Top UN expert: “Israeli settlements do amount to a war crime”
Palestine Information Center – July 10, 2021
GENEVA – A high-level UN human rights expert has called for Jewish settlements to be classified as a war crime, urging the international community to hold Israel accountable for a practice it has long considered illegal.
Presenting his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, said he examined whether the Israeli settlements were in violation of the absolute prohibition against “settler implantation” in the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and concluded that “the Israeli settlements do amount to a war crime.”
Talking about the human rights situation in Palestine recently, he said that in east Jerusalem, Jewish settler groups sought to evict Palestinian families from their homes, pointing out that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, forcible transfer of a protected population was prohibited, and the occupying power is forbidden from applying its own laws to the occupied territory.
“I submit to you that this finding compels the international community … to make it clear to Israel that its illegal occupation, and its defiance of international law and international opinion, can and will no longer be cost-free,” Lynk told the Geneva rights council.
Lynk said Israel’s demolition of Bedouin tent dwellings in a village in the West Bank on Wednesday left residents without food or water in the heat of the Jordan Valley, calling it “both unlawful and heartless”.
“Progressive seizure of Palestinian lands together with the protection of the settlements is a further consolidation of Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank,” he said.
There are nearly 300 settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, with more than 680,000 Jewish settlers, Lynk noted.
The settlements have become “the engine of Israel’s 54-year-old occupation, the longest in the modern world”, he added.
He stressed the need for international action, not just words, in order to resolve the situation in Palestine.
“As long as the international community criticizes Israel without seeking consequences and accountability, it is magical thinking to believe that the 54-year-old occupation will end and the Palestinians will finally realize their right to self-determination,” he said.
A few days ago, the Israeli occupation army blocked the delivery of aid to Palestinians whose homes were demolished in the northern Jordan Valley and asked a UN aid team to leave the area, UN humanitarians said on Thursday.
The razing of 27 residential and animal structures and water tanks on Wednesday in the Palestinian herding community of Humsa al-Bqai’a was the first of its kind since February, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
The Israeli army’s civil administration and forces also confiscated, among other things, food, milk for children, clothes, hygiene materials and toys during the demolition campaign.
The action involved 11 homes for about 70 people, including 36 children, the office said. Animals had no fodder and water as well.
Representatives of OCHA and humanitarian partners visited the community Wednesday evening, but the army on Thursday asked them to leave.
The community rejected a proposal from the Israeli army to move it to a different location, OCHA said, adding that the army moved the residents’ belongings to the proposed site.
Humanitarians said 11 structures donated as humanitarian aid in February following similar demolitions were destroyed or seized by the army during Wednesday’s raid.
“The repeated destruction of their homes and property, including assistance provided by the humanitarian community is having a devastating economic, social and traumatic impact on the community, particularly children,” OCHA warned.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres voiced his deep concern over the demolition of property in the herding community, Stephane Dujarric, the chief spokesman for Guterres, stated.
“He reiterates his call on the Israeli authorities to cease demolitions and seizures of Palestinian property in the occupied West Bank,” Dujarric added in a regular briefing.
“Such actions are contrary to international law and could undermine the chances for the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state,” he read a statement issued by Guterres.
Ex-Mossad chief becomes head of new Saudi-backed SoftBank office: Report
Press TV – July 10, 2021
Yossi Cohen, the former chief of Israeli spy agency Mossad, is becoming head of the new office of the Saudi-backed conglomerate SoftBank in Israel, a report says.
Citing unnamed sources, the Israeli business newspaper Globes reported on Friday that SoftBank, a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company led by Masayoshi Son, was appointing Cohen to head its new office in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Back in May 2017, Tokyo-based SoftBank and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF), which is the Arab kingdom’s main sovereign wealth fund, jointly created the Softbank Vision Fund. The joint venture is the world’s largest technology-focused private equity fund with a capital of $93 billion.
Having invested huge sums into companies such as Uber, Alibaba, and TikTok, SoftBank is seen as the world’s leading technology fund.
This is the second investment giant within three months to open a representative office in Israel, after Blackstone.
According to the daily, although Cohen does not have a background in investment, he is a well-known and popular figure in Israel, capable of connecting to Israeli entrepreneurs and opening doors for them in any company, government, or public authority in any territory.
His duties would include managing SoftBank’s activity in the occupied Palestinian territories and looking for investments.
Cohen has served as the head of Mossad since January 2016. He has reportedly served as former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy for various tasks. Netanyahu reportedly sees him as his preferred successor.
Cohen played an important role in the Israeli regime’s normalization deals with a number of Arab states. He traveled to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The ex-Mossad chief reportedly joined Netanyahu on a 2020 visit to Saudi Arabia for talks with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
Latest US Sanctions Against Russian Firms Contradict Geneva Summit Statements, Embassy Says
Sputnik – 09.07.2021
The latest sanctions imposed by the United States against Russian companies contradicts the Geneva summit statements that call for normalization of bilateral relations, the Russian Embassy in Washington said in a statement.
“This is another confrontational step as part of Washington’s deliberate efforts to restrict the access of domestic enterprises to high-precision technologies from abroad,” the statement said on Friday. “This fundamentally contradicts with the statements of the United States authorities, including during the summit in Geneva, about the need to normalize the entire range of bilateral relations.”
The US government blacklisted 34 foreign entities, including 23 from China, in connection to the situation in the Xinjiang province as well as six companies from Russia for procurement of military electronic components, according to the Commerce Department ruling published on Monday.
“We paid attention to the conclusion of the Commerce Department. It concerns export control lists, which included Moscow firms working with microelectronics,” the Russian Embassy said. “At the same time, the American side again did not provide any specifics as to which violations were revealed.”
Most Chinese companies added to the economic blacklist “have been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” according to the ruling. However, China has routinely denied any wrongdoing.
The Russian entities found themselves on the US black list due to their alleged involvement in the procurement of US-made electronic components which are deemed by Washington as capable of advancing Russian military programs, according to the document.
The Commerce Department blacklisted three Russian companies, OOO Teson, OOO Trade-Component, and Radiant Group of Companies, along with three individuals, Andrey Kuznetsov, Dmitry Kravchenko, and Margarita Kuznetsova.
Other additions to the blacklist include entities from Canada, Iran, Lebanon, Netherlands, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
Facebook’s desire for you to report your friends is the latest alarming step in its bid to take over the world
By Ramsha Afridi | RT | July 9, 2021
A test of a new feature that asks users to report friends they suspect may be becoming an extremist has been greeted with horror from Facebook users. It’s a bizarre precedent that we should all be concerned about.
Over the past few days, some Facebook users have reported seeing prompts asking them if they are concerned that someone they know might be becoming an extremist. Other users are being notified they may have been exposed to extremist content as they were naively reading political articles or watching videos on the platform.
Screenshots of the alerts have surfaced on social media.
Understandably, the move has shocked users. US representative for Colorado Lauren Boebart ironically tweeted, “Facebook just warned me that I may have been subjected to extremist content and asked me to report anyone I may know that is becoming an extremist. I have more than 200 coworkers I need to report.”
In a bid to calm concerns, Facebook issued a statement about the testing. It read, “This test is part of our larger work to assess ways to provide resources and support to people on Facebook who may have engaged with or were exposed to extremist content, or may know someone who is at risk.”
Ultimately, what this means is that if the policy is implemented, Facebook is quite literally going to encourage people to report their friends for committing thought crimes. Even worse, Facebook will punish its own users who may have potentially committed wrongthink.
It’s quite the dystopia Facebook is leading us through, and begs the question: has society, as a whole, got to the point where reporting friends can be deemed as appropriate? And are we becoming docile and easier to control?
For example, individuals’ thoughts on issues such as mass migration should be free to be expressed on Facebook without fear of consequences. It is worrying that what could be interpreted as codes of political correctness are being implemented across the platform.
This is especially problematic as big tech like Facebook and the other giants are now the new public square. And the immense power they hold means they are behaving like monopolies. This raises the important question of why they are apparently involving themselves in the political opinions of its users.
Facebook’s claim that it is aiming to clamp down on “extremist content” by using new policies is questionable. In an era dominated by woke thinking, “extremist content” could mean anything, from something mildly offensive to a crude joke. So, the term is too subjective and vague, as the platform provides little indication of what it considers to be “extremist content”.
Of course, most of us do not want to witness extremist content or hateful behaviour. However, policing people in this way is a slippery slope, especially in a society where we value freedom of speech and diversity of opinions.
This is especially pertinent as Facebook is a powerful platform used by more than a third of the planet’s population, which has bestowed owner Mark Zuckerberg with massive influence and power. He essentially controls the timelines and newsfeeds of 2.7 billion people. Ultimately, in future it could be that in order to be allowed to use the platforms, one must completely oblige Facebook’s policies revolving around speech, which presumably will be determined by Zuckerberg. This is a chilling prospect and precedent.
Thankfully, the bizarre behaviour is being called out by some prominent people. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters slammed Zuckerberg during a recent press conference, describing Facebook’s policies as “insidious movement… to take over absolutely everything.” He’s absolutely right.
The truth of the matter is that Zuckerberg, who is now the fifth richest man in the world, probably has more influence over what information the masses are able to read and watch than any publication or media entity.
Facebook’s sharp algorithms are able to direct its billions of users towards any idea, organisation or partisan ideology in an instant. This power is immense. And its ability to effectively censor people, no matter how influential, has been seen in its treatment of President Trump.
It’s unclear how Facebook went from being a fun, quirky website to socialise on to being such a powerful player in the age of information. Day by day, it really does seem strange that tech oligarchs want to control our posts on their platforms by policing content.
What’s next? Could Facebook socially engineer the timelines of people suspected of being ‘extremists’ by the company itself? Who knows? Who thought we’d be where we are now?
If you don’t believe that Facebook’s latest test policy is a dangerously worrying precedent in a free society in 2021, then it is time to wake up.
Ramsha Afridi is a writer and a journalist based in the UK, she has written for publications such as the Telegraph and the Daily Express amongst others.
Trump was spied on, so why not Tucker? There is no room for dissent in Our Democracy
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | July 8, 2021
Tucker Carlson is far more dangerous to the US media-political establishment than President Donald Trump was, and they pulled out all the stops to get rid of him. Now they’re going after the Fox News host using the same methods.
Wednesday’s revelation – in the Washington political gossip outlet Axios – that Carlson was emailing “Kremlin intermediaries” in order to set up an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin indirectly confirmed his claim that the National Security Agency (NSA) had read his emails and was leaking them to the press.
The same people who initially outright dismissed the notion and cited the NSA non-denial of Carlson’s claims are now in the process of regrouping to argue that sure, OK, the spying happened but it was legitimate – because Russia! Hardly surprising, given that they spent the past several years promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory.
This is the position of Democrats and their allies in the nominally Republican camp – the Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, Lincoln Project crowd. Most Republicans, meanwhile, are outraged and pointing out that spying on Carlson is unconstitutional and an attack on press freedom. They’re correct. They’re also missing the point.
Press freedom and constitutional constraints are quaint relics of the old republic, which has been taken over by something called Our Democracy, gradually and then suddenly over the course of the past year. This new regime cares less about what is being done, and more about who is doing it to whom. Those designated as virtuous can do no wrong, and those designated as villains can do no right. Uneven application of the law in the name of “equity” and social justice is a feature in Our Democracy, not a bug.
Most importantly, Our Democracy is built on narratives, which override observable reality. One dares to notice that – much less point out – at own risk.
Which brings us to Carlson. The formerly bowtie-sporting establishment conservative got his start in the now-defunct (and unlamented) Weekly Standard in the 1990s. He spent the aughts hosting shows on CNN and MSNBC, and founded the Daily Caller in 2010. It wasn’t until 2015 that his current show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, began airing on Fox.
Since then, he has become the undisputed ratings king of primetime cable TV, the most-watched evening opinion host in America. But while his follow-on colleague Sean Hannity has featured a lineup of Republican politicians – and Trump himself on more than one occasion – Carlson ditched the bowtie and turned to ordinary Americans.
Circumstantial evidence suggested that Trump paid attention to Carlson, and the host’s strong opposition on certain issues – the 2018 strikes against Syria, for example – has reportedly served to anchor the White House from drifting too far into neoconservative waters. He also emerged as one of the leading critics of coronavirus lockdowns, featuring as guests a number of small business owners who were ruined by them.
In other words, Carlson was doing what the media are supposed to do in a republic – be watchdogs who bring attention to political issues, thereby keeping the authorities in check. That, however, is not the media’s job in Our Democracy, where they serve as guard dogs of the regime instead. People who appeared on his show ended up being even more viciously persecuted by Democrat governors, as an example to others. It was only a matter of time before it would be Carlson’s own turn.
Which brings us to the present day, and the revelation that the NSA spied on Carlson’s emails. The details of how aren’t yet clear. It could have been through a FISA warrant, the way the FBI spied on Trump’s campaign and the first year of presidency, falsely claiming Carter Page was a “Russian agent” and citing the fraudulent, Democrat-funded Steele Dossier as evidence. Or it could have been through incidental spying on a foreign citizen he was emailing, but with Carlson’s name illegally “unmasked” and leaked to the press – the same way Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn was set up in early 2017.
To borrow a phrase from Hillary Clinton, what difference at this point does it make? Only one of the people involved in ‘Spygate’ was ever punished for it – with a slap on the wrist, no less – while the rest went on to become heroes of the Resistance. Ditto with the railroading of Flynn. Having successfully spied on and sabotaged an existing president, why wouldn’t they go after a cable TV host?
Moreover, Americans who get their news from CNN or MSNBC don’t know about any of this, and think these are Republican conspiracy theories – unlike the Russiagate fantasy that Trump was a Kremlin agent and Russia somehow “hacked our democracy” in 2016, which they believe is 100% real.
Carlson’s ratings and popularity have enabled him to resist many attempts at cancellation over the years, from activists brigading his advertisers to the ADL outright misrepresenting his words. His censorious competition at CNN has tried to compare Carlson to Alex Jones, whom they led the charge in deplatforming back in 2018, and even Trump himself. Clownish as all that sounded, with the involvement of the Biden administration and its spy agencies it now becomes ominous.
Whether the objective is to intimidate Fox into canceling Carlson, or pressure him to renounce himself and bend the knee, the media-political complex behind Our Democracy is counting on getting away with it. After all, they’ve done it before.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Telegram @TheNebulator
Fearmongers Try One Last Desperate Trick
By Tom Woods | Principia Scientific | July 9, 2021
Something very weird happened yesterday, even by the standard of the COVID crazies.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the end of masking and social distancing requirements as of July 19.
Shortly afterward, someone on Twitter warned that this was a bad move:
“My brother has just tested positive for Covid. The delta variant. He has been double jabbed. How on earth can Johnson go ahead with relaxing the rules on the 19th July? It’s madness.”
Now before you start thinking of replies to this person — and there are many — I want you to notice something. Apparently this guy has a lot of brothers:
Well, whatever happens to this guy, at least he’ll have a big family by his side!
CDC Adds Over 2000 Deaths Associated with COVID-19 Shots in One Week & 917 Unborn Baby Deaths
By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | July 9, 2021
The U.S. CDC released more data today in their Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines, and they added more than 2000 deaths following COVID-19 shots over what they reported last week.
Last week they were reporting 6,985 deaths, and this week that number jumped up to 9,048.
This is by far the largest increase of recorded deaths in one week since they started reporting deaths following COVID-19 shots.
Source
Besides the 9,048 deaths, there are 7,463 permanent disabilities, 56,971 Emergency Room visits, 26,818 Hospitalizations, and 7,822 Life Threatening injuries following the COVID-19 injections.
And yet, none of this government data will be reported in any corporate media news broadcast, and those who try to post it on the Big Tech social media sites will be flagged for “fake news” by the “fact checkers.”
These are not even the true numbers, as the CDC selectively chooses what to release to the public each week, and of course many deaths and injuries go unreported because the public is conditioned to believe that none of these deaths and injuries have anything to do with the COVID-19 shots.
To put this into perspective, there are now 30% more deaths recorded in 7 months since the launch of the COVID-19 shots in December of 2020, than during the entire 31-year history of VAERS recording deaths following vaccines since it started in 1990.
1990 to November 2020: 6,145 deaths following ALL VACCINES. (Source.)
December 2020 to July 2, 2021: 9,048 deaths from COVID-19 shots only. (Source.)
Deaths of Unborn Babies Much Higher than Originally Thought
Last week we reported 622 deaths of unborn children when the pregnant mother received a COVID-19 injection. Using the same search parameters, that number increased to 803 cases this week. (Source.)
However, deaths recorded in the age group of 12-15 have not really increased yet according to the data that the CDC is releasing, so I began to look at the deaths in the “unknown” age group to see if there were some there. I did find a couple, but what I also found was that there were other “symptoms” that the VAERS data uses that do NOT include the term “abortion” when reporting deaths of unborn children in pregnant mothers who took the shots.
So I noted those symptoms, such as “Foetal death, Premature baby death, Stillbirth,” etc., and the deaths increased from 803 to 917. (Source.) And it is very possible I am still missing some, not to mention the ones that never get reported, or if they are reported, are not released by the CDC.
Of the 9,048 deaths the CDC recorded, 3,073 of those deaths are listed as age “unknown.” (Source.)
Trying a few different searches among this “unknown” age group, I did find a 13-year-old boy who died, and a curious entry of an 11-year-old girl who died and where the “family who got vaccinated died along with their dog due to have been being exposed to the members who got vaccinated.”
VAERS ID: 1440065 – Write-up: died three days after Covid vaccination; Autopsy showed enlarged heart and fluid surrounding the heart; Autopsy showed enlarged heart and fluid surrounding the heart; This is a spontaneous report from a contactable consumer or other non-health care professional in response to mail sent regarding the confirmation of below mentioned query. A 13-year-old male patient received second dose of bnt162b2 (PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 mRNA VACCINE, Formulation: Solution for injection, Batch/Lot number and Expiration date not reported) via an unspecified route of administration in an unspecified anatomical location on an unspecified date as single dose for COVID-19 immunisation. The patient medical history and concomitant medications were not reported. The patient previously received first dose of bnt162b2 (PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 mRNA VACCINE, Formulation: Solution for injection, Batch/Lot number and Expiration date not reported) via an unspecified route of administration in an unspecified anatomical location on an unspecified date as single dose for COVID-19 immunisation. On an unspecified date, the patient after receiving his second Covid vaccine from Pfizer died three days later. The patient underwent lab tests and procedures which included autopsy: enlarged heart and fluid surrounding the heart caused by the Covid vaccination. The outcome of the events was fatal. No follow-up attempts are possible; information about lot/batch number cannot be obtained.; Reported Cause(s) of Death: enlarged heart and fluid surrounding the heart.
VAERS ID: 1320319 – Write-up: Girl”s family who got vaccinated died along with their dog due to have been being exposed to the members who got vaccinated; 11 year old, pre-period, girls family who got vaccinated; This is a spontaneous report from a contactable consumer. A 11-years-old patient of an unspecified gender received BNT162B2 (PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE), via an unspecified route of administration on an unspecified date (Batch/Lot number was not reported) as single dose for covid-19 immunisation. The patient medical history and concomitant medications were not reported. The reporter reported that 11 year old, pre-period, girls family who got vaccinated died along with their dog due to have been being exposed to the members who got vaccinated. The patient died on an unspecified date. It was not reported if an autopsy was performed. The lot/batch number has been requested; Reported Cause(s) of Death: Girl”s family who got vaccinated died along with their dog due to have been being exposed to the members who got vaccinated.
18-year-old Camilla Canepa died in Italy following the AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot
Neurosurgeon Who Operated on 18-year-old Girl: “I had never seen a brain reduced in those conditions by a thrombosis so extensive and so serious”.
On June 15th this year we published the story of Camilla Canepa, the 18-year-old Italian woman who developed blood clots and was dead two weeks after experimental AstraZeneca shot. The full story was originally published on The COVID Blog.
Her death shocked the community where she lived so much, that a criminal investigation was started, and Italy changed its policy on the AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot limiting it to only people over the age of 60.
The neurosurgeon who operated on her brain has since spoken out, and English translations of what he stated have been circulating through the alternative media this week.
I found an original source from Italy that reported this, and here is the translation, courtesy of DeepL.
The death of Camilla Canepa has shocked the whole of Italy, so much so that after the death of the 18-year-old girl from Sestri Levante as a result of thrombosis emerged a few days after the administration of the vaccine AstraZeneca the Ministry of Health has decided to ban the product against Covid to those under 60 years.
Waiting for the autopsy on the body of the young woman that will be carried out on Tuesday, to speak to La Stampa is Gianluigi Zona, director of the neurosurgical and neurotraumatology clinic of the San Martino Hospital in Genoa: “I had never seen a brain reduced in those conditions by a thrombosis so extensive and so serious”.
“Reasoning in retrospect – explains the doctor on the controversy for the lack of immediate intervention on Camilla – it’s all easy and everyone is a world champion, the last doctor who comes to see a patient is always the smartest.
I can’t judge what could have been picked up already in the first CT scan, it never arrived at San Martino. Normally, if there are no clues that lead to assume something serious is going on, no doctor in the emergency room prescribes a CT scan with contrast or other tests.”
The situation was immediately serious once the operation began: “All the venous sinuses were blocked by thrombi, a scenario that I had never seen in many years of this profession. You have to imagine the venous sinus as the river in the middle of a valley in which several streams converge.
If you build a dam in the middle of the river, the river swells and at that point the tributaries cannot discharge, with the result that the upstream pressure rises. In front of the picture I saw in the head of that girl, it is clear that – concludes the head physician – we are facing something not normal”. (Source.)
Life Will Be Very Different For The Have Jabs & The Have Nots
By Richie Allen | July 10, 2021
The Times newspaper is claiming this morning, that vaccine passports or covid certificates will be a condition of entry to pubs nightclubs and restaurants this Autumn. The paper reports:
Entertainment venues in England would be forced to make customers use so-called vaccination passports from autumn, to prove that they had either had both doses or a negative test the day before.
Recent figures have shown a reduction in the take-up of vaccines with first doses halving in two weeks. Fewer than 100,000 a day are being given out on average for the first time since April.
The government will justify the draconian measure by claiming that it is necessary to prevent a fourth wave of coronavirus overwhelming the NHS this Winter.
Government ministers have told The Times that by mid-September all over-18’s will have had the chance to be double jabbed. According to The Times :
Another government figure added: “If we can show real benefits of getting vaccinated in terms of everyday life then it could be quite a useful tool.”
I did call this early last year, before anyone had ever heard of a vaccine passport. I said that in the very near future people would need to prove that they were safe in order to travel or to socialise.
When vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi said that the UK wasn’t “the sort of country to introduce such measures,” I said he was lying. It’s open tyranny now. Yet there will be very little outrage and lots of compliance.
This isn’t a dystopian novel. It’s life now. Your government is telling you that unless you submit yourself for regular injections and constant testing, you cannot leave the country and are forbidden to socialise.
Life will be very different for the have jabs and the have nots. If I thought that they would leave the have nots alone, I could live with it. But they won’t. The coercion will continue. They will not accept that we won’t surrender to the jab.
The question is, how far will they go?
Covid and the death of independent thought
By Elephant City | The Conservative Woman | July 10, 2021
The most depressing thing about the last 17 months is not what our governments have done. I have always expected governments to be corrupt and inept. They are merely acting in character. No, the truly depressing thing about the last 17 months is how people have acted, in particular, my family and friends.
My parents are practising Christians who marched against the Vietnam War and got arrested for protesting at nuclear submarine bases. They raised me to believe that the elites controlled the world and acted through intelligence agencies such as the CIA. They considered it self-evident that such ‘deep state’ actors killed John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. My siblings and I all absorbed the idea that the highest calling in life was to fight the tyranny of the wealthy over the common people.
I took this worldview with me. I sought out friends who appeared to share these values and whose intellects I respected. We spent countless late nights, over great quantities of beer, trying to peer behind the curtain to figure out exactly who ran the show. We went to New York City to participate in a No Nukes demonstration. I remember looking at my friends on the train back home: I thought, ‘We are the people.’ I felt lucky to have such good allies in this world. I was sure that they would stand beside me in the trenches should our country ever be threatened by tyranny.
All that said, I was neither naïve nor overly idealistic. On the contrary, as an adult, I was deeply cynical, at least about worldly institutions. But I had faith in the inherent goodness of people, the durability of common sense, and the wisdom of my friends and family, and my people in general.
In the last year and a half, this faith in humanity has been completely shattered, and that has shaken me to the core.
My parents have drunk deeply at the well of government propaganda. Despite the fact that their son’s business (mine) has been destroyed and their grandchildren’s education and social lives ruined, they cannot bring themselves to utter a peep of protest. They’ve accepted the closing of churches with perfect equanimity, apparently unaware that had the early Christians been so cowardly in their faith, Christianity would never have survived long enough for them to become Christian in the first place. They’ve acquiesced to the sacrifice (‘vaccination’) of children to ‘protect’ the elderly.
When presented with facts and data that contradict the mainstream narrative, my parents and siblings react with real anger. They refuse to discuss any of it. Years ago, even if we disagreed about a topic, we could discuss it without it threatening our relationship. Not any more. They don’t want to hear anything that goes against the media narrative.
As for my group of 20 or so close friends, most of them either ardently support the mainstream narrative or simply can’t be bothered to oppose it. They’ve not only accepted the theft of their most basic freedoms, they defend that theft.
These same guys who used to treat the mainstream media with healthy suspicion now parrot their talking points without a hint of irony. They seem completely unaware that the mainstream media have undergone a drastic transformation in the last five years, changing from sources of information to strident propaganda organs broadcasting a steady narrative of divisive woke talking points designed to split the masses into warring groups, while a tiny elite solidifies their control of the world’s wealth. They’ve gone from deriding the mainstream media as consent-manufacturing organs of the Machine to having a childlike faith in the latest pronouncements of Big Brother.
People I knew to be filled with curiosity and hungry for knowledge now display a kind of allergic reaction to any new information. Faced with something from outside the mainstream narrative, their reaction ranges from annoyance to outrage.
Only three of my close friends have resisted the Covid narrative. We’ve engaged in a running battle with our group about the latest abomination committed in the name of fighting Covid-19, but we’ve made no headway. We’ve finally come to the conclusion that no argument, however clever, and no data set, however telling, would change their minds. They are beyond reach.
We keep falling back on the metaphor of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a 1956 sci-fi film remade in 1978 in which the human race is taken over by an interstellar virus: the people around us look the same as they did, but something is different. They aren’t there any more; the lights have gone out. Where common sense and reason once prevailed, there is now nothing but mindless repetition of talking points from the mainstream media. What happened to these people?
The most depressing thing is the utter shabbiness of the deception that has fooled my friends, family and countrymen. Satan is often portrayed as attractive, urbane and intelligent. It would be natural that people would be taken in by such a beguiling personality. We could forgive people for falling for his blandishments. But to see them fooled by a gang of such third-rate charlatans really boggles the mind. I mean, look at them: that creepy waxy cadaver, Joe Biden; the evil homunculus, Anthony Fauci; that crooked schoolboy, Matt Hancock; and that carefully calculated rumpled act of Boris Johnson. The merest glimpse of any of them sets my bullsh*t alarms ringing.
And the story they’ve swallowed! A few low-budget clips from China of people collapsing in the streets and endlessly recycled shots of lines of ambulances and crowded ICUs. People have completely ignored their own experience. Does this look like a pandemic? Where are the field hospitals crowded with dead and dying? Where are the mass graves? Where are the trucks calling for us to ‘bring out the dead’? Without the internet and mass media, not a soul on earth would think anything out of the ordinary was happening.
I’ve always attributed to humanity a certain animal intelligence and strength of character. But faced with a third-rate propaganda production delivered by a shoddy cast of charlatans, our most ‘educated’ people have shown all the discernment and mental acuity of the gormless rubes at a professional wrestling match. They’ve given up their most important freedoms and allowed their own children to be tortured, injured and killed without raising a finger in their defence.
The most telling realisation of the last 17 months is this: the mass of people are incredibly easy to propagandise and brainwash. Indeed, they seem to hunger for it, even at the expense of their own lives and those of their children.
I honestly thought we were better people. I thought that common sense, fair play and humanity were our default settings. I didn’t think that sheep-like obedience and cowardice were our deepest traits. But, the last 17 months have disabused me of this belief. And I don’t think I’ll ever recover from that loss.
Now, faced with ever more immersive media and more addictive and manipulative technology, all of it controlled and owned by sociopathic billionaires, I truly despair for our future. I keep thinking of the refrain from Ohio by Neil Young: ‘We are finally on our own.’
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Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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Aletho News- Iranians Want Revenge /Sulaiman Ahmed
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- No Tricks Zone
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