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Cult

Best of the Web: Interview with Whitney Webb: Epstein is one node in a network of sexual blackmail by CIA, Mossad and Mafia

epstein mafia
Journalist Whitney Webb's MintPress series looks at the sordid history tying together mobsters, oligarchs, and government intelligence agencies in a web of blackmail, exploitation, and profit


Comment: Webb's series on Epstein's links to crime syndicates:


Vader

Best of the Web: Just who is behind Hong Kong 'protests'?

It's not hard to imagine the United States' reaction if Chinese diplomats met leaders of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter or Never Trump protesters.

On Aug 6, Hong Kong media reported two meetings between a US political counselor and separatist leaders. Julie Eadeh, who works at the US Consulate General in Hong Kong, was caught on camera meeting with opposition figures Martin Lee and Anson Chan.
hong kong protests us meddling ngos
© China DailyJulie Eadeh,political unit chief of US Consulate General, meets with opposition figures Martin Lee and Anson Chan

Propaganda

Best of the Web: New York Times admits 'we built our newsroom' around #Russiagate and other lies

new york times baquet putin
© Monica Schipper/Getty, Mladen Antonov/AFP/GettyNew York Times executive editor Dean Baquet
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet accidentally admitted to the whole wide world that for two years his far-left newspaper was "built" around spreading a hoax.

When I say "accidentally," what I mean is that he likely didn't know he was being secretly recorded and that his remarks would be made public.

He also admitted the Times' staff is loaded with left-wingers "who cheer us when we take on Donald Trump, but they jeer at us when we take on Joe Biden."

Yeah, there's a real shocker.

Wall Street

Best of the Web: Fakest fake news of the week: 'Jeffery Epstein definitely killed himself', sez NY Chief Medical Examiner

fake news
Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide by hanging himself in his jail cell, the New York medical examiner said Friday.

Epstein, 66, was found in his cell in Manhattan federal lockup Saturday morning and transferred to a nearby hospital, where he was subsequently pronounced dead. His autopsy was performed Sunday, NBC News reported, citing two law enforcement officials.

Epstein was remanded to jail pending trial on charges of sex trafficking of minors and sex trafficking conspiracy, which were lodged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan last month. He was accused of abusing dozens of underage girls in his mansions in New York and Palm Beach, Florida, between 2002 and 2005.

Comment: Dead men tell no tales.

The network he was part of is safe to continue preying on children.

George Galloway holds forth:

More mysteries surround Epstein's last days. The New York Post reports:
Jeffrey Epstein spent at least two hours locked up alone with a mystery woman — possibly part of his legal team — just a day after he was taken off suicide watch at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, according to a new report.

A visiting attorney, who asked that his name not be used, told Forbes Thursday that he saw the young woman with Epstein on July 30, when the disgraced financier was transferred into the facility's Special Housing Unit.

"The optics were startling," the attorney told the outlet. "Because she was young. And pretty."

He speculated that the woman could be a lawyer — as the multimillionaire paid members of his legal team to visit him for nearly eight hours a day, so he could avoid his cell and sit in a room designated for attorney meetings, NBC News reported last week.

The visiting attorney told Forbes that when he visited that day, Epstein's main lawyer, Reid Weingarten, wasn't there — and neither were any of his other known attorneys. It was only the mystery woman.

"If I was him, I would have hired ... an old bald guy," the lawyer said.

The woman didn't seem to be carrying any files and was dressed casually — leading the attorney to believe that she was a first-year associate, according to the report.

"It was slacks and a blouse. ... Could have been jeans or another kind of pants," he told Forbes. "But, like, Sunday brunch attire."

"I think she was there just to babysit him, and keep him out of his cell, and just keep him company for eight hours a day," he added. "Which is not supposed to be the way it works."



Megaphone

Best of the Web: Expert on mass shootings: 'There is no epidemic of mass shootings in the US'

James Alan Fox
James Alan Fox
The nation's leading scholar of mass shootings explains how media coverage of horrific events such as El Paso and Dayton stoke unwarranted fear and anxiety.

The horrific mass killings in El Paso and Dayton have understandably inspired terror in America and calls for expanded gun control, predictive policing, and mental health interventions designed to reduce violence.

But Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, the leading researcher on the topic for the past 35 years, tells Reason, "There is no evidence that we are in the midst of an epidemic of mass shootings." The number of incidents and casualties are simply too small to make such claims and, he stresses, the media coverage of shootings often ends up creating a false sense that gun violence — which is at or near historic lows — is ubiquitous and growing.

In a wide-ranging interview with Nick Gillespie, Fox explains the common characteristics of mass killers, why violent crime involving guns has declined over the past several decades, and how cable TV and social media contribute to a false sense of panic.


Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Comment: So there you have it; statistically, there's been no basic change in the background rate of mass shootings (the definition of which is officially 4 or more people shot and killed, not including the shooter(s)).

There have been particularly high death tolls in mass shootings in the last couple of years (Orlando nightclub, Las Vegas concert venue, Texas church, Parkland school, and El Paso Walmart), and the media amplification of these attacks makes it seem as if there's an 'epidemic of mass shootings' (relative to the normal background rate).

But there isn't.


Padlock

Flashback Best of the Web: Whistleblower Marty Gottesfeld, serving 10 YEARS in prison for exposing medical abductions by Boston Children's Hospital, placed in solitary confinement

Martin Gottesfeld
© FreemartyGMartin Gottesfeld prior to imprisonment
Last year I wrote about a whistleblower from New England who took direct action to save a child's life and who paid for it with his freedom. Marty Gottesfeld is now serving 10 years in prison for trying to save Justina Pelletier from abuse at the hands of her doctors at Children's Hospital in Boston.


Comment: This brave young man is locked away in the same prison as Epstein was until he was offed...


At the age of 14, Justine developed searing stomach pain and inexplicable digestive problems. Her parents took her to a series of doctors until a metabolic geneticist at Tufts Medical Center diagnosed her with mitochondrial disease, a genetic malady that can lead to weakened muscles, neurological problems and dementia.

Her symptoms worsened over the course of the next 18 months until the pain was too much to bear. She began slurring her speech and was unable to stand. Finally, her parents took her to Boston Children's Hospital, a leading institution affiliated with Harvard University. It was there that doctors said Justina didn't have mitochondrial disease at all. They said she had mental illness and her symptoms were psychosomatic. They took her off her medications, but her parents refused to comply. When they went to take Justina home, they were blocked by hospital guards. The hospital took Justina into "state custody" and reported her parents to state officials for "medical child abuse." It was then that the case went off the rails.

Comment: So US hospitals are now regularly abducting children from their parents, and anyone exposing this can be punished more harshly than many killers and pedophiles.


Fire

Best of the Web: Manufacturing Normality

cartoon
© unknown
If people could see the world with fresh eyes, as though they were viewing it for the very first time, they would suddenly find themselves smashed between two equally strong yet wildly different experiences.

On the one hand, they would experience breathless awe at the thunderous beauty of everything that exists. We tend to develop a mental habit of taking things for granted just because we have a thought story about knowing what they are and having seen them before. The labeling, dividing mind says "Oh yeah, I know what that is, that's a tree. I've seen a million of those, no big deal," and we make a habit of overlooking it. This habit combines with our fixation on looping mental chatter to pull the interest and attention out of our experience of the world which would otherwise be experienced as a nonstop eruption of staggering beauty.

On the other hand, someone seeing the world with fresh eyes would at the same time experience howling rage at all the immense evils that the mass media manipulators have convinced us to accept as normal. All the oppression, exploitation, violence, domination, ecocide and corruption which we were born into would no longer be seen as unfortunate but necessary mundane realities, and neither would all the horrible propagandists who deceived us into thinking they were.


Light Saber

Best of the Web: A measure of vindication for Tulsi Gabbard

gabbard debate
© Paul Sancya / Associated PressRep. Tulsi Gabbard speaks in Detroit on July 31, 2019 during the second of two Democratic presidential primary debates hosted by CNN.
In the aftermath of the second Democratic primary debate on July 31, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard emerged as the most Googled of all candidates, an indication that her performance (which included a stunning takedown of California Sen. Kamala Harris over her criminal justice record) attracted the attention of many viewers. This heightened level of attention produced blowback, both from Harris, who dismissed Gabbard as "an Assad apologist" (a reference to Syrian President Bashar Assad), and from the mainstream media, typified by CNN's Chris Cuomo, who alleged that Gabbard — a major in the Hawaiian National Guard, with two tours of duty in the Middle East under her belt — is taking the side of Assad over the U.S. intelligence community and U.N. inspectors when it comes to assigning blame for chemical weapons attacks against Syrian civilians.

"What you are referring to are [sic] cynicism as skepticism that I have expressed, because I've served in a war that was caused by people who lied to us, who lied to the American people, who presented false evidence that members of Congress and U.S. senators believed and voted for a war that resulted in the loss of lives of over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniform," Gabbard replied to Cuomo. "It's our responsibility as lawmakers and as leaders in this country to make sure that our U.S. military is not being activated and deployed to go to war unless we are certain a) that it serves the best interests of the American people; and b) that that action will actually have a positive impact. The questions I'm raising are based on this experience that I've had."

Family

Best of the Web: While other 2020 Democrats are busy pandering, Tulsi Gabbard is serving her country

tulsi gabbard military service
During her service in the military, Gabbard served first in Iraq and later in Kuwait. While in Kuwait, she became the first woman to ever receive an award of appreciation from the Kuwaiti military.
Presidential aspirant Elizabeth Warren wants you to know that she is very, very relatable. Warren, along with many other 2020 candidates, was sure to share photos of her eating corn dogs and other food with common folk at the Iowa State Fair.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris just wished Muslims a happy holiday within hours of tweeting a video of her chomping down on a pork chop. The California Democrat was too busy pandering to notice the irony.

Add this to Cory Booker and Beto O'Rourke's cringe-worthy attempts to speak Spanish on the debate stage, and it's just another reminder that most 2020 Democrats are desperately trying to come across as relatable and in-touch — but coming up empty.

Comment: Gabbard is the first candidate in many a moon to understand what it would be to send the US to war. It forms the foundation of her politics.


Sherlock

Best of the Web: The conflict in Kashmir

Kashmir
Daring Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, has killed a sacred cow, called Article 370 of the Constitution, enshrining the autonomy of Kashmir. The consequences could be dire, including the fourth India-Pakistan war, but not necessarily so. It could also be a successful scheme. Apparently, Narendra Modi had been encouraged by his success in recent elections, by his decent relations with the three powerful men of our age, Trump, Putin and Netanyahu; and by the rearmament and modernisation of India's armed forces. So he decided to go for the root of the age-long Kashmir problem, instead of treating its symptoms, and terminate the special status altogether, giving the people of Kashmir the same rights as all Indian citizens have, not more, neither less.

Kashmir, a chain of pleasant green mountain valleys, was the most cherished patrimony of the Great Mughals, who embellished it with palaces and gardens. Here the Muslims and Hindus have lived together in peace and harmony. A blessed country, if there ever was one, Kashmir could flourish if this peaceful coexistence had survived. Alas, it did not. Frequent riots, separatism and imported Islamic extremism have made life difficult for everybody.

The Hindus were forced to leave Kashmir; many Muslims had left too, rather than having to serve the firebrand insurgents. Their empty, ruined or burned down houses still stick out in Srinagar and elsewhere, though many of the properties were sold for a song during the insurgency.

Comment: See also: