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AK47

Best of the Web: Al Jazeera Investigations: October 7

al jazeera october 7
Hamas's incursion into Israel on October 7 transformed the politics of the Middle East. Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has carried out a forensic analysis of the events of that day - examining seven hours of footage from CCTV, dashcams, personal phones and headcams of dead Hamas fighters, and drawing up a comprehensive list of those killed.

In October 7, the I-Unit reveals widespread human rights abuses by Hamas fighters and others who followed them through the fence from Gaza into Israel.

But the investigation also found that many of the worst stories that came out in the days following the attack were false. This was especially true of atrocities that were used repeatedly by politicians in Israel and the West to justify the ferocity of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, such as the mass killing of babies and allegations of widespread and systematic rape.

Comment: See also:


No Entry

Best of the Web: In blow to Biden, Supreme Court allows Texas to start arresting and deporting illegal aliens

national guard texas border illegal migrants immigrants
© Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesNational Guard soldiers stand guard on the banks of the Rio Grande river at Shelby Park on 12 January in El Paso, Texas.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt a blow to the Biden administration's attempts to keep the US border open - allowing Texas to enforce a new law giving local police the power to arrest migrants.

With three liberal justices dissenting, the conservative-majority court rejected an emergency request by the Biden administration which claimed that states have no authority to legislate on immigration.

The ruling means that Texas' law can go into effect while litigation continues in lower courts.

The law, SB4, allows police to arrest migrants who illegally cross into the United States from Mexico, and imposes criminal penalties. It also empowers judges to deport people to Mexico.

Comment:


Eye 2

Best of the Web: Netanyahu to Biden: 'There's no way to destroy Hamas without Rafah ground op'

netanyahu
© Image source/GPO via Times of Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has revealed more about his Monday phone call with President Joe Biden. He informed a closed meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that he made it clear to Biden that there's no way to eradicate Hamas without a ground operation in Rafah.

Biden had reiterated to Netanyahu that the US sees a Rafah invasion as a "mistake" given the presence of over one million internally displaced Palestinian civilians in the city amid an already soaring death toll.

"The Americans asked that we not do an operation in Rafah," Netanyahu told defense officials. "But there is no other choice. We need control over the Philadelphi Route," he continued in refence to the Egypt-Gaza border area.

Vader

Best of the Web: WaPo reports Biden KNEW Israel was indiscriminately bombing civilians in Gaza

gaza bombed southern israel hamas
© AP / Ariel SchalitSmoke rises from an explosion in Gaza, as seen from southern Israel, March 17, 2024
The US president was told in October that Israeli airstrikes were often carried out without "solid intelligence," the newspaper claims

The White House knew since late October that Israel was regularly bombing civilian targets in Gaza, but President Joe Biden continued to publicly defend the Israeli military's conduct, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

On October 27, three weeks into Israel's war with Hamas, Biden's top foreign policy officials told a small group at the White House that "Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets," the newspaper wrote, citing three sources familiar with the meeting.

The officials also expressed concern that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no clear plan for defeating the Palestinian militant group, with one source telling the Post that "from the very beginning, there's been a sense of us not knowing how the Israelis were going to do what they said they were going to do."

Comment: Since the whole affair would come to a screeching halt were Washington to cut off arms and money to Israel, it's pretty clear who's really in charge here.




Putin

Best of the Web: Putin's dream, Russian unity, conflict with NATO: Key takeaways from election victory speech

putin
© Sputnik / Gavriil Grigorov
President Vladimir Putin has addressed the people of Russia following a historic election victory with over 87% of the vote in his favor, amid a record-high turnout. Here are the key takeaways from his speech and a question-and-answer session at campaign headquarters in Moscow on Sunday night.

Putin's dream

"I dreamed of a strong, independent, sovereign Russia," Putin told the audience, expressing his hope that the results of the vote "will allow us all, together with the Russian people, to achieve these goals."

Record election results

The citizens of Russia realize the dramatic situation the country is going through and understand that much depends on them, Putin said.

"Due to the current situation, due to the fact that we have to literally defend the interests of our citizens, our people with weapons in our hands, to create a future for the full-fledged, sovereign, secure development of the Russian Federation, our homeland."

This year's election was marked by a record-high voter turnout of over 74%, with Putin winning over 87% of the vote. The Russian president stressed that while the results would be good for a mono-ethnic state - for a multi-ethnic country like Russia they are "uniquely exceptional."

Future challenges

The Russian leader noted that while the country faces numerous challenges, its people will be up to the task if they remain united.

"We have a lot of tasks ahead of us. And when we are united, no one can intimidate or suppress us. No one succeeded at this before, it did not happen now and will never occur in the future."

"We have a huge development agenda, and people felt it in their hearts and came to create conditions for the development and strengthening of their Motherland... the results of the election are a guarantee that these tasks will be accomplished and goals will be reached."

Border incursions & 'cordon sanitaire' in Ukraine

Russia has repelled multiple attempts by Ukrainian sabotage groups to break into its territory over the past week, with Putin saying that "the enemy has deployed a group of about five thousand people, and their losses are about 40%. And those who crawled into our territory were destroyed almost 100%... If the enemy likes a 'meat grinder' - we even benefit from it."

Kiev claimed that the operation was staged by paramilitary units, which portray themselves as collaborator forces composed of Russian defectors and fugitive neo-Nazis. Putin likened the saboteurs to the Vlasov army collaborators who fought under German Nazi command during WWII.

"Those traitors, that scum fought on the side of Nazis, and now there are similar people who fight on the side of neo-Nazis," the president stressed, adding: "We all know how they ended up."

In order to protect its people from cross-border Ukrainian strikes, Russia could at some point be "forced" to set up a buffer zone in Kiev-controlled territories. The Russian forces would establish a "security zone that would be quite difficult for the adversary to overcome with its weapons, primarily of foreign origin," if and "when we consider it appropriate," Putin added.

Talks with Ukraine

Moscow has always favored peace talks, as long as the opponents are serious about establishing good neighborly relations in the long term, not just because "the adversary has run out of ammunition," Putin said.

He added that Russia is ready to consider various scenarios, provided that they align with the national interest. But since Kiev barred talks with the current leadership in Moscow, and President Vladimir Zelensky has no intention to hold elections, it will require "painstaking research" to even figure out "who to negotiate with over there," Putin noted.

Conflict with NATO

Weighing in on the possibility of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, Putin said that "anything is possible in the modern world" and warned that it "would be one step shy of a full-scale World War III.""I don't think that anyone is interested in that," he added, stressing that Moscow was well aware of the US-led military bloc's push to deploy troops in Ukraine.

Putin noted that volunteer fighters from NATO states are facing extremely grim prospects, saying "there is nothing good in this, first of all for them, because they die there and in large numbers."

Black Magic

Best of the Web: Torture, Executions, Babies Left to Die, Sexual Abuse... These Are Israel's Crimes

Palestinian prisoners
Why is the same western media obsessively reheating five-month-old allegations against Hamas so reluctant to focus on Israel's current, horrifying atrocities?

Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponised.

No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 7 October - quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel's obstruction of aid.

Last week, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz disclosed that some 27 Palestinians seized off Gaza's streets over the past five months are known to have died during interrogations inside Israel.

Some were denied medical treatment. But most are likely to have been tortured to death.

Three months ago, a Haaretz editorial warned that Israeli jails "must not become execution facilities for Palestinians".

Israeli TV channels have been excitedly taking viewers on tours of detention centres, showing the appalling conditions Palestinians are kept in, as well as the psychological and physical abuse they are subjected to.

An Israeli judge recently called the makeshift cages in which Palestinians are held "unsuitable for humans".

Comment: The ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians might well result in the end of Israel.

See also:


Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Western troops in Ukraine: How a big lie could lead to the biggest war

ukraine germany france security pact scholz macron zelensky
© Sarah Meyssonnier / POOL / AFPGermany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, and France’s President Emmanuel Macron
Macron's latest sallies and the spat they've caused show that Western Europe must finally be honest about the causes of the Ukraine conflict

The current situation in the conflict between Ukraine - serving (while being demolished) as a proxy for the West - and Russia, can be sketched in three broad strokes.

First, Russia now clearly has the upper hand on the battlefield and could potentially accelerate its recent advances to achieve an overall military victory soon. The West is being compelled to recognize this fact: as Foreign Affairs put it, in an article titled "Time is Running Out in Ukraine," Kiev and its Western supporters "are at a critical decision point and face a fundamental question: How can further Russian advances... be stopped, and then reversed?" Just disregard the bit of wishful thinking thrown in at the end to sweeten the bitter pill of reality. The key point is the acknowledgment that it is crunch time for the West and Ukraine - in a bad way.

Second, notwithstanding the above, Ukraine is not yet ready to ask for negotiations to end the war on terms acceptable to Russia, which would be less than easy for Kiev. (Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, reiterated in an important recent interview that Moscow remains principally open to talks, not on the basis of "wishful thinking" but, instead, proceeding from the realities "on the ground.")

Phoenix

Best of the Web: 'Deep genetic and cellular changes relating to detoxification' found in tissue of tobacco smokers

france cafe
© François WALSCHAERTS / AFP
It's no secret that smoking is extremely detrimental to health. Tobacco smoke contains thousands of chemicals, including carcinogens, increasing the risk of cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

A new study from the University of Chicago analyzed data from more than 900 samples of nine different human tissue types to understand just how deep the cellular and genetic damage from smoking goes. The research team generated epigenetic data to assess the effects of smoking on DNA methylation, or genetic locations where a handful of atoms can attach to DNA and turn off gene expression.

They found several new regions associated with smoking, including some that are shared across tissue types, suggesting that DNA methylation is part of the body's attempts to defend itself from the damaging effects of tobacco smoke.


Comment: Vaccines work by stimulating the body to protect itself against dead viruses, and yet they're considered to be a revolution in medicine; exercise 'damages' the muscle tissue creating a healthier physiology overall - the point being that perhaps there's more than one way to look at what's happening here.


Comment: For further insight into the potential health benefits of tobacco smoking, see: Also check out SOTT radio's:


Recycle

Best of the Web: Yet again! Boeing 737 flight departing San Francisco with 139 passengers loses external panel mid-air


Comment: At this point, one starts wondering whether sabotage is afoot...


Unitee Airlines
Literally, not a day goes by without Boeing suffering some major incident, whether it is doors and tires falling off, runway excursions, engine fires, hydraulic leaks, pilot seats flailing around the cockpit and slamming the yoke and, OH YEAH, a "suicided" whistleblower who told a close friend if anything happened to him, it most certainly wasn't suicide. Well, we can now add one more: a United Airlines flight - because it's never American or Delta... always United - that took off from San Francisco International Airport Friday morning landed in Oregon with a missing external panel, abc7 reported citing to officials.

As the NY Post notes, United Airlines Flight 433 departed from San Francisco around 10:20 a.m. local time and landed safely at its intended destination, Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport, about 70 minutes later, according to airport officials and flight data.

Once the plane reached the gate, an external panel was found to be missing, halting operations at the airport while a runway safety check was conducted, airport director Amber Judd told The NY Post.

Amazingly, there was no indication of a problem and no emergency was ever declared during the flight, which had 139 passengers and 6 crew members on board, according to United.

Comment: Boeing might be forced to come out with a new PR campaign with words like "Trust the experts" and "safe and effective". As the article suggest, we might also see another whistleblower 'commit suicide'.

For more of the recent Boeing woes, see:


Light Saber

Best of the Web: Houthis go hypersonic? How Ansar Allah's advance in missile tech could scupper US warmongering in the Middle East

Ansar Allah  yemen houthi
© Ansar Allah Media officeHouthi naval missiles on parade in Sanaa, September 2023.
A military source close to Yemen's Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement has informed Sputnik that the militia has carried out a successful test flight of a hypersonic missile and is preparing to add it into its arsenal. Sputnik asked a leading Russian military observer about the development's strategic implications.

Sputnik's source has indicated that the new Houthi missile can accelerate to speeds up to Mach 8 (nearly 10,000 km per hour), and that it is powered by a solid fuel engine - which typically reduces launch preparation time dramatically and eases transport.

Comment: It's unlikely to thwart the evil empire's presence there entirely, however it is probably going to make them reconsider their airstrikes on Yemen: