Missouri Congressman Burleson Says "It's Angels"

futurism  |  Congressman Eric Burlison (R-MO) has waded into the discourse about UFOs — and in an outburst that probably says more about the state of US politics than unidentified objects in the sky, speculated that they might be "angels" sent by God himself.

Yes, you read that right. During a recent episode of That UFO Podcast this week, Burlison took the UFO conversation in a wild new direction.

"They may not fit exactly the Biblical narrative, but whenever I use the term 'angels,'" he said, "to me, it's synonymous with an extradimensional being."

"I think it's more likely that it would be something extradimensional than it would be within this dimension," Burlison argued. "And then, so what I'll say is that when you start talking about things in that nature, that they're extradimensional, well, in a lot of different scriptures, including the Bible, and others, that's really the way that you describe messengers of God or, you know, angels."

Strikingly, Burlison's musings come after he attended a classified briefing about UFOs this month, though he said after it that nothing he'd learned there had fundamentally shifted his worldview.

"There’s nothing that’s been said that’s changed my worldview," he told the Kansas City Star. "I believe the veracity of the claims of the people who testified in the public hearing. Now, that being said, I believe that what they believe they said is true."

Burlison isn't alone in musing about a connection between UFOs and religious texts.

"UFOs were in the Bible," representative Tim Burchett (R-TN) claimed in 2021. "Read Ezekiel, it talks about the wheel flying around. So I mean, they’ve been around since we’ve been around and somebody needs to come up with some answers."

Burlison has long called for oversight over reports alleging that the US government has conspired to keep spicy UFO findings from leaking to the public.

The subject has been fraught with drama. Last summer, an Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency named David Grusch came forward to allege that the government had secretly recovered alien spacecraft — and even dead "pilots" inside them — for decades as part of a top-secret UFO retrieval program.

 

Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied (Thus The Sinister Beauty Of Apartheid)

nakedcapitalism  |  Now in the wake of October 7 and the unification of sentiment in Israel against Palestinians, a two-state solution is simply na ga happen. Having the US, Egypt, and Qatar talk up a peace scheme that includes a two-state solution as a major component is an insult to intelligence, like the Collective West coming up with Ukraine peace plans they dreamed up in a vacuum, with no consideration of what Russia would accept.

But on top of that, even before October 7, the Palestinians had also soured on the idea. From The Strategist:

On the Palestinian side, long before 7 October it was evident the paradigm of Palestinian politics had shifted. Support for a two-state approach has collapsed.

Fatah, self-indulgent, corrupt and unwilling to do the hard yards of election campaigning, lost to Hamas in Gaza in 2006. It was crushed by Hamas when it attempted a coup in 2007.

Meanwhile, Israeli intransigence; settler violence in the West Bank; the loss of political authority on the part of Mahmoud Abbas; the contempt of Palestinians for the role played by the PA in meeting Israel’s security demands and destructive military and settler incursions; US promotion of normalisation between Israel and Persian Gulf Arab states, without addressing the Palestinian issue as an essential part of that process; and the emergence of West Bank urban militant groups defying the PA all combined to deadly effect.

And finally, let us turn to the ultimate obstacle, the fact on the ground of settler extreme balkanization of the West Bank. On top of settler occupation of much of the land, many of the roads are reserved for Israeli use, and Palestinians often have to take roundabout routes to get from Point A to B, as well as go through many checkpoints. The only way to create even some decent-sized chuck of contiguous Palestinian land would be through a reverse Nakba. And that simply will not occur.

Alastair Crooke describes how Israel has chosen to keep the Palestinians in an ambiguous, but of course second-class, position (emphasis original):

Even in 2008, Foreign Minister (and lawyer), Tzipi Livni, was spelling outwhy “Israel’s only answer (to the issue of how to maintain Zionism) was to keep the State’s borders undefined – whilst holding on to scarce water and land resources – leaving Palestinians in a state of permanent uncertainty, dependent on Israeli goodwill”.

And I noted in a separate piece:

Livni was saying that she wanted Israel to be a Zionist state – based on the Law of Return and open to any Jew. However, to secure such a state in a country with very limited territory – means that land and water must be kept under Jewish control, with differential rights for Jews and non-Jews – rights that affect everything, from housing and access to land, to jobs, subsidies, marriages and migration.

A two-state solution inherently therefore, did not solve the problem of how to maintain Zionism; rather, it compounded it. The inevitable demand for full equal rights for Palestinians would bring the end of Jewish ‘special rights’, and of Zionism itself, Livni argued – a threat with which most Zionists concur.

Sharon’s answer to this ultimate paradox, however, was different:

Sharon had an alternative plan for managing a large non-Jewish ‘out-group’, physically present within a Zionist State of differentiated rights. Sharon’s alternative amounted to frustrating a two-state solution within fixed borders…

Sharon envisaged the depth of the West Bank in its entirety as one extensive, permeable and temporary ‘frontier’. This approach could thus disregard any thin-nibbed pencil line, drawn to denote some political border. This framework was intended to leave Palestinians in a state of permanent uncertainty, caught within a matrix of interlocking settlements, and subject to Israeli military intervention at Israel’s sole discretion.

Crooke also developed these ideas in his Judge Napolitano interview on Monday. But he added some critical detail, particularly starting at 18:50: “Where are the two states going to be?” Continuing:

According to the Security Council resolution, it [the Palestinian state] includes all the West Bank and Gaza. Well, what are you going to do about the West Bank? I’ve already, you know that is peopled by nearly 800,000 settlers now who are armed and zealous, have absolutely no intention, whatever any government says, of abandoning. These are fanatics. I’ve been to them. I’ve spoken to them. They are really radical people. Even the Israeli Army, and look at the Israeli Army in the West Bank. It’s basically a reservists army, but also it is a settler army. Most of these people, when I was in Israel, I saw the big transformation of the Israeli Army into becoming a settler army. It used to be managed and led by the kibbutznik, the people who lived in the kibbutz, but then it changed and the settlers took command over the main points of this army.

So you’re not going to be able to use the Israelis to remove them. Who’s going to remove nearly a million Israelis from West Bank? There’s no discussion that is serious about these things. New fabulist sort of ideas that people are using just to manage the problem. We can’t solve it so we come up and we’ll say, “Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states will do this,” and the other things when they know that’s not going to work, it’s impossible to work.

In other words, shorter Crooke is that failure to admit how intractable the Israel/Palestine problem is allows Israelis to continue to use ambiguity and misdirection to the disadvantage and now physical destruction of Palestine and its people.

There's A Civil War Ongoing Within The Chosen's Elite Ranks

theintercept  |  European colonial movements came in different flavors, and Zionism was unique in that its members — certainly after World War II — were fleeing not just persecution, but also extermination. Still, it was of psychological necessity shot through with colonization’s standard ideological racism. Rudolf Sonneborn, an American who would go on to make a fortune in the oil business, was secretary of the Zionist Commission in Palestine following World War I. He reportedOpens in a new tab that “the average [Arab] is inferior even to our average Negro … I believe there is very little to ever fear from them. Besides, they are a cowardly race.”

This was also true for Christian Zionists. George Biddle, a friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the ultra-WASPy descendant of the original settlers on the Mayflower, took this view in an article in The AtlanticOpens in a new tab after visiting Israel shortly after its 1948 founding. First, Biddle enthused about how Israel would serve Western interests. Then, he explained that Arabs were “foul, diseased, smelling, rotting, and pullulating with vermin and corruption.” Fortunately, they “were about as dangerous as so many North American Indians in modern mechanized war.”

The fact that European Jewry were the greatest victims of the racism that was central to this worldview, which Zionism adopted (in a less virulent form), is one of the most bizarre twists of human history.

In any case, Europe’s centurieslong reign of piracy and mass death should make it clear why people around the world — including such far-flung, surprising places as South KoreaOpens in a new tab and PeruOpens in a new tab — look at Israel’s action in Gaza with particular concern. It is not a coincidence that the genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague was brought by South Africa with the participation of Irish lawyers. 

But what happens now? No one knows. 

Israel was, in a sense, both too early and too late. If it had been founded earlier, it could have massacred the entire Arab population, just as the United States killed most Native Americans and Australia wiped out huge swaths of the country’s Aboriginals. Then there would be no Palestinians left for the world to be concerned about.

On the other hand, if it had come along later, Zionists might have believed that they should join forces with the decolonization movements across the Mideast and the world in the 1950s and 1960s. But in our timeline, an Arab nationalist approached Ben-Gurion about fighting the U.K.’s colonial forces together while Palestine was still under the British mandate — and Ben-Gurion reported him to the British.

In any case, despite the dreams of the Israeli right, the “expel and/or kill them all” solution is (probably) no longer available. But it’s also extremely difficult to imagine a South Africa outcome, in which Jewish Israelis accede to becoming a minority in a one-person, one-vote, one-state Palestine. 

Meanwhile, some parts of the Arab world fantasize about an Algeria analogy, in which (after massive bloodshed) the colonists go back to where they came from. Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, recently claimed every Jewish Israeli “has a second nationality and has his bag ready.” This is both factually false and extremely foolish. Israelis are not going anywhere any more than Americans or Australians are.

 

 

A Handful Of Bad Apples Making It Hard On Everybody Else....,

wsws  |  To better understand the narrow social basis of the campaign to silence opposition to Israel’s genocide, it is useful to understand who is leading it. This campaign of censorship and intimidation is being led by an alliance of billionaires, Zionists, the far-right and top government and political leaders of American imperialism. 

The first major group involved are a handful of multi-billionaires and economic power players whose stranglehold over the global economy positions them to control the political and cultural leadership of the major universities and other significant institutions.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted in an article written by an anonymous Harvard employee:

Just as inequality in general is increasingly incompatible with what remains of democracy, so is the subordination of universities to wealthy donors incompatible with academic freedom. The right-wing, pro-Zionist “donor revolt” is a qualitative development in big-money university donors attempting to use their power and influence to shape campus discourse. That these donors wield such influence—and that many of them seek to do so publicly—is an indication of how deeply compromised academia already is.

Indeed, universities are largely reliant on this stream of cash. According to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, in 1980 private donations to US colleges and universities amounted to $4.2 billion. Today they have surged to $59.5 billion.

These are some of the major billionaires whose “donor revolt” is leading to the attack on basic rights of free speech and protest on US campuses.

Les Wexner – One of the most important capitalists in retail sales, Wexner has amassed $10.6 billion, and is the 192nd richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg. Wexner founded L Brands, which controls, or previously controlled, Bath & Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Express, and several other major brands. While Wexner no longer controls L Brands, his foundation, the Wexner Foundation, donated tens of millions of dollars to Harvard over the last few decades and has now pulled millions of dollars of future support. (He is also the billionaire who became the launching pad for convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who managed Wexner’s personal holdings for nearly two decades).

Idan Ofer – Idan and his brother Eyal are the 77th and 87th richest people in the world, owning $42 billion, according to Bloomberg. Together they control Ofer Global, the Zodiac Group, Quantum Pacific Group and Global Holdings, each of which are massive industrial, energy and real estate investment firms. They own about half of Israeli Corp., Israel’s largest holding company. Collectively their companies take in hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue through shipping, fertilizers, industrial chemicals, energy and real estate. Miller Global Properties, one of the various “small”’companies that they have a leading ownership in, is notable for controlling various landmark properties, such as the Pebble Beach golf course, the Aspen ski resort and the Bevely Hills Hotel. Idan Ofer and his wife Batia both quit the Harvard Kennedy School Dean’s Executive Board in an attempt to pressure the university to crack down on the outcry of pro-Palestinian sentiment on the campus. Idan Ofer’s companies have been at the heart of multiple chemical leak and environmental scandals in Israel. Eyal was formerly an intelligence officer in the Israeli Air Force; he now resides in Monaco.

Bill Ackman – Ackman is an American billionaire who runs Pershing Square Capital, a hedge fund with about $20 billion under management. Ackman owns $4 billion personally. Pershing Square Capital holds significant shares of major US companies, including a 10 percent ownership of Target, one percent of Procter & Gamble, 10 percent control of Chipotle, a 7 percent share of Universal Music Group, and over a billion dollars in Netflix. Ackman is currently leading a vicious campaign to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay. Previously Ackman fought to get Harvard to release all the names of students who signed a pro-Palestinian statement, demanding that employers refuse to hire these students.

Ken Griffin – Griffin is the 35th richest person in the world, with over $37 billion in assets. He is the CEO of Citadel, a massive $52 billion hedge fund based in Miami. Citadel owns a significant share in some of the largest technology and bioscience companies, including Microsoft, Activision, Boston Scientific, Nvidia, Humana, Apple, Comcast, Merck, and Adobe. Griffin has donated over half a billion dollars to Harvard and is pressuring the university to adopt a stronger pro-Israel stance.

Cliff Asness – Asness is an American billionaire who founded AQR Capital Management, which has over $100 billion under management. Asness severed all his donations to the University of Pennsylvania and has publicly begun a campaign to pressure the university to stop “support[ing] evil.” In a diatribe published in the Wall Street Journal, he described the pro-Palestinian protests as a reflection of the “deep and systematic rot on elite college campuses.”

Marc Rowan – Rowan is co-owner of Apollo Asset Management, one of the largest private equity firms. He has over $6 billion in personal wealth. He halted his donations to University of Pennsylvania, using “Wall Street tactics to ‘strong-arm’” the university, in the words of Business Insider. Apollo has sprawling investments in real estate, cruise companies (Norwegian, Regent), hotels (Harrah’s Entertainment), education (McGraw Hill), entertainment (Chuck E. Cheese), private security (ADT) and retail (Smart and Final). Apollo co-founder Leon Black was formerly CEO of the company before revelations emerged that he had paid Jeffrey Epstein over $100 million for tax planning and consulting services. 

Zionists, antisemites and ethno-nationalists

Complementing this group of billionaires are a series of ethno-nationalists, both Zionists and MAGA Trumpers, who are more closely coordinating the effort to censor outrage against Israel’s genocide.

A recent, 2023 film, Israelism, made by two Jewish filmmakers, provides a window into the mechanisms used to promote Zionism in American culture and equate it with Judaism. One central figure in the film is Abe Foxman, an American lawyer and multi-millionaire who was the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from 1987 to 2015. Foxman and the ADL are major fixtures in the American Zionist lobby, heavily promoting organizations such as Birthright.

 

 

Will Disclosure Ignite An Arms Race Unparalleled In Human History?

thehill  |   According to philosopher Nick Bostrom, a novel technological discovery may one day devastate human civilization. In Bostrom’s “vulnerable world” theory, only extraordinary interventions — such as unprecedented global cooperation or surveillance — can prevent a sufficiently dangerous new technology from ushering in civilizational collapse.

With key members of Congress suspecting that the U.S. already possesses such uniquely destabilizing technology, Bostrom’s hypothesis may soon be put to the test.

Legislation proposed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and a bipartisan group of five other senators alleges that surreptitious government “legacy programs” have retrieved and are attempting to reverse-engineer UFOs of seemingly “non-human” origin. Although an influential member of the House successfully “killed” the most remarkable elements of the legislation late last year, Schumer and his Republican counterpart are not backing down.

At the same time, several House members stated last week that they consider the allegations of David Grusch, a former intelligence official who testified under oath about UFO retrieval and reverse engineering programs, to be credible.

At this juncture, leaving the plausible global implications of such a paradigm-shifting revelation unaddressed is irresponsible and, as Bostrom might argue, dangerous.

Let us assume, then, that the U.S. does indeed possess revolutionary UFO technology.

Let us also assume, as Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) appear to believe, that unprecedented secrecy has thus far prevented meaningful scientific understanding of the “exotic” technologies recovered.

A popular assumption holds that any official disclosure that humanity is not alone will unite the nations of the world by default. But this is by no means guaranteed.

On the contrary, a sudden public revelation that the U.S. possesses inconceivably advanced technology could be a uniquely destabilizing event.

China’s military, for example, relies heavily on espionage and the emulation of U.S. technology. Russia’s defense industry is in shambles, compounded by staggering losses in Ukraine. These nuclear-armed states would naturally fear the sudden injection of highly advanced UFO technology into a comparatively mature, sophisticated American industrial base for technical analysis and exploitation.

Russia or China would thus be motivated to engage in a range of destabilizing actions to hedge against the U.S. attaining an insurmountable strategic advantage. More worryingly, such states may seek to actively prevent the U.S. from developing paradigm-shifting military capabilities derived from UFO technology.

In this unstable geopolitical environment, several plausible scenarios could escalate rapidly into a devasting global conflict.

To complicate matters, key senators appear to suspect that some of America’s adversaries have also retrieved highly advanced UFO technology. Three military and intelligence officials, including Grusch, have alleged as much.

If true, the public disclosure of UFO technology by one state could ignite an arms race unparalleled in human history.

 

Come Hell And High Water - Disclosure Will Happen In 2024

breakingdefense  |  Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks has signed off on a new classification policy for space programs that discourages the use of Special Access Program status (SAPs) that dramatically limits clearances to handful of US officials — in hopes of opening still-secret programs to more stakeholders, including US allies and industry partners, according to a senior official.

“What the classification memo does, generally, is it overwrites — it really completely rewrites — a legacy document that had its roots 20 years ago, and it’s just no longer applicable to the current environment that involves national security space,” DoD Assistant Secretary for Space Policy John Plumb told reporters today.

While the specifics of the policy, signed off by Hicks “at the end of 2023,” are themselves classified, Plumb explained that a key issue has been the overuse of SAPs that not only have limited the ability to share with allies and industry, but even among different organizations within the Defense Department.

“So, anything we can bring from a SAP level to a Top Secret level for example, brings massive value to the warfighter, massive value to the department, and frankly, my hope is over time [it] will also allow us to share more information with allies and partners that they might not currently be able to share.”

Plumb explained that from now on DoD will be “assigning minimum classifications to a various number of things, which will then allow the services to examine their own programs and determine ‘should this really be SAP-ed any more?’ And the general point that I have made clear is policy is not a reason, it’s not the only reason, to hide something in a SAP program. There have to be technical aspects to it.”

National security space leaders within the Pentagon and outside experts for years have been pushing to lower the sky-high classification levels traditionally applied to all things military space. This has included a call for declassifying information about DoD’s plans for conducting warfighting in space — but this new policy document does not do that, Plumb said.

“Inside the beltway, people always ask me about how can I make things unclassified? And that is not actually a thing I’m all that concerned about. I’m concerned about reducing the classification of things where they are over-classified to the point that it hampers our ability to get work done or hamper the ability of the warfighter to do their mission,” he said.

Plumb acknowledged that it will take time for the new approach to work its way down through the bureaucracy and be accepted, but said at the same time there are “many folks looking forward to getting started on it.”

He further noted that he will be “briefing some close allies and partners on these changes” in future.

The new classification policy is in essence a first step in an overarching effort by Plumb’s office to craft a new “DoD International Space Cooperation Strategy,” designed to support the ability of the US, allies and partners to more seamlessly undertake collective military space operations.

Plumb noted that already the Pentagon expanded the “Combined Space Operations Initiative (CSpO)” from seven members — Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States — to 10. At the CSpO’s last meeting in early December, DoD announced that Italy, Japan and Norway had now been admitted.

 

Only Fan(i)s And Her Manchild Niggolo....,

 

NYPost  |  A Georgia district attorney accused of hiring her lover to prosecute former President Trump broke her silence on the controversy, saying she and the prosecutor were targeted because they are black.

The comments were Willis’ first time addressing the allegations publicly — but she neither confirmed nor denied the claims lobbed at her and special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who helped secure an indictment against the former Republican president in an election interference case.

“They only attacked one,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Sunday at Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta. “First thing they say, ‘Oh, she’s gonna play the race card now.’

“But no God, isn’t it them that’s playing the race card when they only question one?” 

She called Wade “a great friend and a great lawyer,” along with a “superstar,” but failed to mention him by name once during her more than 30 minute speech, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The pair were accused by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman of having a “clandestine” and “improper” affair when appointments were made for the 2020 election interference case.

Roman, a former official on the Trump 2020 campaign, argued in a court filing last week that the integrity of the case had been compromised by their alleged affair and asked that all charges against him be dropped.

“The district attorney chose to appoint her romantic partner, who at all times relevant to this prosecution has been a married man,” the filing read.

Roman contended in the filing that Wade used some of the $654,000 in legal fees he’d earned on the case to take Willis on vacations to “Napa Valley, California, Florida and the Caribbean.”

Willis pointed out during her speech that the other two prosecutors assigned to the case, Anna Green Cross and John Floyd, both are white, and noted that allegations have only emerged targeting the two prominent black members of the prosecution — her and Wade.

“Isn’t it them playing the race card when they constantly think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I’ve been doing almost 30 years?” she asked.

Roman was unmoved by Willis accusations of the charges being racially charged.

 

 

RIP Coach Red Pill (Should've Placed A Higher Priorirty On Your Wife And Daughter)

Gonzalo Lira, Sr. says his son has died at 55 in a Ukrainian prison, where he was being held for the crime of criticizing the Zelensky and Biden governments. Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen, but the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture. Several… https://t.co/F0nOG9qGvv

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 12, 2024

Hoisted By Their Own Little Cheesey Schmeckels....,

thecradle  |  Three months into Israel’s longest and costliest unconventional war, the country's armed forces have emerged as a significant indirect source of pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's extremist government. 

This development comes at a crucial juncture, both politically and in terms of security, for Tel Aviv. Amid ongoing internal differences over post-Gaza war strategies and proposed resolutions for Hamas's prisoner exchange demands, the negative shift in international and regional public opinion over Israel's 13-week Gaza assault has generated further stressors. 

At the same time, the escalating situation on the northern front with Hezbollah has compelled the Israeli army to establish a committee to investigate the political, security, and military shortcomings that led to the 7 October Al-Aqsa flood operation.

This decision by the Israeli army has triggered a political uproar, particularly from a faction uncertain about how to deal with intensifying Palestinian resistance activities brought on by the formation of Netanyahu's coalition government - which is marked by extremism and controversial decisions, even by Israeli standards. 

During a recent cabinet meeting, far-right and nationalist Zionist ministers slammed army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi's decision to probe intelligence and operational failures leading up to the 7 October resistance operation, claiming that forming an inquiry commission during the ongoing Gaza war damages army and soldier morale.

Some cabinet members rallied to scuttle the selection of former Minister of Defence Shaul Mofaz as head of the inquiry commission, largely because of his role in Israel's unilateral Gaza disengagement plan in 2005. 

Cracks in the coalition 

The timing of the investigative committee's formation is underscored by Defense Minister Yoav Galant and emergency cabinet member Benny Gantz's vigorous defense of Halevi's decision. They emphasize its importance in learning from past mistakes, addressing security gaps, and preparing for potential wider conflicts, particularly with Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

Less clear, however, is Netanyahu stance on the matter, despite the fact that he scheduled the session which was originally intended to be about post-war plans — a topic the prime minister appears reluctant to tackle given the potential risks to his political and personal future.

Netanyahu's right-wing cabinet members view the inquiry as a tool to further undermine an already precarious government. They recognize that the findings of the commission could be especially damning for their governing coalition, which, since its formation, has implemented an agenda focused on the oppression of Palestinians living under occupation and the strangulation of their national aspirations. 

It is an agenda which security and military experts in Israel have consistently warned could heavily exacerbate the level of retaliatory violence against settlers and inflame the security situation, whether in the Gaza Strip or in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

The Arc Of Justice Is Long But Inevitable...,

zerohedge  |  A key aspect of Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit and press conference in Israel on Tuesday was to make a strong show of condemning South Africa's genocide case against Israel, set to start at The Hague this week.

The US top diplomat blasted the case filed at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as "meritless" and described the whole initiative as "galling" - also saying that it will be a distraction while world powers need to be focused on achieving lasting peace in Gaza.

"The charge of genocide is meritless," he said. But then in the same press conference he admitted that the "daily toll on civilians in Gaza, particularly children, is far too high."

The first hearing in the case will be held Thursday, focused on South Africa’s 84-page application to the ICJ , which describes Israel's military campaign as "genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part" of the Palestinian population of Gaza.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby last week said initially, "We find this submission meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact, whatsoever."

Israel has gone on a full-court diplomatic press pushing back against the case. There's not much that the court can enforce in terms of action regardless, but a ruling against Israel would be a huge reputational black eye.

Starting last month, Israel's Foreign Ministry issued a blistering rebuke in response, rejecting the filing "with disgust" and called Pretoria's accusations a "blood libel" - essentially saying the South African government's charge is being fueled by antisemitism.

Israel had also blasted Pretoria for sympathizing with terrorists who massacred civilians:

“South Africa’s claim has no factual and judicial basis and is a despicable and cheap exploitation of the court,” the ministry says in a statement. “South Africa is collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.”

The ministry blames Hamas for the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by attempting “to carry out genocide” on October 7, when terrorists from the Strip killed some 1,200 people and took around 240 hostages after invading southern Israel.

"We call on the International Court of Justice and the international community to reject the baseless claims of South Africa out of hand," the response statement said further.

Below: Israel is now tailoring its messaging in response to growing outrage and pressure...

But Global South countries in particular are likely to support the case. Russia and China too have been deeply critical of Israel's large-scale bombardment of densely populated civilian areas of the Gaza Strip. The death toll has soared past 23,000 killed, according to Palestinian sources.

The Western Elite, Not Ukraine, Is Russia’s True Enemy

korybko  |  President Putin said during a meeting last week with servicemen at a military hospital in Moscow that the Western elite, not Ukraine, are their Russia’s true enemies. This is an important clarification since it’s easy for folks to lose sight of the conflict’s larger dynamics after over 22 months of fighting despite repeated reminders from the Kremlin about what’s really driving the violence. The undisguised bloodlust of the Kiev regime and their supporters also distracts from the Western elite’s puppet master role.

The Russian leader published a treatise in summer 2021 “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, where he also not only reaffirmed his recognition of Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent state, but also endorsed it. In his words, “You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But on what terms?” Simply put, he made peace with the fact that Ukrainians nowadays regard themselves as separate from Russians, but he wants their states to respect each other’s interests.

Therein lies the roots of the current conflict since post-“Maidan” policymakers have consistently done the West’s bidding at Russia’s expense because they owe their power and wealth to the former. That New Cold War bloc envisaged threatening Russia through multidimensional means from Ukraine in order to coerce it into becoming their vassal. If it wasn’t for this grand strategic goal, then everything that led up to Russia’s special operation over the past decade wouldn’t have happened.

Regrettably, Ukraine’s role as the West’s “anti-Russia” was eventually embraced by a growing number of its people, whose identity was reshaped around World War II-era fascist nostalgia as a result of their post-“Maidan” regime’s socio-cultural policies and the past three decades of Western “NGO” work. Reversing this radical revision of Ukrainian identity from its pre-World War I and Soviet-era roots to today’s neo-fascist form is what Russia is referring to when it says that it wants to denazify Ukraine.

These changes in how Ukrainians view themselves were brought about through the abovementioned artificial means, but their consequences have been very real for everyone as evidenced by recent events. This observation doesn’t absolve those who nowadays embrace these views of their personal responsibility for them, especially for the crimes that they commit under the influence of this ideology, but it crucially places the past ten years’ processes into their appropriate context.

Accordingly, those Ukrainians who remain committed to their country’s Western-cultivated neo-fascist identity are Western Hybrid War pawns against Russia, while those who haven’t fallen under the influence of this ideological scourge and retain their original identity aren’t deemed a threat. The real threat all along has been the Western elite, specifically its liberal-globalist faction that’s responsible for reshaping Ukrainian identity in order to geostrategically exploit that country as explained.

Even if the real enemy finally decided to comply with Russia’s requested goals of demilitarizing Ukraine, denazifying it, and restoring that country’s constitutional neutrality in exchange for a Korean-like “land-for-peace” armistice deal, then the second of them will be the most difficult to implement. Removing the post-“Maidan” regime and banning all public glorification of fascism (books, chants, flags, insignia, monuments, museums, etc.) would be a good first step but more would have to be done.

AMLO Makes Reasonable Demands For Helping Cornpop With The Border

dailymail  | Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has spelled out a series of demands from the U.S. ranging from visas to a multi-billion infusion of funds – even as the Biden administration seeks to pressure Mexico to do more on its part to address the migrant crisis.

He wants the U.S. to deploy $20 billion plan to help Mexico and Central American countries dealing with the root causes of migration – while also calling for wholesale changes in U.S.-Cuba policy. 

'We are going to help, as we always do,' López Obrador said in a Friday speech 'Mexico is helping reach agreements with other countries, in this case Venezuela,' he said, before pivoting to his wish list.

'We also want something done about the (U.S.) differences with Cuba,' López Obrador said. 'We have already proposed to President Biden that a U.S.-Cuba bilateral dialogue be opened,' he said in remarks at a Friday press conference.

Lopez Obrador also said he wants the U.S. to provide visas to at least 10 million Hispanic migrants who have been living in the U.S. for 10 years or longer. 

His long list of demands come even as the Biden administration is asking Mexico to do more, as a surge of migrants continue to flow across the border. It also comes at a time when the Biden administration needs to show progress on the issue while getting hammered by Republican rivals and even some prominent Democratic mayors on the costs and social impacts of the surge.

Border encounters hit another stunning milestone in December with 300,000 apprehensions.

The U.S. is leaning on Mexico to do more to reduce those numbers. Late last month Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Mexico to meet with López Obrador.

In one sign that Mexico has the capacity to have an impact, arrests at the southern border fell to about 2,500 Monday, according to the Associated Press, a drop from 10,000 during a December peak.

 

What Kind Of Self-Respecting Heterosexual Male Would Simp For Bill Ackman?

Going after @BillAckman’s wife is one of the dumbest moves I’ve ever seen. MIT and Business Insider don’t understand the force of nature that’s about to come after them.

This guy literally beat out Brad Pitt competing for his wife. While you were losing sleep over not having… pic.twitter.com/LQdJfYMYF0

— Robert Sterling (@RobertMSterling) January 6, 2024

guardian |  The wife of Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire who accused Claudine Gay of being a plagiarist and led calls for her resignation as Harvard president, is now facing allegations of plagiarism herself.

Neri Oxman, a prominent former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has apologized after Business Insider identified multiple instances in which she lifted passages from other scholars’ work without proper attribution in her 2010 dissertation. She also pledged to review the primary sources and request the necessary corrections.

Business Insider on Thursday initially labeled four passages of Oxman’s dissertation as plagiarized – without any attribution – from Wikipedia entries. But by Friday, the outlet had found at least 15 such passages, a turn of events that was similar to that which led to Gay’s ouster from the Harvard presidency.

Business Insider also identified research papers written by Oxman that contained plagiarism, including a 2007 paper – titled Get Real: Towards Performance Driven Computational Geometry – and a 2011 paper named Variable Property Rapid Prototyping.

The 2011 paper contained more than 100 words lifted from a book without any attribution or citation, included two sentences from another book verbatim without any attribution, and pulled material from a 2004 paper without citing it, according to Business Insider.

In response to Gay’s resignation, Ackman published a 4,000-word post on X – formerly Twitter – in which he criticized diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as well as complained about “racism against white people”. He also complained that Gay, a Black woman, was allowed to remain on Harvard’s faculty. Gay had faced plagiarism allegations over her 1997 dissertation, but she requested corrections and was cleared of academic misconduct by a three-member independent review board.

Ackman struck a different tone on X when addressing the plagiarism allegations against his wife. He wrote on X: “It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family. This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews.”

He went on to promise to lead plagiarism reviews against all current MIT faculty, board and committee members, and its president, Sally Kornbluth.

Ackman additionally criticized Business Insider and the reporters at the publication who authored the story investigating Oxman, saying he would spearhead plagiarism reviews against the outlet’s staff.

Previously, Ackman was a donor to the Democratic party. But the New York Times reported that the billionaire’s campaign against Harvard came because he resented the fact that years’ worth of donations to the university did not yield him more influence there.

 

Neri Oxman Caught Plagiarizing

I was forwarded an email this morning from a reporter at Business Insider who noted that there are four paragraphs in my 330-page PhD dissertation: “Material-based Design Computation,” which I completed at @MIT in 2010,https://t.co/6LE1O4FiiL

where I omitted quotation marks…

— Neri Oxman (@NeriOxman) January 4, 2024

The Fight Was Between Two Billionaires Over Control Of Cancel Culture

This is what it looks like when two people who can think clearly talk to two people who cannot think clearly but are good at emoting. https://t.co/p6NDgWd1CB

— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) January 7, 2024

 

Why Didn't Claudia Gay Go After Dershowitz?

Response by Dershowitz is INSANE!

It’s alleged Epstein “forced then-minor Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with..former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz..”

Dershowitz’s response:
“..but what about Hamas!.. Me too except if you’re a Jew”
WTF?!!! pic.twitter.com/6WayHEHnH1 https://t.co/klhgPHXVoX

— أبو عمّار (@MaajidNawaz) January 4, 2024

 

Alan Dershowitz has now been outed as a pedophile according to the Epstein document dump, this is the man Netanyahu selected to defend Israel against the Genocide convention.

Once again I reiterate that the foundation of Israel's national security is *literally* pedophilia https://t.co/B8AdwEZDe0 pic.twitter.com/QM5QfE2cn5

— Benjamin Rubinstein (@BenFRubinstein) January 4, 2024

The FBI Has Possession Of The Epstein Sex Tapes

twitter  |  The Epstein Files. Today a tranche of documents were released in a case involving Jeffrey Epstein. There’s no revelations. Jeffrey Epstein’s case was covered up. I can explain why.

In 2017, my lawyer Marc Randazza found a wonky freedom of the press case. There was a defamation case, and although Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t named as a defendant, the case was central to some “conspiracy theories.” Marc asked me if I wanted to file a motion to intervene. We expected it to be a simple matter.

Media interest was almost zero. No one in the “free press” cared. Then Trump nominated Alexander Acosta to the Secretary of Labor. Acosta had handled the original Epstein criminal case, and said Epstein was given kid gloves treatments due to protection from the intelligence community.

Epstein was an asset of the FBI. What his exact relation was remains sealed.

By 2019 the case I sought to intervene in had an ORANGE MAN BAD angle because Acota was Trump’s Labor Secretary. Even if the motives were impure, at least we were on to the races.

Hundreds-of-thousands of dollars later, a trip to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and a lot of fighting, we had a batch of documents ready to be unsealed.

The weekend before the documents were made public, SDNY arrested Epstein quietly when he landed his private jet on an airport from a trip he took in France. No perp walk for Epstein.

In 2019 I wrote the following after a press conference was held re: Epstein’s arrest:

" Why didn’t the SNDY charge Jeffrey Epstein under the Mann Act? Under the Mann Act, it’s unlawful to transport an underage girl through interstate travel, including on an airplane."

"In a widely-publicized press conference the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced sex trafficking charges against Jeff Epstein."

"Epstein was charged for paying minors for massages from 2002 to 2005. Yet what was more newsworthy was the what the indictment left out."

"The indictment against Epstein does not charge anyone except Epstein, and there’s nothing to indicate that anyone who flew to Epstein’s private island has faced scrutiny."

"The SDNY’s actions have all of the telltale signs of containment. Because the Miami Herald and Cernovich won a civil lawsuit, leading to over 2,000 records being unsealed, it’s simply impossible for the same Feds who gave Epstein a pass years ago to continue to cover up."

"The SDNY could have charged Epstein in 2002, 2003, 2004, or at anytime until today. Yet they did not file charges until the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that previously sealed records involving Jeff Epstein would become public record.Thus they are charging him without implicating anyone else who assisted with his operation."

You know what happened next. Epstein committed suicide.

Because SDNY charged the lowest level offenses possible, they “lacked jurisdiction” to raid Epstein’s island in Little St James, as well as his New Mexico and Paris properties. Those houses were left unattended for a couple of weeks.

During that time, a safe went missing. During the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, it was reported:

Evidence from Jeffrey Epstein's safe 'went missing' after FBI raid.

What was in the safe? We’ll never know for certain. We do know that the FBI has Jeffrey Epstein’s blackmail files.

The real Jeffrey Epstein files are the blackmail material.

Very powerful forces have made sure we will never see it.

CD's in Epstein's safe labeled: "Young [Name] + [Name]"

That looks an awful lot like they found the blackmail tapes https://t.co/4tR9Mya7lL

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 8, 2019

ABCNews Was In Possession Of All The Epstein Details And Covered Them Up

ABC had all the information about Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplices with photos. Chose to hide it all instead of reporting on their friends. pic.twitter.com/0HXHwUdG53

— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) January 1, 2024

 

DOJ Letting Up On SBF To Protect DNC Recipients Of Ill-Gotten Largesse

NYPost  |  The decision to avoid a second trial charging Sam Bankman-Fried with a conspiracy to make unlawful political donations and bribery of foreign officials has many conservatives up in arms.

Federal prosecutors said Friday that they do not plan to proceed with a second trial against Sam Bankman-Fried, citing public interest in a speedy resolution of the case that has seemingly irritated those who were hoping to see the disgraced FTX founder prosecuted to the fullest extent.

In a Friday letter filed in federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors said they do “not plan to proceed with a second trial” as “much of the evidence that would be offered in a second trial was already offered in the first trial and can be considered by the Court at the defendant’s March 2024 sentencing.”

“Given that practical reality, and the strong public interest in a prompt resolution of this matter, the Government intends to proceed to sentencing on the counts for which the defendant was convicted at trial,” the prosecutors added.

The decision by prosecutors not to hold a second trial against Bankman-Fried quickly drew backlash from those who had followed the case.

“So we won’t know which politicians he bribed or who’s campaigns he influenced? That collective sigh of relief you are hearing is from the DEEP STATE,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., wrote in a Friday night post to X.

Conservative commentator John Cardillo also weighed in on the announcement from prosecutors, accusing the Department of Justice of shielding Democrats from being named as recipients of Bankman-Fried donations.

“Sam Bankman-Fried will not face second trial,” Cardillo wrote in an X post. “DOJ is protecting his Dem donation recipients.”

CryptoLaw founder John Deaton, who has consistently commented on Bankman-Fried’s case, slammed the decision by prosecutors as a “disgrace.”

“The DOJ has shown again, that it is NOT an independent agency,” Deaton said on X. “Who is the Attorney General protecting?”

 

Still Pretending Epstein Suicided And Slick Willie Didn't Partake

 

abcnews |  Former President Clinton, who ABC News has learned is identified as "Doe 36," is mentioned in more than fifty of the redacted filings, according to court records. Several of those sealed or redacted entries are focused on an effort by Giuffre's lawyers in mid-2016, first reported by ABC News, to subpoena the two-term Democratic president for deposition testimony about his relationship with Epstein.

According to portions of the court record that were not sealed, Giuffre's legal team initiated informal discussions with attorneys for the then-unnamed witness on June 9, 2016. That was a few days after the former president's wife, Hillary Clinton, clinched the Democratic nomination for president.

Representatives for Giuffre did contact the former president's attorneys in 2016 about a potential deposition, a person familiar with the situation told ABC News. Clinton's lawyers responded that his testimony would not be helpful to Giuffre because, the person said, the former president had never been on Epstein's island, as she had claimed.

Maxwell called the move to question Clinton "utter nonsense" and a "transparent ploy by [Giuffre] to increase media exposure for her sensational stories through deposition side-show," her attorney Laura Menninger wrote, according to an unredacted section of a court filing.

Giuffre's legal team, in contrast, described the proposed testimony of Clinton as "highly relevant" and "important to the fundamental claims and defenses" in the case. The request was ultimately denied by U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet, in a redacted ruling in late June 2016.

Giuffre's lawyers pressed the Clinton issue again at a hearing in March 2017, six weeks before a trial was scheduled to begin. According to a publicly available transcript, Giuffre's team was then seeking to preclude Maxwell's side from presenting testimony suggesting that Clinton hadn't been on Epstein's island. Her attorneys argued it would be "inherently unfair" to Giuffre because they had not been permitted to ask the former president if he had ever been to Little St. James, as Epstein's private island estate was known.

"You did not allow us to depose him because you said it was irrelevant," McCawley told Judge Sweet. "So now we're in a position where at trial they want to put forth that information against my client, and I don't have an under-oath statement from that individual saying whether or not he actually was," she added.

Maxwell's attorneys, according to the transcript, told the court Maxwell was prepared to take the stand and testify that Clinton was never on the island.

 

 

150 Balls-Deep Two Piece And A Biscuit Pedophiles About To Be Outed

yahoo  |  Hundreds of sealed court filings pertaining to the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein are set to be made public this week, and several prominent names -- including Britain's Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton -- are expected to appear in the documents.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled earlier this month there was no legal justification for continuing to conceal the ex-president's name and more than 150 names other "John and Jane Does" mentioned in the records. Preska ordered the unsealing to begin after Jan. 1.

The documents stem from a 2015 civil lawsuit centered on allegations that Epstein's one-time paramour, Ghislaine Maxwell, facilitated the sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre, an alleged trafficking victim. Giuffre also accused Epstein and Maxwell of directing her to have sex with Prince Andrew and several other prominent men. Prince Andrew denied the allegations and claimed he could not recall ever meeting Giuffre. He later settled a lawsuit she filed against him.

Most of the prominent names that appear in the documents are already associated in some way with Epstein; for allegations of wrongdoing, for having worked for Epstein, flown on his planes, or visited his homes. Some were mentioned during Maxwell's criminal trial in 2021. In some instances, the only appearances of the names are in potential witness lists or in proposed terms for searches of electronic records.

While Giuffre's allegations against Prince Andrew, and his denials, have been widely reported around the globe, dozens of the sealed records are expected to contain additional details from "Jane Doe 162," a witness who testified she was with Prince Andrew, Maxwell and Giuffre, then 17, at Epstein's New York mansion. Giuffre has alleged that gathering, in 2001, was one of the occasions she was directed to have sex with Andrew.

Giuffre made no allegations of wrongdoing by Clinton, and there is no indication the sealed records contain evidence of illegal conduct by Clinton. But Giuffre's claim that she met the ex-president on Epstein's private Caribbean island emerged as a contentious issue in the litigation, which was settled in 2017. Maxwell contended Clinton had never been to Little St. James -- as Epstein's island was known -- and assailed Giuffre's claim as a fabrication that shattered her credibility.

Personal flight logs kept by one of Epstein's pilots -- which surfaced in separate lawsuits against Epstein -- showed that Clinton and his entourage had flown extensively on Epstein's jumbo-jet to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei in 2002 and 2003. But none of the available records included the former president on a trip to Epstein's island.

The court documents to be unsealed this week represent the eighth, and likely final, round of unsealing records from the case since the Miami Herald intervened for access to the records in 2018. Previously unsealed items included multiple deposition transcripts of Maxwell and Giuffre, along with sworn, but unproven, allegations that Epstein and Maxwell directed Giuffre to have sex with several well-known men, including former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, the late model scout Jean Luc Brunel, billionaire hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, and others.

Maxwell denied the allegations, as did all of the men identified by Giuffre when their names surfaced.

This batch will involve the names of additional Epstein associates, alleged perpetrators, alleged co-conspirators, alleged victims, witnesses and former Epstein employees. Several of the "Does" mentioned in the documents are now deceased.

Former President Clinton, who ABC News has learned is identified as "Doe 36," is mentioned in more than fifty of the redacted filings, according to court records. Several of those sealed or redacted entries are focused on an effort by Giuffre's lawyers in mid-2016, first reported by ABC News, to subpoena the two-term Democratic president for deposition testimony about his relationship with Epstein.

 

Nu Year's Eve: Turn't On Champagne And Cracked Up By The GOAT

hotnewhiphop  |   These days, Dave Chappelle is known for standing by his non-PC approach to comedy, and his new special is no exception. The Dreamer arrived on Netflix today, raising eyebrows and getting social media users talking. The special features various jokes about the trans community, disabled people, Will Smith's infamous Oscars slap, and even Lil Nas X.

One of Chappelle's jokes centered around him meeting Jim Carrey on the set of Man On The Moon, in which the actor stars as Andy Kaufman. "I was very disappointed because I wanted to meet Jim Carrey and I had to pretend he was Andy Kaufman all afternoon. It was clearly Jim Carrey. I could look at him and clearly see it was Jim Carrey," he explained, citing Carrey's method-acting. "I say all that to say … that's how trans people make me feel."

He later joked that in an attempt to mend his relationship with the trans community, he wrote a play about a trans woman. “To be honest with you, I’ve been trying to repair my relationship with the transgender community cause I don’t want them to think that I don’t like them... You know how I’ve been repairing it? I wrote a play. I did. Cause I know that gays love plays. It’s a very sad play, but it’s moving," he described, "It’s about a Black transgender woman whose pronoun is, sadly, n***a. It’s a tear-jerker. At the end of the play she dies of loneliness cause white liberals don’t know how to speak to her. It’s sad.”

Chappelle didn't stop there, however. He went on to joke that he'd now be targeting disabled people. "Tonight, I'm doing all handicapped jokes," he declared. "They're not as organized as the gays and I love punching down." What do you think of the jokes Dave Chappelle made about trans people in his new Netflix special?