize “even passive social media use” amid a climate of surveillance and curtailment of free speech targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel. Ben Gvir statement: Israeli National Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote in a post on X, formerly twitter, saying that “the criticism internally and externally over ‘settler violence’ needs to completely disappear from public discourse.” The far-right minister said that it was time to change the doctrine on the subject, and that “everyone knows exactly who is being violent in Judea and Samaria,” citing a terror attack carried out on Wednesday in the West Bank against Jews. Ben Gvir’s statement contradicts the facts in the West Bank. Read about Israeli state violence in the West Bank here. RECOMMENDED READING: Israeli media: Palestinians recount settler, army torture amid surge in West Bank expulsions Israeli casualties: Several Israeli soldiers have died in northern Gaza, bringing the official number of military casualties within the army to 34. The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli population centers has continued over the past 24 hours, with no reported fatalities. (Information on rocket attacks is here.) RECOMMENDED READING: U.S. diplomats slam Biden’s Israel policy in leaked memo
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