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Canada’s Heritage Minister panel: unregulated speech “erodes the foundations of democracy”

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | July 11, 2022

According to the Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety appointed by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, “misleading political communications” should be regulated because unregulated political disinformation and discussion “erodes the foundations of democracy.”

Rodriguez has insisted multiple times that censorship bill, Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act, would not regulate user-generated content.

“We made it very clear in the Online Streaming Act that this does not apply to what individual Canadians and creators post online,” said Rodriguez. “No users, no online creators will be regulated. Only the companies themselves will have new responsibilities.”

However, that claim has been contradicted by the Canada Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety that he appointed. Online platforms would have to regulate based on the speech of its users.

“[Section] 4.2 allows the CRTC to prescribe by regulation user uploaded content subject to very explicit criteria. That is also in the Act,” said chair of CRTC Ian Scott in June 2022.

The same comments have been previously repeated severally by the Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety, whose role is to propose measures of regulating online content that it considers harmful, including, but not limited to “propaganda, false advertising and misleading political communications.”

Content that would be regulated includes Facebook posts, private Twitter DMs, Amazon listings, video games, and even listings on Airbnb.

“Many experts mentioned there is justification to look more widely at some interactive services like Airbnb and gaming platforms,” members of the group proposed in one meeting.

“Many experts supported the notion that private communications should be included under the scope of the legislative framework. Private messaging services should also be regulated.”

The advisory group also proposed the regulation of legal content, noting that legal but harmful content “poses unique challenges” and “it is difficult to reconcile the issue of disinformation with the freedom of expression.”

The Online Streaming Act passed in the House last month and is currently in the Senate.

July 11, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

U.S. Drug-War Hypocrisy in Russia

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | July 11, 2022

The drug-war hypocrisy of President Biden and the mainstream press are on full display in Russia, specifically in the case of Brittney Griner, the renowned W.N.B.A. basketball star. Griner was caught with a small amount of hashish oil in her luggage upon arriving in Russia to play for a Russian basketball team during the offseason. She has been detained by Russian authorities for drug-war violations since February 17 of this year. She faces a possible 10-year jail sentence.

Imbued with their extreme anti-Russia animus, Biden and the mainstream press have gone ballistic, accusing Russian authorities of illegitimately detaining Griner. They have been maintaining that Russian authorities should release her immediately and permit her to return to the United States without any further delay.

For example, here is an editorial from the Los Angeles Times entitled “Free Brittney Griner,” in which the Times writes, “We don’t know if Griner brought contraband into Russia or if she’s being framed by an adversarial government with an unjust legal system. At this point, it really doesn’t matter. This punishment does not fit the alleged crime, and it’s clear that Griner is essentially a political hostage. She must be freed.”

Consider this op-ed in the New York Times in which a Times sports columnist named Kurt Streeter repeatedly repeats the phrase “141 days,” to depict what he considers to be an excessively long period of time for Griner to be held on drug charges.

Meanwhile, after these pieces were written, Griner decided to plead guilty to the charges. So far, there is no allegation by either newspaper that the Russians forced her to plead guilty. 

For his part, Biden is steadfastly maintaining that despite Griner’s guilty plea, the Russians are still holding Griner illegitimately. Unfortunately, he failed to provide any explanation for his reasoning, most likely because he doesn’t have one. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed this when she stated, “We believe that the Russian Federation has wrongfully detained Brittney Griner, and she is in intolerable circumstances right now. We are going to do everything that we can — the president has this top of mind — to make sure that we get Brittney home safely.”

Of course, there is one great big elephant in the room that none of these people dares to confront and address: drug laws. Russia has drug laws, just like the United States does. 

Now, think about that: Russia is an authoritarian state, one that has drug laws as part of its legal structure. In fact, think about China, a totalitarian communist state, one that also has drug laws as part of its system. 

Given such, what does that say about the United States, given that it too has drug laws as part of its system. In fact, both the federal government and the state governments have brutally enforced drug laws for decades, as thousands of people who have been prosecuted and incarcerated can attest.  

Streeter laments, repeatedly, that Griner has been in jail for “141 days.” Sure, three months is a long time, given that no one should should ever be detained at all for possessing drugs. But what Streeter omits from his lamentations is that 141 days is nothing compared to the years-long and decades-long jail sentences that American citizens have received at the hands of not the Russians but rather at the hands of their very own government officials — just for possessing or distributing drugs.

Just a few weeks ago, a festival organized by a group called the Rainbow Family was held in a national forest in Colorado. A U.S. magistrate popped in and opened up a makeshift courtroom in the middle of the forest. And guess why he did that. So that he could arraign people who were charged with possession of marijuana and other minor offenses. You can catch a photograph of this guy in this Washington Post article. He is quoted as saying, “Have you ever been in a more beautiful courtroom?”

It’s worth noting that Griner is black. Why is that important? Because it helps to remind us of the racist nature of America’s drug laws. The people who are serving the longest jail sentences here in the United States for drug-war violations are black. In fact, America’s drug war is without a doubt the most racist government program since segregation. 

The Wall Street Journal, citing NORML, states that Griner’s possession of a small quantity of hashish oil would have been legal in Arizona and 18 other states. That’s only partially true. It’s legal under state law, but not federal law. The federal government continues to make possession of illicit drugs, including marijuana and hashish oil, illegal in every state, just as Russia does. 

There is, of course, another lesson to be learned here. The more that the Pentagon, by itself or through NATO, incites foreign crises or creates official enemies in order to justify the continuation of its massive and ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess, it makes it much more unsafe for Americans to travel overseas. 

Brittney Griner’s arrest and detention for drug-war violations in Russia puts a needed mirror on America’s war on drugs. The best thing U.S. officials could do to help others around the world who are victimized for drug-war violations is by ending its own drug-war tyranny here at home. That means legalization of all drugs, both at the federal and state levels. It also means immediately releasing every person from every state and federal prison who has been incarcerated for a non-violent drug offense. It’s always best to lead by example, as compared to engaging in hypocritical tirades against foreign regimes that are enforcing the same drug-war tyranny that U.S. officials are enforcing here at home.

July 11, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Stocks of Western-supplied missiles destroyed in Ukraine – Moscow

Samizdat | July 11, 2022

Russian warships have destroyed stocks of US-supplied ammunition, by striking arms depots in Ukraine’s central Dnepropetrovsk Region with Kalibr cruise missiles, the defense ministry said on Monday.

“Stores of ammunition for US-delivered HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and M772 howitzers, as well as for 2S7 Pion self-propelled guns have been destroyed,” Defense Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said during his daily press briefing.

Konashenkov added that Russian aircraft hit the bases of “nationalist battalions and foreign mercenaries” in the eastern city of Kharkov, killing around 250 fighters and destroying up to 25 military vehicles.

The US promised this month to supply Kiev with four additional HIMARS launchers, bringing the total number sent to Ukraine to 12. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov called them a “game-changer” on the battlefield.

Last week, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that it had wiped out two HIMARS launchers and two ammunition depots. The Ukrainian military dismissed the report as “fake,” insisting that the US-made launchers were inflicting “colossal” damage and casualties on the “occupying forces.”

July 11, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Don’t vaccinate your children with covid-vaccines! Ever!

Tomaris

In a video message, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche begs parents not to have their children vaccinated against COVID under any circumstances. “If you do, it could mean their death sentence.”

Full transcript:

“My name is Geert Vanden Bossche. I am a vaccinologist. I have worked in the vaccine industry for many, many years. I am trained as a virologist, having worked for many years not only in the vaccine industry but also with Gavi and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Today I want to talk about your children.

I beg you, I really beg you, do not vaccinate your children against COVID.

I will do my best to explain as best I can why this would be dramatic.

I’m not even going to talk about the fact that there’s no need to vaccinate children against COVID. And that there are too many and too dangerous side effects.

I’m going to talk about how these vaccines affect children’s immune systems. I am not exaggerating when I say that these vaccines could be a death sentence for your child.

Innate Antibodies
Let me explain how these vaccines will damage your child’s innate immune system.

First, and these are facts and data that you can check, we have never, really ever used a viral vaccine other than live attenuated vaccine. During childhood, we never use any vaccine other than live attenuated vaccine. And there’s a good reason for that.

This has everything to do with the innate or innate antibodies in the child. A child is equipped with a special kind of antibodies, innate antibodies. And those antibodies are only present for a limited time during childhood, then they disappear.

Kick-off immune system
These innate antibodies have an extremely important function. They help the child to kick-off his own immune system. The only way it can do this properly is thanks to its innate antibodies. What do these antibodies do?

First, the innate antibodies can neutralize the virus. And not just COVID but all kinds of viruses. Viruses are everywhere and people are continuously exposed to them.

But more importantly, by binding to the live virus, the innate antibodies learn to give proper instructions to the immune system to recognize not only the viruses it faces, but many other viruses as well. And that is important because the innate antibodies will disappear over time. So the immune system has to be trained to recognize viruses later in life, when the innate antibodies are no longer there.

But that’s not all. By binding to viruses, the innate antibodies will prevent your innate immune system from recognizing self-components. These are components of the child’s own body that should not be recognized.

What Happens When You Vaccinate Your Child?
What Happens When You Vaccinate Your Child? Then the vaccine creates antibodies, which will bind strongly to the virus and they will displace the innate antibodies. The innate antibodies are then no longer able to bind to the virus.

Source: https://rumble.com/v1az8uc-dont-vaccinate-your-children-with-covid-vaccines-ev

July 11, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

From Wild-Type SARS-2 to Omicron: Towards a Theory of Corona Evolution

With additional thoughts on why mass containment probably made everything worse, by playing to the most central strategy of the virus

eugyppius | July 10, 2022

Scientific discourse on Corona remains focused on microbiological minutiae, while ignoring the broader evolutionary and behavioural patterns of SARS-2. This is especially frustrating, because our mass containment policies were at base attempts to change the behaviour of the virus, and their failure has prompted no introspection about the limits of our understanding.

Equally neglected is the evolutionary trajectory of Corona. Aside from simplistic, one-dimensional concerns about things like escape variants, almost nobody in mainstream scientific circles has tried to account for observed evolution or describe the various selection pressures SARS-2 faces.

Among the few people to have given serious thought to the evolution of viral pathogens is Paul Ewald, author of the book Evolution of Infectious Disease, as well as numerous articles explaining the evolutionary pressures on the virulence and transmissibility of viruses.

As he explains in this piece from 2011:

Much of the variation in the harmfulness of acute infections is associated with the dependence of transmission on host mobility. When transmission occurs by direct contact, infected hosts generally need to be mobile to facilitate contact with susceptibles. When transmission of pathogens does not depend on the mobility of infected hosts, evolutionary considerations predict that natural selection should favor high degrees of host exploitation and hence high degrees of virulence.

Basically, the virus wants to make as many copies of itself as possible. But, very roughly speaking, the more aggressively the virus copies itself, the sicker its hosts become. This places an upper limit on the virulence of viruses that depend on person-to-person contact, and it explains why widely transmitted respiratory viruses all fall within the same narrow range of pathogenicity and cause the same kinds of symptoms. The pandemicists raise money by wargaming pandemic viruses with 10% fatality rates, but in the real world, the truly deadly viruses never get very far. They’re all like SARS-1 – they put people in the hospital too soon.

But what about smallpox? And cholera, and yellow fever and dengue fever? Are these not deadly viruses?

They are, but they don’t spread via direct contact. Smallpox falls into what Ewald calls a “sit-and-wait” category of transmission. These are viruses that have remarkable durability, remaining viable in the external environment for months or (in the case of Variola) even years. They can thus disable their hosts while still having hope of new victims. Yellow fever and dengue, meanwhile, are “vector-borne.” They depend on mosquitoes to hop from host to host, and they’re free to make their victims as sick as they want. “Waterborne” pathogens like cholera are similarly advantaged.

More importantly for our purposes, Ewald defines a fourth category of what we might call mediated transmission facilitating higher virulence. This is “attendant-borne” transmission, which occurs primarily in hospitals, where staff unwittingly circulate viruses among patients. Attendant-borne viruses, like their vector-borne and waterborne colleagues, are free to develop remarkably high virulence. Ewald believes that the 1918 influenza outbreak achieved its unusually high mortality via attend-borne transmission related to troop transports at the end of the First World War.

SARS-1, although never properly adapted to human hosts, also depended on attendant-borne transmission, and MERS is a more straightforward case of this phenomenon. But the clearest example of all is surely pre-Omicron SARS-2, which caused elevated mortality near the top of what we would expect for pandemic influenza; and which flourished nowhere as effectively as in healthcare institutions, including hospitals and especially nursing homes.

Remember that SARS-2 arrived in Europe no later than November 2019, and in America no later than December 2019. The West saw multiple months of community Corona transmission, in other words, without anybody noticing that anything was amiss. Hospitals remained as empty or as full as ever. As soon as we imposed lockdowns and started testing everybody, though, mortality spiked. These containment procedures involved nothing so much as identifying Corona patients and putting as many of them as possible in environments favouring attendant-borne transmission – from Corona testing centres to hospitals. And as the mass containment regime continued through 2021, SARS-2 began evolving towards greater virulence, as nosocomial and nursing home infections came to dominate the case statistics almost everywhere.

Omicron, whatever its origins, broke this dynamic. Unlike prior SARS-2 lineages, this is a classic direct-contact respiratory pathogen. With the advent of Omicron, Corona no longer spreads preferentially in healthcare institutions, and behaves much more like a mild flu or the common cold, with an emphasis on keeping its hosts healthy and mobile.

The worst thing we could do, from an evolutionary perspective, is continue the mass containment regime. We want to keep SARS-2 circulating via direct contact in the community. All such respiratory viruses, despite their stark differences, have been subject to the same convergent evolution, with remarkably similar effects on their human hosts. We must stop intervening in matters we don’t understand, or we’ll just continue our recent history, of always making everything worse.

July 10, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Justin Trudeau’s opponent would ban ministers from attending WEF

Free West Media | July 10, 2022

Pierre Poilievre, who will be running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada later this year, said at a meeting in Calgary that he would ban ministers from attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland sits on the WEF’s Supervisory Board. Shadow Minister of Natural Resources Michelle Rempel Garner can also be found on the organisation’s website. She denied in an article that Canada was run by the WEF.

Earlier, WEF chief Klaus Schwab had boasted however that more than half of the Canadian cabinet was made up of Young Global Leaders of the WEF.

Poilievre thus indicated that he wanted to take Canada in a completely different direction. He is planning to take on Trudeau in the next election and defeat him.

“I have made it clear that I will ban my ministers in my cabinet from attending the World Economic Forum if I become prime minister,” he said at an earlier meeting. “Work for Canada. If you want to go to Davos, to that conference, buy a single ticket. You cannot be part of our government and pursue a policy agenda that is not in line with the interests of our people.”

Poilievre is running in the 2022 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election and is considered to be the frontrunner. He has supported those in the Canada convoy protest against vacccine mandates who were protesting peacefully and said the federal government had abused its power by invoking the Emergencies Act during the protest and proposed limiting its power and use to prevent it from being used similarly in the future.

Poilievre demonstrated his support for army reservist James Topp’s anti-mandate protest walk from Vancouver to their planned Canada Day freedom protest on Parliament Hill, by joining Topp, Paul Alexander, Tom Marazzo, a self-declared spokesperson for the Canada convoy protest and an ex-military officer, on June 30, 2022 in the final stage of Topp’s march to Ottawa.

July 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

India to boost Sakhalin-1 oil output

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 10, 2022

After Sakhalin-2, Moscow also plans to nationalise Sakhalin-1 oil and gas development project by ousting US and Japanese shareholders. But Moscow will make an exception for India so that OVL which holds 20% stake will remain & continue to work. Moscow grapevine is that while Rosneft will continue to hold controlling share, more Indian companies may be inducted to replace US & Japan and thereby also ensure a sales market in India.

The Sakhalin-1 is located off the coast of Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. It comprises three offshore fields — namely, Chayvo, Odoptu, and Arkutun-Dagi. Until recently, the Sakhalin-1 project was operated by a Russian subsidiary of the American major ExxonMobil known as Exxon Neftegaz, which owns 30% of the shares. In addition, 20% is owned by the Russian state, 30% by the Japanese company Sodeco, and 20% by the Indian ONGC Videsh. Whereas Sakhalin-2 specialises in the export of liquefied natural gas, Sakhalin-1 is in the export of Sokol oil.

The capacity of Sakhalin-1 is quite impressive. There was a time before OPEC+ set limits on production level, when Russia extracted as much as 400,000 barrels per day, but the recent production level has been about 220,000 barrels per day. The abrupt departure of the Americans following the US sanctions against Russia has caused the production to plummet to just 10,000 barrels. Russians hope that with the replacement by more Indian companies, the production level can be restored to the previous level. Indeed, the hope is that Indian ONGC Videsh will pull up the production level of Sakhalin-1 project relatively quickly by bringing in own technologies.

The overall trend of nationalising the holdings of American, British, Japanese and European capital in Russia’s strategic sectors of economy is crystallising as the new policy — the Russian version of India’s AatmaNirbhar Bharat (“Self-reliant India” campaign.) Cleansing of the Russian economy, freed of Western capital, is expected to accelerate in the period ahead. India has seamless opportunities here to make investments and reap windfall profits. In strategic terms, India’s energy security will also be guaranteed for decades to come.

Moscow was well aware of the predatory character of Western capital in Russia’s oil sector — a legacy of the Boris Yeltsin era — but had to live with the exploitation as it didn’t want to antagonise other potential western investors. But that is history now. The souring of relations with the West to almost breaking point rids Moscow of such archaic inhibitions.

Indeed, the new policy to replace western capital from the commanding heights of Russian economy is not without risks, but Moscow is confident that it is on the right track and must do what it takes. Also, the decrease in production in the Sakhalin-1, unless addressed soon, may negatively affect the very characteristics of the oil fields in the Russian Far East, if the oil recovery factor decreases over time and a lot of oil is left to remain in the reservoirs.

The development of the fields had depended on Western equipment and technologies. Now Russia has lost both. On the other hand, the departure of the Americans will leave Russia with no easy route but to have its own technologies.

On balance, however, Americans stand to lose heavily too, as the production sharing arrangements dating back to the Yeltsin era had been forced out of the Russian government when it was in dire economic straits during the transition from the Soviet period and was in no position to negotiate optimal deals. Come to think of it, something like 262 such so-called production sharing agreements (PSAs) were squeezed out of the Russian government by western oil companies by the time Yeltsin retired.

After coming to power in 1999, President Vladimir Putin set about the mammoth task of cleaning up the Aegean stables of Russia’s foreign collaboration in the oil sector. The “decolonisation” process was excruciatingly difficult, but Putin pulled through it and got rid of as many as 260 (out of 262) PSAs. In fact, Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 are the very last remaining two PSAs harking back to post-Soviet Russia’s decade of humiliation under Yeltsin.

Any surprises why the Biden Administration hates Putin so much and wants him out of power in Moscow?

Legend is that when the Soviet Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev paid his pathbreaking visit to India in 1955, then Prime Minister Nehru, amongst other “talking points”, referred to Soviet Union’s great reservoir of expertise in the oil sector, while complaining that the West refused help for anything in India’s state sector.

The folklore is that Khrushchev instinctively reacted in positive terms to Nehru’s request for help and no sooner than his return to Moscow, deputed a famous Soviet expert / geologist to India to prospect for oil — whose fame was such that he could apparently smell oil lying untapped deep in the bowels of the earth! Thus was born the ONGC in 1956, which is now heading for Sakhalin Island on a similar mission!

July 10, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

‘Developing world to face wave of defaults’

Samizdat – July 10, 2022

Emerging nations, including El Salvador, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia and Pakistan, will be challenged with a historic cascade of defaults as a quarter-trillion-dollar pile of distressed debts keeps exerting downward pressure on economies, Bloomberg is reporting.

“With the low-income countries, debt risks and debt crises are not hypothetical,” the World Bank’s Chief Economist Carmen Reinhart told the agency on Saturday. “We’re pretty much already there.”

Over the past six months, there’s reportedly been a doubling in the number of emerging markets with sovereign debt that trades at highly distressed levels, meaning yields that indicate investors believe default is a real possibility.

Another cause for major concern reportedly arises from a potential “domino effect” that commonly occurs when scared investors begin yanking money out of countries with economic problems similar to those defaulting nations had previously gone through.

In June, traders reportedly pulled $4 billion out of emerging-market bonds and stocks, marking a fourth straight month of outflows.

Probable defaults may be followed by political instability. Earlier this year, Sri Lanka was the first nation to stop paying its foreign bondholders, burdened by unwieldy food and fuel costs that fueled protests and political chaos.

“Populations suffering from high food prices and shortages of supplies can be a tinderbox for political instability,” Barclays has said, as quoted by Bloomberg.

July 10, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

‘Israel’ to close embassy in Eritrea after ambassador blocked

Press TV – July 10, 2022

Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid has approved the closure of the regime’s embassy in Eritrea as authorities in the Northeast African country have not been allowing the arrival of a diplomat from the occupied territories in the past two years.

Lapid, who is still serving as Israeli foreign minister, took the decision on Saturday to shutter the diplomatic mission in the Eritrean capital city of Asmara, after the local government had been delaying Ishmael Khaldi to take up the post despite his appointment.

According to Israeli media outlets, the embassy has remained empty in the aftermath of the Eritrean government’s decision, and many of its staffers are currently in their homes without doing any particular tasks.

The outlets added that the Tel Aviv regime spends tens of thousands of dollars per month on rent and other fees for the employees.

The last Israeli ambassador left Asmara in September 2018. Since then, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has sent a temporary administrator for the embassy from time to time.

Until April 2020, the head of the embassy’s security was the only Israeli representative in Eritrea, and his wife was responsible for the administrative work.

The Israeli foreign ministry then decided to evacuate the embassy in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The embassy has been abandoned ever since.

On July 5, 2020, the regime’s foreign ministry’s appointments committee appointed Ishmael Khaldi to serve as ambassador to Eritrea. The approval of his appointment was, however, delayed by Eritrean authorities.

Palestine’s official WAFA news agency, quoting the London-based online newspaper Rai al-Youm and other sources reported on August 1, 2021, that at least 14 countries including South Africa, Tunisia, Eritrea, Senegal, Tanzania, Niger, the archipelago of Qamar, Gabon, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Liberia, and the Seychelles had agreed to expel Israel from the 55-member African Union.

On July 22 that year, Israel attained observer status at the AU after nearly 20 years of lobbying.

Making the move official, Israeli ambassador to Ethiopia, Burundi and Chad Aleli Admasu presented his credentials to Moussa Faki Mahamat, the chairman of the African Union Commission, at the bloc’s headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Experts say Israel’s observer status is largely seen as part of Tel Aviv’s continued campaign to normalize ties in Africa.

Pro-Palestine language is typically featured in statements delivered at the AU’s annual summits. Palestine already has observer status at the African Union.

July 10, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | | Leave a comment

Biden regime lets Israel off the hook in the case of Palestinian-American journalist’s death

By Robert Inlakesh | Samizdat | July 10, 2022

The US State Department’s press release on Washington’s investigation into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh has sparked outrage and triggered accusations of a whitewash.

Almost two months after the murder of the veteran Al-Jazeera reporter, Washington announced that an investigation by the US Security Coordinator (USSC) had concluded that Israeli gunfire was “likely responsible.” However, the statement asserted that the evidence was inconclusive and it could not say that Israeli forces were to blame, contradicting various other reports which had concluded the opposite. The US government also claimed that there is “no reason to believe” that the killing was intentional and instead was likely “the result of tragic circumstances,” to which Israel’s top human rights group B’Tselem responded by calling the investigation a “whitewash.”

“We are incredulous,” the family of Abu Akleh said in a statement of their own, in which they decried the State Department’s press release. What is perhaps most concerning about the State Department’s statement is its contradictory nature; it calls for accountability on the one hand, whilst simultaneously disagreeing with other reports that indicate Israeli guilt and making a poorly-substantiated assessment of intent. If the US government’s investigation cannot conclude Tel Aviv’s guilt or prove an Israeli soldier fired the shot, then how can it conclude that the “likely” culprit did not intend to kill Abu Akleh?

According to a CNN investigative report, Abu Akleh was killed in a “targeted attack by Israeli forces,” implying that the evidence suggested the killing was indeed intentional. The claim made by the Israeli government, that a firefight had occurred in the minutes leading up to the murder, was seemingly debunked by the Washington Post’s own investigation into the incident. This is important because the Israeli military’s argument as to why they say the shooting was unintentional is based upon their claim that Israeli soldiers were likely trying to fire at Palestinian militants. Furthermore, according to the Washington Post, “Abu Akleh and other journalists identified as press would likely have been visible from the IDF convoy’s position.”

The New York Times also conducted its own investigation, in which it “showed that there were no armed Palestinians near her when she was shot” and debunked the Israeli government’s claims as to how many bullets were fired in the journalist’s direction. The New York Times also stated that “the bullet that killed Ms. Abu Akleh was fired from the approximate location of the Israeli military convoy, most likely by a soldier from an elite unit.” The United Nations’ probe likewise came to conclusions “consistent with many findings out there that the shots that killed her came from Israeli Security Forces.”

The other troubling element surrounding the US investigation has been the White House’s flip-flopping on its approach to achieving justice. When news first broke of Abu Akleh’s death on May 11, State Department spokesperson Ned Price stated that “the Israelis have the wherewithal and the capabilities to conduct a thorough, comprehensive investigation,” and seemed to indicate that a US inquiry would not be necessary. Later, however, it was reported that Israel would not conduct an investigation into the killing, and then a statement from an IDF military lawyer suggested that if an Israeli soldier were to be found responsible for firing the fatal shot, they would not be guilty of any criminal misconduct “absent further evidence.”

The above information also has to be paired with the fact that Israel’s Foreign Ministry and various political figures distributed a video of Palestinian gunmen, following the killing, claiming that Palestinians had been responsible for the crime. The video that was being shared around was quickly debunked by B’Tselem, which proved through an on-the-ground investigation that the Palestinian gunmen shown in the video could not have possibly fired the kill shot. Then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett claimed that it was likely Palestinians who were responsible, later altering his rhetoric when it became more difficult for him to defend the claim.

To rub salt into the wound, after Israeli forces had harassed the family of Abu Akleh, police violently assaulted the pallbearers at the slain journalist’s funeral in Jerusalem. Making things even worse, it appeared that the Israeli police doctored footage from the scene of their attack, to make it appear as if Palestinians had thrown objects at the police, prior to the assaults on mourners.

The USSC has not provided any clarity on how it was able to draw the conclusions it did. Investigations from the UN, various human rights groups, CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others, all point to Israeli guilt, but none were able to determine the exact intention of the Israeli soldier who fired the bullet. The US assertion that there is no evidence to suggest the attack was intentional contradicts multiple eyewitnesses who say it was. If the US investigation relied on claims that Israeli soldiers were engaged in firefights with Palestinian militants (likewise contradicted by the investigations mentioned above), then their conclusion is questionable. Above all, the USSC’s judgment of intent has now given Israel a convenient excuse to sweep the killing of an American citizen under the rug. Some may call it a whitewash, but what it really looks like is the US siding with Israel once again over the lives of its own people.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

July 10, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Lies, lies, lies

By John Ellwood | TCW Defending Freedom | July 10, 2022

WHILE the public has been distracted by beer, cake and sleaze, our politicians have been consistently lying about their ruinous policies.

Here are the first 20 lies (there are many more):

They lied about Covid

They lied about the ‘vaccine’

They lied about the side effects

They lied about Covid passes

They lied about lockdowns

They lied about the pandemic

They lied about the consequences

They lied about their contracts with Big Pharma

They lied about Russia

They lied about Ukraine

They lied about carbon dioxide

They lied about the ‘climate emergency’

They lied about ‘green’ energy

They lied about heat pumps

They lied about electric vehicles

They lied about Brexit

They lied about immigration

They lied about taxation

They lied about their attack on agriculture

They lied about the influence of the WEF/Gates/all the rest

When the contenders for Downing Street open their mouths, remember the quote ‘Why is this lying b*stard lying to me?’

July 10, 2022 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment