Nobody Is Safe Until Everybody Is Safe

judiciary.house.gov  |  Today, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust, led by Chairman Thomas Massie (R-KY), released an interim staff report titled, "Politics, Private Interests, and the Biden Administration's Deviation from Agency Regulations in the COVID-19 Pandemic" The report details how the Biden Administration pressured the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to go beyond its regulatory authority to change its procedures, cut corners, and lower agency standards to approve the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and authorize boosters. This approval enabled the Biden Administration to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine, despite concerns that the same vaccine was causing injury among otherwise healthy young Americans. 

"In August 2021, when the Pfizer shots received FDA licensure, and just before the booster received EUA, the top two FDA vaccine reviewers with decades of experience announced they were leaving the agency," said Chairman Thomas Massie (R-KY). "During the pandemic, politics overruled science at the government institutions entrusted with protecting public health. The FDA abandoned its congressional directive to protect citizens from false claims and undisclosed side effects, and instead ignored its own rules to pursue a policy of promoting the vaccine while downplaying potential harms. Exposing and acknowledging mistakes that were made is a necessary step toward restoring integrity and trust in our regulatory agencies."

The Subcommittee's investigation also revealed that the administrative state mishandled reports of vaccine injury, despite requirements to actively obtain, synthesize, and report feedback on the safety and efficacy of the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) vaccine. Two former FDA scientists, Dr. Marion Gruber and Dr. Philip Krause, testified to the Subcommittee that they felt pressure to cut corners on the vaccine review, which was due to outside pressure to provide immediate approval so that the government could mandate vaccines. Despite evidence of harms from the EUA vaccine, the Biden Administration sought to fully approve the Pfizer vaccine through the Biologics Licensing Application (BLA) process.

Under the leadership of then-Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, a long-time FDA staffer who the Biden Administration promoted to Acting Commissioner, and Dr. Peter Marks, head of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the agency cut corners in its usually rigorous BLA process to brand the Pfizer EUA vaccine as the only fully licensed "safe and effective" COVID-19 vaccine on the market at the time.  Today, former Acting FDA Commissioner Woodcock says that, as it relates to vaccine-related injury, she is "disappointed in [her]self" and that the FDA did not do enough to address vaccine-related injury.

The FDA succumbed to the Biden Administration's pressure to act beyond its authority, which may have long-term impacts on the agency's ability to confidently serve the American public. This poor policy by the Biden Administration reveals many significant problems related to accountability and good decision making in the administrative state that warrant legislative reform. 

Read the full interim staff report and appendix here.

Briahna Still Not Gone Get Her Job Back....,

threadreaderapp  |  BREAKING: New detailed report from the Times of London admits there is no evidence for the "mass rape" hoax fabricated and spread by the NYT, BBC, Guardian, AP and Reuters, and notes that Patten's own UN report confirms this and reiterates her call for an actual UN investigation 

some important facts to highlight from this new report. The main claim of rape on October 7 which the NYT heavily relied on is from a deranged fantasy "testimony" by "Sapir", including cut off breasts and severed heads. The Times now confirms from Israeli police that she lied:

this piece by The Times is the first one I have seen in prestige Western media that accurately states both the highly limited nature, scope and content of Pramila Patten's UN report, which every other outlet keeps lying about, falsely saying it "confirms Hamas mass rape", and "found evidence of sexual violence/rape" by the evidentiary standard of an actual full legal investigation, both of which Patten herself confirms again are lies and falsehoods but the NYT, BBC, Reuters and AP keep repeating to launder their own "mass rape" hoax (see and ).

The AP just did this again recently in its report exposing the two Zaka hoaxers by constantly, over and over again, repeating these blatant lies about Patten's UN report "confirming Hamas mass rape" and "sexual violence/rape on October 7."

But now the Times confirms that Patten's report was not full, legal or investigative in nature, that she explicitly does not attribute any sexual violence/rape to Hamas, and that any case of sexual violence she says might have happened on October 7 is based on a low evidentiary threshold that does not meet the standard of an actual full legal investigation, and relies entirely on Israeli information and "eyewitnesses" like the aforementioned Sapir.

That is why she keeps calling for an actual investigation, which as the Times notes the Israeli regime keeps blocking.

I have been saying all this for months now (see ), and finally it has penetrated a mainstream prestige Western media outlet, confirming that all the others in the Western media and political class including the NYT, BBC and Guardian are blatant propagandist liars.

Demented Squawking By A Putrid Old Buzzard..., (Nancy Pelosi)

Watch Nancy Pelosi claim that protestors opposing Israel's genocide in Gaza are spreading "Putin's message," and that she wants them investigated for possibly being on Russia's payroll.

This is what Russiagate has been about since day one: embracing Russia conspiracy theories… pic.twitter.com/YeWsPpLXZX

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 28, 2024

TNR  |  Representative Nancy Pelosi accused pro-Palestine protesters of having links to Russia and called for the FBI to investigate them.

During a Sunday interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Pelosi was asked if she was worried that younger voters would abandon President Joe Biden due to his resistance to a cease-fire.

“For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message,” Pelosi said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see.”

“I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia.”

When asked if she thought some of the pro-Palestinian protesters were Russian plants, Pelosi said, “I don’t think they’re plants. I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”

Israel’s constant bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 26,500 people, primarily women and children, since October 7, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The vast majority of Americans, particularly younger voters, support a cease-fire. Growing numbers of lawmakers have also begun to call for an end to the fighting, but the White House continues to back Israel.

Pelosi’s comments sparked immediate backlash. The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Nihad Awad, called Pelosi’s claim “delusional” and her call for an FBI investigation “downright authoritarian.”

“Sadly, Rep. Pelosi’s comments echo a time in our nation when opponents of the Vietnam War were accused of being communist sympathizers and subjected to FBI harassment,” he said in a statement.

“Instead of baselessly smearing those Americans as Russian collaborators, former House Speaker Pelosi and other political leaders should respect the will of the American people by calling for an end to the Netanyahu government’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza.”

Many people on social media were quick to point out the hypocrisy of Pelosi’s comments. The majority of people who support a cease-fire are politically neutral or left-leaning, including thousands of Black American pastors, Doctors Without Borders, and according to some polls, 80 percent of Democratic voters.

Others pointed out that the specific call for an FBI investigation marked a dangerous shift in the government’s stance on involving law enforcement against anti-war efforts. Widespread crackdowns against pro-Palestine speech have been compared to a new wave of McCarthyism.

Biden’s refusal to call for a cease-fire could well cost him in November. His popularity among young voters has dropped dramatically, primarily due to his stance on Israel. Biden’s campaign manager traveled last week to Detroit, which has a large Arab-American community. Many of the community leaders refused to meet with her over Biden’s Gaza policies.

 

 

"All roads lead to Putin" pic.twitter.com/UcMbnMagpW

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 28, 2024

The U.S. Is Well Beyond Hypocrisy

amgreatness  |  The abject narcissism of the insular Left is startling. They apparently believe the American public is amnesiac enough to forget what leftists once did, now that they’re doing the utter opposite. And they assume we are to discount their hypocrisy and self-absorption simply because they self-identify as erudite and moral and assume their opponents are irredeemable and deplorable.

Impeachment

The Left is saturating the airwaves with outrage over the current House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry. They allege that formally investigating Joe Biden’s role in the family grifting operation is somehow a poor constitutional precedent, if not out-of-bounds entirely.

So we hear further arguments that it will be unwise to impeach a first-term president when he loses his House majority, that there is no reason to “waste” congressional time and effort when Biden will be automatically acquitted in the Democratically controlled Senate, and that the impeachment is cynically timed to synchronize with president’s reelection efforts.

All of these are the precise arguments many of us cited when Donald Trump was impeached in December 2019 (as his reelection campaign began, and immediately after being cleared of the 22-month, $40-million-special-counsel Russian-collusion hoax).

The Democrats tried to remove an elected president over a phone call without a special counsel’s report. So Trump was impeached only after the 2018 election led to a Democratic House majority, which went from eating up nearly two years of his administration in the Russian-collusion hoax straight into the impeachment farce. There was no concern about the cost to the nation of putting an elected government into a continual state of siege.

There is one difference, though, between the Trump impeachment and the Biden impeachment inquiry. Donald Trump was impeached because he accurately accused the members of the Ukrainian government of paying Hunter Biden, with his zero fossil fuel expertise, an astronomical sum to serve on the Burisma board—as the costly quid that earned the lucrative quo from his dad Vice President Joe Biden.

No one now denies that Joe Biden got prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired by threatening to cancel legislatively-approved U.S. aid. Shokin knew about the skullduggery through which the Biden family eventually received $6.5 million from Ukraine—and so Biden ensured his firing, and publicly bragged about it in performance-art fashion.

In sum, Trump had a perfect right as commander in chief to delay (he did not cancel) aid to Ukraine, to ensure that its government was not still paying off the Bidens for their lobbying efforts on its behalf.

 

 

The Three College Presidents Were Right

popehat  |  Stefanik’s purpose was transparent. No matter how the college presidents answered, she won. If they answered accurately — that the question depended on the context - she could shriek neeeeeerrrrrrdddd like a football player bullying a kid with glasses, and credulous people would eat it up. If the presidents answered inaccurately but simply “yes,” she could make her next point: then why aren’t you punishing people who advocate intifada? Why aren’t you expelling students for saying “from the river to the sea”? Why aren’t you punishing people for accusing Israel of genocide? That was her express, explicit purpose:

Congresswoman Stefanik: Dr. Kornbluth, at MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?  

President Kornbluth: If targeted at individuals not making public statements. 

Congresswoman Stefanik: Yes or no, calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment? 

President Kornbluth: I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus.

Congresswoman Stefanik: But you've heard chants for Intifada. 

There’s the rhetorical trick. Calling for Intifada is not the same as calling for the genocide of the Jews, and it’s just dishonest to say it is. Not all Jews are Israeli. Arguing that a particular group has a moral right to violent revolution against the power over it is not a call for the genocide of a group. The argument about when violent revolution is morally justified is ancient. Whether or not you agree that Israel is tyrannical or the Palestinians are unjustifiably oppressed, you can’t outlaw arguments that they are and pretend you’re anything but an absolute censor. The hearing was full of gripes like that — contentions that the slogan “from the river to the sea” should be outlawed and complaints that colleges had invited speakers with radical pro-Palestinian views. The crystal clear message was we think protecting Jews from antisemitism requires suppressing a broad range of speech from Them.

And many people bought it, and now it’s being used as part of the culture war against higher education, and too many of you fucking fell for it.

You might say I am being more than usually uncharitable in this post. That’s because I think people falling for Stefanik’s gambit have been more than usually gullible. They’ve become useful idiots for evil. They’ve become the dupes of people who will wave the banner of “fight antisemitism” while pushing Great Replacement Theory. They’ve become the patsies of people who transparently want to use Jews as an instrument and excuse to suppress speech they don’t like. They’ve become the creatures of cynical, dishonest politicians who want to treat hard things like they are simple to rile up mobs.

OK Kirby If You Say So...,

WH’s John Kirby:

“It is not the Israeli Defense Forces' strategy to kill innocent people.

"It's not like the Israelis are sitting around every morning and saying, 'Hey, how many more civilians can we kill today?'

“They are not doing that. They are trying to go after Hamas.” pic.twitter.com/M0uP2kVovx

— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) December 7, 2023

timesofisrael  |  ‘Charbu Darbu’ by Ness Ve Stilla promises to rain fire on Israel’s enemies, capturing the righteous indignation felt by Israeli youth during the Israel-Hamas war.

A new song became a number-one hit in Israel over the last week, an angry hip-hop war anthem by the duo “Ness Ve Stilla,” whose real names are Nesia Levy and Dor Soroker.

The song’s title, “Charbu Darbu,” comes from Syrian Arabic and means literally “swords and strikes.” In Hebrew slang, it is a reference to raining hell on one’s opponent — which is what the rappers promise the IDF will do to Hamas. 

With a minimalist beat produced by Stilla (Soroker) and quick cuts of the rappers in various urban and desert landscapes, the two-and-a-half-minute video is in many ways typical of Israeli hip-hop.

Lyrically, though, the piece encapsulates a feeling of righteous fury that has been prevalent in Israel since the October 7 atrocities.

“Left, right, left, how is it that the whole country is in uniform from Galilee to Eilat… We’ve brought the entire army against you and we swear there won’t be forgiveness, sons of Amalek,” Stilla raps, comparing Hamas to the Biblical enemy of the Israelites who must be obliterated.

The chorus is a roll call of the IDF’s most storied combat units (“Golani, Givati, Air Force, Navy, Commandos!”) and ends with the phrase “All the IDF units are coming to ‘Charbu Darbu’ on your heads, oy oy.”

Ness lends a feminine counterpoint to Stilla’s bravado, but her verses are equally militant. After complimenting all the men in uniform for being handsome, she raps, “For mom and dad, all my friends are at the front, for grandma and grandma, let’s write names on the bombs, for the children of the Gaza envelope.”

The song ends with an up-tempo section where the rappers promise to “X out” their enemies. They call them out by name, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’s military wing and one of the likely masterminds behind the October 7 massacres, saying in Arabic, “Every dog gets his day.”

The rappers also include in their list of enemies Bella Hadid, Dua Lipa and Mia Khalifa, prominent Western celebrities who expressed support for the Palestinian cause shortly after the war began.

Since its release about a week ago, “Charbu Darbu” has become the number-one song in Israel on YouTube, Spotify and other streaming platforms. The duo’s PR team told The Times of Israel that based on the feedback they have received, the song was currently the most popular song in the country.

The Deliberative Branch Of Congress Told Biden To "Go Fuck Yourself"

zerohedge  |   On Wednesday President Joe Biden suggested that if Congress doesn't send Ukraine more money, now, it may 'embolden' Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade a NATO ally, which would precipitate "American troops fighting Russian troops."

The threat was not persuasive.

In response, Senate Republicans channeled Elon Musk (G...F...Y...), blocking Biden's $111 emergency supplemental package that would also include aid for Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza, and a smattering of border funding.

The Senate voted 49-51, failing to reach the 60-vote threshold required to allow the proposal to come up for consideration. Notably, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) voted against the measure, while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) flipped his vote to 'no' to preserve the option of revisiting the bill at a later date.

President Joe Biden has raised the possibility of "American troops fighting Russian troops" in a speech urging Congress to put aside "petty, partisan, angry politics" which is holding up his multibillion-dollar aid package for Ukraine. He said that he's willing to make "significant compromises" with Republicans but that it's they who've been unwilling to back down from their "extreme" demands. 

"This cannot wait," Biden stressed in the televised remarks from the White House. “Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. Simple as that. Frankly, I think it’s stunning that we’ve gotten to this point in the first place. Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he can hope for and abandon our global leadership."

"I’m willing to make significant compromises on the border. We need to fix the broken border system. It is broken. And thus far I’ve gotten no response," Biden pleaded. He made the speech after speaking with G7 leaders, who are reportedly alarmed that US funding to Ukraine is set to run dry in a mere three weeks.

"If we walk away, how many of our European friends are going to continue to fund and at what rates are they going to continue to fund?" he posed.

And that's when the fear-mongering really kicked into overdrive. He went so far as to say that if Ukraine's defense isn't funded, this will lead to the country being steamrolled by the Russian military machine, and an emboldened Putin will then seek to gobble up more territory.

 

 

Lester Holt And Antony Blinken Nervously Pretending Biden Didn't Shit The Bed

MSDNC  |  But at a press conference at the end of the meeting, Biden made a pointed remark that underscored the gulf between the two countries. Asked by a reporter if he stood by his characterization of Xi in June as a “dictator,” Biden answered that he did. “Well, look, he is. I mean, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours,” Biden said. “Anyway, we made progress.”

As he said this, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was seated in the front row, visibly winced. Blinken’s apparent pain at his boss’ blunt language has gone viral — inspiring mockery of the Biden administration, and prompting some right-wing commentators to describe Biden’s language as a sign of senility-induced incompetence. David Sacks, a right-wing venture capitalist, posted on X, “This was a bumbling act of senility in which Biden fell for a reporter’s obvious gotcha question, erased the whole point of the diplomatic summit, and caused his own staff to shake their heads in disbelief.” Ian Miles Cheong, a right-wing commentator, observed in a response to Sacks: “China would be foolish to trust anything the Biden administration offers them at this point.”

Is Biden’s age a valid concern as he pursues another term in office? Yes. Does that definitively explain his behavior here? No. The simplest explanation is that Biden was being Biden.

First, it’s unclear that Biden’s comment could even be characterized as a gaffe. The question, after all, was whether the president would disavow a view he articulated just a few months ago. Biden knew if he changed his position he would be vulnerable to attacks of inconsistency out of political expediency. China has the same style of government today that it had in the summer, and there is nothing inaccurate about what Biden said. Biden is also aware that the right is constantly looking to attack him for being soft on China, and that very well may have happened if he had used softer language. It’s a bit of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario when it comes to Biden’s critics on the right.

Second, even if one assumes that Biden veered from the kind of language his staff advised him to use, anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock knows that Biden has misspoken, said something off-color, or unexpectedly deviated from talking points for his entire political career — particularly in the realm of foreign policy. As senator, vice president and now president, Biden tends to feel confident making edgy off-the-cuff remarks that cause others headaches. It’s difficult to argue that any impolitic comment he makes can be attributed to his age when this is the same man who, as vice president, forced former President Barack Obama to change his position on same-sex marriage by freelancing on the issue on “Meet the Press.” (Biden has even called himself “a gaffe machine.”) So even if one wants to argue that Biden was behaving incompetently, the bar for proving that it has to do with declining mental acuity is high.

Blinken’s reaction was funny to witness, a rare example of a seasoned diplomat shedding their poker face. But it doesn’t mean Blinken thought Biden didn’t know what he was doing — he could’ve simply disagreed with the president’s on-the-fly judgment. It’s possible he would have preferred that Biden had, for example, ignored the reporter’s question and shifted the topic to focusing on the progress that had been made at the summit, thereby neither confirming nor denying the question. Perhaps Blinken would’ve valued such a response after a summit when the U.S. and China made substantial diplomatic progress and their heads of state were unusually chummy with each other — including sharing nostalgic photos, exchanging birthday wishes and showing off their presidential cruisers. But unlike Blinken, Biden is primed to consider domestic audiences more than international ones; their judgment on this could simply be irreconcilable.

 

 

 

Ain't No Katyusha Rocket Blowing Up Hospitals In Gaza

caitlinjohnstone  |  A huge blast in Gaza has destroyed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, killing hundreds of people. The exact death toll is still unknown.

.@HananyaNaftali proudly boasted that Israel bombed Gaza’s ah-Ahli hospital before deleting and two minutes later lying that Hamas did it. He works directly under Netanyahu. pic.twitter.com/6QVS9ZoZhk

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) October 17, 2023

Details of who is responsible for the explosion are being hotly debated by all parties, and this is still a developing story with a lot of details yet to be revealed. But what I’d like to quickly document as things unfold is the highly unusual number of mass media reporters I’ve been seeing who haven’t hesitated to point to Israel as the probable culprit.

After noting that Israel is blaming the blast on a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), MSNBC foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez quickly pointed out that PIJ rockets don’t tend to do that kind of damage, but Israeli missiles do. He also noted that Israel has an extensive history of lying about this sort of thing.

“The Israeli military at this point is not providing any evidence to back up its claims that this was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket; they are citing intelligence that they have not yet made public,” Sanchez said. “We should also say that this kind of death toll is not what you normally associate with Palestinian rockets. These rockets are dangerous, they are deadly, they do not tend to kill hundreds of people in a single strike in the way that Israeli high explosives — especially these bunker buster bombs that are used to target these Hamas tunnels under Gaza City — do have the potential to kill hundreds of people.”

“And we should say finally that there are instances in the past where the Israeli military has said things in the immediate aftermath of an incident that have turned out not to be true in the long run,” Sanchez added. “And the one example I’ll give you is that when the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military initially said that she was killed by Palestinian gunmen, and it was only months and months later that they admitted that it was likely an Israeli soldier who fired the fatal shot.”

CNN’s Clarissa Ward said essentially the same thing.

“I will say, just based on seeing these rocket attacks many times over the years, that they don’t usually have an impact like that in terms of the size of the blast, in terms of the scale of the death toll and the scale of the damage,” Ward said. “It’s also not the first time, it’s important to add, that we have seen the IDF categorically deny something before being forced to kind of do an about-face after an extensive investigation.”

 

Preznit Poopie Pants Caught In Yet Another Bald-Faced Lie...,

thegrayzone  |  After an Israeli reserve soldier named David Ben Zion told a reporter Palestinian militants “cut [off] heads of babies,” Biden, Netanyahu, and the international media amplified the dubious claim.

The Grayzone has identified Ben Zion as a fanatical settler leader who incited riots by demanding a Palestinian town be “wiped out.”

An international outcry erupted when Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that Palestinian militants from the besieged Gaza Strip had killed 40 “babies,” and beheaded several of them during an incursion into Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border. President Joseph Biden repeated the inflammatory claim during an October 10 White House Rose Garden address, while networks across the West carried the story without a shred of critical scrutiny.

According to CNN correspondent Nic Robertson, apparently citing Israeli military sources, Palestinian militants carried out, “ISIS-style executions,” in which they were “cutting the heads off of people,” including babies and pets. 

The Grayzone has now identified a key source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies. He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.

In an October 10 interview with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network, Ben Zion stated, “We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them.” 

He added, “We know that they are animals,” referring to Palestinians, “but we found that they don’t have any heart.”

Hours after his interview with i24, still in the village of Kfar Aza, a uniformed Ben Zion could be seen repeatedly grinning ear-to-ear in a video posted to his Facebook – an odd disposition for a supposed witness to the methodical butchering of babies.

Earlier that day, i24’s Zedek declared during a live report from Kfar Aza, “About 40 babies were taken out on gurneys… Cribs overturned, strollers left behind, doors left wide open.’” Zedek’s report has been viewed tens of millions of times on Twitter and promoted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry – which underwrites her network.

Hours later, she qualified her statement, stating, “Soldiers told me they believe 40 babies/children were killed. The exact death toll is still unknown as the military continues to go house to house and find more Israeli casualties.”

Yet the unverified tale quickly made its way to the highest levels of leadership, as if by design. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman stated unequivocally that babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated,” while President Joe Biden himself vaguely gestured towards “stomach-churning reports of babies being killed.”

Likewise, cable news has flown into a frenzy, breathlessly reporting the story despite the IDF walking back its initial confirmation.

Meanwhile, some reporters who initially carried the official Israeli allegations about beheaded babies began issuing qualifications of their own.

Oren Ziv, an Israeli reporter who joined the military’s official tour of Kfar Aza, commented on Twitter, “I’m getting a lot of question about the reports of ‘Hamas beheaded babies’ that were published after the media tour in the village. During the tour we didn’t see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents.”

So who is the source behind the explosive claim?

 

NYTimes Still Out'Chere Peddling Utterly Discredited Russiagate Burraschidt...,

Mary Katharine Ham tries to cure Bill Maher and Sam Harris from their Trump derangement syndrome. pic.twitter.com/J51lcATOxO

— Turncoat Don (@TurncoatD) October 1, 2023

NYTimes  | Russia’s strategy to win the war in Ukraine is to outlast the West.

But how does Vladimir Putin plan to do that?

American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies.

The Russia disinformation aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine aid with the ultimate goal of stopping international military assistance to Kyiv.

Russia has been frustrated that the United States and Europe have largely remained united on continued military and economic support for Ukraine, American officials said.

That military aid has kept Ukraine in the fight, put Russia’s original goals of taking Kyiv and Odesa out of reach and even halted its more modest objective to control all of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

But Mr. Putin believes he can influence American politics to weaken support for Ukraine and potentially restore his battlefield advantage, U.S. officials said.

Mr. Putin, the officials said, appears to be closely watching U.S. political debates over Ukraine assistance. Republican opposition to sending more money to Kyiv forced congressional leaders to pass a stopgap spending bill on Saturday that did not include additional aid for the country.

Moscow is also likely to try to boost pro-Russian candidates in Europe, seeing potential fertile ground with recent results. A pro-Russian candidate won Slovakia’s parliamentary elections on Sunday. In addition to national elections, Russia could seek to influence the European parliamentary vote next year, officials said.

Russia has long used its intelligence services to influence democratic politics around the world.

U.S. intelligence assessments in 2017 and 2021 concluded that Russia had tried to influence elections in favor of Donald J. Trump. In 2016, Russia hacked and leaked Democratic National Committee emails that hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and pushed divisive messages on social media. In 2020, Russia sought to spread information denigrating Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Though many Republicans in Congress argued Russia’s goal was to intensify political fights, not support Mr. Trump.)

Americanism Failed When America Failed To Integrate Its Public Schools

theconversation  |   Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, wants a “national divorce.” In her view, another Civil War is inevitable unless red and blue states form separate countries.

She has plenty of company on the right, where a host of others – 52% of Trump voters, Donald Trump himself and prominent Texas Republicans – have endorsed various forms of secession in recent years. Roughly 40% of Biden voters have fantasized about a national divorce as well. Some on the left urge a domestic breakup so that a new egalitarian nation might be, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “brought forth on this continent.”

The American Civil War was a national trauma precipitated by the secession of 11 Southern states over slavery. It is, therefore, understandable that many pundits and commentators would weigh in about the legality, feasibility and wisdom of secessionwhen others clamor for divorce.

But all this secession talk misses a key point that every troubled couple knows. Just as there are ways to withdraw from a marriage before any formal divorce, there are also ways to exit a nation before officially seceding.

I have studied secession for 20 years, and I think that it is not just a “what if?” scenario anymore. In “We Are Not One People: Secession and Separatism in American Politics Since 1776,” my co-author and I go beyond narrow discussions of secession and the Civil War to frame secession as an extreme end point on a scale that includes various acts of exit that have already taken place across the U.S.

Separatist ideas come from the Left, too.

“Cal-exit,” a plan for California to leave the union after 2016, was the most acute recent attempt at secession.

And separatist acts have reshaped life and law in many states. Since 2012, 21 states have legalized marijuana, which is federally illegal. Sanctuary cities and states have emerged since 2016 to combat aggressive federal immigration laws and policies. Some prosecutors and judges refuse to prosecute women and medical providers for newly illegal abortions in some states.

Estimates vary, but some Americans are increasingly opting out of hypermodern, hyperpolarized life entirely. “Intentional communities,” rural, sustainable, cooperative communes like East Wind in the Ozarks, are, as The New York Times reported in 2020, proliferating “across the country.”

In many ways, America is already broken apart. When secession is portrayed in its strictest sense, as a group of people declaring independence and taking a portion of a nation as they depart, the discussion is myopic, and current acts of exit hide in plain sight. When it comes to secession, the question is not just “What if?” but “What now?”

 

The FBI Found No Evidence Of January 6th Planning Or Coordination Outside Of Its Own

reuters  |  The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.

Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations.

Kash Patel calls on Tucker Carlson to release footage of undercover feds:

"Ray Epps was on FBI's most wanted list one day, and the next day he was off. There are only two ways that happens: you die, or you are an informant. Jill Sanborn, the head of the FBI counterintelligence… https://t.co/RALaXMKxX3 pic.twitter.com/8DJXX5JN1z

— kanekoa.substack.com (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 8, 2023

"Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases," said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. "Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages."

Stone, a veteran Republican operative and self-described "dirty trickster", and Jones, founder of a conspiracy-driven radio show and webcast, are both allies of Trump and had been involved in pro-Trump events in Washington on Jan. 5, the day before the riot.

FBI investigators did find that cells of protesters, including followers of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys groups, had aimed to break into the Capitol. But they found no evidence that the groups had serious plans about what to do if they made it inside, the sources said.

Prosecutors have filed conspiracy charges against 40 of those defendants, alleging that they engaged in some degree of planning before the attack.

They alleged that one Proud Boy leader recruited members and urged them to stockpile bulletproof vests and other military-style equipment in the weeks before the attack and on Jan. 6 sent members forward with a plan to split into groups and make multiple entries to the Capitol.

But so far prosecutors have steered clear of more serious, politically-loaded charges that the sources said had been initially discussed by prosecutors, such as seditious conspiracy or racketeering.

The FBI's assessment could prove relevant for a congressional investigation that also aims to determine how that day's events were organized and by whom.

Senior lawmakers have been briefed in detail on the results of the FBI's investigation so far and find them credible, a Democratic congressional source said.

The chaos on Jan. 6 erupted as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives met to certify Joe Biden's victory in November's presidential election.

 

Why Didn't The House Select Committee Interview Officer Tarik Johnson?

Slate |  Carlson also made a big show of his “exclusive” interview with Tarik Johnson, a former Capitol officer who has actually been interviewed before by NPR. The House’s select committee on Jan. 6 did a fine job of connecting larger dots, drawing a straight line from the Stop the Steal rhetoric through to the insurrection. But though it interviewed Capitol police officers, it skipped an interview with Johnson, who was pictured that day wearing a MAGA hat. “The frontline officers and supervisors were not prepared at all,” Johnson said on the air. He told Carlson he asked leadership for direction after the Capitol was breached. “I got no response,” he said. (He said that he used the MAGA hat to avoid being assaulted by the crowds of rioters himself; the Capitol police have denied no one responded to Johnson.) Johnson offered seemingly sincere answers to Carlson’s leading and partisan questions, and gave Carlson’s audience a fair representation of the riot: “They focused on Donald Trump, not the failures of the Capitol police,” he said of the committee. “Some people there had planned on being violent. Some people may have turned violent after what they were going through. I think people wanted to support their president. Some of those people just wanted to support him, and some of those people didn’t commit violence, and some of those people didn’t plan on it.”

Trump Wasn't Remotely Clever, Cruel, Or Ruthless Enough To Fight The 5th Estate

WSJ  |  So compromised are the national reporting staffs of the Washington Post, the New York Times and other outlets that they can’t be trusted on the biggest story of the day. A Jeff Bezos, say, would have to take a page from the CIA’s own history and recruit a “Team B” off-site from his Washington Post to investigate the laptop ruse, then require his newspaper to report the truth however discomfiting to its newsroom and leadership.

The laptop ruse also ought to have you rethinking the FBI’s and Robert Mueller’s dragging out of the collusion inquiry to damage a president they distrusted. It ought to have you rethinking James Comey’s convenient resolution of the Hillary Clinton email matter based on secret “Russian intelligence” that he made sure would remain hidden from you even today.

Our press would bring these stories to light if it could refute them, but it can’t so it ignores them. And no, Twitter and Substack aren’t a substitute for institutions that can deploy teams of reporters and substantial resources to investigations.

The point has long since stopped being whose ox is gored, Mr. Trump’s or Mr. Biden’s. American voters whatever their sympathies don’t want their government and media lying to them to shape their political choices. (Put aside lying in a way that falsely incriminates a nuclear-armed hostile power as trying to fix a U.S. election on behalf of one of the candidates—an element of this episode that none want to confront.) The election is over; the truth is kept from you now to protect the guilty, not to save the country from the supposed menace of Trumpism. In a different universe far, far away—that is, America pre-Donald Trump—a conscientious press would be reporting the hell out of all this.

Now House Republicans will have to do the job instead, implicitly holding the press to account in the process. Whether Joe Biden actively promoted his son’s ventures is a secondary question but will yield to further investigation. Whether active-duty officials joined in lying to news outlets about the laptop origins will become clear as the Twitter revelations are followed up. One question I think we can say is already resolved conclusively: The 51 former officials lied to the public with deliberation and premeditation to influence a presidential election, and the national press abetted them.

Circling The Wagons Of Total BS Gives Us Still Less Reason To "Trust The Science"...,

newenergytimes |  Omar A. Hurricane, chief scientist for the inertial confinement fusion program at the NIF lab, explained the facts to New Energy Times:

The total laser energy delivered to the target was 2.05 MJ and the total fusion yield was 3.15 MJ of energy. The laser pulse duration was about 9 nanoseconds long. The duration of the fusion reaction was 90 picoseconds long. Very short time-scales, obviously, which are the nature of inertial fusion systems.

Practically speaking, the result is irrelevant. The NIF device did not achieve net energy. The scientists who are promoting this result to the news media are playing word games. They use multiple definitions for the phrase “net energy.” Only the fuel pellet achieved “net energy.” This does not account for the energy required to operate the device.

The 3.15 megajoules of fusion output energy were produced at the expense of 400 megajoules of electrical input energy. A fusion device that loses 99.2 percent of the energy it consumes, in a reaction that lasts for 0.00000000009 of a second, does not indicate technology that could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.

On Monday, CNN implied that the reactor produced a small amount of power, but too little to be practical:

“It’s about what it takes to boil 10 kettles of water,” said Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College in London. “In order to turn that into a power station, we need to make a larger gain in energy – we need it to be substantially more.”

The “10 kettles” represents the 3.15 megajoule output. CNN didn’t mention the 400-megajoule input. It’s a deceptive material omission, bordering on fraud.

The public promotion of this result as evidence that fusion is a potential energy solution is a scam and promotes false hope. NIF is a taxpayer-funded project that is never going to power any house. NIF is useful only to test nuclear weapons. Are there other laser fusion results that are better than NIF? No.

We have already explained the technical details but it seems that some journalists didn’t get the memo. See our reports #73, #102, #103, #104.

P.S.: Let us not forget that half of the fuel mixture required for commercial fusion reactors does not exist. Does. Not. Exist.

Sorry BeeDee - That's A NOPE On The Fusion Ignition Front - Your Grandkids Still Waiting For Godot....,

To summarize: The “breakeven” achieved was between the output energy of the lasers and the fusion. Even just looking at that, Houston we have a problem. 2.1 megajoules of laser output energy went into a pellet and 2.5 megajoules of heat energy came out. So a 0.4 megajoule gain in energy! Woohoo!

But let’s use more familiar units. One kWh of energy is 3.6 megajoules so 0.4 megajules is 1/9 of a kWh or around 111 Watt hours. So enough energy to run an old-school 100W light bulb for a bit over an hour

1) Lasers provoke the fusion. The amount of electrical energy dumped into those lasers yields an approximate energy of 1%.

2) Capturing the heat energy produced by the fusion and transforming it into actually usable current would incur a conversion loss on the order of 60% (heat to electricity).

3) The technology used (relying upon lasers focused on a pellet of material that is compressed to fusion) was originally designed and is only useful to manufacture detonators for atomic bombs; it is not a viable technical path to a power plant.

So, the end-to-end cycle (electricity to power lasers – fusion – heat transformed to electricity) would require a 250 times factor improvement in energy efficiency.

In other words: a meaningless "achievement" about which very big and very misleading lies are being mass broadcast at a clueless and non-technical audience.

For decades it has been touted that fusion will be feasible and power our societies maybe 50 years from now. I contend it is time to pull the plug on these never-ending projects that never come to fruition. If Russia or China don't turn their attention to fusion, it will never get done period. The U.S. needs to redirect the gargantuan resources devoted to this white elephant to something feasible — it is becoming urgent.

llnl.gov  |  “We have had a theoretical understanding of fusion for over a century, but the journey from knowing to doing can be long and arduous. Today’s milestone shows what we can do with perseverance,” said Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the President’s chief adviser for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

“Monday, December 5, 2022, was a historic day in science thanks to the incredible people at Livermore Lab and the National Ignition Facility. In making this breakthrough, they have opened a new chapter in NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program,” NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby said. “I would like to thank the members of Congress who have supported the National Ignition Facility because their belief in the promise of visionary science has been critical for our mission. Our team from around the DOE national laboratories and our international partners have shown us the power of collaboration.”

“The pursuit of fusion ignition in the laboratory is one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity, and achieving it is a triumph of science, engineering, and most of all, people,” LLNL Director Dr. Kim Budil said. “Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit — a continual process of learning, building, expanding knowledge and capability, and then finding ways to overcome the new challenges that emerged. These are the problems that the U.S. national laboratories were created to solve.”

“This astonishing scientific advance puts us on the precipice of a future no longer reliant on fossil fuels but instead powered by new clean fusion energy,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (NY) said. “I commend Lawrence Livermore National Labs and its partners in our nation’s Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program, including the University of Rochester’s Lab for Laser Energetics in New York, for achieving this breakthrough. Making this future clean energy world a reality will require our physicists, innovative workers and brightest minds at our DOE-funded institutions, including the Rochester Laser Lab, to double down on their cutting-edge work. That’s why I’m also proud to announce today that I’ve helped to secure the highest-ever authorization of over $624 million this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for the ICF program to build on this amazing breakthrough.”

“After more than a decade of scientific and technical innovation, I congratulate the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility for their historic accomplishment,” said U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA). “This is an exciting step in fusion and everyone at Lawrence Livermore and NIF should be proud of this milestone achievement.”

“This is an historic, innovative achievement that builds on the contributions of generations of Livermore scientists. Today, our nation stands on their collective shoulders. We still have a long way to go, but this is a critical step and I commend the U.S. Department of Energy and all who contributed toward this promising breakthrough, which could help fuel a brighter clean energy future for the United States and humanity,” said U.S. Senator Jack Reed (RI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“This monumental scientific breakthrough is a milestone for the future of clean energy,” said U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (CA). “While there is more work ahead to harness the potential of fusion energy, I am proud that California scientists continue to lead the way in developing clean energy technologies. I congratulate the scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for their dedication to a clean energy future, and I am committed to ensuring they have all of the tools and funding they need to continue this important work.”

“This is a very big deal. We can celebrate another performance record by the National Ignition Facility. This latest achievement is particularly remarkable because NIF used a less spherically symmetrical target than in the August 2021 experiment,” said U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren (CA-19). “This significant advancement showcases the future possibilities for the commercialization of fusion energy. Congress and the Administration need to fully fund and properly implement the fusion research provisions in the recent CHIPS and Science Act and likely more. During World War II, we crafted the Manhattan Project for a timely result. The challenges facing the world today are even greater than at that time. We must double down and accelerate the research to explore new pathways for the clean, limitless energy that fusion promises.”

The Guardian Talks All Around Hancock But Not About His Theory And Concludes He's WAYCISS!!!!

Guardian  |  For a story that was first told 2,300 years ago, the myth of Atlantis has demonstrated a remarkable persistence over the millennia. Originally outlined by Plato, the tale of the rise of a great, ancient civilisation followed by its cataclysmic destruction has since generated myriad interpretations.

Many versions have been intriguing and entertaining – but none have been as controversial as its most recent outing in the Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse.

Presented by the author Graham Hancock, the programme argues that a once sophisticated culture was destroyed by floods triggered by a giant comet which crashed on Earth, a disaster that inspired the legend of Atlantis, it is claimed.

According to Hancock, survivors of the calamity spread round the world – which was then populated by simple hunter-gatherers – bringing them science, technology, agriculture and monumental architecture. We owe everything to these near godlike individuals, it is claimed.

For good measure, Hancock – who has been promoting these ideas in his books for decades – argues that archaeologists have deliberately covered up this catastrophic vision of civilisation’s spread and accuses mainstream academia of its “extremely defensive, arrogant and patronising” attitudes.

These stark claims have helped the series reach the top of viewing lists on both sides of the Atlantic, to the chagrin of archaeologists who, for their part, have denounced Ancient Apocalypse on the grounds that it provides little evidence to support its grandiose claims and for promoting conspiracy theories dressed up as science.

Nor is Hancock the first to suggest the destruction of a once great civilisation led to the flowering of culture elsewhere. In 1882, the maverick US congressman and popular writer Ignatius Donnelly published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World which argued that a highly complex, sophisticated culture had been wiped out by a flood 10,000 years ago and claimed that its survivors had spread round the world teaching the rest of humanity the secrets of farming and architecture. Sounds familiar.

Then there were the Nazis. Many swore by the idea that a white Nordic superior race – people of “the purest blood” – had come from Atlantis. As a result, Himmler set up an SS unit, the Ahnenerbe – or Bureau of Ancestral Heritage – in 1935 to find out where people from Atlantis had ended up after the deluge had destroyed their homeland.

And that, in part, explains why the myth of an ancient, lost civilisation is so useful. It is a basic tale of a rise and fall that can be corralled and exploited for all sorts of causes. Plato meant his tale to be an allegory. Atlantis was destroyed by the gods who had grown angry with the hubris displayed by its inhabitants and so destroyed it. Don’t get too big for your boots, in other words.

 

Why Did NBC News Suspend Miguel Almaguer For Accurately Reporting On Paul Pelosi?

dailymail  |  NBC News is under mounting pressure to explain its actions after retracting the controversial segment and this week suspending Almaguer, pending an internal inquiry.

It made the move despite a second report on the company-owned-and-operated NBC Bay Area station that repeats many of the same points in his segment.

National correspondent Almaguer quoted sources saying the husband of House Speaker Nancy did not immediately declare an emergency when he answered the door to police at the couple's San Francisco home following a 911 call.

NBC removed the footage from its website hours after airing on November 4, saying it 'did not meet' its reporting standards - and this week suspended the 45-year-old reporter pending an internal investigation.

et San Francisco's local NBC Bay Area news still has available online a report that also questions versions of the horrific incident, asking why Mr. Pelosi didn't flee the $8million house the moment officers arrived.

The suspension of Almaguer- who has been with NBC since 2009 – has now reignited conspiracy theories surrounding the early hours break-in and attack on October 28, allegedly carried out by Canadian national David DePape, 42.

Almaguer has not appeared on the network since the report, which directly contradicted claims made by prosecutors and the police.

One former senior NBC executive told Fox News that station 'needs to be more transparent with its viewers about this error… NBC owes it to its audience to be truthful and not cover this up'.

Unlike most affiliates, NBC Bay Area is directly owned and operated by the parent company. It is one of only around a dozen in the country to have such an arrangement while more than 200 others are independently owned.

In the now retracted report, Almaguer can be heard saying over footage of the four-bedroom Pelosi home: 'NBC News learning new details about the moments police arrived.

'Sources familiar with what unfolded in the Pelosi residence now revealing when officers responded to the high priority call they were seemingly unaware they had been called to the home of the Speaker of the House.

'After a knock and announce the front door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82-year-old did not immediately declare an emergency or try to leave his home, but instead began walking several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police.'

The correspondent added: 'It's unclear if the 82-year-old was already injured or what his mental state was, say sources.

'According to court documents, when the officer asked what was going on 'defendant smiled and said that everything's good' but instantaneously a struggle ensued as police clearly saw David DePape strike Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer.

'After tackling the suspect, officers rushed to Mr. Pelosi who was lying in a pool of blood.'

The footage then cut to Almaguer on screen saying: 'Law enforcement officials tell us the bottom line here is this is a terrifying situation.

'We still don't know exactly what unfolded between Mr. Pelosi and the suspect for the 30 minutes they were alone inside the house before police arrived. Officials who were investigating this matter would not go into further details about these new details.'