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Pentagon report says US's Kurdish allies in Syria recruiting child soldiers


Sputnik
Sun, 09 Aug 2020 17:34 UTC
Kurds flag SDF
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed coalition of mostly Kurdish militia units operating in northeastern Syria, has maintained de-facto control over much of the oil-rich eastern area of that Middle Eastern nation since the start of the Syrian conflict in the early 2010s.

A new report to Congress by the Office of the Inspector General at the US Department of Defence has criticised the SDF militias' ongoing practice of recruiting child soldiers, with the militia forces reportedly promising to stop doing so since at least 2014.

"Considerable additional detail on the SDF's actions to end the use of child soldiers subject was provided in the [Department of State] Country Report on Human Rights Conditions section for Syria for 2019, issued in March 2020, but the report also notes allegations that children were still being forcibly conscripted and that at least one 14-year-old boy was killed in fighting in Baghouz in early 2019," the report indicates.

"Each year's edition of the DoS Country Reports...since 2014 have contained similar promises by Kurdish entities partnered with the United States to end the use of child soldiers, and each report notes that their use apparently continued," the document notes.

Commenting on this state of affairs for the report, the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs said that this was an issue "limited more to the YPG [Kurdish People's Protection Unit militias] rather than the SDF or internal security forces as a whole."
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Bad Guys

Covid tyranny: Iran's restrictions to last through January 2021 - at least


RFE/RL
Sun, 09 Aug 2020 17:27 UTC
iranian woman mask covid
© EPA-EFE
Iranian President Hassan Rohani says a state of emergency imposed in the country because of the coronavirus pandemic will remain in place at least until the end of January 2021.

"We have been in this situation for six months and we must prepare ourselves for another six months at least," Rohani said in a statement published on his website on August 9.

Rohani said any complete easing of public health restrictions is not planned for now.

"We must find a middle way between normality and sticking to the virus restrictions," he said.

Comment: See also:

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Pumpkin 2

The DNC Convention is the election

Mike Luongo
Strategic Culture Foundation
Thu, 06 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
Biden
For nearly a year it has been my primary thesis that the DNC nominating convention would determine the fate of the presidential election here in the states. These four days may, in fact, be more dramatic than any Democratic convention since 1860 when incumbent James Buchanan was tossed aside to ensure a lawyer with railroad ties from Illinois, Stephen Douglas, squared off against Republican Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln was also a railroad lawyer from Illinois. Just sayin'.

The convention is less than two weeks away and serious questions about the Democrats' strategy should be plain to see for anyone who pays even cursory attention to presidential politics.

How can they possibly run Joe Biden?

It's not that Biden hasn't been a good soldier for the empire, he has. It is that he is unpresentable as a candidate in public. The evidence of his cognitive decline, which has accelerated in recent months, mounts every time he fails to even read a teleprompter correctly.

The only thing the Democrats are united on is their hatred for Trump. But that hatred cannot be an animating principle to base an election strategy on, though, to this point, they certainly have tried.
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Pirates

Strategic destruction in Beirut: The US, Israel and Beirutshima

Taxi
Plato's Guns
Thu, 06 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
Lebannon flag
Wherever there is mass murder in the Middle East, there you find the Israeli fingerprint. And it was always forever thus.

Time and time again, since 1948, Israel has demonstrated that it solves all its regional problems with violent terroristic solutions that change the political and geostrategic equation in its favor. Time and time again, there is always a major Western government that benefits from and supports this Israeli terrorism, and in the case of the recent horrific explosion at the Beirut Port, now otherwise known as 'Beirutshima', it is the US who greatly benefits as well as Tel Aviv.

Since 1948, the Beirut Port has long been a target marked for destruction by Israel. It has long been Israel's wet dream to destroy this busy and industrious port, originally built by the ancient Phoenicians. This is because the Beirut Port poses the biggest trade competition to Israel's Haifa Port, therefore a constant threat to Israel's lucrative marine economy. Also, the Beirut Port is a well-established and crucial lifeline to Lebanon's daily energy and sustenance needs, therefore destroying it renders the Lebanese government vulnerable and open to a practical siege of all its economic and political decision-making: a virtual colonization of political Lebanon by its more affluent enemy and neighbor. Not forgetting here also that Lebanon's militarized resistance groups being the biggest immediate threat to the very existence of the Jewish state itself, Israel fears the port being used to transfer unchecked weapons into the hands of Palestinian resistors residing in Lebanon, as well as into the hands of various other Lebanese resistance groups at war with Israel.
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Burka

Best of the Web: British govt advisor spits it out: 'Wearing facemasks acts as reminder that we no longer live in normal times'


BBC
Fri, 07 Aug 2020 11:57 UTC
gabriel scally
Dr Scally is from the govt. He sez: 'wear a muzzle'
The Welsh Government should "think again" about making face masks compulsory in shops, a member of the Independent Sage group has said.

Dr Gabriel Scally, a visiting professor of public health, said wearing a face mask "acts as a reminder that these aren't normal times".

"Each individual action adds together," he told BBC Wales.

The Welsh Government has advised the use of face masks where social distancing is difficult.

On Thursday, Labour leader Keir Starmer failed to back the Welsh Government's stance on face masks in shops in an interview with BBC Wales, saying it was "for each government to decide".

Comment: This doctor's bio reads:
Dr Scally is currently visiting Professor of Public Health at both the University of the West of England (UWE) and the University of Bristol. His most recent academic role was as Director the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Healthy Urban Environments at the UWE.


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Sherlock

Best of the Web: Forbes asks: 'Was Israel responsible for the Beirut explosion?'

Michael Peck
Forbes
Tue, 04 Aug 2020 20:24 UTC
BEIRUT
© Marwan Tahtah/Getty ImagesBEIRUT, LEBANON - AUGUST 04: Smoke rises from a port facility after large explosions on August 4, 2020 in Beirut, Lebanon. At least 50 people were killed and thousands more injured when two explosions occurred near the Lebanese capital's port area.
As the smoke clears over Beirut, and rescuers struggle to aid survivors of a massive explosion that killed at least 78 people and wounded more than 4,000, an ominous question hangs in the air:

Was Israel responsible? The answer is, probably not.

Israel denies any involvement. Lebanon's government and Hezbollah militants - never shy about blaming their arch-enemy Israel for any misfortune - say the disaster was an accident caused by volatile explosive material in a warehouse. If Israel were in fact responsible, the result could be a war with Hezbollah and Hezbollah's patron Iran that could even embroil the United States and other nations in a vast Middle East conflagration.


Comment: ...which is likely why Hezbollah, much less other Lebanese leadership, didn't initially accuse Israel; they would have painted themselves into a corner in which they would have to respond, militarily.


Comment: Well, at least Forbes asked the question and thereby acknowledged the elephant-in-the-living-room.

See also:

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Caesar

As Democrats dither, Trump signs executive orders providing economic relief to millions of Americans


RT
Sat, 08 Aug 2020 21:17 UTC
trump executive order
'Enough talking!'
US President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders giving extended economic relief to Americans struggling economically during the Covid-19 pandemic after negotiations with Democrats broke down.

Trump announced the orders at a press conference at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club on Saturday, the same location where he warned such action would be taken a day earlier.

The orders will give a payroll tax holiday to Americans earning less than $100,000 a year. A second order will "protect people from eviction," Trump said.

A third order will extend unemployment benefits, giving Americans out of jobs $400 a week on top of the unemployment benefits they would have been entitled to before the pandemic, which is a decrease from the previous $600 per week benefit Democrats were looking to extend through the end of the year.

Trump also said that student loan repayments would be deferred and that any accrued interest would be forgiven indefinitely.

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No Entry

Illegal immigrants pose potential health risk to Hungary amid Covid-19 - Orban


RT
Fri, 07 Aug 2020 14:34 UTC
orban mask
© Reuters / Francois Lenoir
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that while immigration advocates may disagree, all illegal immigrants trying to enter Hungary during the Covid-19 pandemic pose a possible health threat and should be treated as such.

The PM, known for his tough approach to undocumented migrants, made the comments during an interview with Hungary's Kossuth Radio on Friday. He said all of those attempting to enter the country "pose a biological and health risk to Hungary" due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Orban clarified that he didn't consider every individual migrant "a biological bomb," but said some of them may be infected with Covid-19 and not even realize it themselves. In that case, while the dignity of people trying to cross the border should be respected, Hungary has every reason to see them as a potential threat.
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Bullseye

Best of the Web: Fact Check: Was censored Trump right to say children are 'almost immune' from Covid-19?

Peter Andrews
RT
Thu, 06 Aug 2020 18:38 UTC
Trump/little girl
© PanAmPost/Premium PhotoPresident Donald Trump • Mother removing daughter's mask
Facebook and Twitter have taken down the US president's claims on the insusceptibility of children to Covid-19 - a fact on which the science supports him - proving that Big Tech is increasingly acting in a nakedly political way.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Donald Trump declared that "children are almost immune" from coronavirus. The videos posted online have been deleted, but the trimmed audio is available here from CNN, which helpfully titled it "Trump falsely says kids are 'almost immune' from Covid-19," just in case its editorial position was in any way in doubt.

In his own inimitable vernacular, Trump says:
"If you look at children, children are almost - and I would almost say definitely - but almost immune from this disease." He adds, "I don't know how you feel about it, but they've got much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this. And they don't have a problem, they just don't have a problem."
His words may have the cadence of crazed ramblings, but so does everything he says. The question is rather whether or not he's correct.

Fact check!

Comment: No one elected Facebook or Twitter to adjudicate public conversation, whether it is offered by everyman or the president. Nor were these 'new rules' part of the original platform equations - especially when flying in the face of proven facts.

See what else has been said about this censoring:
"This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation," Andy Stone, a Facebook policy spokesperson said in a statement. A link to the post now diverts to a page that says, "This Content Isn't Available Right Now."

It is the first time that Facebook has removed a post from Trump entirely, rather than labelling it, as it has done in the past, making it a rare instance in which it has been willing to censor the president.

Twitter also removed a link to the same video clip, which the official Trump Twitter account @TeamTrump shared earlier on Wednesday. Links to the tweet now point Twitter users to a message that the tweet violated Twitter's rules and is no longer available.

The Trump campaign accused Facebook of "flagrant bias." "The President was stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus," Courtney Parella, the campaign's deputy national press secretary, said in an emailed statement.

"Another day, another display of Silicon Valley's flagrant bias against this President, where the rules are only enforced in one direction. Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth," Parella said.
See also:

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Snakes in Suits

US sanctions Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, the police chief, nine officials for 'undermining autonomy'

Tom Grundy
Hong Kong Free Press
Fri, 07 Aug 2020 22:37 UTC
Pompeo and Chinese group
© AFM/Jim Young/POWERPRINTUS Secretary of State Mike Pompeo • Carrie Lam, Eric Chan, John Lee, Teresa Cheng, Zhang Xiaoming, Zheng Yanxiong, Stephen Lo, Luo Huining, Chris Tang, Erick Tsang, Xia Baolong
The United States on Friday slapped sanctions on Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam and 10 senior figures, in a major new step against China's clampdown in the semi-autonomous city.

In the most significant US action since China imposed a tough security law, Lam and the other leaders of the Asian financial hub will have any assets in the United States blocked. The move also criminalizes any US financial transactions with them.

"The United States stands with the people of Hong Kong and we will use our tools and authorities to target those undermining their autonomy," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States was acting because Beijing had violated its promise of autonomy that it made to Hong Kong before Britain handed back the territory in 1997.
"Today's actions send a clear message that the Hong Kong authorities' actions are unacceptable and in contravention of the PRC's commitments under 'one country, two systems' and the Sino-British Joint Declaration, a UN-registered treaty."
Washington has already imposed sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the crackdown on Uighur Muslims in the region of Xinjiang.


Comment: Perhaps the US should be sanctioned for overreach in another country's business.

See also:

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