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According to Italy's Guardia di Finanza military police force, an estimated 84 million tablets were seized after authorities became suspicious of three containers that were expected to arrive at the Italian port of Salerno, around 32 miles south of Naples. The drugs are estimated to be worth some $1.12 billion.
Editor's Note: The following statement was released today by a broad coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations. Mondoweiss occasionally publishes press releases and statements from organizations in an effort to draw attention to overlooked issues.Israel's extremist government decided today to keep everyone in the dark about if and how it will make use of the "golden opportunity" offered by the Trump administration to embark on de jure annexation of large swathes of the occupied Palestinian West Bank. No one should be misled, however. Israel will continue to quietly de facto annex occupied Palestinian territory, as it has done for decades, while trying to appease its Western allies. But as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said, "Annexation is illegal. Period. Any annexation."
Moscow protest leader Alexei Navalny rejected the legitimacy of the plebiscite and asked his followers not to engage in "despair and anxiety," but instead to focus on "mobilization." The populist activist, who has attempted to appeal to both nationalists and liberals, is prominent in the Western media's coverage of Russia.
"I woke up and found out78 percent voted for zeroing Putin's terms. That is, even more than in the presidential election in 2018 (76 percent). Russia has broken the record of fake votes. The announced result doesn't even have anything to do with people's opinions," he wrote on Telegram.
The election-monitoring organization Golos agreed with Navalny's assessment of the nature of the vote, believing the turnout and results to be rigged. Golos is registered in Russia as a 'foreign agent' and once received funding from the United States Agency for International Development.
"This is not a vote, not a referendum, but a show," said Lyubov Sobol, an opposition politician and lawyer for Navalny's Anti-Corruption Fund. Sobol thinks the vote was manufactured, allowing Putin to declare that serving further terms is the will of the people.
The constitutional amendments were also opposed by the country's biggest opposition parliamentary party, the Communists. In the weeks before the vote, the party's leader, Gennady Zyuganov, called on Russians to vote against it, citing a rushed process. On polling day, he tweeted, "Amendment voting is not a referendum. This is an all-Russian survey, which, in addition, is going ahead in accordance with incomprehensible rules. In such a situation, you cannot allow your voice to be stolen."
Another 'systematic' opposition politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, supported the amendments, however. Last week, when the political veteran voted, he said it was "imperative to support" the "major overhaul of the constitution."
By comparison, the death rate for influenza in Canada on an annual basis is usually between nine and 13 deaths per 100,000 people..."Does this one statistic really make COVID "unquestionably" worse than the flu?
Comment: As of 2 July 2020, at 22:30 CET, Maxwell remains unsuicided, and has been taken into custody by US Marshals.
'Q' followers are all excited about this, apparently believing it heralds sweeping imminent mass arrests of Swamp creatures the whole Empire over.
If only.
More likely, it's taken an entire year to follow up on Maxwell because LOTS of backroom deals had to be worked out first. For instance, also reported today is a ruling by the judge in the defamation case Alan Dershowitz brought against Virginia Giuffre that her legal team must "destroy all files" they have on Epstein - over 1,000 of them - because her lawyers allegedly "came into possession of them improperly."
We do wonder, however, if some action finally took place today because of last week's sacking of Geoffrey Berman, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), by US Attorney General William Barr, apparently at Trump's insistence.
The fact remains, however, that everyone who's anyone is either implicated in this scandal, or stands to lose a lot from it 'going wrong'. For one thing, former FBI director James Comey's daughter, Maurene Comey, remains one of the SDNY prosecutors handling the Epstein case, and Maxwell has just been transferred from New Hampshire to that jurisdiction to face criminal charges...
Update (July 3): The details of the charges against Maxwell have been released by acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss, and they are revolting: Former Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe has claimed Maxwell was a Mossad agent like her father and that the pair used underage girls as bait to blackmail world leaders. This would hardly be the first time an intel agency used the "honeypot" trap to gain leverage on politicians. That particular spy operation is most well-known for having entrapped Mordechai Vanunu after he blew the whistle on Israel producing nuclear weapons at the Dimona plant. He was arrested in Rome by the Mossad, drugged and taken back to Israel where he served 18 years in prison for "treason," 11 of those years in solitary confinement.
Another piece of damning info on Maxwell is that she apparently inquired to her realtor in New Hampshire about the flight patterns over the property she would eventually purchase. The realtor described the inquiry as "very strange." It's only strange if you're not wanted by the FBI!