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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
.@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
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.”
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.”
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.)
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.
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.
“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?”
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/RALaXMKxX3pic.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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.'
nbcbayarea | The Department of Justice and the San Francisco District Attorney's
Office have outlined differing accounts of who opened the door when
police responded to Pelosi's 911 call.
Senior Investigative Reporter Bigad Shaban shares new details about
what the body camera video actually captured as police arrived at the
Pelosi's San Francisco home.
Police body camera video that captured the attack on Paul Pelosi, and
the moments leading up to it, contradict one of the details included in
the Department of Justice's account of what happened that evening,
according to a source familiar with the Pelosi investigation who
personally viewed the body camera footage and spoke to the NBC Bay Area
Investigative Unit.
Despite this contradiction over who opened the door, the basic facts
of the attack are not disputed in the documents: 42-year-old David
DePape is accused of breaking into the Pelosi home and attacking
82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer. DePape is being held in San
Francisco County jail on attempted murder and multiple other felony
charges. According to court documents, DePape was looking for Speaker of
the House Nancy Pelosi, Paul's wife, and threatened to break her
kneecaps.
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
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64th day is March 5
My birthday
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...
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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