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US sanctions Russian chemical research institute, saying it’s ‘connected’ to Triton computer malware

RT | October 23, 2020

A Moscow research institute involved in developing the S-300 air defense missiles has been blacklisted by the US Treasury Department over alleged “connections” to malware used “against US partners in the Middle East.”

The Central Scientific Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (TsNIIKhM, or ЦНИИХМ) is “connected to the destructive Triton malware,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared on Friday, accusing it of “building customized tools that enabled” the cyber attack on “a petrochemical facility in the Middle East” that allegedly took place in August 2017.

No evidence was offered for this claim, nor the one that in “2019, the attackers behind the Triton malware were also reported to be scanning and probing at least 20 electric utilities in the United States for vulnerabilities.”

The alleged malware attack targeted industrial control systems at the facility and “had the capability to cause significant physical damage and loss of life,” Treasury said in the announcement.

There have been media reports of a cyber-attack on a petrochemical facility in Saudi Arabia in August 2017, but its name or ownership have never been revealed. A March 2018 New York Times story said that “Iran, China, Russia, the United States and Israel had the technical sophistication to launch such attacks,” and speculated that Iran was behind it, arguing that none of the others had the motive to do so.

The sanctioned institute goes back to a gunpowder research lab founded in 1894, and is the leading scientific organization in Russia “in the interests of defense and security of the state,” according to the Association of State Scientific Centers, an umbrella group for 48 Russian government-funded research facilities.

As a result of the sanctions, any property of the institute in possession of US persons is blocked and Americans are prohibited from any transactions with it. The designation also opens non-Americans to sanctions if they do business with the institute.

The sanctions were imposed under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), a law approved with veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate in July 2017 – at the height of the ‘Russiagate’ hysteria.

October 23, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The most important debate of 2020 with Del Bigtree

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | October 22, 2020

THE MOST IMPORTANT DEBATE OF 2020

With the presidential election less than two weeks away, #COVID19 has become one of the biggest issues between the 2 candidates. While they both seem to agree that a vaccine will be available, where do the candidates stand on a potential vaccine mandate? Take a look.

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | October 23, 2020

HERD IMMUNITY DEBATE GOES GLOBAL

From the W.H.O., to government officials across the world, there is an orchestrated push to erase the true origin of herd immunity, a phenomenon that has naturally occurred through every other pandemic the world has seen. Fortunately “The Great Barrington Three” along with over 40,000 scientists and medical professionals refuse to let a small few rewrite history.

October 23, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

FDA Approves Gilead’s Remdesivir To Treat COVID-19 Despite Data Showing Drug Doesn’t Work

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/22/2020

Despite reams of data from an international WHO study raising serious questions about its efficacy, the FDA has finally approved the use of Gilead Science’s remdesivir – a powerful antiviral originally developed to treat ebola – for the treatment of COVID-19, making it the first such drug approved to treat the virus in the US.

The FDA first granted the drug emergency authorization in May, allowing hospitals and doctors to use the drug even though by all accounts it wasn’t that widely used.

President Trump received one course of remdesivir along with several other COVID-19 therapies after contracting the virus. Doctors also gave the president dexamethasone, a steroid that has a much better track record for treating the virus, according to the available data. Trump also received an experimental drug from Regeneron, which, along with Eli Lilly, has filed for emergency use approval for its COVID-19 antibody treatment.

Gilead has been waging a PR campaign against the WHO, which recently publicized the results of its global trial of remdesivir, producing data that was widely hailed as definitive by other scientists.

But Gilead had a lock on approval seemingly from the very beginning, as US officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, praised the drug. Dr. Fauci once said the drug would “set a new standard of care” for COVID-19.

Back in August, Gilead said the company planned to produce more than 2 million courses of the drug by the end of the year, with “several million more coming in 2021.”

Initially, Gilead says it will initially focus on meeting “real-time demand” in the US.

Oddly, none of the initial coverage of the FDA’s decision included much discussion of the WHO’s trial data, which pretty clearly branded the drug a flop. Even the evidence that Gilead has managed to marshal in remdesivir’s defense has been pretty unconvincing.

October 23, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

US elections: with two weeks to go who’s winning

By William Stroock | October 23, 2020

2016 was a bad year for political pollsters and predictors. At his website, FiveThirtyEight, data guru Nate Silver gave Hillary Clinton a 65% Chance of defeating Donald Trump. Silver’s prediction model was on the low end. The New York Times said Hillary had an 85% chance of winning. The Princeton Election Consortium put Hillary’s chances at 99%. Hillary Clinton was heavily favored in 2016.

But she shouldn’t have been. At the end of the Obama presidency much of the nation was in a malaise. The Obama economic recovery never achieved an annual growth rate of 3% and wasn’t felt throughout large swaths of the country. While Obamacare enabled some Americans to buy health insurance, it didn’t lead to universal coverage and was passed by the Democrats via parliamentary muscle and maneuver. The president’s Iran nuclear deal was never ratified by the senate and did not have the force of law. Under Obama the Democrat Party didn’t grow, it shrank. Obama lost nearly a thousand elected Democrat seats throughout the nation. Obama’s presidency simply wasn’t transformative as he and the Democrats promised.

After eight years of Obama, Hillary had a tough task before her. Replacing a two-term president from your party, while not impossible, is hard to do. Just ask Vice Presidents Richard Nixon and Al Gore. In 2016 had Hillary Clinton been in the White House for eight years, a brilliant Democrat candidate like Barrack Obama would’ve been hard pressed to defeat Donald Trump.

Hillary was not a brilliant candidate. From her first senate run in 2000 she was stiff on the stump and had trouble connecting with voters. One got the sense that everything Hillary said had been presented to a focus group and written into a talking point. Overtime she should have become a better campaigner. But bizarrely, from 2000 through 2016 Hillary only became more awkward, ‘Why aren’t I fifty points ahead!?’ she shouted in a weird televised message during the 2016 campaign. She couldn’t defeat Obama in the 2008 Democrat primary and barely defeated socialist Bernie in 2016

Hillary could have learned a thing or two from her husband. In 1992 Bill Clinton jumped into the Democrat primary. Clinton cast himself as an old fashioned democrat in the model of JFK and FDR, an alternative to the ‘bleeding heart’ liberals that lost five of the last six presidential elections to the GOP. Clinton reinvented campaigning, appearing on talk shows and attending townhalls where he took questions from voters. Clinton had an uncanny knack for connecting with people in these venues. After twelve years of Republicans in the White House and a recession, the circumstances for Clinton were fantastic and he won a three-way race. With a good economy at his back in 1996, Clinton easily defeated Republican dinosaur Bob Dole.

In 2000 Vice President Al Gore won the Democrat nomination. But despite eight years of peace and prosperity, Gore lost the 2000 election by a razor thin margin. The Vice President looked uncomfortable before the cameras as he tried to overcome his reputation for being ‘wooden’. His ideas like a social security ‘lock box’ were the butt of jokes. His three debates with GOP nominee George W. Bush were the turning point of the campaign. Bush was amiable while Gore looked like a smug, know it all bully lacking self-awareness. Gore thought he won the debates. Exasperated staffers showed him clips of Saturday Night Live’s brutal parodies of his performance.

So at this point readers are probably wondering where Trump and Biden fit into this matrix of circumstances, ideas and candidates. Let’s ask ourselves who’s the better candidate. Joe Biden has spent most of the campaign in his Wilmington home. When Biden does come out, he reads cues from a comically large teleprompter, very often losing his place and the context of what he is saying. Biden looks tired and old. On most days he ends press availability before noon. The size of the Trump crowd protesting outside a Biden campaign event usually outnumbers the people attending. Biden just isn’t a big campaign draw. At this point Biden’s best argument is that he’s not Trump. His TV ads are sentimental calls for unity and change but offer no specifics. In essence Biden tells voters nothing about what he would do in the Oval Office.

Despite being 73 years old and having just recovered from the Corona Virus, Trump is campaigning across the country. He often holds two rallies a day; thousands attend. These rallies are visual masterpieces, usually held in local airports with Air Force One in the background. On the trail, Trump is relentlessly on message, touting his record on China, trade war, Corona Virus and the economy. He hammers Biden on his 47 years in Washington and son Hunter’s corruption. As far as circumstances go, who would you rather be right now, Trump or Biden?

October 23, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Iran Seeks to Confuse the United States?

Another story that is more fiction than fact

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Credit: The Hill/ YouTube
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | October 23, 2020

Those who have been waiting for the elusive October Surprise that will upset the apple cart on election day are admittedly running out of time. The media’s unwillingness to even consider that the antics of Hunter Biden just might constitute an embarrassment of major proportions or even something worse has done much to kill that story. And the old tried and true expedient of starting a little war somewhere is also proving to be a false hope as no one appears ready to provoke the righteously wrathful Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by ponying up a casus belli. Maybe there is still time for a false flag operation, but even that would require more prior planning than the White House appears capable of.

There is, however, one area that might just be exploitable to create a crisis, though it much depends on whether a tired public is willing to go one more round over the issue of “foreign election interference.” And yes, the Russians are presumed to be involved, on this occasion, as they always are, joined by the ever-vengeful Iranians.

On Wednesday Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe held a news conference at which he laid out details of the most recent dastardly plot against American democracy. He described how Iran and Russia both obtained American voter registration data, apparently through publicly accessible databases and through purchases of email lists. Though no actual votes have been altered, they are using that information “to influence the presidential election as it enters its final two weeks.” Ratcliffe elaborated how “This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos and undermine… confidence in American democracy.”

Ratcliffe focused mostly on Iran, saying that it had been identified as the source of what he described as a claimed 1,500 “spoofed emails” routed through Estonia that “seek to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump.” Iran was also blamed for other material, to include a video encouraging the casting of illegal ballots both domestically and overseas. Additional intelligence suggests that Iran is planning to take more steps to influence the election in the coming days, though what those measures could possibly be was not revealed.

Other government sources elaborated, indicating that Iranian intelligence has been credited with the sending of the email messages going out to Democratic voters in four states, including hotly disputed Pennsylvania and Florida. The emails falsely claimed to be from the alleged far-right group Proud Boys which has been much in the news. Their message was that “we will come after you” if the recipients fail to vote for Donald Trump.

It doesn’t take much to realize that threatening messages relating to voting for Trump allegedly coming from a source described as “racist” would undoubtedly motivate most registered Democratic voters to do the opposite, but that seems to have escaped the analysts of the Directorate of National Intelligence. And one must also ask why Tehran would want the re-election of a president who has been unremittingly hostile, including imposing crippling sanctions, withdrawing from a beneficial nuclear agreement, and assassinating a leading Revolutionary Guards general. Even U.S. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer appears to have figured that one out, saying “It was clear to me that the intent of Iran in this case and Russia in many more cases is to basically undermine confidence in our elections. This action I do not believe was aimed… at discrediting President Trump.”

The anti-Trump New York Times has, of course, another, more sinister interpretation, suggesting that “… it may also play into President Trump’s hands. For weeks, he has argued, without evidence, that the vote on Nov. 3 will be ‘rigged,’ that mail-in ballots will lead to widespread fraud and that the only way he can be defeated is if his opponents cheat. Now, on the eve of the final debate, he has evidence of foreign influence campaigns designed to hurt his re-election chances, even if they did not affect the voting infrastructure.”

The Times also notes a broader conspiracy by the dreadful Persians, explaining how “Iran has tinkered at the edges of American election interference since 2012, but always as a minor actor. Last year, it stepped up its game, private cybersecurity firms have warned. They have caught Iranian operatives occasionally impersonating politicians and journalists around the world, often to spread narratives that are aimed at denigrating Israel or Saudi Arabia, its two major adversaries in the Middle East.” Again, however, the article provides no explanation of what Iran could possibly hope to gain from the minimal “tinkering” it might be able to engage in an American election in which billions of dollars will be spent by Democrats and Republicans who are viciously attacking each other without any outside help.

Ratcliffe had less to say about Russia but U.S. media coverage of the story included a referral to a recent account of how the U.S. military’s Cyber Command helped take down a network developed by Russian hackers called TrickBot that had been used in ransomware attacks directed against companies as well as cities and towns across the United States. It also reported how “In recent days, another Russian hacking group called Energetic Bear, often linked to the F.S.B. — one of the successors to the Soviet Union’s K.G.B. — appears to have focused its attention on gaining access to state and local government networks. That has caught the attention of federal investigators because, until now, the group had largely targeted energy firms, including public utilities.”

There was, however, no evidence that either hacking group was being directed against voter systems, so Russia’s inclusion in the front-page Times story headlined “Iran and Russia Seek to Influence Election in Final Days, U.S. Officials Warn” has to be considered questionable editorial judgment. Perhaps scaremongering would be a better description. In any event, the story itself is much ado about nothing. Iran’s sending out 1,500 emails if that actually occurred, would have zero impact. Likewise, the claimed existence of alleged Russian hacking groups that have done nothing directed against voters or balloting systems with only a few days left until the election would appear to be an electoral tactic rather than exposure of any genuine threat. One might even describe it as a bit of deliberate disinformation.

October 23, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

‘Big Guy’ Joe Biden was PERSONALLY involved in China venture, Hunter Biden’s business partner says

RT | October 23, 2020

Investor Tony Bobulinski says he personally met with Joe Biden to discuss a joint venture with a Chinese company, accusing his son Hunter and the Biden family of using the endeavor as a “personal piggy bank.”

In a statement to the press on Thursday night, shortly before the presidential debate in which Democratic nominee Biden and President Donald Trump will face off, Bobulinski affirmed media reports that the emails between him and Hunter Biden are authentic.

Bobulinski said he was approached in 2015 about a joint venture with CEFC China Energy and “one of the most prominent families in the US.” This led to a May 2, 2017 meeting with Joe Biden, his brother James, and his son Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.

At the hour-long meeting, Bobulinski said, they discussed the Biden family’s business plans with the Chinese, with which Joe Biden “was plainly familiar, at least at a high level.”

The venture was to be named “SinoHawk,” Bobulinski explained, combining China and the favorite animal of Biden’s late son Beau, who died of a brain tumor in 2015.

Bobulinski further said he received an email from Hunter on May 13, 2017 in which 10 percent of the equity in the company would be reserved for “the Big Guy,” which he said stood for Joe Biden. He later objected to Hunter’s request that the company should wire $5 million to entities controlled by the Biden family, saying SinoHawk “could not be Hunter’s personal piggy bank.”

According to Bobulinski, he found out that the money had indeed been wired from last month’s Senate report.

Responding to Bobulinski’s announcement, Biden’s campaign said that Barack Obama’s former vice-president and current Democrat presidential candidate “has never even considered being involved in business with his family nor in any overseas business whatsoever.”

The campaign also called the accusations a “smear” and claimed it was a “desperate, pathetic farce.”

Bobulinski told reporters he had never been political and had previously donated to Democrats, but decided to go public so “the American people can decide for themselves.” At the event, he held up three cell phones he said contained messages from the 2015-2018 time period, which he was going to turn over to the FBI as evidence. He left without taking questions.

October 23, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Then they came for the LEFT: Facebook deletes account of biologist & Big Tech critic Bret Weinstein without explanation

RT | October 22, 2020

Facebook has deleted the account of biology professor Bret Weinstein without explanation, apparently expanding its crackdown on politically incorrect thought to include leftists who defend speech rights and criticize Big Tech.

Weinstein, who rose to national prominence when he opposed a 2017 event at Washington’s Evergreen State College banning white people from campus for one day, said Thursday on Twitter that he had been “evicted” from Facebook. “No explanation, no appeal.”

Weinstein’s tweet included a screenshot of a Facebook notice indicating that his account hadn’t followed “community standards” and therefore had been disabled. The notice said the decision had already been reviewed and wouldn’t be reversed.

“We are governed now in private, by entities that make their own rules and are answerable to no process,” the professor and podcaster added. “Disaster is inevitable. We are living in it.”

Weinstein is a full-fledged progressive, having supported self-described Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders for president. He also participated in the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2009. But he’s also a classical liberal and participant in the so-called ‘Intellectual Dark Web’, where commentators speak out against cancel culture and defend free-speech rights.

The biologist appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in June, warning about the consequences of woke authoritarianism spreading from college campuses into the real world. As if that wasn’t controversial enough, he spoke out against YouTube’s demonetization of conservative commentator Steven Crowder in 2019.

Responding to Weinstein’s banishment from Facebook, Dave Rubin, another liberal who has faced backlash for his positions on free speech and libertarianism, said social-media censorship was inevitably going to spread from the political right to left. “They weren’t going to stop with Alex Jones,” Rubin tweeted.

Another Twitter commenter said, “We tried to warn liberals, when they tested this out on easy fringe targets like Milo (Yiannopoulos) or Alex Jones, that they were just the first but by no means the last. Can’t say conservatives did not warn them.”

Columnist Amy Alkon said that by terminating Weinstein’s account without explanation, Facebook leaves no way to “assess whether you indeed violated some standard or whether somebody there high up enough to ax you just wanted you gone.” Writer Terry Wayne Carpenter Jr. added that “in the attention economy, social-media companies are de facto First Amendment enforcers.”

Big Tech has notoriously put its thumb on the scale for Democrat interests, as evidenced in the past week when Facebook and Twitter tried to squelch the New York Post’s scoops on alleged influence-peddling by Joe Biden’s family. But other voices that oppose more mainstream liberal and neocon dogmas have increasingly been quieted. For instance, Google has slashed search traffic to anti-war and socialist websites, while Twitter has suspended anti-war and Occupy-linked accounts.

October 22, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Weapons of Mass Distraction

By Eric Striker • National Justice • October 22, 2020

The most remarkable thing about the Iraq war debacle isn’t the trillions of dollars wasted or hundreds of thousands of innocent people and US servicemen killed, but the fact that all of the journalists who promoted the lie to the American people were never held to account.

During the 2000s, a bipartisan cabal of overwhelmingly Jewish media personalities coordinated with American intelligence services to concoct the lie that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction to use against the United States.

The role of neoconservatives in this endeavor, primarily as Bush administration officials coordinating the war, is well known. What has been forgotten is the integral role “liberal” publications like the New York Times, Washington Post and others played in selling the WMD hoax.

The Times’ Judith Miller is credited with being one of the first to plant unsubstantiated WMD tales in popular consciousness, but other Jews — many of them also seen as unambiguously “liberal” — also played an active role in lying to drum up support for Bush’s war for Israel: Ezra Klein (currently of Vox ), Jeffrey Goldberg (now editor of The Atlantic), and Jonathan Chait (star columnist at the New Yorker). That’s just a shortlist.

Amazingly, every one of these individuals has only grown in prestige and influence in the press in the aftermath. Even Iraq war sin chicken Judith Miller remained unapologetic in her 2015 rehabilitation tours. She has since 2016 been hired by conservative outlets like Fox News and City Journal, now dedicating her columns to promoting foreign election meddling claims.

The gravest problem now with our Jewish controlled media is that all of the Iraq war disinformation agents, not just Miller, are now amongst the loudest amplifiers of the US intelligence community’s latest baseless hysterics alleging that every act of low-level trolling, dissenting political opinion, or news report (including initially the Hunter Biden story) that they find inconvenient is an inorganic product of Russian, Chinese or Iranian “election meddling” or “disinformation.”

To what ends? To lower public confidence in liberal institutions? To cause division and polarization? To make people afraid to vote and even more afraid of the outcome? The intelligence community’s Chicken Littles are doing this on a much wider scale than any supposed foreign agent.

Earlier today, the Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe held an “important” national security conference besides American NKVD leader Christopher Wray claiming that crudely written emails sent by someone impersonating the pro-Trump group, Proud Boys, telling registered Democrats in Florida not to vote was in fact an act of “election interference” by Iran. Intelligence operatives at the announcement also mentioned that Russia was conspiring with them by harvesting US political registrations for ill-intended reasons. No evidence was provided for either allegation.

The claim is ridiculous because, first of all, Florida political registrations are publicly available and easily found online. Anyone can obtain them without engaging in cyber crime or hacking.

Secondly, unflinching hostility towards Iran and over the top loyalty to Israel first is an issue Joe Biden and Donald Trump both enthusiastically agree on.

Trump and Biden are equally bad for Iran in distinct ways. Biden supports escalating Washington’s military presence in Syria and placing pressure on Iraq to cut ties with Iran.

Trump on the other hand has for the last few years attempted to starve the Iranian people into submission with “maximum pressure” sanctions, but this has been paired with military retreats in geostrategic zones of the Middle East that Israel believes are important to maintain a foothold in.

The Iranians and Russians don’t have a dog in America’s 2020 election fight between Oreo and Hydrox. Seeing how only 67% of Democrats are excited to vote for Joe Biden, it looks like Biden’s uninspired and mailed-in candidacy is the foremost act of interference in his campaign.

Meanwhile, Iran has responded with fury typical of a falsely accused man. The nation’s diplomats have lodged an official complaint at the United Nations demanding the FBI and DNI stop making frivolous accusations of trying to intimidate voters in America. President Hassan Rouhani’s counter is that both candidates — who are just spokesmen for Washington’s permanent bureaucracy — are enemies of the Iranian nation.

Today’s press conference by Wray and Ratcliffe was more akin to the despots in 1984 switching back and forth between blaming Eurasia (Russia) and Eastasia (China and Iran) during Hate Week. It’s a moronic distraction from their moronic failures, corruption and the artificially induced climate of fear they have created in our homeland.

It’s an attempt to shoehorn into tonight’s debate the non-issues of “election interference” and “disinformation” that most of the American public, which is suffering from problems like hunger and unemployment, has tuned out.

From weapons of mass destruction to weapons of mass distraction, both personify the Jewish post-truth order.

October 22, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Tehran Summons Swiss Envoy over US’ Anti-Iran Claims

Al-Manar | October 22, 2020

Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned Swiss Ambassador to Tehran, representing US Interest Section in Iran, over remarks of US officials against Iran.

Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that Islamic Republic of Iran advises the United States to “refrain from useless projections,” as quoted by Mehr news agency.

“Swiss envoy to Iran was summoned by Assistant and Director General of Iranian Foreign Ministry for American Affairs on Thursday following some baseless allegations raised by US officials about interference of other countries in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election in the United States,” the spokesman said.

While rejecting the repeated claims and “false, clumsy and fraudulent reports of the US officials,” Khatibzadeh emphasized once that it does not matter for Tehran which of the two current candidates will run for the White House.

“The US regime and its intelligence and security services, which have a long history of interfering and creating chaos in the elections of other countries, make baseless claims on the eve of the US elections to advance their undemocratic project and predefined scenario with some projections,” he said.

“It is not far-fetched that the designers of such childish scenarios seek to divert public attention and suspicious provocations in the run-up to the elections.”

Khatibzadeh, meanwhile, advised the United States to refrain from “useless projections, baseless accusations and suspicious scenarios, and try to act like a normal country in the field of international relations and in relation to other countries.”

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe claimed late Wednesday that voter registration information had been obtained by Iran and Russia in an attempt to undermine confidence in the 2020 election.

Ratcliffe claimed Iran sought to sow unrest in the US in an attempt to damage the candidacy of President Donald Trump.

October 22, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Star ‘disinformation’ reporter brags about doxxing Trump supporters & NBC defends it as journalism

RT | October 22, 2020

An NBC reporter has bragged about doxxing Trump supporters, “anti-vaxxers,” and other societal rejects, one self-described victim has revealed, suggesting the aim is to turn the US’ national security apparatus against her targets.

Brandy Zadrozny, an NBC feature reporter who specializes in ‘disinformation’ and ‘extremism’ on the internet, is teaching the world how she digs up data on her targets – from phone numbers and home addresses to property records and even Amazon wishlists – to expose their real-life identities. She recently shared her doxxing methods in an online textbook hosted by DataJournalism.com.

But while this might sound like standard journalism practice, Zadrozny’s targets – who have recently included anonymous Trump supporters on Twitter – are private citizens who have committed no crimes, and exposing their real-life identities for allegedly posting “disinformation” is a not-so-subtle effort to turn them into enemies of the state, one such recent target, Revolver News reporter Darren Beattie, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Wednesday.

“She uses state-of-the art-proprietary technical tools to dig up personal information about anonymous Trump supporters online,” Beattie told the Fox News host. “She’ll do anything she can to unearth anonymous Trump supporters – basically so she can ruin their lives.”

Beattie revealed that Zadrozny’s “doxxing handbook” is sponsored in part by Bellingcat, the notoriously partisan ‘open-source intelligence’ outfit that, in turn, is backed by the US’ National Endowment for Democracy. It’s also funded by Google, a military contractor in its own right, and the European Journalism Centre, which counts such oligarchic bogeymen as George Soros and Bill Gates among its financial backers. So much muscle behind the doyenne of doxxing would be enough to give anyone who’s ever tweeted “wrongthink” pause, especially when her how-to guide describes how she has “identified people by connecting photos of things like cars, homes, or pets” in addition to profile photos.

Calling the institutionally sanctioned outing “disgusting and disgraceful, even by modern journalism standards,” Beattie described the work of Zadrozny and her ilk as that of “a neo-Stasi” attempting to “crush the rebellion of the American people against their corrupt ruling class,” suggesting her repeated description of anonymous conservatives’ social media posts as “disinformation” was meant to bring down the force of the national security state “to silence Trump supporters domestically.”

The former White House staffer shared screenshots from the textbook on Twitter, revealing the extensive lengths to which Zadrozny went to “out” the Columbia Bugle, which she refers to as a “popular far-right anonymous Twitter account that boasts that it was retweeted twice by Donald Trump’s account.”

Such dogged detective work is one thing when an investigator is hunting a criminal, but quite another when the quarry’s only “crime” is posting political material on social media. And Zadrozny’s targets have been subjected to death threats and suffered real-world harm because of her work.

While Beattie and Carlson both called on NBC to denounce Zadrozny’s abusive tactics, the network responded by defending its employee, calling her an “incredible and meticulous reporter” whom they were “proud to call … our colleague.” Other colleagues stepped up to defend her and attack her accusers, painting the Fox News segment as a preemptive strike against an article Zadrozny was working on about Beattie’s site.

Trained by oligarch-funded journalism outfit the Poynter Institute, Zadrozny shot to journalistic stardom in the past few years, making her name hyping Russiagate, denouncing pedophile hunters, and shutting down Facebook communities in which parents of autistic children swap tips about healing what they believe are vaccine injuries. The unifying thread running through her work, other than a fanatical devotion to pro-establishment narratives, has been reliance on social media deep-dives to learn more about her subjects without having to actually, well, interview them.

October 22, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US federal court grants pro-Palestinian American group legal victory in terrorism case

MEMO | October 21, 2020

Pro-Palestinian groups in America have won a famous victory after a three-year legal battle against a lawsuit holding them responsible for an act of terrorism carried out in 1996. A federal court ruled that American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and Americans for Justice in Palestine (AJP) are not liable for the $156 million in damages sought by Stanley and Joyce Boim.

The husband and wife, whose teenage son David Boim was fatally shot in 1996 at a bus stop near Jerusalem, was awarded $156 million in damages in a 2004 legal case under the Anti-Terrorism Act. The Boims attempted to collect the sum from the defendants to the original lawsuit, however these entities had become defunct.

In 2017 the Boims went after AMP and AJP claiming that they were “alter egos” of the defunct groups that a jury found liable in 2004 for the death of their 17-year-old son David. The two entities did not exist at the time. AMP was formed in 2009 as a national education and grassroots-based organisation, dedicated to educating the American public about Palestine and its rich cultural, historical and religious heritage. AJP is the legal business name for AMP.

AMP Chairman Dr Hatem Bazian dismissed the 2017 lawsuit as “frivolous” saying that it was an attempt to use “the Islamophobic environment we are in to try to tarnish and defame an organisation that is in good standing, and has been working diligently to provide a perspective on the Palestine cause to the American public.”

In their complaint filed in a Chicago federal court, the Boims said they had collected only a “small fraction” of the judgment, and the defendants should be held civilly liable for the rest under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act. They also continue to insist that “it never was their intention to get rich” from the lawsuit.

The federal court dismissed the suggestion that AMP was in any shape or form liable. The eight-page judgement seen by MEMO says that the Boims “do not present evidence that AMP and AJP and the defunct Boim defendants had substantial continuity in operations, ownership, leadership, the same business purpose or that there was a transfer of assets – nor do they set forth evidence of unlawful motive”.

The judge accused the Boims of offering “speculative allegations” centred mainly around Bazian, who they claimed “fully subscribed” to Hamas. Dismissing their allegations, the court refuses to infer that because Bazian had supported Palestinian issues he was somehow connected to Hamas, as the plaintiffs suggest.

Lawyers from the Constitutional Law Centre for Muslims in America (CLCMA), which defended AMP, spoke of the significance of the victory. “We are thrilled for our clients after this long and hard-fought battle,” commented Christina A. Jump, Civil Litigation Department Head for CLCMA.

“Without CLCMA’s ability to work for non-profits like AMP free of charge, due to the generosity of our operating grant funded by many small donations from across the country, a blameless non-profit would have been forced out of existence solely because of the nationality of its members and the culture which it works to preserve. The right legal decision came through today, after many years, many depositions, and a lot of fishing expeditions in discovery – which all led nowhere. Today we celebrate on behalf of our clients, and look forward to being able to do so even more often in the future.”

October 22, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

UAE, Bahrain, Israel ‘Abraham Accords’ should be renamed ‘Benjamin Accords’

By Robert Inlakesh – Press TV – October 22, 2020

The first UAE delegation, since the signing of its infamous normalization deal, traveled to Ben-Gurion airport yesterday, in order to secure trade deals with Israel. Amongst deals regarding travel between the two sides and a pipeline deal, Israel, the US and the UAE also agreed to set up a 3 billion dollar investment fund, headquartered in Jerusalem (al-Quds).

Dubbed by media pundits throughout the Western media as a “peace deal”, the so-called “Abraham Accords” have proven to bear the fruits of economic prosperity, instead of sowing the seeds for peace. It is obvious at this point that the official reasons, according to the United Arab Emirates, the US and Israel, for having signed the deal were a farce, it was not about peace but rather about the Benjamins (slang for currency).

Upon the announcement from the UAE that it was to normalize ties with Israel, the narrative was spun from their side that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would halt going forward on his campaign promise to annex the West Bank, in return for “peace” with the UAE.

However, Netanyahu instantly positioned himself in front of all available cameras and stated that to the contrary Israel will continue with its annexation. Despite this, it seems that Netanyahu was never truly interested in a de jure annexation of the West Bank and had failed to deliver by the promised date he had set forth to begin accomplishing the task.

Benjamin Netanyahu had won an election, campaigning on the promise of annexation, but had failed and was hesitant to enforce the policy, likely due to a fear of European backlash. Netanyahu needed a distraction, so instead of annexation, he delivered a so-called “historic” peace deal with the UAE and Bahrain, nailing in the hundredth nail into the cothin [coffin] of the “two-state solution”.

Although annexation seems to have been put on the back burner, Israel has since the signing approved for over four thousand new settler units to be constructed, in violation of international law, in the occupied West Bank. This is how Israel truly annexes land in the West Bank, through physical expansion onto that land, which is much more cement than a declaration or signing something on paper. So ultimately, annexation has only escalated, on the ground, since the “peace deal” was signed.

Also, on top of this, Israel, the UAE and the US have agreed to set up a three billion dollar trust fund, which will reportedly allow for the creation of further investment, based in Jerusalem (al-Quds).

In a bid to inject investment into the UAE regime owned airline ‘Emirates’, Israeli citizens will be allowed to travel to the UAE without any visa.

But perhaps the most significant of all in this new series of business deals is the announcement that Emirati Crude is set to be sent from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, this being transported via a pipeline seized by Israel from Iran.

The pipeline was originally built for joint Israeli-Iranian trade, however this no longer became an option after Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.

A Swiss court ruled in 2016 that Israel was liable for its seizure of this pipeline and was required to pay Iran at least 1 billion dollars in compensation, which Israel continues to refuse to pay.

If oil is transported between the UAE and Israel, it is likely to further inflame tensions between the UAE and Iran. One of the aims of the so-called ‘Abraham Accords’ having been to combat Iran’s influence in the Middle-East.

With major trade deals being secured, via illegally seized pipelines, a joint mission having been set up to exacerbate tensions which could lead to all-out war in the region and with Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza, expansion of settlements and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, it is clear the deal is not about peace.

The UAE has not been forced to end its involvement in the genocidal war waged against the people of Yemen, with Israel now being able to openly cooperate with them on that front.

The “peace deal” is nothing more than corrupt dictators, coming together with opportunistic Western politicians, in a bid to secure greedy business deals and a policy of joint aggression against their enemies in the region, all whilst saving face to their blind and clueless populations who clap along as they fail to recognize that the “peace deal” is in fact a distraction from how they have been lied to.

Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer and political analyst, who has lived in and reported from the occupied Palestinian West Bank. He has written for publications such as Mint Press, Mondoweiss, MEMO, and various other outlets. He specializes in analysis of the Middle East, in particular Palestine-Israel. He also works for Press TV as a European correspondent.

October 22, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

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