The Times Wants You Consumed by Fear, Isolation, and Misery
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | AIER | January 30, 2021
There are probably multiple reasons why coronavirus cases in the US are down nearly 50% in the US in the last month.
Could be seasonal. Could be the vaccine. Could be herd immunity from natural infection.
Could be the post-holiday default to endemicity. Could be a change in the cycle threshold of PCR that generates fewer positive cases. Could be data tweaks in light of political changes.
Anyone who says he knows for sure which is dominant is pretending to know the unknowable.
The New York Times, which obliquely reports the case decline, is still certain that you should still live in isolation, fear, and disease panic. They offer every county in America a tool in which you can discover what you should do to protect yourself from the pathogen, as if the only way to deal with a respiratory virus is to hide. Their tool is extremely manipulative.

For example, they have this category called “very high risk level.” Red is in the text. Scary! But what is it? It means 11 or more people per 100,000 have generated a positive PCR test for the coronavirus.
Not deaths. Not hospitalizations. Not even symptomatically sick. (Yes, I know the term “sick” is old fashioned.)
We are talking about 11 positive PCR tests. This is an infection rate of 0.01%. Consider too that the NYT reports that these tests in the past have generated up to 90% false positives. In addition, the infection fatality ratio for those under 70 could be as low as 0.03%.
Once you add all that up, you end up with a very long string of zeros followed by some number (I’ll let someone else do the math; in any case, all these data are mostly based on illusion). In any case, we are talking about a vanishingly tiny chance of severe outcomes for the population at large, depending almost entirely on demographics.
Still, the Times says you may not live a normal life. True, people in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, South Dakota, and many others states are living happy normal lives. But they are all doing it wrong, according to the New York Times.
Let’s look at their life advice for anyone living in a “very high risk” area.



No haircuts, no manicures, no gatherings, no travel, no friends, no bars, no restaurants, and no singing! BE VERY AFRAID…CONSTANTLY!
To me, all of this sounds like insanity defined. And look at how they tip their ruling-class hand. People should not go to the store but rather have their groceries delivered. Delivered by whom? Apparently not readers of the New York Times.
To the Times, there is only us and them: the clean people vs. the dirty people who get to travel to deliver to “us” our groceries and essential services. Our job is to sit in a perpetual state of disease avoidance while they operate as sandbags to create the herd immunity from which we will benefit. It’s the new feudalism.
Now look what we must do for “extremely high risk” which pertains for as low as 20 PCR positives per 100,000 people.


Notice any difference between “serious” and “extreme” risk? That’s right. There is none. They are identical. And if you look at the map above you can see that right now most of the country is in extreme risk, according to the Times. According to this preposterous map, there are only two counties in the US at low risk.
Let’s look at Prairie County, Montana. It’s one of the two places you can live without the terrifying prospect of dropping dead from disease. There are 1,300 people living there. If one person tests positive, that immediately shifts the entire county into extreme risk. So the trajectory since November 1 looks utterly hilarious, toggling between low and extreme risk with a total of 70 cases in three months with most daily cases at exactly 0.
So what according to the Times should the good people of Prairie County do? They should be grateful to be relatively safe but try to their best to stay put! Do not go anywhere near the scary places elsewhere! They should stay in their bubble!

Look, at some point, the media is going to have to admit complicity in the creation of this extremely unscientific, pathological, unwarranted, and deeply destructive disease panic. They created it, starting with the now-discredited Donald McNeil’s February 27, 2020, recommendation that we “go medieval” with the coronavirus.
This whole paradigm amounts to a rejection of public health, which is always not just about one pathogen but all threats to human health and not just for the short term but the long term. The defining mark of 20th century public health as distinguished from the Middle Ages is that we recognized that pathogens are all around us and need to be managed rationally. Oh also the paradigm rejects human rights and freedom.
We do not need to destroy society, lock people in their homes, tear down businesses, close schools, traumatize kids, drive people to alcoholism and drug abuse, divide society between the clean ruling class and the dirty working class, ban travel, close churches, abolish choirs, close the arts, and whip up the population into a frenzied psychological meltdown in order to deal with a new strain of a respiratory virus. But tell that to the New York Times.
Damascus says terrorist groups, US-backed militants continue to commit crimes in Syria

Press TV – January 30, 2021
Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Bashar al-Jaafari says terrorist organizations and militants of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is supported by the United States, continue to commit crimes in the Arab country.
The Syrian diplomat made the remarks during an informal session of the United Nations Security Council held via video conference at the initiative of Russia and Kazakhstan on Friday, Syria’s official news agency, SANA, reported.
During the session titled, “Children in Armed Conflict in Syria,” Jaafari noted that the said groups kept committing crimes and violations against children, including killing, kidnapping, recruiting, and transferring children to conflict areas in the countries of the region.
He added that those groups were also burning and destroying schools and hospitals and preventing children from receiving education.
The Syrian deputy foreign minister, however, stressed that despite all the crimes and violations, Damascus exerts tremendous effort to protect and care for the children who are found in the areas liberated from the grips of terrorists or those minors reached by the state institutions.
Jaafari further described terrorism as one of the most dangerous threats that affect countries and communities, warning that when it spreads, the first affected and the most vulnerable ones would be children.
The veteran diplomat also warned that an extremely alarming impact of terrorism is recruiting children by terrorists and illegitimate entities and forcing them to take part in terrorist acts.
Last week, the UN Children’s Agency said more than half of Syrian children in the war-ravaged country were missing out on education, as almost a third of schools have either fallen down or been commandeered by militant factions.
It estimated that there are more than 2.4 million children out of school inside the Arab country.
The new figures showed an alarming sharp rise from previous estimates when the UN agency said a third of Syrian schoolgoers were deprived of education.
Sharjah: Emir’s wife criticises UAE-Israel education cooperation

MEMO | January 29, 2021
The wife of the Emir of Sharjah has criticised the UAE’s cooperation with Israel in the education field. Sheikha Jawaher Bint Mohammed Al-Qasimi made her comment about an online meeting between the ministries of education in the UAE and Israel to discuss cooperation, student exchanges, and joint academic studies.
“Their [the Israelis’] curriculum encourages the killing of Arabs and stealing Arab lands,” she said on Twitter. The Sheikha also retweeted a post by “Ahmed”, a tour guide, about Andalusia in which he recalled the background of Israeli Minister of Education Yoav Galant.
“Who is the Israeli Education Minister Yoav Galant?” wrote the tour guide. “He is one of the bloodiest generals in the history of Israel. He participated in the killing of Hassan Salameh in Beirut in 1979. He is the leader of the operation to storm the Jenin [refugee] camp, which led to the killing of dozens of defenceless Palestinians, and operation Grapes of Wrath against Lebanon (Lebanese Qana massacre) in 1996.”
Sheikha Jawaher’s tweet is the most prominent and explicit objection to have emerged from the ruling circles in UAE against cooperation with Israel. Hundreds of Twitter users have praised her courage in expressing her opinion.
In 2013, the UN-appointed Sheikha Jawaher as the first prominent advocate for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the UAE. This, said the international organisation, was because of her “proven track record in the field of humanitarian work, community support, and women’s empowerment.”
The UAE and Israel signed an agreement last September to normalise their relations under US auspices, despite Palestinian and Arab objections.
READ ALSO:
Kuwait school book shows Israel on map in place of Palestine
A Domestic Terrorism Law? War on Dissent Will Proceed Full Speed Ahead
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 28, 2021
President Joe Biden has already made it clear that legislation that will be used to combat what he refers to as “domestic terrorism” will be a top priority. That means that his inaugural speech pledge to be the president for “all Americans” appears to apply except for those who don’t agree with him. Former Barack Obama CIA Chief John Brennan, who is clearly in the loop on developments, puts it this way in a tweet where he describes how the new Administration’s spooks “are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about [the] insurgency” [that includes] “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”
The United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which includes freedom of speech and association, has been under siege for some time now. Government has always used its assumed powers conferred by a claimed state of emergency to deprive citizens of their rights. During the American Civil War Abraham Lincoln imprisoned critics of the conflict. Woodrow Wilson’s First World War administration brought in the Espionage Act, which has since been used to convict whistleblowers without having to present the level of evidence that would be required in a normal civil trial. During the Second World War, Franklin D. Roosevelt erected concentration camps that imprisoned Japanese Americans whose only crime consisted of being Japanese.
But perhaps the greatest attack on the Bill of Rights is more recent, the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts that were passed into law as a consequence of the “Global War on Terror” launched by President George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11. Together with the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which includes a court designed to speed up the warrant approval process, ordinary citizens found themselves on the receiving end of surveillance for which there was little or no justification in terms of probable cause. The FISA process was even notoriously abused in the national security apparatus attempt to derail the campaign of Donald Trump. The tools are in place for ever more government mischief and no one should doubt that the Democrats are just as capable of ignoring constitutional safeguards as the Republicans have been.
What makes the current state of war against “terrorism” so dangerous is that the national security apparatus has been politicized while the government has learned that labeling someone or some entity terrorist or even a “material supporter of terrorism” is infinitely elastic. That is precisely why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has frequently called out opponents and attached to them the terrorist label, since it then permits other steps that might otherwise be challenged.
And there is also the fact that the playing field has changed since the First and Second World Wars. The government has technical capabilities that were never dreamed of in most of the twentieth century. Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers have demonstrated how the government routinely ignores constitutional limits on its ability to interfere in the lives of ordinary citizens. Not only that, it can monitor the lives of millions of Americans simultaneously, giving the police and intelligence agencies the power to mount “fishing expeditions” that literally invade the phones, computers and conversations of people who have not been guilty of any crime.
The authorizations that already exist will be further weaponized to go after dissidents as identified by the new regime. A bill introduced by House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff “would take existing War on Terror legislation and simply amend it to say we can now do that within the U.S.” It would be combined with previous legislation, including former president Barack Obama’s infamous 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the military to indefinitely detain American citizens suspected of terrorism without a trial. Obama and Brennan also assumed an illegal and unconstitutional right to act as judge, jury and executioner-by-drone of American citizens overseas. Given those precedents, a bill like Schiff’s would free the national security community’s hands even more.
The new body of legislation would mean increased secret legal surveillance, suppression of free speech, indefinite incarceration without charges, torture, and perhaps even assassination. If it sounds like totalitarianism it should. There ought to be particular concern that the plan of the Biden Administration to go after so-called domestic terrorists will be this generation’s version of either Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The incident that took place at the Capitol Building on January 6th (already being referred to as 1/6 in some circles) has been exaggerated beyond all recognition and is now being regularly referred to as an “insurrection,” which it was not, by both politicians and the mainstream media. The language used to vilify what are alleged to be “right wing” and “white supremacist” enemies of the state is astonishing and the technology is keeping pace to turn the United States and other countries into police states to ensure that citizens will do the bidding of government.
To cite only one example of how technology can drive the process, Biden has several times threatened to initiate and enforce something like a nationwide lockdown to defeat the coronavirus. Can he do it? Yes, the tools are already in place. Facial recognition technology is highly developed and deployable in the numerous surveillance cameras that are being installed. Wrist bands are being developed overseas that are designed to compel compliance with government dictates on pandemic measures enforcement. If you have been told to stay home and are instead walking the dog your wrist band will tell the police and they will find and arrest you.
And, as the old saying goes, the Revolution is already beginning to devour its own children. Universities and schools are insisting that teachers actively support both publicly and privately the new “equity and diversity” order while police departments are purging themselves of officers suspected of being associated with conservative groups, meaning that something like a loyalty test might soon become common. Recently the Defense Department has begun intensive monitoring of the social media of military personnel to identify dissenters, as is already done in some large companies with their employees. The new Director of National Intelligence hardliner Avril Haines has already confirmed that her agency will participate in a public threat assessment of QAnon, which she has described as America’s Greatest Threat.
Haines has also suggested that intelligence agencies will “look at connections between folks in the U.S. and externally and foreign” while Biden on his first full day in office has pledged to thoroughly investigate claims about Russian hacking of U.S. infrastructure and government sites, the poisoning of Putin critic Alexei Navalny, and the story that Russia offered the Taliban bounties to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It could be Russiagate all over again, with a claimed foreign threat being used to conceal civil rights violations being committed by the federal government at home.
And, of course, the new policies will reflect the biases of the new rulers. Right wing “terror” will be targeted even though the list of actual right-wing driven outrages is embarassingly short. Groups like Black Lives Matter will be untouchable in spite of their major role in last year’s rioting, arson, looting and violence that caused $2 billion damage and killed as many as thirty because they are in all but name part of the Democratic Party. Antifa, which rioted in Portland last week, will also get a pass – the media routinely describes leftist violence as “mainly peaceful” and only sometimes concedes that some “property damage” occurred.
It is Trump supporters and conservatives in general who are being shown the exit door, to include calls for “deprogramming them”. The Washington Post’s Zionist harpy Jennifer Rubin recently declared that “We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.” She also echoed calls for making them unemployable, “I think it’s absolutely abhorrent that any institution of higher learning, any news organization, or any entertainment organization that has a news outlet would hire these people.”
As the notably clueless Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in 2006 while Lebanon was getting bombed and shelled by Israel, “We are seeing the birth pangs of a new Middle East…” so too are we Americans seeing something new and strange emerging from the ruins of Trumpdom. It will not be pretty and after it is over Americans will enjoy a lot fewer liberties, that is for sure.
A third French lockdown could drive fed-up French away from Macron towards rising Le Pen

Marine Le Pen at an end of summer annual address in Frejus, France September 15, 2019 © REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier
By Rachel Marsden | RT | January 28, 2021
A new poll shows that if the French presidential election was held today, populist National Rally leader Marine Le Pen would beat French President Emmanuel Macron – at least in the first round of voting.
While there’s no reason for Macron to start panicking, he’s nonetheless at a critical crossroads as he faces a decision over whether to lock down the country once again and risk triggering chaos.
Much is being made in the worldwide press of the new Harris Interactive poll indicating that Le Pen currently leads Macron by a score of 26-27 percent to 23-24 percent in a head-to-head, first-round presidential matchup.
It’s not exactly a shock poll, and closely mirrors the first round of the actual faceoff between Macron and Le Pen in 2017 that saw Macron lead Le Pen by only three percent. Macron still won massively in the second round, 66 percent to 34 percent, as voters who favored candidates in the first round all held their noses and voted for Macron in order to block Le Pen. And because of that phenomenon, conventional wisdom suggests that Le Pen simply can’t ever win a French presidential election.
Unless, of course, all hell breaks loose and voters decide that their priority is to get rid of those they perceive as destroying France, at any cost. It’s the same kind of sentiment that swept Donald Trump into the White House and has left permanent marks on American society in Trump’s wake via the radicalization of those who feel that the establishment spent his entire four-year term refusing to accept their electoral choice to the point that it wasn’t a stretch for them to believe that the same establishment would have rigged Trump’s reelection.
Macron finds himself staring down the possibility of what the French call a general “ras-le-bol” – that is, the French being totally fed up with him and his team, to the point of casting whatever vote would be required to replace him in the second round. That would still require a massive shift of 30 percent of Macron voters in the last election’s second round to choose Le Pen. But, given the increasingly dire economic and social crisis facing the country, anything seems possible.
A lot will depend on the next few weeks. Macron is under pressure from sanitary advisers who are encouraging him to adopt a preventative lockdown to avoid hospitals from being overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients. A third lockdown would mean that the economy would take yet another hit, while the French are growing increasingly fed up with nearly a year of government-imposed restrictions on their lives and livelihoods. Already under a 6pm curfew and with some businesses by now closed for months, Macron apparently feels that there’s a growing possibility of civil unrest. And he has good reason to fear, as 38 percent of French citizens are against a third national lockdown, according to an Elabe poll.
Macron can’t keep asking all of French society to fall on their swords for a virus that kills mainly the elderly and people with preexisting problems, all while watching the government roll out the vaccine at the pace of an escargot. The fact that hospitals still risk being overwhelmed a year into the pandemic is a sign of government ineptitude. They could have built hundreds more hospitals within the past year. Instead of offering any other solution, they prefer to just keep downloading their failures onto the backs of the citizens by asking them to lock themselves up at home and tolerate going broke and mad so the government can save face.
Into this breach storms Marine Le Pen, saying on FranceInfo this week: “Lockdown is the last solution when you’ve failed with all the others. Why did the government not take advantage of the last lockdown, which required a lot of sacrifices from the French, to test massively and get ahead of the epidemic?” She added: “We have the feeling that the government has nothing under control, that it spends its time chasing the virus. To be ahead of the game, certain systems need to be generalized, in particular the massive analysis of wastewater, or even sequencing.”
Le Pen echoes the frustration of the French with the government’s go-to solution to its own insufficiencies being repeated lockdowns. When the government handouts dry up – and they soon will – businesses that have been forced by the government to close for months under pandemic pretext will simply fail, and along with them so will the livelihoods of many voters.
And while Macron clearly has a sense that he’s needed to move further right to block a Le Pen rise by adopting measures to better control immigration and Islamist extremism, those measures will amount to pointless window-dressing if he allows the lockdown bulldozer to destroy the social and economic foundation of the country.
So Macron has a choice to make in the coming days. And it may very well decide his presidential fate.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com
Revving Up US War on a Free and Open Society
By Stephen Lendman | January 28, 2021
It’s disappearing in plain sight with Big Media support.
The NYT supports what demands exposure and denunciation.
Sticking with the official narrative, it perpetuates the myth of a January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection — ignoring the orchestrated anti-Trump false flag, its disturbing aftermath playing out in real time.
It backs the phony DHS claim about a growing US threat posed by “violent domestic extremists” emboldened by what happened on Capitol Hill.
The only internal threat to the nation and its people is state-sponsored.
What the Times should explain, it suppresses. Instead it reported the following rubbish:
Homeland Security’s “terrorism alert did not name specific groups that might be behind any future attacks, but it made clear that their motivation would include anger over ‘the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.’ ”
No “presidential transition” threat occurred, no evidence of violence against the state coming ahead.
The DHS falsely expressed concern about so-called “drivers to violence… remain(ing)” active (sic).
Yet the department admitted having no evidence that indicates a “specific, credible plot.”
Instead it dubiously warned of unexplained terrorism trends, nothing that indicates an imminent attack.
An unnamed DHS official was quoted claiming the department is concerned that Biden’s peaceful inauguration could create a false sense of security because “the intent (sic) to engage in violence has not gone away (sic).”
In the run-up to, during, and after January 20 inauguration ceremonies, there was no violence or known threat of it occurring in the nation’s capital.
The city resembles a war zone with no ongoing hostilities.
It remains militarized and occupied by thousands of National Guard troops and other security forces over nothing.
A DHS “terrorism advisory” is fear-mongering mass deception about nonexistent domestic terrorists — except for dark forces in the halls of power.
Americans are repeatedly lied to by government officials and press agent media like the Times.
The 9/11 state-sponsored mother of all false flags to that time was and remains all about waging endless war on humanity at home and abroad.
Since seasonal flu was renamed covid last year and all that followed, what remains of a free and open society is being eliminated entirely for our own good.
Police state enforced totalitarian rule is in place and being hardened.
The undemocratic Dem controlled White House and Congress are heading the nation toward full-blown tyranny — to arrive wrapped in the American flag for mass deception.
What’s coming may include mandatory mass-vaxxing with hazardous vaccines for access to public places, for work and education, for an illusory return to normalcy ahead that’s long gone without mass resistance against diabolical harshness.
The scheme includes elimination of remaining freedoms as once existed on the phony pretext of protecting public health, welfare and national security.
Instead of sounding the alarm against what no one should tolerate, the Times and other Big Media support the transformation of America to a brave new world dystopia unfit to live in — except for its ruling class at the expense of most others.
The choice is clear.
Resist or endure dark forces “stamping on a human face — forever,” with attribution to Orwell.
Life as once experienced will no longer exist if dark forces get their way.
I’m in the twilight of my life. I’m concerned about younger generations that’ll have none of the advantages I had growing up long ago.
That’s the disturbing state of things today — what I won’t be silent about, what I’m committed to resist against through my activist writing.
I urge mass activism from others to save what otherwise will be lost with no turning back.
‘Where is the line between global business & attempts to control society?’ Putin asks Davos, calling out Big Tech
RT | January 27, 2021
Technology giants have become powerful rivals to governments, but there are doubts over the benefits for society of their monopoly positions, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin told the annual World Economic Forum, on Wednesday .
“Where is the line between a successful global business, in-demand services and consolidation of big data – and attempts to harshly and unilaterally govern society, replace legitimate democratic institutions, restrict one’s natural right to decide for themselves how to live, what to choose, what stance to express freely?” Putin wondered.
“We’ve all seen this just now in the US. And everybody understands what I’m talking about,” he added.
The Russian leader was apparently referring to the crackdown by Big Tech corporations like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, mostly on Donald Trump and his supporters, during the recent presidential election in the US. The companies, which, according to some critics, sided with Democratic candidate Joe Biden, blocked President Trump’s social media accounts over accusations of inciting violence, with the same being done to many pages of groups and individuals who’d backed him.
However, one-sided bias claim voiced by some might be an overestimation – the accounts of Democrats supporters were also subject to restrictions, but on a much smaller scale.
Conservative Twitter-like platform Parler was also forced offline, and now there are calls to block the Telegram app as well.
These events have shown that Big Tech companies “in some areas have de facto become rivals to the government,” Putin said.
Billions of users spend large parts of their lives on the platforms and, from the point of view of those companies, their monopolistic position is favorable for organizing economic and technological processes, the Russian president explained. “But there’s a question of how such monopolism fits the interest of society,” he stressed.
#TheGreatReopening – #SolutionsWatch
Corbett • 01/27/2021
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Yes, #TheGreatReopening is happening as we speak. No, it will not be televised (or even YouTubed). Find out the details as James highlights the resistance movements that are rising up around the world on this week’s edition of #SolutionsWatch.
Watch on Archive / BitChute / LBRY / Minds / YouTube or Download the mp4
SHOW NOTES
The Uprising Has Begun (New World Next Week)
30,000 Italian Restaurants Defy Lockdown Rules / Hugo talks #lockdown
100’s Of Polish Business’s To DEFY Lockdown / Hugo Talks #lockdown
“BURN IT DOWN!” – Anti-Lockdown RIOTS Lead To Covid Testing Facility Being TORCHED In Netherlands!
Ontario barbershop reopens despite provincial lockdown using loophole
Unmasked COVID protesters try, fail to place Canadian mayor under citizen’s arrest
What You Need to Know About Making a Citizen’s Arrest
Taking a Stand: Sheriffs, Local Officials, and Rule of Law VS. Covid Dictators
Left, Khaps, Gender, Caste: The solidarities propping up the farmers’ protest
Freedom Airway – #SolutionsWatch
Fact check: PCR testing and viral genetic sequencing serve different purposes
Israeli Forces Demolish Mosque in Masafer Yatta

Israeli forces Wednesday demolished a mosque in the Bedouin community of Azwadeen. (Photo: via Social Media)
Palestine Chronicle | January 27, 2021
Israeli forces Wednesday demolished a mosque in the Bedouin community of Azwadeen, east of Yatta city, south of Hebron, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
Coordinator of the Protection and Steadfastness Committees, Fuad al-‘Amour, told WAFA that Israeli forces escorted bulldozers into Khirbet Umm Qassa in the Bedouin community of Azwadeen, in what is called the Eastern Slope, where the heavy machinery tore down the mosque, reducing it to rubble.
The demolition was carried out less than two weeks after soldiers posted demolition notices against the mosque and a local school, which serves 50 students from three marginalized communities, purportedly for being built without licenses.
Meanwhile, soldiers seized a tin-sheet health unit in Khirbet al-Rakiz hamlet in Masafer Yatta.
Masafer Yatta is a collection of almost 19 hamlets that rely heavily on animal husbandry as the main source of livelihood.
Located in Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli administrative and military control, the area has been subjected to repeated Israeli violations by settlers and soldiers targeting their main source of living – livestock.
It has been designated as a closed Israeli military zone for training since the 1980s and accordingly referred to as Firing Zone 918.
Israeli violations against the area include demolition of animal barns, homes and residential structures. Issuance of construction permits by Israel to local Palestinians in the area is non-existent.
Wisconsin Senate greenlights measure to kill governor’s statewide mask mandate & ALL Covid-related emergency orders
RT | January 27, 2021
Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Senate has voted to end Governor Tony Evers’ face mask order, with lawmakers arguing the government overstepped its authority by extending emergency mandates without approval from the legislature.
The state Senate voted 18-13 to pass the joint resolution on Tuesday, deeming the Democratic governor’s emergency health orders “unlawful.” The bill applies not only to Evers’ most recent declaration last week, but to “all actions of the governor and all emergency orders” issued throughout the pandemic, including the statewide requirement for mask-wearing in public.
Wisconsin Republicans have blasted the emergency mandates as unconstitutional, with GOP state Senator Duey Stroebel arguing on Tuesday that “It is not ok or normal or inevitable or necessary to indefinitely suspend the lawmaking process.”
“There is no such thing as a perpetual emergency.”
Before it becomes law, the measure must also pass through Wisconsin’s State Assembly, where the GOP carries a 58-30 majority. The lower chamber is set to take up the bill on Thursday, which, if passed, would mark the first pandemic-related action taken by the legislature since April.
While Evers has insisted he has legal authority to issue multiple emergency declarations, arguing the threat of the virus changes over time, Republicans say he should have secured approval from lawmakers after his first mandate expired in May.
“Legislative oversight is rendered useless if the governor ignores the temporal limitations on the emergency powers by continuously reissuing emergency declarations for the same emergency,” the Senate resolution states, adding that Evers had “no authority” to impose mandates unilaterally after May 11, 2020.
Under Wisconsin law, legislators can halt a governor’s health emergency through a majority vote, which cannot be vetoed.
“Are we going to start saying that seatbelts, taking off your seatbelt, is a sign of independence? And therefore flying through a windshield when you get in an accident is the utmost way to exercise your liberty?” Larson said.
Democratic lawmakers have denounced the GOP-led effort to kill the mask order, which Milwaukee Senator Chris Larson called a “basic test of what government is supposed to do.”
Two Republican Senators, Rob Cowles and Dale Kooyenga, joined Democrats across the aisle in opposing the measure, with Kooyenga arguing that while he agrees Evers has exceeded his legal authority, he believes the resolution would prolong school closures. Cowles, meanwhile, said he is concerned the bill will send the “wrong message” about masks.
“I’m coming from the science point of view and from the healthcare point of view and I can’t imagine making it worse for the people who have worked their butts off to try to make this better in the healthcare community,” he said.
The new Senate resolution comes after Wisconsin’s highest court shot down Evers’ stay-at-home order in May, deeming it “unlawful, invalid, and unenforceable,” however the governor has nonetheless continued to renew other emergency measures since.
The Republican drive to end Evers’ sweeping health mandates mirrors similar efforts in other states, such as in Michigan, where the state Supreme Court ruled that Governor Gretchen Whitmer had no authority to extend emergency orders beyond April 30, when the state’s first mandate expired. Similar to arguments by the Wisconsin GOP, Michigan’s Republicans also insisted any further orders would need approval from the state house.

