Australian authorities seize child, rule parents abusive for resisting hormone therapy to alter daughter’s sex
RT | November 29, 2020
An Australian couple whose child was reportedly seized by state authorities is appealing a magistrate’s ruling finding them abusive and “dangerous” for resisting testosterone therapy for their daughter, who identifies as male.
Lawyers for the unidentified parents filed papers last week seeking to appeal a magistrate’s October decision, setting up what appears to be the country’s first test case on parental rights regarding gender dysphoria medicine, the Australian newspaper reported on Saturday. Their child, then 15, was taken away from the family last year, after discussing suicide online.
“The authorities say we will not allow her to change gender, so it’s dangerous for told her to come back to our house because we will mentally abuse her,” the father told the Australian. “They want us to consent to testosterone treatment.”
The parents are seeking an independent psychological review of all possible causes of their child’s depression, as well as consideration of non-invasive treatment options. The teen struggled after losing friends at 13, when the family relocated, and those difficulties were compounded by a difficult start to puberty and anxiety about eating and body image, the mother said.
The family migrated to Australia a decade ago, the newspaper said, without identifying their native country. The magistrate found that the teen likely suffered verbal abuse over “his feelings and expression of gender identity,” which the parents denied.
Lawyers for the child earlier this month filed papers seeking approval to begin hormone therapy.
A Twitter commenter who said her own daughter suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria, said state interventions such as in the Australia case mark “the end of parenting as we knew it.”
“We have no rights. Our children can be seriously harmed by the government and medical profession, and we are powerless to stop it.”
As the debate on treatment for gender dysphoria heats up in Australia, some US states are creating exceptions to parental consent laws to enable children to get such treatments as hormone therapy and sex-change surgeries without parental consent. Starting this year, children as young as 13 in Washington state have been allowed to obtain confidential treatment for gender dysphoria, billed to their parents insurance plan and done without parental consent.
“Hard to overstate how radical this is,” Abigail Shrier, journalist and ‘Irreversible Damage’ author, tweeted. “States are intervening in a loving relationship between parent and minor child and declaring: ‘We will physically transform the child against your wishes and behind your back.’”
Trump Says DoJ, FBI May Have Been In On Large-scale Voter Fraud
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 29.11.2020
The Trump campaign has accused Democrat Party officials in half a dozen battleground states of widespread election fraud, mostly involving mail-in ballots. Democrats, most legacy media, and even some Republicans have dismissed the allegations and urged the President to concede defeat.
President Donald Trump has accused the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of possibly being ‘in on’ the alleged plot to steal the election from him.
“This is total fraud and how the FBI and the Department of Justice, I don’t know, maybe they’re involved, but how people are allowed to get away with this stuff is unbelievable. This election was rigged. This election was a total fraud,” Trump alleged, speaking to Fox News in a telephone interview Sunday morning.
“They’ve been there a long time. Some of them have served a lot of different presidents, and they have their own views. All I can say is… with all the fraud that’s taken place, nobody has come to me and said ‘the FBI has nabbed the people that are doing this scheme,'” he added. The President went on to complain that the FBI and the DoJ have yet to investigate Obama-era officials’ potential illegal activities, including spying on the Trump campaign in 2016.
“Where are they with Comey, with McCabe, with Brennan, with all these people? They lied to Congress, they lied, they leaked… Where are they with all this stuff?” Trump asked, referring to former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former CIA director John Brennan and their roles in instigating Russiagate.
Suggesting that the world was watching what’s going on in the United States regarding the election fraud allegations, Trump said that he’s had leaders of other countries calling him up and saying the 3 November vote was “the most messed-up election we’ve ever seen.”
‘Hundreds and Hundreds of Affidavits’
Going through his campaign’s claims, Trump pointed to alleged widespread fraud involving mail-in ballots, including cases of people receiving multiple ballots, dead people ‘voting’ and requesting applications to vote, so-called ‘glitches’ of Dominion voting machines which shifted thousands of votes from Trump to Biden, and problems of poll watchers being “thrown out” of counting rooms in major Democrat strongholds. Trump insisted his campaign had “hundreds and hundreds” of sworn affidavits to back up these allegations.
The President also recalled the discrepancy between results coming in on election night and those coming in later, thanks to large “vote dumps” in Biden’s favour in Michigan, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. “And all of a sudden I went from winning by a lot to losing by a little, and in some cases it took a period of time to do it,” he said.
Trump accused state judges and the media of shirking their responsibilities to hear his campaign’s lawsuits and cover the fraud allegations, and attacked big tech for its alleged censorship. “The media doesn’t want to talk about it. They know how fraudulent this is. It’s no different than Hunter,” he said, referring to Joe Biden’s son and his alleged pay-to-play corruption in Ukraine during the Obama presidency.
“We don’t have freedom of the press in this country. We have suppression by the press. You can’t have a scandal if nobody reports about it,” Trump complained, referring to efforts by Twitter and Facebook to cover up a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop allegedly proving illegal activities, and other mainstream media’s lack of coverage.
‘One Nice, Big, Beautiful Lawsuit’
As for the courts, Trump claimed that judges in the swing states weren’t allowing his campaign to put the evidence in.
“We’re not allowed to put in our proof. They say ‘you don’t have standing’. I said to the lawyers that I would like to file one nice, big, beautiful lawsuit with tremendous proof. We have affidavits. We have hundreds and hundreds of affidavits… [people] willing to sign under penalty of perjury (you go to jail)… These are respected people. These are people that are putting their life at risk. And they don’t want to take the affidavits. Then they say we don’t have proof.”
Trump also expressed doubts about whether his campaign’s fraud claims could reach the Supreme Court. “The problem is it’s hard to get into the Supreme Court. I’ve got the best Supreme Court advocates that want to argue the case if it gets there. But they said it’s very hard to get a case up there.”
Echoing claims made by other members of his staff – as well as members of his family – about the supposed unlikelihood of Biden receiving 15 million more votes than Barack Obama, Trump suggested repeatedly in the interview that he believed there was no way that Biden got 80 million votes, or could win more votes in African-American communities than Obama.
“I got 63 million votes four years ago and won quite handily in the electoral college… We were hoping to get 68 or so and we felt that was a path to an easy victory. I got 74 million votes – the largest in the history of a sitting president. So many millions more than we were even trying to get. And everyone said this is over. I’m telling you, 10 o’clock [election night] everybody thought it was over. And then the phoney mail-ins started coming in,” Trump said.
Major US media called the election in Biden’s favour on 7 November, with the Democrat projected to win 51.1 percent of the popular vote and 306 votes in the Electoral College, well above the requisite 270. President Trump has refused to concede. The Electoral College is expected to cast its votes formally for president and vice-president on 14 December, with votes to be counted by Congress on 6 January, and the inauguration slated for 20 January 2021.
Turkey has perfected a new, deadly way to wage war, using militarized ‘drone swarms’
By Scott Ritter | RT | November 29, 2020
From Syria to Libya to Nagorno-Karabakh, this new method of military offense has been brutally effective. We are witnessing a revolution in the history of warfare, one that is causing panic, particularly in Europe.
In an analysis written for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow, argues that the extensive (and successful) use of military drones by Azerbaijan in its recent conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh holds “distinct lessons for how well Europe can defend itself.”
Gressel warns that Europe would be doing itself a disservice if it simply dismissed the Nagorno-Karabakh fighting as “a minor war between poor countries.” In this, Gressel is correct – the military defeat inflicted on Armenia by Azerbaijan was not a fluke, but rather a manifestation of the perfection of the art of drone warfare by Baku’s major ally in the fighting, Turkey. Gressel’s conclusion – that “most of the [European Union’s] armies… would do as miserably as the Armenian Army” when faced by such a threat – is spot on.
What happened to the Armenian Army in its short but brutal 44-day war with Azerbaijan goes beyond simply losing a war. It was more about the way Armenia lost and, more specifically, how it lost. What happened over the skies of Nagorno-Karabakh – where Azerbaijan employed a host of Turkish- and Israeli-made drones not only to surveil and target Armenian positions, but shape and dominate the battlefield throughout – can be likened to a revolution in military affairs. One akin to the arrival of tanks, mechanised armoured vehicles, and aircraft in the early 20th century, that eventually led to the demise of horse-mounted cavalry.
It’s not that the Armenian soldiers were not brave, or well-trained and equipped – they were. It was that they were fighting a kind of war which had been overtaken by technology, where no matter how resolute and courageous they were in the face of the enemy, the outcome was preordained – their inevitable death, and the destruction of their equipment; some 2,425 Armenian soldiers lost their lives in the fighting, and 185 T-72 tanks, 90 armored fighting vehicles, 182 artillery pieces, 73 multiple rocket launchers, and 26 surface-to-air missile systems were destroyed.
A new kind of warfare
What happened to Armenia was not an isolated moment in military history, but rather the culmination of a new kind of warfare, centered on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones). Azerbaijan’s major ally in the war against Armenia – Turkey – has been perfecting the art of drone warfare for years, with extensive experience in full-scale modern conflict gained in recent fighting in Syria (February-March 2020) and Libya (May-June 2020.)
Over the course of the past decade, Turkey has taken advantage of arms embargoes imposed by America and others which restricted Ankara’s access to the kind of front-line drones used by the US around the world, to instead build from scratch an indigenous drone-manufacturing base. While Turkey has developed several drones in various configurations, two have stood out in particular – the Anka-S and Bayraktar.
While the popular term for the kind of drone-centric combat carried out by Turkey is “drone swarm,” the reality is that modern drone warfare, when conducted on a large scale, is a deliberate, highly coordinated process which integrates electronic warfare, reconnaissance and surveillance, and weapons delivery. Turkey’s drone war over Syria was managed from the Turkish Second Army Command Tactical Command Center, located some 400km away from the fighting in the city of Malatya in Turkey’s Hatay Province.
It was here that the Turkish drone operators sat, and where they oversaw the operation of an integrated electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) warfare capability designed to jam Syrian and Russia air-defense radars and collect signals of military value (such as cell phone conversations) which were used to target specific locations.
For every $1 in losses suffered by Turkey, Syria lost approximately $5
The major systems used by Turkey in this role are the KORAL jamming system and a specially configured Anka-S drone operating as an airborne intelligence collection platform. The Anka-S also operated as an airborne command and control system, relaying targeting intelligence to orbiting Bayraktar UAVs, which would then acquire the target visually before firing highly precise onboard air-to-surface rockets, destroying the target. When conducted in isolation, an integrated drone strike such as those carried out by Turkey can be deadly effective; when conducted simultaneously with four or more systems in action, each of which is capable of targeting multiple locations, the results are devastating and, from the perspective of those on the receiving end, might be likened to a deadly “swarm.”
The fighting in Syria illustrated another important factor regarding drone warfare – the disparity of costs between the drone and the military assets it can destroy. Turkish Bayraktar and Anka-S UAV’s cost approximately $2.5 million each. Over the course of fighting in Syria’s Idlib province, Turkey lost between six and eight UAVs, for a total replacement cost of around $20 million.
In the first night of fighting in Syria, Turkey claims (and Russia does not dispute) that it destroyed large numbers of heavy equipment belonging to the Syrian Army, including 23 tanks and 23 artillery pieces. Overall, Turkish drones are credited with killing 34 Syrian tanks and 36 artillery systems, along with a significant amount of other combat equipment. If one uses the average cost of a Russian-made tank at around $1.2 million, and an artillery system at around $500,000, the total damage done by Turkey’s drones amounts to some $57.3 million (and this number does not include the other considerable material losses suffered by the Syrian military, which in total could easily match or exceed that number.) From a cost perspective alone, for every $1 in losses suffered by Turkey, the Syrians lost approximately $5.
Turkey was able to take the lessons learned from the fighting in Idlib province and apply them to a different theater of war, in Libya, in May 2020. There, Turkey had sided with the beleaguered forces of the Government of National Accord (GNA), which was mounting what amounted to a last stand around the Libyan capital of Tripoli. The GNA was facing off against the forces of the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), based out of Benghazi, which had launched a major offensive designed to capture the capital, eliminate the GNA, and take control of all of Libya.
How to capture half a country
The LNA was supported by the several foreign powers, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia (via Wagner Group, a private military contractor.) Turkey’s intervention placed a heavy emphasis on the integrated drone warfare it had perfected in Syria. In Libya, the results were even more lop-sided, with the Turkish-backed GNA able to drive the LNA forces back, capturing nearly half of Libya in the process.
Both the LNA and Turkish-backed GNA made extensive use of combat drones, but only Turkey brought with it an integrated approach to drone warfare. Observers have grown accustomed to the concept of individual US drones operating freely over places such as Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan, delivering precision strikes against terrorist targets. However, as Iran demonstrated this past May, drones are vulnerable to modern air-defense systems, and US drone tactics would not work over contested airspace.
Likewise, the LNA, which made extensive use of Chinese-made combat drones flown by UAE pilots, enjoyed great success until Turkey intervened. Its electronic warfare and integrated air-defense capabilities then made LNA drone operations impossible to conduct, and the inability of the LNA to field an effective defense against the Turkish drone operations resulted in the tide of battle rapidly shifting on the ground. If anything, the cost differential between the Turkish-backed GNA and the LNA was greater than the $1-to-$5 advantage enjoyed by Turkey in Syria.
The big players – the US, Russia & China – are playing catch-up
By the time Turkey began cooperating with Azerbaijan against Armenia in September 2020, Turkish drone warfare had reached its zenith, and the outcome in Nagorno-Karabakh was all but assured. One of the main lessons drawn from the Turkish drone experiences in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh is that these conflicts were not fought against so-called “poor countries.”
Rather, the Turks were facing off against well-equipped and well-trained forces operating equipment which closely parallels that found in most small- and medium-sized European countries. Indeed, in all three conflicts, Turkey was facing off against some of the best anti-aircraft missile defenses produced by Russia. The reality is that most nations, if confronted by a Turkish “drone swarm,” would not fare well.
And the multiple deployment of drones is only going to expand. The US Army is currently working on what it calls the “Armed, Fully-Autonomous Drone Swarm,” or AFADS. When employed, AFADS will – autonomously, without human intervention – locate, identify, and attack targets using what is known as a “Cluster Unmanned Airborne System Smart Munition,” which will dispense a swarm of small drones that fan out over the battlefield to locate and destroy targets.
China has likewise tested a system that deploys up to 200 “suicide drones” designed to saturate a battlespace and destroy targets by flying into them. And this past September, the Russian military integrated “drone-swarm” capabilities for the first time in a large-scale military exercise.
The face of modern warfare has been forever altered, and those nations that are not prepared or equipped to fight in a battlefield where drone technology is fully incorporated in every aspect of the fight can expect outcomes similar to that of Armenia: severe losses of men and equipment, defeat, humiliation and the likely loss of their territory. This is the reality of modern warfare which, as Gustav Gressel notes, should make any nation not fully vested in drone technology “think – and worry.”
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
The Fallacy behind ‘Normalization’
By Lubna Tarabey – Al-Manar – November 28, 2020
“Normalization” is the process through which relationships can become normal or the process of bringing or returning something to a normal state or condition. Normalcy requires a balance of relationships, a regularization, an orderly state of affairs. Is that really the basis of the relationship between the so called “State of Israel” and the other countries of the Arab World that appear to be rushing to sign such ‘normalization’ agreements? Would such a state of affairs result in something that is even remotely balanced?
Let us take a look at this assumed balance and see if it is skewed in any direction – in whose direction. What does the “State of Israel” have? It has a nuclear ability- unlike the Arab countries, the strongest army, and the unconditional support of the United States of America and the Western world. What do any of the Arab states embarking on normalization have? Nothing of the above – not even the support of their people. Yes, they do have an oil-based wealth which can be robbed, used or abused, and that is what the Israelis are after. What resources does ‘Israel’ have that it promises to share with these Arab states? It promises to share nothing – promising peace. The idea in itself would be funny if it was not so pathetic. When were these Arab states now signing agreements ever in a state of war with ‘Israel’? When did any ever offer to send one soldier to fight alongside the Palestinians? The promised peace is pathetic as it is being offered as a gift among two parties that had never even been in war. Arab regimes are fools if they think they would benefit from the Zionists controlling the policies, both internal and external, in ‘Israel’. Which Arab state – those who actually were engaged in armed conflict – ever benefited from any agreement with the Zionists? Did Egypt benefit? Did Jordan benefit? The answer is categorically NO. None of these states benefited and none can hope to ever benefit from such agreements. That is against the policies of the Zionists state as the following clarifies.
The Zionists have a long history of using others. Ends justifies means. No other principle matters to them. Not justice, not equality, not fairness, not even peace. The principle of ‘end justifies means’ is the only principle they adhere to and to achieve their aims they gladly walk over other people. They even did that to Americans themselves – their number one ally. This is something that was seriously and meticulously documented by Alison Weir, the author of a must read book titled “Against Our Better Judgment: the hidden history of how the U.S was used to create Israel” (2014). Describing the scheming of the Zionist movement in the US, the author writes, “It has targeted virtually every sector of American society; worked to involve American in tragic, unnecessary and profoundly costly wars, dominated congress for decades; increasingly determined which candidates could become serious contenders for US presidency; and promoted bigotry towards an entire population, region and culture.”(Weir, 2014:2). The Zionist movement has constantly used any and whichever method to realize its end – using other people, benefiting from other nations economic powers, draining their resources and even stealing and appropriating other people’s history and culture. This is what they have done all over the world. This is what they have done in Palestine.
How can one even consider a normal relationship with an entity that is anything but normal. Its very existence represents an abnormality among nations. The only state in the world that has no history – a mere 60 years of existence – younger than my own father! Created in a land whose people have a history of more than 4000 years. This abnormal state was established at the cost of killing and displacing the natives of the land. The ‘engineers’ behind the establishment of this abnormality were quite aware that their claim to the land had no foundation. So, what was their brilliant solution? Let us steal the needed foundations! It was not enough to steal the land and houses of the Palestinians. Why not go the extra mile? Steal their history and, along the way, their culture. After all, no one can stop them. They enjoyed the support of the almighty western superpowers along with all the technological resources need to do so. The plan was deviously simple: Erase all traces of anything Palestinian and replace it with ‘Israeli’. Hence, the world wide famous Middle Eastern dish called the hummus became Israeli Hummus. The famous relics of the church of Bethlehem were stolen and documented as part of the Jewish heritage. The embroidery work of the Palestinians which for thousands of years stood as a signature of the clothing of the people of Palestine was also stolen and renamed ‘Israeli’. Even names of villages were changed in line with the Jewish pronunciations to establish a sense of continuity and belonging. For example Asqalan became Ashkelon …. The story goes on and on. Palestine was removed from the maps used all over the world and replaced with ‘Israel’. One theft after another. All carried out under the eyes of the so called ‘free world’ which mostly reacted by turning a blind eye, intentionally so, further supporting these atrocities.
Such practices cannot be allowed to continue. People of the Arab World must become active agents, calling out and exposing these practices. A documentation of Palestinian cultural heritage must be embarked upon. The youth of the Arab world must be reminded of how the ‘state of Israel’ was established. Whose houses were destroyed? Whose land was stolen? Whose culture was destroyed? Normalization of what! What a fallacy! There can be no normal relationships – the very basis of the concept is not applicable.
Lubna Tarabey is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Social Sciences, Lebanese University.
Alison Weir is an American research with a lot of publications on the Zionist movement and the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
MPs demand Iran restrict IAEA inspections after scientist assassination
Press TV | November 29, 2020
Iranian lawmakers have issued a statement demanding that the country respond to the recent assassination of a senior nuclear scientist near Tehran by restricting the United Nations’ regulatory mandate regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
Members of Majlis (Iran’s Parliament) offered the proposal in a statement that was read out at the legislature on Sunday.
“Such atrocity entails an immediate and regret-inducing response,” they said, stressing that the best means of retaliation is through “the revival of the country’s brilliant nuclear industry by ending its voluntary adherence to the Additional Protocol” and restricting the UN nuclear watchdog’s unprecedented inspection regime.
Iran undertook to adhere to the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as part of its 2015 nuclear agreement with world countries. Under the protocol, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, is allowed to carry out “more intrusive” inspections of the country’s nuclear work.
Iran’s nuclear activities and the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have frequently been the target of sabotage by the United States and the Israeli regime.
The US left the JCPOA in 2018, and its allies in the accord – the UK, France, and Germany – subsequently failed to secure Iran’s interests guaranteed by the deal, under Washington’s pressure.
Two of the most recent acts of sabotage — where the Islamic Republic strongly suspects Israel to have acted with US intelligence – include a July incident at the central Natanz nuclear site that caused material damage to the facility and the Friday assassination of nuclear expert Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Fakhrizadeh, the head the Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, was targeted in a multi-pronged terrorist attack by a number of assailants in Absard city of Tehran Province’s Damavand County.
Qalibaf: Enemies should be made to regret this
Majlis Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf also urged a “strong response” to the assassination, saying the country’s enemies would not be made to regret their atrocity in any other way.
A response, he said, has to both avenge the assassination and deter the enemies from repeating such atrocities in the future.
The assassination showed that the adversaries have been frustrated by Iran’s rising power and therefore have resorted to eliminating its scientists, he noted.
The senior parliamentarian, however, expressed certainty that the nation would be able to weather the loss as it has in countless other cases since the 1979 victory of its Islamic Revolution and “pursue the path of its martyrs more strongly than before.”