In March, Rashid Khalidi joined Jeffrey Sachs for an exclusive conversation about Khalidi’s book “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.” By providing a two-sided narrative of the conflict, Khalidi opens the floor for discussion.
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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi held a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Cairo on 27 December, where they once again rejected Israel’s plans for forced displacement of Palestinians in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
In a joint statement, the two leaders announced their “complete rejection of all attempts to liquidate the Palestinian issue and forcibly displace Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.”
The statement also urged the international community to push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and called for “uninterrupted delivery of sufficient humanitarian aid to Gaza” to alleviate the “tragic situation and the suffering of the people in the Strip.”
“The two leaders note the international community’s immense political and ethical responsibility towards implementing UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions to maintain the integrity of these international entities,” the statement read.
Since the start of the war, aid has trickled into Gaza at a pace nowhere near fast enough to address the dire humanitarian situation. The US has also vetoed two UN resolutions urging for an immediate truce.
A resolution was passed on 22 December, after having been held up for days and watered down significantly at Washington’s insistence. The resolution made no mention of a ceasefire.
King Abdullah’s visit to Egypt comes days after Cairo proposed a ceasefire plan to reform Gaza’s government on a technocratic basis and gradually release Israeli prisoners in exchange for detained Palestinians and a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
However, Hamas has rejected the proposal, which also failed to gain traction on the Israeli side.
Tel Aviv continues to push for a mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Israel recently ordered more Palestinians to evacuate from Khan Yunis to areas further south, as tens of thousands of displaced are already stranded in the southern border city of Rafah.
The Cradle’s William Van Wagenen details in his recent analysis Israel’s longstanding goals to forcibly displace Gaza’s population into the Sinai Peninsula, occupy the Gaza Strip, and re-establish the Jewish settlement bloc that was evacuated in 2005.
In the occupied West Bank, violent Israeli settlers with Israeli government backing also continue to drive Palestinians from their homes in attempts to expel them to Jordan, a practice which has been ongoing for years.
A decades-old Israeli initiative known as the ‘Transfer Plan’ – originally formulated by the Zionist militias operating in Palestine, and then endorsed by the government of Israel post-1948 – calls for mass expulsion of Palestinians to the Sinai desert.
After Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the idea of pushing Palestinians towards Jordan became included in the ‘Transfer Plan.’
Israel forced many Palestinians to migrate to Jordan over the years, particularly after 1967 and with the rapid expansion of illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank.
The ‘Transfer Plan’ was never officially implemented, and is a violation of UN Resolution 194, which was issued in 1948 and which legitimizes the right of return for Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes.
A joint Egyptian-Jordanian statement issued in late October this year rejected the transfer plan.
Germany’s Blackout News reports on how Germany’s move into renewable energies has gone from “a boom to crisis”.
The policies of (worst ever) Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Green Party) are leading the German economy to disaster. Photo: public domain.
It wasn’t long ago, when interest rates and inflation were low, and the economy and the business of renewable energies in Germany were booming.
But now, Blackout Newsreports how “the outlook for the renewable energy sector has deteriorated drastically” and affordable raw materials have become hard to get. Manufacturers are now reeling. “The renewable energy sector is facing the abyss” and is “on the brink.”
“The S&P Global Clean Energy Index, which monitors the performance of the sector, has fallen by 32% in the last 12 months, while the global stock markets have risen by 11%,” writes Blackout News. “These losses on the stock market not only affect the companies themselves, but also the investors and shareholders who have invested in renewable energies.”
Reduced work hours, job cuts
Blackout News also reports how the German economy in general, the biggest in Europe, is crumbling at its foundation. For example, construction equipment manufacturer Liebherr “is putting 1000 employees on short-time working for 9 months.”
Also Stiehl, Gardena and Hansgrohe, are “opting for short-time working and job cuts.”
Other famous German companies planning cuts include textile group Groz-Beckert in Albstadt-Ebingen, and chainsaw manufacturer Stihl,
“Rising inflation and the construction crisis are two of the main reasons for the current economic uncertainty. Rising inflation is putting a strain on households,” reports Blackout News.
The major driver of inflation and all the German economic misery? The rising cost of energy caused by the government’s incompetent energy policies.
I just pulled out some of the high-sounding claptrap in this article, below, to give you its flavor. You can see how a small cadre of immoral ‘scientists’ funded by an evil cabal can create an “intellectual” infrastructure to justify stealing land in the name of pandemic prevention.
Israel has killed six more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The six were targeted by an Israeli drone in Nour Shams Camp, located east of Tulkarm. They were confirmed dead at the Martyr Thabet Thabet Government Hospital in the city.
Hospital officials noted that Israeli occupation forces delayed ambulances trying to reach the victims of the attack. After a delay of 65 minutes, the Israelis released an ambulance carrying three seriously injured individuals from Nour Shams camp, reported the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The head of the Tulkarm Doctors’ Syndicate, Radwan Balibla, reported that an Israeli soldier stabbed one of the injured Palestinians inside the ambulance. He added that other wounded Palestinians were also assaulted with kicks, punches and rifle beatings as Israeli soldiers threatened to kill them.
The Palestinians killed were identified as 19-year-old Ahmed Anwar Hamarsha; Ahmed Abdel Rahman Issa, 19; Adham Muhammad Fahmawi, 19; Yazan Ahmed Wahid Fahmawi, 23; Fares Hossam Fahmawi, 29; and Hamza Ahmed Mustafa Fahmawi, 17. A 24-year-old Palestinian sustained serious head injuries. His condition was described as critical.
According to Wafa news agency, the occupation forces used artillery to target an abandoned house in the Aktaba suburb, east of Tulkarm, near the refugee camp. Palestinian homes in different areas of the camp, including Al-Manshiya, Al-Mahjar, Al-Joura, Al-Damj and Jabal Al-Nasr, were also targeted by the occupation forces. They conducted extensive raids inside these homes, interrogated the occupants and destroyed their belongings.
Furthermore, Israeli troops used high-rise buildings in and around the camp as observation posts. Bulldozers were employed to demolish infrastructure in the camp’s main streets, square and Al-Manshiya neighbourhood. This destruction included the demolition of public and private property.
At least 320 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, according to the local Palestinian authorities. More than 3,200 others have been wounded.
The owners shredded the Constitution. Legal protections, or even their simulation of a simulation, no longer exist. In Florida, questioning a historical event or the policies of a Middle East country risks ten years in prison. Taking selfies at a legal demonstration endorsed by a sitting President of the United States can get you almost twenty. A journalist and opinion writer became an international fugitive for insulting a Jewish woman online. Douglas Mackey (X/Twitter handle Ricky Vaughn) received a seven month federal prison sentence for posting a Hillary Clinton election meme. Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis pled guilty to one felony count of “aiding and abetting false statements and writings” after she wrote in a letter that the 2020 election was rigged. To avoid prison (she’ll still be a convicted felon and get disbarred), she agreed to testify against her co-defendants (who will likely receive prison time) in this bizarre “false statements/writings” racketeering case. Given the rapid rise in thought/speech crime incarceration, it behooves citizen-serfs, especially political ones, to gain some familiarity with the workings of the US prison industrial complex.
For the record, I’ve never been to prison. I’m disseminating data picked up from sources who have. If anyone reading this has done prison time or worked/works as a CO (corrections officer) and feels that I’ve misrepresented something, please add your perspective in the comments section. I don’t claim to be an expert on the penal system. Nor do I want to be.
Imagine you repost a meme on social media and get charged with “spreading misinformation while committing hate speech within a fifty-mile radius of an Israeli consulate and or synagogue during the commission of a thought crime.” Your day in court arrives, and after the #MeToo Jacinda Ardern lookalike prosecutor gives her PowerPoint presentation on your online browsing history and puts your bad-breakup ex-girlfriend on the stand, your case goes to a jury of monthly boosted blue and yellow flag emoji patriots. Following an hour of deliberation they return a guilty verdict. (They voted guilty within the first minute, but for appearance’s sake wait an hour before notifying the bailiff). After the Kamala Harris wannabe judge reads a moving passage from Michelle Obama’s “The Light We Carry” and tells you what a degenerate scumbag you are, she sentences you to ten years. What kind of life awaits you inside the prison industrial complex? Prison conditions vary depending on security level, location, and whether it’s a state or federal facility. While low-level fed camps offer the best conditions, high-level federal institutions like USP Atlanta and Beaumont are super barbaric. Alabama and Florida state prisons have bad reputations. Generally speaking, the higher the security level, the more brutal the prison. That’s not to say you can’t get jammed up in a minimum security facility or county jail.
Prison is violent. An angry lifer has little to lose by smashing or stabbing a prisoner he dislikes. “What are you looking at?” can be a tricky question to answer in the civilian world. Much more so in prison.
Even if you’re an astute practitioner of conflict avoidance, in higher-level prisons you will likely receive a “heart check,” i.e. a prisoner tests you. The majority prison consensus for this type of encounter? Fight. The good news is that there is no shame in losing a prison fight. Violence is so common that most prisoners, no matter how tough, have lost a fight during their stay. All that matters is you stood up. For those lacking skills, “flailing arms spaz mode” style seems the best option. It should be over pretty quickly. If you don’t fight, you’ll be labeled prey. This invites future b!tch slap humiliations and extortion. Extortion could mean turning over commissary items, or in more extreme cases, a family member wiring funds to a prisoner’s “girlfriend” to keep you healthy. Predatory prisoners love draining nest eggs. For those with money, refrain from bragging about past French Riviera vacations.
Most prison violence stems from gambling and drugs, especially in regard to debt. If you choose to indulge, pay as you go. Taking commissary on credit also entails risk. Some prisoners operate “stores” whereby they loan out one can of soup with the expectation of receiving two as repayment. Better to go hungry that night. Defaulting on prison debt gets you smashed or stabbed. On occasion, a soft younger inmate runs up a debt he can’t cover. Some creditors accept sexual favors as repayment. Once an inmate goes that route, there’s no coming back. For Boomers and fellow Gen Xers, even if so inclined, that escape hatch won’t be open to you. Nobody wants your old ugly ass. The takeaway—don’t run up prison debt.
Even if you play things right, you could still find yourself housed with a violent psychopath who doesn’t like your face. This could morph into a case of “kill or be killed.” Killing your adversary could get you a life sentence with transfer to a super-max dungeon. Legal self-defense doesn’t carry much weight in prison. If you stab or bludgeon him and he survives, you might only wind up with a few weeks or months in the hole (solitary confinement). Or you could add decades to your sentence and a super-max stay. How a facility’s administration deals with violent offenses varies from prison to prison. In some places, as long as you don’t give staff the paperwork headache of a body, they don’t care how extreme prisoner-on-prisoner violence gets. Alabama prison administrators are known for covering up prison homicides, which could work to your advantage if you need to take out an adversary. Conversely, this could work against you if you wind up on the receiving end of the shank.
When things get too heavy, some prisoners opt to “check-in” (enter protective custody (PC) /solitary confinement). Some guards want you to name your antagonizer(s) before letting you check-in, which technically makes you a “snitch.” Snitches and chomos (pedophiles) inhabit the lowest rung of the prison hierarchy. Not a good look. Even if you manage to enter PC without snitching, you’ll be labeled a “check-in.” At some point you go back into general population. A check-in label follows you for the rest of your stay and opens you up to victimization. If faced with an unreasonable predator, the better option might be to handle things yourself.
What about prison rape? While common back in the day, it’s been largely eradicated through PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) and current prison culture. In most prisons, a booty bandit who targeted straight males would get run off the yard, i.e. smashed. Plus, with all the openly gay prisoners today, there’s no reason for a booty bandit to take it by force. Many prison organizations forbid their members from engaging in gay sex. Members who pursue down-low activity risk a death sentence. Overall, messing with “boys” (effeminate prison gays) is looked down on, and most prisoners avoid it. The small percentage who practice that lifestyle do so openly and without fear of reprisal. No one’s calling a three-hundred-pound wall of granite a f@g. Or his “boy.”
Many large corporations utilize prison slave labor. According to zio-globalist Harvard University, on average, prisoners get paid ninety-three cents per day. Juxtaposed to these slave wages are real-world prices for prison goods and services. US prisons outsource food services, phone, internet, healthcare, commissary, and pretty much everything else to private corporations. To maximize profits, these corporations price gouge prisoners and cut services. Prison food is often rotten and inedible. If you don’t want to lose weight, you’ll need to buy commissary food at market prices. But how can you do that earning ninety-three cents a day? You can’t. If fortunate, you might have family members who put money on your books (prison account). Otherwise, you’ll need to form a “prison hustle.” This could include offering cell cleaning and laundry services, working as a jailhouse lawyer or tattoo artist, running a poker table, brewing prison wine, or selling drugs. Predatory prisoners simply take stuff off weaker inmates.
Prison living conditions can be quite bad. Institutions often go on lockdown for months. That means sharing a bathroom-sized cell with another man 24/7 until the lock pops. To me, this constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Imagine getting locked down with a cellie who snores like a Metallica concert bass amp. Or a psycho-maniac. As reported by the Miami Herald : “An inmate at Columbia Correctional Institution’s annex was able to strangle and mutilate his cellmate, gouge out his eyeballs, wrap his blood-soaked body in a sheet and walk into the prison’s chow hall wearing the dead inmate’s ear strung around his neck before officers learned anything was amiss.” Prisoners with psycho-maniac cellmates often develop severe PTSD from continuously sleeping with one eye open.
The lack of privacy in prison is obscene. That includes bathroom privacy. Full view-everything. Whoever invented this layout was a sick f*ck.
Prisoners are subject to regular “bend over, spread your cheeks and cough” level strip searches that would be humiliating if carried out by a licensed medical practitioner in a private patient room. Imagine performing this routine in front of snickering guards.
West Coast prisons practice racial segregation, i.e. races stay with their own. Fraternizing with a member of another race could get you smashed or stabbed. In West Coast prison politics, if a prisoner fights, it’s usually against someone from his race. If he gets victimized, it’s usually by an individual or group from his race. If two prisoners of different races have a beef, most times the shot callers of the respective races put the aggrieved parties into a cell and let them fight it out. After it’s over, the matter’s considered settled. If a prisoner goes into debt to someone from another race, members of the debtor’s race sometimes pay the debt and then smash or stab the debtor to avoid a race riot. An unsettled interracial beef can result in a race riot. If a race riot pops off, you’ll be expected to swing your lock-in-a-sock or shank for your race even if you have no involvement in the beef or know what it’s about. Anyone caught ducking out of a race riot gets smashed or stabbed by members of his race.
East Coast prisons are not racially segregated, although like in society, people tend to gravitate toward their own. However, strong bonds often develop between prisoners of different races.
In some institutions, prison organizations (gangs) control the internal politics. Higher-tier prison organizations resemble paramilitaries, as they possess a military top-down chain of command, written constitutions, well-trained soldiers with a high capacity for violence, mandatory boot camp level calisthenic regimens, large capital flows, and a reach that extends into the streets which includes access to serious arsenals. As per the Second Amendment, citizen militias still exist. Conversely, many prison organizations (gangs) lack structure and discipline and are more free-wheeling.
Prisoners join gangs for different reasons, e.g., protection, fellowship, thrills, resources. Joining a gang means following orders. This could include anything from stabbing a gang target to acting as a drug mule. Refusing an order could result in a death sentence. Like any major life decision, weigh the pros and cons carefully before signing on. As with civilian organizations, application standards vary. Some prison organizations want numbers, while others maintain a higher bar for entry. A case of “twenty-five pennies versus a quarter.”
Prison guards can be somewhat professional, corrupt, or sadistic. A nasty CO can make a prisoner’s life hell. Most COs just collect a paycheck and don’t care what happens to their charges. The Stanford Prison Experiment provides insight into guard psychology. Try to be respectful toward guards, but avoid fraternization, as this will cause some prisoners to label you a snitch.
It should be noted that the #MeToo psyop poses a unique danger to political prisoners. #MeToo started with Harvey Weinstein. I didn’t follow his case closely enough to comment on how far Weinstein’s actions went past the Hollywood casting couch quid pro quo that has existed since the days of silent movies and into the classic legal definition of rape. Weinstein was a connected insider. His circle of friends included Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey. He was a rabid Hollywood Zionist with Mossad ties. To his credit, Miramax offered up some decent movies in the 90s. Weinstein appeared to run with the “above the law” crowd, however, the donor class sometimes sacrifices one of its own when politically expedient. I don’t know why they chose Weinstein. Julian Assange became the first major “enemy of the state” #MeToo victim. Once the globalists had him in their clutches, his “rape” charges quickly and quietly vanished. Comedian-political commentator Russell Brand appears to be the latest #MeToo target.
#MeToo framed political prisoners entering prison with “bad paperwork” or sex offender status get greenlit. That means open season for extortion, smashing, and slashing. It could even mean a death sentence. Real rape is a terrible crime that traumatizes the female victim. However, from my viewpoint, throwing fake sex crime charges at an innocent man is an equal or worse crime. The Bible says – “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” It’s serious sh!t. Any woman or operative who participates in such a horrific charade deserves an appropriate response. If the Deep State #MeToo frameup trend continues. I respectfully suggest that the heads of convict-code based prison organizations (gangs) consider secondary in-house trials for “sex crime convicted” political prisoners to determine if the charges are real or state fabrications.
In summary, from my review of the data, best prison practices include:
Mind your business aka “do your own time.” If you involve yourself, you’re involved, i.e., the violent predator who was the other guy’s problem becomes your problem. In a similar vein, never look into another prisoner’s cell when passing by it. Not only is that considered rude, but if he’s in the middle of hiding contraband and his cell gets searched later, guess who he’s blaming.
Don’t snitch.
Avoid gambling, borrowing, (hard) drugs, and “boys.”* (*No offense to gay people. It’s prison politics).
Practice C&R (Courtesy and Respect). “Please, thank you, and excuse me” go a long way in civilian life, but even further in prison.
Choose solid associates (“friends”). You’ll be judged by the company you keep. If your associate gets into a beef, you’ll be expected to back him up, and vice versa. Someone prone to drama could drag you in. If your associate borrows heavily and checks in or gets transferred, his debts could pass on to you.
For those facing potential incarceration for “hate speech,” “spreading misinformation,” questioning election results, posting offensive memes, attending protests, or similar crimes, I hope this article helps. If you need more data, there are informative YouTube channels hosted by ex-prisoners.
While prison seems to be the modality of choice, please note that the Deep State can always exercise the ultimate option to neutralize enemies. See Wikileaks DNC whistleblower Seth Rich. Or the quixotic veteran who believed in free and fair elections. Her name is Ashli Babbitt.
We live in a society run by criminals. Goldman Sachs stole way more money than John Dillinger, and the worst child killer pales in comparison to Madeleine Albright, who starved five hundred thousand Iraqi children to death and bragged about it on network television. The “rules” don’t apply to the donor class.
Outsourcing of jobs, endless war, corporate welfare, and banker theft increased poverty and raised crime levels. Formerly productive regions of the US became opioid/meth/crime/poverty zones. While prisons warehouse violent predators who pose a serious threat to public safety, it’s not uncommon for innocent poor people to take shorter sentence plea deals rather than risk going to trial with a checked-out public defender and potentially receiving a decades-long sentence. As America sinks further into third-worldism and despotism, former law-abiding citizens might need to go “Walter White” to pay medical bills, avoid homelessness, or practice basic civil rights.
Just like the Military Industrial Complex requires endless wars for its business model, the for-profit Prison Industrial Complex needs to fill beds. An influx of thought/political criminals into the system floats stocks. Not surprising that end-stage neoliberal capitalism America has the world’s highest incarceration rate.
For those who cheered Reagan-Clinton mandatory-minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug offenses while the CIA shipped in freight loads of coke and heroin to inner cities and the Sacklers drowned the heartland in a sea of opioids- congratulations, you’ve arrived at gulag nation. Welcome home son.
The US government has run into a significant hurdle in its campaign to “revitalize” the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) as possible successors to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, failing to convince Israel to unblock funds necessary to prevent the PA from total collapse.
“Even if we agreed [to take over for Hamas in Gaza], how can we implement it? The policy of Israel is to weaken the authority, not strengthen it,” PA Deputy Prime Minister Nabil Abu Rudeineh told the Washington Post. “We cannot even pay the salaries of our soldiers, our employees,” he added.
Despite round-the-clock visits to the heavily fortified PA headquarters in Ramallah and meetings with Israeli authorities, US officials have made little progress in securing the release of millions in Palestinian tax money that Israel has blocked since 7 October.
Two months ago, the Israeli finance ministry – led by Jewish supremacist official Bezalel Smotrich – froze the transfer of tax revenues amounting to some $188 million monthly to the PA.
“The PA didn’t see fit to distance itself from these barbarian actions, and officials in the authority even expressed support for the awful massacre […] Furthermore, the PA is acting against Israel at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice,” Smotrich said on 30 October.
The tax revenues – known in Palestine as maqasa – are collected by the Israeli government on behalf of the PA on Palestinian imports and exports. Israel earns a commission of 3 percent of collected revenues.
On Friday, the European Commission said it was preparing a $130 million aid package to help plug the gap.
According to Sabri Saidam, a member of the central committee for the Fatah party and close adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, plans for Palestinians to receive their tax revenue have “collapsed.”
Besides finding ways to avert the financial collapse of the PA, US officials have also been pushing for “changes and new faces in key positions” in a last-ditch effort to improve the public image of the deeply unpopular organization.
According to a recent poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 88 percent of Palestinians want Abbas to resign as PA President, up 10 points from three months ago.
Meanwhile, the popularity of Hamas has soared in the occupied West Bank, from 12 percent to 44 percent.
“It’s always this colonizing mentality, whereby, ‘We decide your leadership, we are the ones basically designing your strategy for the day after, we tell you how to live, we tell you how to breathe, and we tell you how to run your land,’” Saidam told the Washington Post.
The PA was established in 1994 based on the first Oslo Accords (1993) between Tel Aviv and the now-defunct Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It was initially established as a temporary governing body to lay the foundation for an independent Palestinian state.
Complicating matters further for Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is staunchly opposed to a PA-controlled Gaza.
“Expectation that the Palestinian Authority will demilitarize Gaza is a pipe dream,” Netanyahu says in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Monday.
“[The PA] has shown neither the capability nor the will to demilitarize Gaza,” the premier added, claiming that Ramallah “currently funds and glorifies terrorism […] and educates Palestinian children to seek the destruction of Israel.”
“For the foreseeable future, Israel will have to retain overriding security responsibility over Gaza,” Netanyahu stressed.
A vast field is filled as far as the eye can see with miserable and gaunt men in remnants of military uniform. It’s May 1945 and the war in Europe has ended. By rights, these surrendered soldiers will be allowed to return to their families, but many will not leave this muddy ground alive. There is no food, no shelter, and no medicine. The Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) were the killing fields of one of the worst war crimes in modern history, committed by General Dwight Eisenhower and the US Army.
The cull of German troops was a closely-guarded secret until four decades after the war, when a Canadian researcher was writing a book on a French resistance hero. James Bacque found that his subject, Raou Laporterie, had been saved by a German soldier, Hans Goertz. In gratitude, in 1946, Laporterie got Goertz out of a French prison camp to work in his chain of drapery stores. Goertz told of mass deaths of inmates through lack of sustenance.
‘Over most of the western front in April 1945, the thunder of artillery had been replaced by the shuffling of millions of pairs of boots as columns of disarmed German soldiers marched wearily towards Allied barbed wire enclosures. Scattered enemy detachments fired a few volleys before fading into the countryside and eventual capture by Allied soldiers.’
As Fisher explained, German soldiers did everything they could to evade capture by the Russians, who raped and pillaged as they advanced over eastern Germany:
‘The mass surrenders in the west contrasted markedly with the final weeks on the eastern front where surviving Wehrmacht units still fought the advancing Red Army to enable as many of their comrades as possible to evade capture by the Russians. This was the final strategy of the German High Command then under Grand Admiral Doenitz who had been designated Commander-in-Chief by Adolf Hitler.’
But crossing to the Allied side was not the sanctuary that the defeated Germans expected, due to the visceral hatred of Eisenhower. The supreme military commander, of Swedish-Jewish background, had wriiten in a letter to his wife ‘God, I hate the Germans’. In September 1944, in the presence of the British ambassador to Washington, Eisenhower proposed that the entire German general staff, all officers of the Gestapo and all leaders of the Nazi party from mayor upwards should be exterminated (around a hundred thousand men).
Fisher had met Bacque in Washington in 1987 where they uncovered evidence, deeply buried in national archives, of a systematic slaughter. ‘More than five million German soldiers in the American and French zones were crowded into barbed wire cages, many of them literally shoulder to shoulder. The ground beneath them became a quagmire of filth and disease. Open to the weather, lacking even primitive sanitary facilities, underfed, the prisoners soon began dying of starvation.’
Shockingly, more German soldiers died in the camps from April 1945 onwards than died in combat.
In the archives, Bacque studied each edition of the ‘Weekly Prisoner of War and Disarmed Enemy Forces Report’, which showed a high number in the category of ‘other losses’. As escape was almost impossible, these men must have died in the camps. According to Bacque:
‘The victims undoubtedly number over 800,000 and quite likely over a million. Their deaths were knowingly caused by army officers who had sufficient resources to keep the prisoners alive. Relief organizations that attempted to help the prisoners in the American camps were refused permission by the army. All of this was hidden at the time; then lied about when the Red Cross, Le Mondé and Le Figaro attempted to tell the truth publicly.’
Ominously, on 26th April 1945 the combined chiefs-of-staff at Reims decided to create the status of ‘disarmed enemy forces’. This category would apply to ‘prisoners-of-war in American hands only’. No public declaration was made of this bypassing of the Geneva Convention. Mortality data were censored by the American military authorities, who exploited their control of media to push propaganda about their humane treatment of prisoners.
With German soldiers failing to come home in the months after the war ended, the myth of a ‘world food shortage’ was used, a contrived crisis blamed on the Germans. Yet despite the war, there was ample supply of wheat and corn The Swiss Red Cross had thirteen and-a-half million food parcels intended for prisoners, which would have prevented any death from starvation, but this provision was blocked. Indeed, the Red Cross was prevented from entering the camps, as Bacque explained:
‘Granting permission for the welfare agencies to visit the camps would have led to a storm of public protest against the atrocious conditions, while at the same time producing the workers and political will needed to alleviate them. It can hardly be doubted that this was why permission was not given.’
Eisenhower’s accomplice in this cruelty was an old friend of his from military training. Appointed as Eisenhower’s right-hand man, General Everett S Hughes took an extraordinary interest in prisoners’ rations, which he deviously reduced by as much as he could.
The British were innocent in this massacre, its German prisoners dying at no more than an expected rate, because they were fed and housed appropriately. Bacque’s book begins with a conversation at the banqueting table at the Yalta conference in 1943. Joseph Stalin expressed his desire to shoot a line of fifty thousand German officers. Franklin Roosevelt suggested a compromise of 49 thousand, before his son Elliott, a brigadier-general in the US Army, added to the proposed cull hundreds of thousands of Nazis. Winston Churchill stormed out, after stating ‘I would rather be taken out in the garden here and now to be shot myself than sully my own and my country’s honour by such infamy’.
There is another part to this dark episode. General George Patton, a magnanimous victor who respected the Germans as a people, was disgusted by Eisenhower, accusing him of Gestapo practices. Patton, whose Third Army had rapidly swept through northern France after the D-Day landings, due to his brilliant tactics, made himself unpopular with the US military establishment after the war was won. A thorn in the side of Eisenhower, he suggested that the Germans be rearmed to fight the communist Russians.
As described in a Daily Mail article (21 December 2019), General Patton MURDERED? Mystery pertaining to the suspicious death of the general 74 years later, Patton’s death at the end of1945 was later suspected as an assassination. In 1979 Second World War spy Douglas Bazata claimed that he was ordered by the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) to kill Patton and make it look like an accident. Patton was driving a Cadillac in Mannheim when he collided with a military truck. He was paralysed from the head down, but recovered sufficiently in an army hospital for medical clearance to fly back to the USA. On 21st December, the day before his flight, he died suddenly. There was no autopsy, and medical records disappeared.
Was Patton killed because he knew too much about the death camps, and was as much of a maverick to risk the dirty secret coming out?
***
Niall McCrae is a researcher and educator, and author of ‘The Moon and Madness’ (Imprint Academic, 2011), and ‘Moralitis: a Cultural Virus’ (Bruges Group, 2018). See his 21WIRE archive here.
An Israeli airstrike targeting a refugee camp in the central part of the Gaza Strip has killed at least 70 Palestinians as the regime’s genocidal war across the besieged territory continues unabated.
Gaza’s Health Ministry reported the massacre in a late Sunday statement, saying the fatalities came after the regime’s air raid hit a number of houses at the al-Maghazi refugee camp.
According to the ministry’s spokesman, the strike destroyed a “residential block” and the “toll is likely to rise” given the large number of families residing there and the fact that many people are still under the rubble.
“What is happening at the al-Maghazi camp is the annihilation of an entire residential square,” Ashraf al-Qudra said.
The ministry also noted that another Israeli strike on a house in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza has killed 10 members of the same family.
The ministry’s spokesman said the regime’s forces “are bombing the main roads between the [refugee] camps … to impede the arrival of ambulances and civil defense vehicles to the targeted locations.”
“Most of the martyrs who arrived from the Maghazi camp were children, women, and the elderly,” the spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital was quoted by the Palestinian media as saying.
Gaza’s Government Media Office said the Israeli strike saw the regime’s military bombing “four inhabited homes” at al-Maghazi.
“We call on all countries of the world to put pressure on the criminal occupation in order to stop the genocidal war … against our Palestinian people and against children, women and civilians,” it added.
The Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement Hamas also reacted to the Israeli attack, describing it as a “horrific massacre.”
Hamas called the strike “a new war crime extending the genocide” that the Israeli regime “commits against children and unarmed civilians.”
The movement said Israel perpetrated “this treacherous and cowardly bombing…in an attempt to renovate the image of its defeated army.”
Hamas noted that Israel’s onslaught on Gaza is being “supported by [US] President [Joe] Biden’s administration, [which is] the primary partner of the Zionist entity in its crimes and fascist aggression” against the blockaded territory.
The Israeli war machine launched its military aggression on October 7 following an operation by Gaza’s resistance movements, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm. Over 20,400 people, most of them women and children, have been killed in the Israeli genocide so far.
As the regime’s most dedicated ally, the US has supplied it with more than 10,000 tons of military equipment since the onset of the aggression.
Washington has also cast its veto against all the United Nations Security Council resolutions that called for implementation of an immediate ceasefire across Gaza.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, politicians, scientists and media organizations vilified unvaccinated people, blaming them for prolonging the pandemic and advocating policies that barred “the unvaccinated” from public venues, businesses and their own workplaces.
But a peer-reviewed study published last week in Cureusshows that a key April 2022 study by Fisman et al. — used to justify draconian policies segregating the unvaccinated — was based on the application of flawed mathematical risk models that offer no scientific backing for such policies.
Dr. David Fisman, a University of Toronto epidemiologist was the lead author of the April 2022 study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), which the authors said showed that unvaccinated people posed a disproportionate risk to vaccinated people.
Fisman has worked as an adviser to vaccine makers Pfizer, Seqirus, AstraZeneca and Sanofi-Pasteur. He also advised the Canadian government on its COVID-19 policies and recently was tapped to head up the University of Toronto’s new Institute for Pandemics.
Fisman told reporters the key message of the study was that the choice to get vaccinated is not merely personal because if you choose to be unvaccinated, you are “creating risk for those around you.”
The press ran with it.
Headlines like Salon’s, “Merely hanging out with unvaccinated puts the vaccinated at higher risk: study,” Forbes’ “Study Shows Unvaccinated People Are At Increased Risk Of Infecting The Vaccinated” or Medscape’s “My Choice? Unvaccinated Pose Outsize Risk to Vaccinated” proliferated in more than 100 outlets.
The Canadian Parliament used the paper to promote restrictions for unvaccinated people.
However, in the new study published last week, Joseph Hickey, Ph.D., and Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., show that Fisman’s “susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR)” model, used to draw his conclusions, had a glaring flaw in one of its key parameters — contact frequency.
When they adjusted that parameter to account for real-world data, the model produced a variety of contradictory outcomes, including one showing that segregating unvaccinated people can increase the epidemic severity among the vaccinated — the exact opposite of what Fisman et al. purported to show
Hickey and Rancourt, researchers at Canada’s Correlation: Research in the Public Interest, concluded that without reliable empirical data to inform such SIR models, the models are “intrinsically limited” and should not be used as a basis for policy.
The Canadian researchers attempted to publish their paper in CMAJ, where Fisman had published his original study, but the editor — a collaborator of Fisman’s — refused even to review it.
The open-access version of CMAJ also declined to publish the article even after it received favorable peer reviews.
In a letter sent, with supporting documentation, to the CMAJ and the Canadian Medical Association, Hickey and Rancourt recounted the “tedious saga” whereby the journal editors “concocted a multitude of ancillary and unnecessary objections, apparently intended to be insurmountable barriers” to publishing their study.
They later published the study in the peer-reviewed journal Cureus.
Rancourt tweeted a link to the study results along with a montage of pandemic-era media clips scapegoating unvaccinated people.
The latest rigorous peer-reviewed science has now proven that these (video clip) despicable global-parasite pronouncements were wrong (=disinformation), and were therefore evil given the widespread harm caused… MEDIA NOTICE ABOUT THE ACTUAL SCIENCE: https://t.co/FrXJGWaCsF h/t… pic.twitter.com/xyV8ksCtiH
SIR models were commonly used as the basis for pandemic policies, often with fatal flaws research has since shown.
Fisman et al. designed their study to measure the impacts of segregating two groups — vaccinated and unvaccinated people — applying a SIR model to predict whether the unvaccinated pose an undue risk to the vaccinated during a severe acute respiratory viral outbreak, based on variable degrees of mixing among the groups.
However the model, Hickey and Rancourt wrote, failed to consider the impacts of that segregation on “contact frequencies,” a key parameter in predicting epidemic outcomes.
Instead, it assumed contact frequencies among the majority (vaccinated) and socially excluded (unvaccinated) groups would be equal and constant, which “is not realistic,” Hickey told The Defender.
In other words, the model assumed the two groups would be separated, yet living the same parallel existence — socializing, working, shopping and coming into contact with others in exactly the same ways.
But in the real world, segregation meant the unvaccinated were barred from many public places, so their contact frequencies were severely curtailed.
Hickey and Rancourt implemented the SIR model again, testing for a degree of segregation that ranged from zero to complete segregation and allowing the contact frequencies for individuals in the two groups to vary with the degree of segregation.
When they ran the model using the more realistic estimation of how different segregation policies might generate different contact frequencies among the two groups, “we found the results are all over the map,” Hickey said.
By segregating unvaccinated people from the vaccinated majority, he said, “You can have an increase in the attack rate among vaccinated people or you can have a decrease.”
“Negative epidemiological consequences can occur for either segregated group, irrespective of the deleterious health impacts of the policies themselves,” they wrote.
Hickey said the variable outcomes were very sensitive to the values of the parameters in the model, namely infectious contact frequency.
But he said, in the real world there are no reliable measures for contact frequency, and without reliable measures for model inputs, the model is essentially meaningless.
They concluded that the degree of uncertainty is so high in such SIR models that they cannot reasonably inform policy decisions.
“It’s a policy based on nothing basically,” Hickey said.
“We cannot recommend that SIR modelling be used to motivate or justify segregation policies regarding viral respiratory diseases, in the present state of knowledge,” the study concluded.
‘Fisman’s Fraud’
Modeling had a major impact on the pandemic response in Canada and globally, statistician Regina Watteel, Ph.D., who chronicled the impact of the Fisman paper in her book “Fisman’s Fraud: the Rise of Canadian Hate Science,” told The Defender.
As a key figure in modeling the pandemic in Canada, Fisman “was involved in Canada’s pandemic response at all levels,” she said.
He was also influential as a public figure, making numerous disparaging comments about “anti-vaxxers” from early on and advocating policies like vaccine passports and school closures long before he received a major grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for his SIR modeling study.
Fisman was open in interviews about the fact that the point of the 2022 study was to “undermine the notion that vaccine choice was best left to the individual,” Watteel said.
The 2022 modeling paper didn’t just present mathematical results, the authors also made political claims.
“The choice of some individuals to refuse vaccination is likely to affect the health and safety of vaccinated people in a manner disproportionate to the fraction of unvaccinated people in the population.
“Risk among unvaccinated people cannot be considered self-regarding, and considerations around equity and justice for people who do choose to be vaccinated, as well as those who choose not to be, need to be considered in the formulation of vaccination policy.”
Fisman publicly advocated for vaccine mandates and passports and told reporters the impetus behind the modeling study was not a scientific question of the effects of segregation on infection rates, but the political question of, “What are the rights of vaccinated people to be protected from unvaccinated people?”
A few days after the study was published, the parliamentary secretary to the Ontario Ministry of Health used the study to defend proposed travel restrictions, Watteel showed in her book.
As a result, she wrote, it “has generated a massive trail of misinformation.”
Watteel concurred that Fisman et al.’s study was based on bad modeling. She added that by omitting publicly available current data that contradicted the data they presented in the article, the study was actually “fraudulent.”
Fisman et al. published the paper during the so-called Omicron surge, which was dominated by infections among the fully vaccinated. By spring 2022, people who were boosted had disproportionately more infections than others, according to data on the government of Ontario COVID-19 website and reproduced in Watteel’s book.
However, none of that publicly available data was included in the study.
“Fisman et al. concocted a model to generate the results they wanted, completely omitting any reference to readily available real-world data that contradicted their results (falsification). They went on to state the contrived results as facts (data fabrication) and then proceeded to inform public policy based on the fabricated results.
“The researchers continued to push the false narrative long after numerous scientists rebuked the findings and provided evidence of the findings’ falsity. This indicates a willful misrepresentation and misinterpretation of research findings.”
CAMJ editor, Fisman colleague, blocks review of Correlation article
Hickey told The Defender when they submitted their paper critiquing SIR models like Fisman’s to CAMJ in August 2022, editor Matthew Stanbrook, M.D., Ph.D. — who also works at the University of Toronto and has collaborated with Fisman on academic articles, grants and courses — rejected the article without even sending it for peer review.
Hickey and Rancourt appealed the decision and requested Stanbrook recuse himself. The journal suggested they resubmit their study to the open-access version of CAMJ, which they did. It was rejected without going through peer review.
They appealed that decision and the paper was sent for review. A few months later, they received two positive reviews with requested corrections. They responded to the reviews and made corrections to the paper, expecting publication.
The journal then informed them there had been a “technical error” and the journal — which is supposed to have an entirely transparent peer-review process — had failed to send them concerns from anonymous internal editors and an anonymous statistician.
Hickey told The Defender :
“It is their policy that the reviewers’ names are public and that the review reports and the revision, like the responses by the author, all that stuff is public. That’s the policy. There’s no escaping that.
“And yet what do they do? They use anonymous internal people to put barriers up and make pretexts to not publish even in the face of positive reviews.”
Those anonymous comments included a suggestion that they should use Fisman’s flawed mathematical analysis, Hickey said. The authors responded to those comments in what they have now also posted on their website as a stand-alone article.
Months later, they requested an update on the journal’s plans for the article and were informed that the journal decided the article would not be suitable for its audience and suggested they instead publish in a modeling journal.
All of their collected critiques of Fisman’s 2022 paper are also collected on the Correlation website.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
Expressing support for Palestinians in the ongoing conflict in Gaza risks Canadians being fired, suspended from their jobs and calls not to be hired, the country’s public broadcaster reported on Friday, reports Anadolu Agency.
It is a development in other countries, including the US and Europe, and affects various employment fields, such as the service sector, education, health care, the law and media. “I can tell you personally, in the last month and a half, I’ve probably spoken with someone at least once a day [about this],” Jackie Esmonde, a labour lawyer at the Toronto-based firm Cavalluzzo Law, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). “They’re not always cases that we take on, but we do have eight to 10 cases that we’re actively working on at the moment.”
She said these are not cases of hate speech or support for terrorism.
In November, the University of Ottawa suspended Dr Yipeng Ge after a social media post that said: “From the River to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The university interpreted this to mean the “ethnic cleansing of Jewish people from Israel.”
Others have suffered job suspensions for posts that featured the words “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe Israel’s actions.
In November, 650 lawyers, law students and professors from across Canada published an open letter that says there has been a “chilling effect” on freedom of expression since the start of the Israeli-Hamas conflict on October 7.
Meanwhile, lawyers interviewed by the CBC said they were not aware of anyone facing consequences for social media posts supporting Israel.
And two employees at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies – a non-profit human rights organization that fosters antisemitism education – told the CBC that teachers at the centre have been told to report students who make statements critical of Israel.
During the first six weeks of the war on Gaza, Israel routinely used one of the largest and most destructive bombs supplied by the US in areas it deemed safe zones for civilians, according to an analysis of visual evidence conducted by the New York Times published on Friday.
The report showed Israel’s bombardment using bombs weighing approximately one tonne in an area in southern Gaza, to which civilians were displaced under the pretext of seeking safety.
Many Western armies use bombs of this size, but munitions experts confirmed that US forces no longer drop them in densely populated areas, according to quotes by the newspaper.
The newspaper reported that it had programmed an artificial intelligence tool to scan satellite images of southern Gaza in search of craters resulting from this type of bomb. Its reporters manually reviewed the search results, looking for craters 13 metres or more.
According to munitions experts, only bombs weighing one tonne would create craters of this size in Gaza’s light, sandy dirt.
The investigation identified 208 craters in satellite images and drone footage. Due to limited satellite images and differences in bomb effects, many instances were likely not captured. However, the findings reveal that the one-tonne bombs pose a widespread threat to civilians seeking safety in southern Gaza.
The newspaper quoted the remarks of an Israeli army spokesperson, claiming that Israel’s priority is to destroy Hamas and “questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage,” adding that the Israeli army “takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
US officials say Israel must do more to minimise the number of civilians killed in its war on Hamas.
The Pentagon has increased its arms shipments to Israel, including smaller bombs considered more suitable for use in densely populated and urban environments like the Gaza Strip. Despite this, since October, the US has supplied Israel with more than 5,000 MK-84 munitions — a type of one-tonne bomb.
By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | August 18, 2013
There is no way to say this truth nicely: Politicians lie. That includes Japanese, American, Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian politicians! Is there something more common sense than that? Yet, so many citizens around the world believe their own politicians or wistfully acknowledge lies but think it is part of the job needed to run things. They believe even when politicians contradict themselves blatantly. This phenomenon is rather remarkable. It is a dissonance and disconnect from reality that many seem oblivious to. It is very dangerous because it can lead to accepting rationales for going to war. These can be deadly wars that lead to millions of lives lost as happened in what was called World War 1 and WW2. Even when incredible and declassified evidence abound, politicians continue to lie and old mythologies refuse to die. Here are just a few of the countless lies told to us over the past few decades… continue
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