Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Norman Finkelstein's new book indicts the ICC for whitewashing Israel's crimes against humanity

James North
Mondoweiss
Thu, 28 May 2020 18:49 UTC
I ACCUSE!

Herewith a Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt that ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda Whitewashed Israel

By Norman G. Finkelstein
Finkelstein's book I Accuse
© Noram G. Finkelstein (2020)
This May 31 marks 10 years since Israeli commandos attacked the Gaza Humanitarian Flotilla in international waters and killed 10 people. Norman Finkelstein, one of the world's most effective critics of Israel, is observing the occasion with a persuasive indictment of Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, for refusing to take legal action over Israel's lethal attack on the Mavi Marmara, the Flotilla's flagship.

At first glance, Finkelstein's new book resembles a legal brief. But start reading more closely, and you soon see his trademark indignation, intense and eloquent. The Comoro Islands, where the Mavi Marmara was registered, brought the Gaza Flotilla case to the ICC in 2013, and Finkelstein points out that the chief prosecutor since then has tried to bury it 3 times. He is not diplomatic; he charges that she "defiled her office by refusing to investigate credible allegations of Israeli criminality."
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Bad Guys

'It was a homicide' - Epstein's lawyer says his client was 'upbeat and excited' about strategy to clear his name

Dan Bates
Daily Mail
Thu, 28 May 2020 18:51 UTC
epstein
Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself because he was preparing a multi-layered legal and media strategy to fight his case, the late pedophile's lawyer has claimed.

David Schoen, who Epstein asked to lead his legal team in his final days, said he planned to mount legal and factual defenses to the sex trafficking allegations against him.

During a five-hour meeting with Epstein nine days before his death, Schoen said Epstein was 'upbeat and excited' and looking forward to clearing his name.

But Epstein was in a 'dangerous situation' in jail and suggested other prisoners were considering blackmailing him.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

Facebook appoints Israeli censor of human rights defenders to oversight board

Tamara Nassar
Electronic Intifada
Tue, 26 May 2020 19:10 UTC
zuckerberg
© Anthony Quintano / Flickr
Facebook has hired the former director-general of Israel's justice ministry as a member of its new oversight board. This body will effectively determine what content to censor or permit on the social media platform.

Emi Palmor headed the justice ministry from 2014 until she was dismissed from her post last year.

Under her direction, the Israeli justice ministry "petitioned Facebook to censor legitimate speech of human rights defenders and journalists because it was deemed politically undesirable," Palestinian civil society groups stated this month.

The groups condemned Facebook's selection of Palmor, warning of her potential role in muzzling freedom of expression and censoring human rights defenders, particularly Palestinian, Arab and Muslim voices on the platform.

The Palestine Digital Rights Coalition, the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council and the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network are urging Facebook to "consider the grave consequences that electing Emi Palmor may have particularly on Palestinian human rights defenders and on freedom of expression online in defense of Palestinian rights."
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Magnify

Spain, US & Russia using Hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus while France, Italy and Belgium ban it due to WHO concerns


WION
Thu, 28 May 2020 04:39 UTC
Hydroxychloroquine
© ReutersAnti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine
Several European nations, including France, Italy and Belgium, followed a World Health Organisation decision on Monday to pause a large trial of hydroxychloroquine due to safety concerns.

Spain has said it sees no reason to stop the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat COVID-19 patients even as European governments moved on Wednesday to halt the use of the anti-malaria drug.

Several European nations, including France, Italy and Belgium, followed a World Health Organisation decision on Monday to pause a large trial of hydroxychloroquine due to safety concerns.

A UK regulator said on Wednesday that a separate trial was also being put on hold, less than a week after it started. The study, being led by the University of Oxford and partly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was expected to involve as many as 40,000 healthcare workers.


Comment: An obvious conflict of interest there because The Gates Foundation are championing the lockdown while pushing for a vaccine to be rolled out worldwide.


Comment: Jonny Tickle for RT reports that Russia has announced it will not ban it either:
On Thursday, the Russian Health Ministry stated on its website that hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness and safety in the treatment of coronavirus is continually being monitored, but the ministry is not taking any steps towards outlawing it. This decision is in sharp contrast to moves made by some European countries which, due to safety concerns, have completely stopped the prescription of the drug to fight the coronavirus.

"Several drugs are used to treat patients with Covid-19," a ministry statement said. "Among these drugs is hydroxychloroquine, which, due to its anti-inflammatory effect and effect on the immune system, has been used for decades to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis, and systemic lupus erythematosus."
Hydroxychloroquine
© AFP / George FreyA bottle and pills of Hydroxychloroquine
According to the Health Ministry, recommendations to use HCQ have come from various foreign studies confirming its effectiveness, and it has been included in several national and international clinical guidelines, including in Russia. As it stands, Russian doctors are able to give the drug to patients who provide informed consent, taking into account potential side effects and risk factors.

"According to the results of monitoring the safety of hydroxychloroquine drugs during the Covid-19 pandemic in the Russian Federation, there were no fatal outcomes associated with rhythm disturbance in patients with HCQ," the ministry said.


Notably deaths from coronavirus in Russia have been extremely low when compared to many of those countries that have banned HCQ.


The drug, most often used to treat malaria, rose to prominence on March 19 when US President Donald Trump promoted the medication as a potential treatment for Covid‑19. On May 25, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced it would be suspending its hydroxychloroquine testing out of what it called an "abundance of caution." HCQ was just one part of a more extensive study of experimental coronavirus treatments.
Considering the decades that this drug has been in use, and to treat a variety of illnesses and patients, one wonders what it is that has caused some countries to suddenly become so concerned. Especially because other countries and its experts, noted above, obviously don't see sufficient evidence to be so concerned as to ban it outright.

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War Whore

AFRICOM's gambit: Why a US military command is waging a 'media war' on Americans

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Thu, 28 May 2020 18:31 UTC
senegal army
© AFP / Seyllou
A regional US military command tasked with hunting down terrorists across Africa seems to be far more interested in waging psychological operations targeting the American public, the Pentagon and the White House. How curious.

Most countries in the world divide their own territory in military areas of responsibility. Not so the US, whose combatant commands span the entire globe - and beyond. One of these, the Africa Command (AFRICOM) is responsible for the entire African continent - with the exception of Egypt, which somehow ended up in the realm of the neighboring Central Command (CENTCOM).

Tasked with going after terrorist groups like Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), AFRICOM has recently focused its efforts on using friendly journalists, media leak and bombastic social media statements to bypass its military and civilian superiors and lobby in Washington for more power, influence and money.

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action," goes a quote attributed to James Bond author Ian Fleming. So it was definitely noticeable when AFRICOM made a third bid to attract attention in under a month.
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Star of David

Netanyahu pushes for West Bank annexation in his fight to avoid jail. But he is setting the Middle East on fire

Finian Cunningham
RT
Wed, 27 May 2020 18:19 UTC
netanyahu
© AFP / Abir Sultan
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reckless push to expand the annexation of Palestinian territory is a gambit to avoid jail over corruption charges. But it could blow up an already volatile Middle East.

Even Israeli security chiefs are increasingly alarmed by Netanyahu's push to expand the country's borders.

In a dubious historic first this week, the longest-serving Israeli prime minister also became the country's first sitting leader to be prosecuted on criminal charges. Arraigned before a court, Netanyahu could barely contain his outrage, denouncing the trial as a "fabrication" by his political enemies to "depose a strong leader."

If found guilty, the decorated war hero could wind up in jail for 10 years. At 70 years of age, 'Bibi' Netanyahu is fighting for his life and the preservation of his political legacy. He has always presumed his political ascent and the glorious fate of Israel to be intertwined.
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Bad Guys

Taliban delegation in Kabul for talks as Afghan officials blame the militant group for deadly attacks


RFE/RL
Thu, 28 May 2020 18:14 UTC
Taliban prisoners
Taliban prisoners are released from Bagram prison in Afghanistan's Parwan Province on May 26.
A Taliban delegation has arrived in Kabul for talks over a prisoner swap, just hours after Afghan officials blamed the militant group for two deadly attacks in the country's north and west.

The prisoner exchange is part of a U.S.-Taliban agreement signed in February that called on the Afghan government to release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners and for the militants to free around 1,000 government captives as a confidence-building measure ahead of formal peace talks.

"A technical delegation of the Taliban is in Kabul to work with a technical team of the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on the release of prisoners of both sides," said National Security Council spokesman Javid Faisal on May 28.

Later in the day, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen tweeted that the group had released 80 Afghan soldiers and government officials from their jails in northern Baghlan and Kunduz provinces. It brings to more than 300 the number of captives freed by the Taliban since April.
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Propaganda

Moscow has secret Covid-19 CURE for chosen elite: Western media's favorite Russian pundit voices new conspiracy theory

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Wed, 27 May 2020 18:12 UTC
putin
© Sputnik/Alexey Druzhinin/Kremlin via REUTERS
As a rule, Western correspondents covering Russia - either by necessity or design - often use extreme or fringe voices to fit their reporting agendas. One of the most frequently cited may have finally jumped the shark this week.

A handful of Russian 'experts' frame the narrative in the US/UK media. The most widely featured include Tatyana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Center (an American think tank funded by George Soros, the US and UK governments, and the EU), Gleb Pavlovsky (a former Vladimir Putin adviser and political strategist, who was dismissed in 2011) and Valery Solovey, once a professor at Moscow's prestigious MGiMO University.

Putting aside Stanovaya (reasonable enough, albeit one-note) and Pavlovsky (so far past his sell-by date that he's a political museum piece) the continued platform granted to Solovey is incomprehensible. The academic is a David Icke-style conspiracy theorist who makes Alex Jones and Rachel Maddow look like perfectly balanced operators.
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Binoculars

Satellite images show China expanding airbase near Ladakh, Kashmir

Vishnu Som
NDTV
Thu, 28 May 2020 17:31 UTC
chinese airbase
The second image (right) dated May 21, this year, shows massive construction activity.
Satellite images show massive construction activity at a high altitude Chinese air base, located just 200 kilometres away from the Pangong Lake, the site of the skirmish between forces of India and China on May 5 and May 6.

Two images, exclusively sourced from the open source intelligence expert detresfa_ , an analyst with ShadowBreak Intl., show the Ngari Gunsa airport in Tibet. The first image is dated April 6, 2020 while the second one, dated May 21, this year, shows massive construction activity including the addition of what appears to be a second taxi-track or a secondary tarmac to position helicopters or combat aircraft. A third image shows a close-up of the main tarmac at the airport with a line-up of four fighter jets believed to be either J-11 or J-16 fighters of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force.

The J-11/J-16 are advanced, domestically produced variants of the Russian Sukhoi 27 and broadly match the capabilities of the Indian Air Forces Sukhoi 30 MKIs, its most potent fighter until the arrival of the first batch of Dassault Rafales in a few weeks.

A caption on close-up image with the fighters indicates that their deployment at this base was first spotted in December 2019. The close up images now released help spotters identify the type of fighters deployed.

The location of the Ngari Gunsa air base is particularly significant. A dual-use military and civil airport which serves the town of Shiquanhe in the Ngari prefecture, the airport is located at 14,022 feet, which makes it among the highest in the world.

The advantage gained by its location close to the Line of Actual Control is balanced by the reality that fighter jets deployed at such an altitude can only carry limited war-loads and fuels.
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Star of David

Be very afraid: Israeli cyber czar warns of 'cyber winter' of attacks from Iran

Yonah Jeremy Bob
The Jerusalem Post
Thu, 28 May 2020 17:08 UTC
hacker v vendetta mask
© DADO RUVIC/REUTERS
A cyber winter is coming and it will be faster than suspected, Israel's cyber czar warned on Wednesday, a week after Iran tried hacking Israel's water system.

In a recorded speech for a Cybertech conference event slated for Thursday and obtained by The Jerusalem Post, National Cyber Directorate chief Yigal Unna provided striking new details about the Islamic Republic's hack and how Israel blocked it.

Unna neither confirmed nor denied that Israel launched a counter cyberattack against Iran's Shahid Rajaee port on May 9, but, in unusually open remarks for a senior defense official, he strongly implied that Iran should be wary of attempting future attacks against Israeli civilian infrastructure.

"We will remember this last month, May 2020, as a changing point in the history of modern cyberwarfare... What we faced here in Israel... the attempted attack, synchronized and organized attack," targeting civilian water infrastructure, "if it had been successful... we would now be facing in the middle of the corona crisis, a very big damage to the civilian population, a lack of water," Unna said.


Comment: Israeli spooks lie so brazenly and so frequently, we wouldn't be surprised if this attack never even happened - or was staged in order to let Unna's cyber spooks appear to swoop in to rescue the Jewish state from its dastardly enemies.


Further, he noted that when various chemicals are mixed with water in the wrong proportions - which could happen due to a hack - it "can be harmful and disastrous."
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