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Truthstream Media | August 10, 2024

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August 10, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

JOHN OLIVER RECYCLES GARBAGE VACCINE MISINFORMATION

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 8, 2024

HBO funnyman and vaccine shill, John Oliver, made another attempt this week on his show to amplify the mainstream vaccine safety narrative, citing the same studies he referred to in a similar segment on his show in 2017. Del once again destroys his stale, recycled misinformation.

August 9, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the Problem of Torture

By Andrew P. Napolitano | Ron Paul Institute | August 8, 2024

In the months following the attacks of 9/11, the government laid the blame for orchestrating them on Osama bin Ladin. Then, after it murdered bin Ladin, the government decided that the true mastermind was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

By the time of bin Ladin’s death, Mohammed had already been tortured by CIA agents for three years at various black sites and charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder, to be tried before an American military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Mohammed and four other alleged conspirators have been awaiting trial since their arrivals at Gitmo in 2006. Since then, numerous government military and civilian prosecutors, as well as numerous military judges, have rotated into and out of the case. Two weeks ago, the government and the defendants agreed to a guilty plea in return for life in prison at Gitmo. Then, last week, the Department of Defense abruptly changed its mind and rescinded its approval of the guilty pleas.

Here is the backstory.

The concept of military tribunals for the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks was born in the administration of President George W. Bush, who argued that the attacks, though conducted by civilians on civilians, were of military magnitude and thus warranted a military response. Throughout the entire 22-year existence of the U.S. military prison at Gitmo, no one has been tried for causing or carrying out the crimes of 9/11. The government tried only one person for crimes related to 9/11. That was Zacarias Moussaoui, who pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to conspiracy for being the 20th hijacker and then was tried in a penalty phase trial where the jury chose life in prison.

Bush’s rationale not only brought us the fruitless and destructive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; it also brought a host of legal problems unforeseen by Bush and his revenge-over-justice colleagues. The first legal issue was conspiracy. Since Mohammed did not carry out the attacks, he could only be charged with planning them. But conspiracy is not a war crime, and thus no military tribunal could hear the case. So Congress came up with a historic first — a military tribunal that would try civilian crimes.

The next issue was where to try Mohammed and his colleagues. President Barack Obama wanted to close Gitmo, which costs $540 million annually, and try Mohammed and the others in federal courts. This would have been consistent with federal law and the U.S. Constitution. But Republicans in Congress viewed Mohammed as too dangerous to bring onto U.S. soil, and so Congress enacted legislation that prohibits the removal of Mohammed and the others to the U.S. for any purpose.

The prohibition on removal means that any life terms would need to be spent at Gitmo. It also means that there would be a legal obstacle to the execution of a death sentence, as Gitmo is not equipped to execute anyone.

Most troubling, however, is the government’s problem of how to address the issue of torture. Bush believed that military men on military juries would neither cringe at torture nor hesitate to impose a death sentence. Yet, when defendants at Gitmo, in non-9/11-related cases, described the torture that CIA agents and military officials had inflicted upon them, military jurors were repulsed at what they heard and recommended clemency even for those who caused deaths.

These events — filing legally baseless charges, prohibiting the removal of civilian defendants to civilian courts, and fear of the likely reaction of military jurors to testimony about torture — caused the prosecution team to rethink the entire idea of putting Mohammed on trial, and thus in March 2022, the government initiated secret plea-bargaining negotiations with defense counsel.

In large measure, government prosecutors — now the fourth team since 2006 — recognized that Bush’s torturers had so brutalized the defendants that their so-called voluntary confessions would likely be tossed by the trial judge or rejected by a jury. Moreover, there are serious ethical issues when lawyers defend torture — so serious that it could jeopardize their careers.

Why would the government agree to such a plea bargain for the persons it claims are the monsters who murdered 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and triggered all the horrors that followed those murders? What does the government fear?

What does it always fear? THE TRUTH.

Since the trial judge — the fourth judge on the case — had already accepted the guilty pleas before the DoD changed its mind, it is unclear if he will enforce them.

If he does not, one day there will be a trial. At trial, the defendants will be permitted to bring the government’s imperialistic wars, its tortures and its foreknowledge of 9/11 into the courtroom. The government knows that much of its behavior — from the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of a popularly elected prime minister of Iran in the early 1950s to the untruthful excuses for toppling Saddam Hussein — will show American foreign policy at its imperialistic and violent worst.

And the hours and weeks and months and years of repeated torture — all of it criminal — will undermine the case against Mohammed and the others.

This is what happens when the fabric of our legal system is interfered with for authoritarian reasons. The tragedy of 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch. What did the CIA know before 9/11? Bush compounded his ignorance and failures with boasts of bravado and torture — all of which have come back to haunt his current successor in the White House.

Defense and Justice Department lawyers have recognized that they cannot try this case without material damage to the scheme of American empire, built on death, lies and torture, without revealing the names and methods of the folks who did these horrible deeds and the lies of the presidents who authorized them — and without the truth coming out at last.

What good has come from Bush’s torturers? None.

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

August 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Be Careful What You Say

How honesty leads to the trauma of unnecessary psychiatric hospitalization

Involuntary Commitment and Forced Mental Health Treatment Violate Human Rights

By Dr. Roger McFillin | Radically Genuine | August 8, 2024

Picture a soul in turmoil, wrapped in the suffocating embrace of despair. In the sanctuary of a therapist’s office, they finally find the courage to voice the unspeakable:

“Sometimes, I think about not being here anymore.”

The words hang heavy in the air, a testament to the crushing weight of their pain, loneliness, and emptiness. This confession, born from a place of vulnerability and trust, should be the beginning of a deeper healing journey.

During these intense emotional struggles, it’s important to understand that thoughts of escape, including suicide, are a common human response to overwhelming pain. There’s a vast chasm between contemplating an end to suffering and actively planning to end one’s life.

Context is everything.

The mind, overwhelmed by anguish, may grasp at any perceived exit, including the idea of nonexistence. But voicing these thoughts doesn’t signal imminent danger. Rather, it’s often a cry for understanding, a desperate reach for connection in the depths of isolation.

Skilled and experienced therapists understand this.

The very act of sharing these dark musings with a trusted professional can be profoundly cathartic. It’s in these raw, unfiltered moments that true therapy has the potential to work its magic. A skilled therapist, one who can navigate these turbulent waters without succumbing to panic, becomes a lifeline. They offer not just a listening ear, but a steady hand to guide the patient through the storm, helping them to contextualize their pain and find hope in the midst of despair. This is the essence of healing – not in avoiding the darkness, but in facing it together, unafraid.

Fast forward to mental healthcare in 2024.

As the demand for mental health services skyrockets, we’re witnessing a disturbing trend: the proliferation of ill-equipped therapists flooding the market. What was once a skilled profession has, in many cases, devolved into little more than paid listening.

The rise of virtual therapy platforms, while increasing accessibility, has created a cohort of isolated practitioners. Lured by the promise of higher profits without the overhead of a physical office, many therapists now find themselves cut off from the vital support networks of supervisors and mentors. Without this crucial guidance, they’re left to navigate treacherous emotional waters alone, often defaulting to a “cover your ass” mentality when confronted with challenging situations.

Simultaneously, as large hospital networks muscle into the mental health arena, therapy is increasingly reduced to an appendage of psychiatry. The nuanced art of healing is replaced by a simplistic “take your pills and manage your mental illness” approach. This medicalization of human suffering is fundamentally dehumanizing, reducing complex emotional states to mere chemical imbalances.

The consequences of this shift are stark. Individuals brave enough to voice thoughts of death are no longer met with understanding, but with fear. Their pain is hastily labeled as emerging “mental illness,” triggering a rigid psychiatric protocol that leads to overmedicalization and unnecessary hospitalization.

“I want you to go to the emergency room”

The knee-jerk mantra of risk-averse therapists and doctors who’ve been brainwashed to treat every fleeting suicidal thought like a ticking time bomb.

They herd the emotionally vulnerable into sterile, overpriced hospital rooms, mistaking cold fluorescent lights and paper gowns for actual care. It’s a convenient way to abdicate responsibility, slap a band-aid on deep-seated pain, and pad the pockets of our broken healthcare system – all while patting themselves on the back for “saving lives.”

A Rise In Psychiatric Hospitalizations

The U.S. mental health care system is at a breaking point, buckling under the weight of an insatiable demand for inpatient care. Recent federal data, as reported by CBS News, reveals a system in crisis: hospitals and clinics are operating at a staggering 144% capacity for inpatient psychiatric beds. This alarming statistic, courtesy of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), exposes the raw nerve of a long-festering problem – a dire shortage of psychiatric inpatient facilities.

Yet, this begs a crucial question: Is this surge in demand a genuine need, or merely a symptom of a more insidious systemic failure?

The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a long shadow over youth mental health, with alarming consequences. A recent study comparing mental health emergency admissions among young people before and after the outbreak reveals a disturbing trend. In the two years following March 2020, youth psychiatric emergencies surged by an astonishing 116.7% compared to the same period in 2018-2020. Even more concerning, this new wave of patients skewed younger and were less likely to have prior psychiatric histories.

These findings suggest a troubling shift: the pandemic appears to have triggered new, earlier onset psychiatric manifestations in previously unaffected youth. Moreover, these emergencies lead to psychiatric drugs as a matter of course.

Which leads to worsening outcomes.

Primary Care Driving Hospitalizations

The mental health crisis among youth has been sensationalized to a dangerous degree, leading to misguided interventions that may do more harm than good. In pediatric offices across the country the use of quick, invalid screening measures that reduce complex emotional states to simple checkboxes is the primary assessment approach. These cursory assessments, administered by primary care doctors ill-equipped to handle nuanced mental health concerns, are causing undue panic.

A single checked box on these questionable screening measures can set off a chain reaction of fear-mongering, with parents being urgently directed to emergency rooms for what may be nothing more than typical teenage angst or temporary emotional struggles. This knee-jerk approach not only overwhelms emergency services unnecessarily but also risks pathologizing normal developmental experiences.

The media’s portrayal of primary care doctors drowning in a youth mental health crisis obscures a more insidious reality: these physicians, despite their best intentions, are conducting mental health evaluations in alarmingly short timeframes without the proper training to contextualize their findings.

The result is a perfect storm of misunderstanding, where the vulnerability and complex emotions inherent to adolescence are stripped of their context and hastily labeled as mental health emergencies. This approach not only fails to address the real needs of struggling youth but also potentially traumatizes families and clogs a healthcare system already stretched to its limits.

Even if these youth are not hospitalized they are going to placed on a drug that will at least double the risk of suicide, if not more. Lexapro is often prescribed despite the 6-fold increase in suicide risk!

The Trauma of Psychiatric Detention

When desperate parents drag a sullen teenager to the ER, or a vulnerable adult finds themselves cornered by an ER social worker, a grim dance begins. The fluorescent-lit stage is set for a performance of “crisis management theater,” where real human suffering collides with bureaucratic checklists and liability concerns.

Parents, gripped by fear that their child might take their own life, often feel coerced into consenting to psychiatric hospitalization and medication. This fear becomes a potent weapon wielded by hospital staff, despite the lack of evidence that such interventions actually prevent suicide.

Ironically, within academic circles, it’s widely acknowledged that these very interventions may increase the likelihood of suicide. This grim reality makes a perverse kind of sense: patients are prescribed powerful, mood-altering drugs and then discharged back into the very circumstances that initially drove them to contemplate suicide.

The experience of psychiatric detention is frequently described as traumatizing. Patients are stripped of their dignity – quite literally during invasive searches – and their autonomy, as their phones and personal belongings are confiscated. Many report being treated like cattle by burned-out, unprofessional staff.

Young women often feel unsafe, surrounded by men who are also experiencing mental health crises. For women struggling with the aftermath of sexual violence – a common precursor to psychiatric hospitalization – the hospital stay itself can be profoundly re-traumatizing.

This system, designed ostensibly to help, often inflicts further harm. It substitutes genuine care and understanding with a one-size-fits-all approach that prioritizes risk management over true healing. In our rush to “do something,” we’ve created a revolving door of trauma, where those seeking help often emerge more damaged than when they entered.

When parents, armed with knowledge and a desire to protect their children from potentially harmful interventions, attempt to resist the pressure to medicate, they’re often met with a dismissive and exasperated “What do you want us to do then?”

It exposes a mental health apparatus that has become reliant on the false promise of quick-fix pharmaceutical solutions, lacking the resources, training, or willingness to explore alternative approaches. This attitude effectively holds families hostage: either accept potentially harmful psychiatric drugs or be left with no support at all.

This false dichotomy – drugs or nothing – is a damning indictment of a system that has lost sight of its purpose. It reveals a profound lack of creativity and compassion in addressing mental health crises. Instead of working collaboratively with families to develop comprehensive, individualized care plans, hospital staff often default to a one-size-fits-all approach that prioritizes expediency over efficacy.

Moreover, this response subtly shifts blame onto the parents, implying that by refusing medication, they’re somehow obstructing their child’s care. It’s a manipulative tactic that exploits parental fear and guilt, further eroding trust between families and mental health providers.

Fear Based Therapy

The mental health industry has a dirty secret: it’s terrified of the patients it claims to help. Therapists, those supposed bastions of understanding and support, turn into protocol-driven robots at the mere whisper of suicide. Gone is the empathy, replaced by a checklist of CYA questions designed more to protect their licenses than to save lives.

This is how they are trained.

This fear-based charade masquerading as care has created a toxic environment where honesty is punished. Patients learn quickly: bare your soul at your own risk. Admit to dark thoughts, and watch your therapist’s eyes glaze over with panic as they mentally rehearse their mandatory reporting script.

In my years of specializing in treating chronically suicidal clients, I’ve witnessed firsthand the deep-seated trauma inflicted not just by their original experiences, but by the very system purporting to help them.

A disturbing pattern emerges, particularly among women survivors of sexual violence. Their acute trauma reactions are frequently misunderstood and hastily misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder or other psychiatric illnesses, leading to a cascade of inappropriate treatments and interventions. The psychiatric hospitalizations that often follow are not just ineffective; they’re actively traumatizing.

When these survivors finally find their way to my office, the damage is palpable. Trust, the very foundation of effective therapy, has been shattered by their previous encounters with mental health professionals. It can take months of patient, careful work to rebuild that trust, to convince them that it’s safe to be open and honest in therapy. This process is painstaking, requiring us to undo layers of iatrogenic harm – harm caused by the very institutions and individuals tasked with healing.

The tragedy here is twofold: not only are these women denied proper care for their actual traumas, but they’re also subjected to a secondary trauma at the hands of a mental health system that fails to recognize the complexities of their experiences. This cycle of misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatment, and subsequent re-traumatization doesn’t just delay healing – it actively impedes it, sometimes for years. Many never recover.

What Genuine Help Looks Like

True healing begins with the compassionate ear of a skilled, experienced therapist who can create a safe space for emotional expression and validation. This approach recognizes a fundamental truth: everything, including emotional pain and suicidal thinking, is temporary. By understanding struggles in their proper context, therapists can help clients navigate their darkest moments without resorting to extreme measures.

A competent therapist knows that most expressions of suicidal thoughts are not declarations of intent, but rather desperate attempts to communicate profound suffering. This nuance, while seemingly obvious, often eludes less experienced or inadequately trained professionals who are paralyzed by fear and uncertainty. Instead of reacting with panic, skilled therapists help clients explore their pain and envision a life worth living, even in the midst of emotional turmoil and trauma.

When someone is in emotional turmoil and suicidal risk is present, truly skilled therapists know that a gentle, personalized approach can make all the difference. Instead of rushing to hospitalization, these compassionate professionals take the time to really listen and understand. They work hand-in-hand with the person in crisis, crafting a safety plan that feels right and makes sense for their unique situation. It’s not about imposing rules, but about finding inner strength and support.

Effective therapy often involves teaching clients how to regulate intense emotions and tolerate distress. This might include techniques drawn from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) or other evidence-based approaches. For many, additional support such as telephone coaching and family-based therapies can create a plan to weather crisis periods. These interventions recognize that suicidal crises tend to be episodic and often resolve when the underlying problems are addressed.

Primary care doctors should not be administering mental health screening measures or prescribing psychiatric drugs for complex emotional issues. Their well-intentioned but misguided interventions often exacerbate the situation, medicalizing normal human experiences and setting patients on a path of unnecessary and harmful treatments.

Working in “mental health” requires patience, understanding, and a willingness to sit with discomfort – both from the client and the therapist. By moving away from a fear-based, reactionary model of care towards one that embraces complexity and prioritizes genuine human connection, we can create a mental health system that truly serves those in need.

When the storm of the mind rages, feel-good therapy buzzwords and empty reassurances are as useful as a paper umbrella in a hurricane. What’s needed isn’t another degree or certification, but something far rarer: the guts to stare unflinchingly into the abyss of another’s pain without flinching. In the end, perhaps the most radical act in modern mental health care is simply having the backbone to shut up, sit down, and bear witness to suffering without trying to sanitize it.

August 8, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Pharma, WHO Team Up to Create Permanent ‘Pandemic’ Market for Mandated, Experimental Vaccines

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 6, 2024

Big Pharma and its key investors are rolling out a new strategy — “the full takeover of the public sector, specifically the World Health Organization (WHO), and the regulatory system that now holds the entire market hostage” — according to a new investigative report by Unlimited Hangout’s Max Jones.

What’s behind the new strategy? The pharmaceutical industry is facing a “patent cliff” by 2030, as many of its blockbuster drugs are set to lose their patent protection, placing $180 billion in sales at risk and threatening to topple the industry.

According to Jones, for years, when patents expired on profitable drugs, pharmaceutical giants deployed a “mergers and acquisitions” strategy, buying up smaller drug companies to add to their product portfolios.

As a result, the industry is now dominated by a handful of companies, conventional chemical drugs exist for most health issues, and the regulatory process for new ones has become onerous.

Big Pharma has now pivoted to acquiring biotech and biologic companies, whose products are “more complex, unpredictable and difficult and expensive to make,” than chemical-based medicine, Jones wrote.

Conventional drugs are chemically synthesized and have a known structure according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Biologics come from living humans, animal or microorganism cells, and are technologically altered to target particular proteins or cells in the immune system. The FDA calls biologics “complex mixtures that are not easily identified or characterized.”

As a drug class, biologics offer an appealing solution to the patent cliff problem, because they can’t be easily replicated like generic versions of conventional drugs.

Instead, producers make “biosimilars,” which unlike genetics can’t simply be interchanged with the original drug during a course of treatment without serious safety risks, according to Jones. And while generics are cheap, biosimilars are still expensive to produce. There also are regulatory hurdles to getting biosimilars to market.

However, Jones wrote, the serious safety issues associated with biologics — the high risk of serious adverse events associated with the COVID-19 vaccine, for example — make it difficult for drugmakers to find commercial success in a conventional regulatory environment.

“Luckily for Big Pharma,” Jones wrote, the WHO and its private backers “are pursuing an unprecedented legal process that would cement loopholes that could solve these significant market challenges of at least some biotechnologies.”

Such loopholes made Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — the paradigmatic example of this new strategy — Big Pharma’s highest-selling annual market success ever.

Distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines to approximately 70% of people globally was possible only because of the “fast-tracked, deregulated development and mandated consumption of the experimental drugs,” Jones wrote.

The industry hopes to replicate that model with other drugs. And it has already begun — last month the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, gave Moderna $176 million to develop an mRNA bird flu vaccine.

Stakeholders behind the WHO have turned it into an arm of Big Pharma

According to Jones, the process of rapidly developed and mandated experimental drugs was first adopted by the U.S. military for bioweapons threats. Now, it is being internationally legitimized by the WHO through the agency’s revisions to the International Health Regulations (IHR) and its continued attempt to push its pandemic treaty.

The amendments were watered down and the treaty was partially thwarted at the last meeting of the World Health Assembly, which ended on June 1. However, the powers added to the amendments and the language in the treaty WHO and its backers are still hoping to advance next year show the type of biotech pandemic market Big Pharma has in the works.

According to Jones, this market:

“Will not be one that depends on the free will of consumers to opt in and out of products — but instead relies on tactics of forced consumption and manipulation of regulatory paradigms.

“At the forefront of this push are the WHO’s public-private-partners/private stakeholders, who directly shape and benefit from this policy. Their influence has, in effect, turned the WHO into an arm of Big Pharma, one so powerful that it already demonstrated its ability to morph the entire international regulatory process for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

These stakeholders can wield this power in part because the WHO receives 80% of its funding from private stakeholders.

Those stakeholders include private-sector giants like Bill Gates, his public-private partnership organizations like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and public-sector bureaucrats, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and Rick Bright, Ph.D., of BARDA and the Rockefeller Foundation, who have been working for years to create a new system that would speed up vaccine production.

During the COVID-19 pandemic period, even states that lacked legal structures to provide emergency authorization for new drugs created them, using the WHO’s Emergency Use Listing Procedure (EUL) as justification, and aided by the WHO’s COVAX vaccine distribution system. COVAX was co-led by the WHO, Gavi, CEPI and Unicef, which are all backed by Gates.

The goal now, Jones wrote, is to institutionalize the procedures that were put in place globally for COVID-19 to pave the way for a new pandemic market.

The One Health agenda, which requires “full-scale surveillance of the human-animal environment,” both before and during pandemics, is central to this plan, he wrote.

The four pillars of the emerging pandemic market

There are four pillars to the plan for securing this market. The pillars are embodied in the WHO’s recently passed IHR amendments and the proposed pandemic treaty.

1. Biosurveillance of “pathogens with pandemic potential”: The WHO is calling on member states to create infrastructure to conduct biosurveillance on entire populations.

WHO private stakeholders, like the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have been funding such initiatives for years and continue to be at the forefront of similar initiatives today, Jones wrote.

2. Rapid sharing of data and research: Under the IHR amendments, the WHO’s director-general must provide support for member states’ research and development. In the pending treaty, that would include helping them rapidly share data during a pandemic.

Such sharing should help coordinate global pandemic responses and also “pandemic prevention.” That means building a globally coordinated effort to research and share data on diseases that don’t currently pose a public health threat but are allegedly “likely to cause epidemics in the future.”

The WHO’s announcement last week that it is facilitating data-sharing for a new mRNA bird flu vaccine from Argentina is one example.

Experts have raised concerns that incentivizing such “preventive R&D” could incentivize risky gain-of-function research, Jones wrote.

Jones also noted that it is “highly likely” that the same global organizations that partner with the WHO and are funded by its largest private donors will be the ones doing this research and development on vaccines for “future pathogens with pandemic potential” — and also the ones profiting from it.

3. New regulatory pathways: The WHO is developing new regulatory pathways for unapproved medical products to get to market during pandemic emergencies. The IHR amendments are vague on this, Jones wrote, but the proposed language of the treaty aims to speed up emergency authorizations of WHO-recommended investigational “relevant health products.”

The proposed treaty also seeks to compel member countries to take steps to ensure they have the “legal, administrative and financial frameworks in place to support emergency regulatory authorizations for the effective and timely approval of pandemic-related health products during a pandemic.”

4. Global mandates of unapproved products: The final key element in the Big Pharma-WHO plan to pave the way for a new pandemic market is shoring up the global capacity to mandate unapproved medical products.

According to Jones, in July 2023, the WHO adopted the European Union’s (EU) digital COVID-19 passport system, or the “immunity pass” which recorded people’s vaccination records, negative test results or records of previous infections.

“While a digital vaccine passport does not function as a hard mandate in which every citizen of a given population is forced to take a vaccine, it acts as a conditional mandate — one which offers the illusion of choice, but — in reality — restricts the civil liberties of those who do not comply,” Jones wrote.

The 2005 version of the IHR allowed for travel-based mandates that required proof of vaccination to enter countries when there was a public health risk. The new IHR, Jones wrote, expands on this by detailing the kinds of technology that can be used to check such information during future pandemics.

The WHO also is developing its Global Digital Health Certification Network, which expands the EU digital passport system to a global scale. It will digitize vaccination records and health records and will be “interoperable” with existing networks.

While interoperability makes it possible for decentralized data to be shared globally, Jones wrote, “The UN is seeking to impose digital identification as a ‘human right,’ or rather as a condition for accessing other human rights, for the entire global citizenry by 2030, as established in its Sustainable Development Goal 16.9.”

The initiative seeks to provide people with a “trusted, verifiable way” to prove who they are in the physical world and online.

Jones wrote:

“Verification systems of this size will place the right of citizens to do basic activities — like traveling, eating at a restaurant or working their job — in the hands of governments and potentially employers.

“The rights of civilians will be conditional, dictated by data stored in a massive digital hub that is global in its sharing abilities. Not only will domestic governments have access to the health information of their own citizens under this system, but an entire global bureaucracy will as well.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 7, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Debunking the debunkers on the “myths” of antidepressants

By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | August 5, 2024

Recently, The Conversation ran an article which claimed to “debunk” a range of myths about antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Natalina Salmaso, a clinical psychologist at Carleton University in Canada, highlighted five common myths that make people hesitant to take antidepressants.

Salmaso said hesitancy is often “unfounded” and “may not be grounded in science” and that “debunking the myths surrounding antidepressants is critical to permitting educated treatment decisions for those who suffer.”

However, Salmaso’s article was full of omissions and falsehoods, so we decided to debunk the debunker.

Myth 1 – I am stronger if I do this without meds

Salmaso says that a person with depression is like an athlete with a broken leg.

An athlete cannot compete effectively with a broken leg, in the same way a person with depression cannot function effectively, because their brain “is no longer responding to everyday life.”

She adds that a person’s brain needs to “heal” before they can expect it to function like they did pre-depression and implied antidepressants can help.

This is grossly misguided. This feeds into the false narrative that depression is a brain disease that can be cured by antidepressants.

Antidepressants don’t cure people with depression and their symptomatic effects are so small that they lack clinical relevance.

Studies show that patients actually do better with psychotherapy, which has enduring effects. Further, psychotherapy halves the risk of suicide whereas antidepressants double this risk, in people of all ages.

Myth 2 – I will be dependent on antidepressants to be happy

Salmaso says that antidepressants won’t make people ‘happy’ per se, but they “allow people to experience all emotions in an appropriate and balanced way.”

However, this is not what patients report. SSRIs tend to make people feel “numb” and unable to experience emotions. Some describe it as an inability to feel love, attachment or sexual excitement.

Some experience sexual dysfunction, which can continue long after the drug is discontinued.

Salmaso says that antidepressants “are a long-term (typically at a minimum for a year) and (hopefully) curative treatment, much like chemotherapy for certain types of cancer.”

This is also misguided. Most people become depressed because they have stressful or depressing circumstances, which no drug can cure.

People have been misled to believe that antidepressants can “correct” a chemical imbalance in the brain. A systematic review in 2022 thoroughly debunked the hypothesis that depression is caused a serotonin imbalance.

Salmaso even says that “most studies show that if you take antidepressant medications for a year before coming off of them, the majority of people will not relapse.”

This is also incorrect. The majority of studies on relapse are flawed because they involve subjects already on antidepressants and when they suddenly stop them for the trial they experience withdrawals, which interferes with the assessment of relapse.

Also, the longer someone takes an antidepressant, the higher the probability of that person experiencing withdrawal effects.

Myth 3 – Meds will change who I am, I will be different or feel high

Salmaso says that antidepressants won’t change you, but rather “allow you to view things from a more balanced perspective.”

However, Danish psychiatrists have reported that half of the patients on antidepressants agreed that the treatment could alter their personality and that they had less control over their thoughts and feelings.

Far from rebalancing the brain, antidepressants alter the normal functioning of the brain and disrupt biological processes with potentially devastating consequences.

As far as “changing who you are,” there have been ample reports of out-of-body experiences (including akathisia) where people became suicidal or homicidal on antidepressants, even in people with no history of this behaviour.

A systematic review found that taking antidepressants increased aggression three times more than taking a placebo, in children and adolescents.

Myth 4: I will become addicted

Salmaso says that antidepressants “are generally not addictive and have a low potential for misuse.”

This is not correct. Antidepressants can lead to dependency. Many people experience withdrawal symptoms, which are very similar to those that people experience when they try to come off benzodiazepines.

Salmaso claims that some patients get headaches and other withdrawal symptoms when the stop taking antidepressants “suddenly” but says they are “generally short-lived and can be minimised by tapering off treatment slowly.”

However, it is well-documented that about half of patients on antidepressants cannot stop them without experiencing withdrawals symptoms, which for some, can persist for many years. These symptoms are very difficult to “minimise” even with slow tapering.

Myth 5: Meds should only be used as a last resort

Salmaso disagrees that antidepressants should be used as a last resort.

She says that reserving antidepressants only for extreme cases “doesn’t make sense” because depression can reduce “work productivity and has immense societal consequences.”

“The financial repercussions that can be attributed to depression in terms of the number of workdays missed, jobs lost, accidents caused, etc. are enormous,” she added.

However, studies examining the efficacy of antidepressants have not shown any meaningful effects, such as improvements in quality of life, and they make it more difficult for people to function.

In all countries where this relationship has been examined, the increased use of antidepressants has been accompanied by an increase in disability pensions for mental health reasons.

Salmaso argues that, “Depression significantly increases risk of cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disease, respiratory disease and Parkinson’s disease, to name a few. It also seems to worsen the outcomes for cancer.”

Antidepressants do not improve these conditions either. Overall, it is our view that Salmaso’s evidence and arguments are flawed and misguided.

August 7, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Israel’s admission that it targeted a journalist exposes crude attempt to control war narrative

By Tim Dawson | MEMO | August 7, 2024

Ismail Al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami Al-Refee were observing the conflict-zone-reporting best practice, as they motored back from their assignment on the last day of July. Having reported issues facing the displaced people of northern Gaza, they were leaving the scene of greatest danger. Blast vests bearing the insignia “PRESS” protected their bodies. Minutes earlier they had updated the Al Jazeera newsroom with their location.

None of this would save their lives when an Israeli drone strike blasted their car. The explosion blew off Al-Ghoul’s head – an image subsequently shared on social media. Al-Refee and Khalid Shawa, a boy who happened to be passing by on a bicycle, also died instantly.

Unusually, we know that the killing was deliberate – because the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has admitted as much.

The occupation army justified the assassination, arguing that the journalist’s name appears on a list of “senior Hamas officers” that it captured earlier in the conflict. This allegation is strenuously denied by Al-Ghoul’s family, his employer and his union. And Israeli “evidence” in similar cases has appeared questionable. Indeed, Al-Ghoul spent enough time “on camera” that his capacity outside journalism would have been limited.

Critically, however, he was arrested by Israeli soldiers in March and held for 12 hours before being released without a charge. Surely, if the evidence of his Hamas membership justified his killing, there must have been sufficient basis for his prosecution?

This admission of targeting confirms much of what have for months been swirling allegations about Israeli operations. We know that it has software – Pegasus – that secretly invades mobile phones and shares its user’s locations, communications and the identities of those who they meet.

We know that the Israeli army uses software called “Lavender” that deploys AI to sort operational intelligence and suggest targets for assassination. A further tool, “The Gospel”, uploads targets’ geo locations to killer drones dramatically faster than had been possible with manual programming.

More than 12% of Gaza’s journalists killed

Alongside this technological capability is the extraordinary number of journalists who have been killed in Gaza since 7 October. The most conservative tally is around 120, some believe that as many as 165 Gazan reporters have perished since 7 October. This is dwarfed by the total death toll in Gaza, now somewhere around 40,000 victims. It is the mortality rate among journalists that is really striking. There were approximately 1,000 journalists in Gaza at the start of the conflict – more than 12 per cent have now lost their lives.

This extraordinary rate of killing, and the precision targeting to which the Israeli occupation forces have admitted, points to a simple and awful conclusion. But there is more.

Since the outset of the conflict the Israeli government has barred international reporters from entering Gaza – despite hundreds petitioning to be admitted. It has also threatened to remove funding from newspapers such as Haaretzshut down Al Jazeera’s operation in Israel, and disabled the internet at key moments.

And, following the law is not the army’s way either. When the United Nations investigated the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, its report concluded: “The Israeli security forces used lethal force without justification under international human rights law and intentionally or recklessly violated the right to life of Shireen Abu Akleh.”

But why target journalists in this way? The only plausible explanation is that this is an attempt to control the war narrative.

In international law, journalists are considered civilians; combatants are obliged to ensure their safety. The Israeli army’s bloody campaign is in clear contravention of this – but whether the institutions of international law will bring anyone to justice remains to be seen. The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) lead prosecutor, Karim Khan, displayed bravery in May when he issued arrest warrants for the Israeli and Hamas leadership. If he sees these cases through to satisfactory conclusions he will have shown himself as one of the greatest jurists of our age.

Justice, if it comes, will be no comfort to Al-Ghoul and Al-Refee. They have distinguished themselves, however, by standing up to the most horrific force ever visited upon journalists and continuing to act as the world’s eyes and ears. There is no consolation for them – but they deserve celebration; their colleagues, who continue this work, deserve our support.

August 7, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

TOP VACCINOLOGISTS FAIL TO PRODUCE SCIENCE TO SUPPORT SAFETY

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 1, 2024

In a recent interview, one of the world’s leading vaccinologists and co-author of what is considered to be the ‘bible of vaccines’, Dr. Paul Offit admitted that studies comparing unvaccinated children to vaccinated children have not been done, claiming they are impossible to do. All the while, lead author of the aforementioned book, Dr. Stanley Plotkin, the ‘godfather of vaccines’, made a recent statement in a published paper revealing the truth about safety trials on vaccines in the US, painting a picture of vaccine safety that falls far short of the safety claims our health agencies make.

August 4, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 1 Comment

Truths about the War in Ukraine – Part Eighteen of The Anglo-American War on Russia

Tales of the American Empire | August 1, 2024

In 1945, American President Roosevelt met with Soviet Premier Stalin at Yalta to discuss the post war world. Yalta is on Russia’s Crimean peninsula where tens of thousands of Russians had recently perished fighting the invading Nazis. Both leaders would be stunned to learn that 70 years later, American leaders would insist that Crimea does not belong to Russia.

America’s corporate media is closely controlled so their reporting supports the American empire. Six massive media companies control 90% of the American market. Reporting guidelines are sent from a secret cabal to news editors then down to so-called “journalists.” Soon after direct Russian military intervention in Ukraine in early 2022, NATO launched a massive “Information War” formally known as propaganda. Russian news sites were blocked from the internet as well as many small independent western sites. Corporate propaganda was all that most Americans encountered so they are now bewildered when told Russia is winning in Ukraine.

August 3, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | 1 Comment

JP Conference – Germar Rudolf, June 30, 2024

Bitchute

August 2, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , | 4 Comments

Israel Has a History of Killing Hamas Leaders Who Are Trying To Secure Ceasefires

Benjamin Netanyahu’s reckless assassination of Ismail Haniyeh undermines the prospects for a peace deal and the release of the hostages

Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, Qatar, on March 26, 2024. Photo by AFP via Getty Images
By Mehdi Hasan – zeteo – July 31, 2024

“Israel’s leaders killed three birds with one stone,” wrote Reuven Pedatzur, a senior military affairs analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “They assassinated the man who had the power to make a deal with Israel; they took revenge on someone who had caused more than a few Israeli casualties; and they signaled to Hamas that communications with it will be conducted only through military force.”

Was Pedatzur referring to the Israeli assassination of senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the group’s political bureau, in Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday morning?

No. Pedatzur died in a road traffic accident in 2014. His quote from Haaretz, above, was in response to the Israeli assassination of another senior Hamas commander, Ahmed Jabari, in November 2012, which kicked off the 2012 Gaza war.

As my former colleague at The Intercept, Jon Schwarz, documented in great detail last year, “Jabari had come to believe that it was in the best interest of Palestinians for Hamas to negotiate a long-term truce” and had been in communication with the respected Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin. “Just before the assassination, [Baskin] gave Jabari a draft proposal for such a truce to review and approve. The draft was agreed to by Baskin and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, and Baskin also said he had previously shown it to Ehud Barak, then the Israeli minister of defense.”

Would Jabari have signed off on a ‘hudna,’ or long-term truce, between Hamas and Israel? We’ll never know.

Israel, in fact, has a long and cynical history of killing Hamas leaders who are in the midst of ceasefire negotiations or, even, proposing long-term truces with the Jewish state.

Remember Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the quadriplegic co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas? He was assassinated less than three months after he proposed a long-term truce with Israel “if a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

His successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, was assassinated less than three months after he made a similar truce offer to Israel.

Then there was the Netanyahu government’s 2012 assassination of Jabari, who, as mentioned, was reviewing a “long-term mutual cease-fire” deal just “hours before he was killed,” according to Baskin.

The parallels between 2012 and 2024, between the killings of Jabari and Haniyeh, are eery.

“He was in line to die, not an angel and not a righteous man of peace,” Baskin said of Jabari shortly after his killing, “but his assassination also killed the possibility of achieving a truce and also the Egyptian mediators’ ability to function.”

The same could be said of Haniyeh. Mainstream Western media outlets agree that the Hamas leader was – by Hamas standards – a “pragmatist”; a key figure in the ongoing negotiations to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and free the Israeli hostages.

From Reuters:

“For all the tough language in public, Arab diplomats and officials had viewed [Haniyeh] as relatively pragmatic compared with more hardline voices inside Gaza, where the military wing of Hamas planned the October 7 attack. While telling Israel’s military they would find themselves ‘drowning in the sands of Gaza,’ he and his predecessor as Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, had shuttled around the region for talks over a Qatari-brokered cease-fire deal with Israel that would include exchanging hostages for Palestinians in Israeli jails as well as more aid for Gaza.”

From Sky News:

“Haniyeh was the pragmatic face of Hamas. He was less hard-line and militaristic than Yahya Sinwar, who is the head of Hamas inside Gaza and is leading the battle. Haniyeh was the public face of Hamas’s diplomacy in Arab capitals. He was leading efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.”

This was the person that the far-right Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu chose to assassinate on Iranian soil on Wednesday.

Why?

Put simply, Netanyahu and his coalition of fascists and bigots do not want a deal to release the hostages. They prefer to continue the war, no matter the cost to Gaza’s civilians or to their own citizens still held inside of the enclave. Despite Joe Biden’s ludicrous claims to the contrary, it is Netanyahu who has been the biggest obstacle to a deal to free Israel’s hostages in Gaza. The former spokesperson for the hostages’ families says Netanyahu rejected a deal. Benny Gantz, a former member of Israel’s war cabinet, says Netanyahu blocked a deal. Israeli defense officials tell Haaretz that “Netanyahu systematically foiled the negotiations to free the hostages.”

There is nothing new here. To misquote Winston Churchill, Israel has always preferred “war-war” over “jaw-jaw.” Israeli governments – especially those led by Netanyahu – have preferred having Hamas as the permanent enemy – or as an “asset,” to quote the current Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – rather than trying to do a permanent deal with Hamas.

As the late Israeli journalist Pedatzur wrote, in his analysis of the disastrous Jabari assassination in 2012:

“Our decision makers, including the defense minister and perhaps also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, knew about Jabari’s role in advancing a permanent cease-fire agreement. … Thus the decision to kill Jabari shows that our decision makers decided a cease-fire would be undesirable for Israel at this time, and that attacking Hamas would be preferable.”

Change the name ‘Jabari’ to ‘Haniyeh’ above, and those words could have been written today.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

August 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel’s Rule of Law

It exists only for Jews

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • August 1, 2024

Does anyone in Israel in a position of power truly understand what the expressions “human rights” and “rule of law” really mean? Developments over the past ten months in Gaza would suggest “No,” that Israel’s government, its legal system, and its constitution exist solely to empower the state to do whatever it wishes, which in the current version includes the genocidal elimination of the Palestinian people and the theft of their land and property to be incorporated into a Greater Israel that plausibly will include the already annexed Syrian Golan Heights as well as all of historic Palestine running from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

But even given the fundamental dishonesty over the Jewish state and what it represents, there is something truly frightening about some recent developments which suggest that the long running United States government pander to Israel and its presumed interests have poisoned the chalice, making Americans absolutely complicit in the Israeli war crimes and other assorted crimes against humanity. And the level of control over Washington by Israel virtually guarantees that it will only get worse.

I am, of course, referring to the recent state visit of the world’s leading war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, where he was worshipped by both Congress and the White House alike together with considerable fawning from the heavily Jewish-influenced media. Netanyahu, to put it succinctly, spoke for an hour in his address to the US Congress, emitting lie after lie. And the Congress critters responded with an outburst of love combined with total subservience, delivering 53 standing ovations, close to one per minute. The most exuberant ovation occurred when Netanyahu denounced the 50,000 or so demonstrators who surrounded the Capitol building to express their disgust at the Jewish mass murderer’s presence. Bibi called the protesters, some of whom were pepper-sprayed and arrested by a heavy police presence including 360 imported New York City Policemen fresh from their beatings of protesters at Columbia University, “useful idiots paid for by Iran.” That particular lie produced paroxysms of celebration among the leaping and waving Congressmen. Given that performance, does anyone need any confirmation that free speech seems to be off the agenda when it comes to Israel and the clowns who nominally represent the American people in Washington, who once upon time swore an oath to support the Constitution, but now consider speaking ill of the Jewish state to be a “hate crime.” Indeed, bills have been introduced in Congress to that effect.

It is interesting to go through his speech to determine what Netanyahu was trying to accomplish and what lies he thought he could get away with. Actually, he did nothing but lie while blaming most of his neighbors, particularly Iran, for the turmoil that Israel has caused in the Middle East for the past 75 years. And predictably, much of the coverage of the Netanyahu appearance in the mainstream media on the following day was toothless and even laudatory. It generally reflected what was hailed as Bibi’s “fiery speech” that “did not give an inch” which vowed to continue fighting until “total victory” is achieved. “It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.” Ironically, Netanyahu was right about the clash of civilization though he was wrong about who represented which side: Israel backed completely by the US is pure evil. And the Netanyahu visit should be seen as a call to arms. The Jewish state is struggling economically and militarily in its war of extermination in Gaza and it knows it is not in any shape to take on Hezbollah and Iran, so it has decided to let the United States do the heavy lifting. Reading between the lines on what occurred in meetings with the two presidential aspirants as well as with a non-compos-mentis Joe Biden, it is clear that Netanyahu expects American boys and girls to do his fighting for him as well as covering the costs.

American complicity in the genocide in Gaza as well as in two possible wars in Lebanon and Iran due to the Israeli embrace is a tragedy for all parties involved, but the damage being done to future generations of American citizens cannot be remedied. Our country has done many bad things, but this whole hearted alliance with unmitigated evil is a betrayal of the birthright of every American.

So how low can you go, but the tale of Netanyahu visits Congress was soon joined by another truly awful story that demonstrates that there is no bottom to the evil in the minds and hearts of Israel’s leaders as well as among a large majority of the Israeli people, which Mondoweiss calls a “genocide from above and below.” Few Americans are aware of the atrocities that occur by virtue of what the Israelis choose to call their legal system. There is a body of law that is applicable to protect Jews and their interests, but where those interests collide with those of the native Palestinians, be they Christian or Muslim, only one outcome is acceptable even when something comparable to a legal procedure takes place. This has enabled the horrible settlement movement with something like 800,000 Jewish settlers having stolen Palestinian land and other property and has meant that Palestinians who were driven from their homes by force when Israel was founded have no ability to return to their own homes. At its most extreme, severely injuring or even killing a Palestinian, which occurs regularly, often at the hands of the heavily armed settlers, is a crime that is almost never prosecuted. To cite only one recent example, Palestinian-America journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was wearing a clearly visible journalist vest was shot and killed by an Israeli army sniper in May 2022. In spite of repeated demands that her murder be fully investigated, no one was ever identified or punished for the killing. Israel has also killed 20 other journalists in the past several years with no one being punished. Often Israeli soldiers stand by and watch crimes involving Jewish perpetrators, never interceding to help the Arab victim. If the Palestinians resist they are immediately labeled as “terrorists” and have no rights of self-defense against the occupiers, be they army or nominally civilians.

A story that appeared a week after the Netanyahu visit illustrates perfectly the two-tiered justice in Israel and the occupied territories. There are currently nearly 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, the number having increased sharply since the war against Gaza began. Many are Gazans, but an increasing number are from the West Bank, which is also being targeted for “settlement” and eventual annexation. Many are held under what is referred to as “preventive detention,” in which they are not charged with a crime, do not appear in any court, and are held at the will of the Israeli army or police. In jail, they are frequently tortured and starved. If they are ever released, they show the signs of the torture and Israeli human rights groups, among other witnesses, have provided substantial evidence of what is taking place behind closed doors. Israel soldiers are, for their part, not shy about what they do to Palestinians, posting photos and videos online of dead Palestinians, torture in detention areas, and the gleeful destruction of Gazan homes and property.

The story is as follows: There are a number of detention centers run by the Israeli Army that are generally used to torture Palestinians prisoners, not in the old fashioned “intelligence” role to obtain “information,” but just for the entertainment of the soldiers who are the jailers. Sde Teiman, one such center in the southern Negev desert region, recently made the news due to a particularly outrageous bit of torture engaged in by ten of the soldiers in charge of the prisoners. Conditions in Sde Taiman reportedly included “Electric shocks, amputations due to bad conditions, severe beatings, surgery without anesthesia, playing loud music until inmates’ ears bleed, deaths due to bad sanitary conditions, systematic torture and sexual abuse.”

A Palestinian from Gaza was reported serially sodomized and otherwise raped at the detention site using various implements even including a cell phone which was inserted in the man’s rectum and turned on for the amusement of the Israeli soldiers. The victim also had a wooden stick inserted in similar fashion and it was believed that he was only one of a number of other prisoners who were treated in that same way, which appears to be systemic throughout the detention facilities run by the army. The activity was only exposed when the victim began bleeding heavily both internally and externally and was unable to walk with a “serious wound in his rectum area”, which may have occurred if or when the phone was removed from inside of him and he was taken to a hospital where what had taken place was revealed. The army, somewhat uncharacteristically, sent some military policemen to the center to detain the soldiers for questioning but the suspects fought back using pepper spray and building barriers. When nine of the men (one went AWOL) were eventually taken to a nearby military base at Beit Lid, the MPs were confronted almost immediately by an angry crowd of civilians, consisting largely of settlers and ultra-nationalists, led by several Likud party parliamentarians who demanded that the soldiers be set free. Something like a melee ensued. The unruly crowd chanted its support for torture and even called for the summary execution of the Palestinian prisoners, which has been an “option” supported by some in the Netanyahu government.

The rioters were so aggressive that they actually broke into the Israeli military base and there was considerable support for their actions even coming from Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who said he was “shocked” to see IDF troops being detained for questioning “in a way that is suitable for arresting dangerous criminals.” He added that the soldiers were doing a “holy job” at the base. Far-right Knesset member Simcha Rotman called the troops “heroes,” instead attacking Israel’s “justice and enforcement systems” for detaining them.

Typically, later in the day, when asked by the press about the rape accusations, US State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel refused to say whether gang raping and torturing Palestinian prisoners would be considered a war crime, even if conclusively demonstrated by witnesses and other evidence. Patel explained “So the reports of abuse are deeply concerning, and we have been clear and consistent with Israel and the IDF that they need to treat all detainees humanely and with dignity in accordance with humanitarian law.” He said that the US was going to let “due process” play out in this case. The western media that is bothering to cover the story are refusing to even use the word “rape” or “sodomy” in reference to the allegations, with the BBC describing how the soldiers are accused of “severely mistreating a Palestinian prisoner” while the New York Times prefers to call it “suspected abuse”.

At the heart of the discussion is the fact that Israel’s Knesset uniquely has a proposed law that was first formulated in 2022 by current National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir which would give automatic immunity to any soldier or policeman who kills or seriously injures any Palestinian. The immunity does not apply if the victim is a Jew. The law still has not passed through parliament, but many conservatives in Israel believe it is the guideline used by the military and judiciary de facto. Ben-Gvir has, in fact, denounced the questioning of the nine men as “shameful,” adding that the Israeli security establishment should support the soldiers and “learn from the prison service: light treatment of terrorists is over. Soldiers need to have our full support.” Ben-Gvir is also supporting a separate bill that would authorize the systematic execution of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. It also does not apply to Jews. In a video statement, Ben-Gvir said that Israel should be able to kill Palestinian prisoners with a “shot to the head.” He also recommended that Palestinian prisoners be given just enough food to keep them alive until the execution law comes into effect.

So, when it comes to human rights Israel lives in another parallel universe where there is one set of rules for Jews and other for gentiles. Perhaps the easily visible brutality evident in the recent Netanyahu speech to Congress coupled with stories like that out of Sde Teiman and the daily horror inflicted on the Gazans will bring about some kind of wake-up for the American public, which has been heavily propagandized and continues to believe in the myth of the perpetual victimhood of the Jewish people. The real victims of the “miracle of Israel” are those in western countries that the Jewish diaspora continues to buy and manipulate as well as the poor Palestinians who are forced to live under a form of daily repression and humiliation that is almost unimaginable.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

August 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 4 Comments