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Uzi

Best of the Web: The FBI entraps another fake assassin

trump FBI routh
Two attempts on the life of a former president, less than two months apart, is unprecedented in American history. And yet it's not entirely surprising given that the country's most powerful institutions and industries have spent the last eight years weaponizing the most suggestible and mentally ill of our citizenry to target Donald Trump and his supporters. Now it seems the FBI may be recruiting from abroad as well.

According to the Trump campaign, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently briefed the Republican candidate on "real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States." The Secret Service was alerted to the threat before the July 13 attempt on Trump's life and reportedly increased his security because of it. But that was not enough to stop Thomas Matthew Crooks from shooting Trump in the face, killing Corey Comperatore, and wounding two other attendees.

There's little doubt the Iranians are targeting Trump, say former intelligence officials with whom I spoke. "The Iranians are promiscuous assassins, and they hate Trump more than anyone else on earth," says Peter Theroux, a retired CIA officer who worked on Iran and related issues during his tenure at Langley. "Trump enforced sanctions against Iran. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. He was the most antithetical to everything Tehran wants, including the triumphal visit to Riyadh he made for his first presidential trip in 2017."

Comment: This time. As if a deep stater like Wray will ever 'come clean'. The more alarming aspect of this fake FBI assassination plot is that the Feds may have intended to link Crooks to this idiot, and thus Iran, thereby channeling American public outrage into support for war against Iran.


Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: Hurricane Helene slams Florida, Georgia and other states with flooding, power outages - at least 200 dead, 600 missing (UPDATES)

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A tornado killed two people in the US state of Georgia, the governor said, as Hurricane Helene churned into the state after causing one death in the neighbouring state of Florida, where it barrelled ashore in the southeastern United States.

Helene weakened to a Category 1 hurricane early on Friday with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), but it left a deadly trail of destruction in both states.

More than 55 million people in the US have been placed under some form of weather alert.

As of Friday morning, broadcaster ABC reported two deaths in Georgia's Wheeler County, while Florida confirmed one death, after a sign fell on a car on a highway in Tampa City.

The hurricane made landfall in northwestern Florida as a Category 4 storm as forecasters warned that the enormous system could create a "nightmare" storm surge and bring dangerous winds and rain across much of the southeastern US.


Comment: Update September 28

Newsnationnow.com reports:
After making landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, Helene is continuing to track inland as a weakened tropical storm, bringing flooding and leaving millions without power in the Southeast.

There have been at least 44 reported fatalities from the storm across five states after catastrophic flooding and storm surge that left destruction in their wake, according to The Associated Press.

Deaths have been confirmed in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

Multiple deaths have been attributed to drowning, while some were the result of trees falling. State officials say dozens more are still trapped inside their homes, The Associated Press reports.

In Florida, crews have been working to rescue people stuck in floodwaters with some areas experiencing up to 9 feet of flooding. Crews are also dealing with downed powerlines and other hazards from the storm.

As Helene barreled through Georgia, wind gusts over 90 mph were reported with sustained winds at 60 mph. Headed toward the Carolinas, there are flood warnings across the Southeast, including North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and southern Illinois and southern Indiana.






In Western North Carolina, significant flooding and road closures were reported with the Lake Lure Dam in Rutherford County at imminent risk of failure. Those in the area were being advised to evacuate immediately.

The flash flood emergency remains in place until 2 a.m. Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.

Rising floodwaters and a mudslide washed out the interstate near the North Carolina-Tennessee state line. The closure occurred around 12:30 p.m. Friday and is expected to reopen by 5 p.m. Saturday, NewsNation local affiliate WJZY reports.

Millions have also been left without power thanks to the storm.

More than 595,000 people in Florida are left without power, along with 860,000 outages reported in Georgia, more than 1.16 million in South Carolina and more than 812,000 in North Carolina.

As the weakened system makes its way north, power outages are following. Virginia is reporting more than 220,000 without power, while Ohio has more than 315,000.
Update September 29

AP reports:
At least 64 dead and millions without power after Helene's deadly march across the Southeast

Massive rains from powerful Hurricane Helene left people stranded, without shelter and awaiting rescue Saturday, as the cleanup began from a tempest that killed at least 64 people, caused widespread destruction across the U.S. Southeast and left millions without power.



"I've never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now," said Janalea England, of Steinhatchee, Florida, a small river town along the state's rural Big Bend, as she turned her commercial fish market into a storm donation site for friends and neighbors, many of whom couldn't get insurance on their homes.

Helene blew ashore in Florida's Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday with winds of 140 mph (225 kph).

From there, it quickly moved through Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday that it "looks like a bomb went off" after viewing splintered homes and debris-covered highways from the air. Weakened, Helene then soaked the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains, sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.
Update September 30

CBS News reports:
The number of storm-related deaths climbed past 100 across the Southeast on Sunday as authorities rushed to airdrop supplies, restore power and clear roads after massive rains from the powerful Helene left people stranded and without shelter.

Helene left at least 116 people dead, CBS News has confirmed, and caused widespread destruction.

Thirty fatalities were reported in Buncombe County, North Carolina — in one of the states hit hardest by the storm.

Helene knocked out power to several million customers. More than two million still had no electricity early Monday, according to utility tracker Find Energy.

But But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday night that 99% of the state's homes and businesses had had power restored.
Update October 1

ITV reports:
At least 133 people have died as Hurricane Helene continues to devastate the United States causing widespread flooding along its south east coastline.

Flood-stricken North Carolina has suffered significant damage, with reports of 30 people having been killed in the mountain city of Asheville.

President Biden has said he will travel to North Carolina on Wednesday.

There are fears the death toll may continue to rise as rescuers and emergency workers continue to explore areas isolated by collapsed roads, failing infrastructure, and widespread flooding.

During a briefing Monday, White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall suggested that as many as 600 people haven't been accounted for, noting that some of them might be dead.
Update October 2

CNN reports:
Climbing death toll: At least 182 people have died across six states and officials fear the death toll could rise following Hurricane Helene.

Many more remain missing, perhaps unable to leave their location or contact family where communications infrastructure is in shreds.

Power and infrastructure outages: Hundreds of roads remain closed, especially in the Carolinas, hampering the delivery of badly needed supplies. Some areas are so inaccessible supplies are being delivered by mules and by air. More than 1.2 million customers are without power, according to PowerOutage.us, most in the Carolinas, where "major portions of the power grid... were simply wiped away."
Update October 3

AP reports:
Hurricane Helene's death toll reached 200 on Thursday and could rise higher still, as searchers made their way toward the hardest to reach places in the mountains of western North Carolina, where the storm washed out roads and knocked out electricity, water and cellular service.

Officials in Georgia and North Carolina added to their states' grim tallies, padding an overall count that has already made Helene the deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.





Smoking

Best of the Web: Russian MPs to back groundbreaking smoking ban that would eliminate it entirely


Comment: Yes, it's still fascism, even when Russia does it.


Smoker
© Sputnik/Pavel Bednyakov
The proposed law would prohibit the sale of nicotine and vaping products to teens in a bid to curb new addictions.

The head of Russia's parliament announced on Wednesday he expects MPs to support a bill to outlaw smoking and vaping for the next generation. It would mean that those born after 2009 will never be legally able to buy tobacco, to vape or use hookahs.

The draft law would make it illegal to sell cigarettes, vapes and similar goods to anyone born after December 31, 2009. The New People faction in the parliament, which penned the legislation, sent it to the cabinet on Wednesday.

State Duma Chair Vyacheslav Volodin backed the draft law during a parliament session later in the day.
"You say some people want to boost the budget [by taxing tobacco]. Trust me, nobody does. Everyone in this chamber will vote for and support your initiative," he promised.
The legislation tabled by the left-leaning New People faction means the legal smoking age will increase every year, eventually leading to a total prohibition for the entire population.

Comment: See also:


Bullseye

Best of the Web: "I pled guilty to journalism" in exchange for freedom: Council of Europe recognizes Assange was political prisoner

julian assange Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe speech
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, recently released after five years in a British prison, declared that his plea of “guilty to journalism” secured his freedom, as he addressed European lawmakers about his years of incarceration.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, made his first public remarks on Tuesday since his release from prison in June, telling the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that his freedom came after pleading "guilty to journalism."

Assange, who spent five years in a British prison and seven years in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, addressed lawmakers from 46 European countries during a session of the assembly's legal affairs and human rights committee in Strasbourg, France. He detailed the impact of his years of confinement and reflected on his plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, which concluded a long legal battle.

"I am not free today because the system worked," Assange said. "I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism."

Cow Skull

Best of the Web: It begins: US port strikes erupt, first shutdown in 50 years sparks fears of supply chain crisis

dockworker strike
© Fox News
Update (1330ET):

Here's a closer look at Harold J. Daggett, who leads the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA).

According to Politico, Daggett, the ILA's president, earned $728,000 from the union last year and another $173,000 as president emeritus of a local union branch.

The New York Times said the union boss previously owned a 76-foot yacht, the Obsession, and runs around town in a Bentley.

Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: 29 dead after John hits Mexico's Pacific coast as major hurricane, 2nd time as tropical storm - 17 inches of rain in 24 hours (UPDATED)

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Two people are dead after former Hurricane John barreled into Mexico's southern Pacific coast, blowing tin roofs off houses, triggering mudslides and toppling scores of trees, officials said Tuesday.

John grew into a major hurricane in a matter of hours Monday and made landfall about 80 miles (130 kilometers) east of the resort of Acapulco before declining to a tropical storm after moving inland.

John came ashore near the town of Punta Maldonado late Monday night as a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (190 kph). It weakened back to tropical storm status early Tuesday with maximum sustained wind speeds of 40 mph (65 kph) and was expected to weaken rapidly.

Evelyn Salgado, the governor of the coastal state of Guerrero, said two people died when the storm sent a mudslide crashing into their house on the remote mountain of Tlacoachistlahuaca (TLAH-ko-chis-tla-waka), further from the coast.


Comment: Update September 26

CNN reports:
'Zombie' Hurricane John regains strength in Pacific, flooding parts of Mexico's southwestern coast

Towns along Mexico's southwestern coast are dealing with torrential rain, flooding and landslides after tropical storm John strengthened back into a Category 1 hurricane on Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center.

John is considered a "zombie" storm - a term referring to systems that dissipate before strengthening back into a storm. After slamming into Mexico as a deadly Category 3 hurricane on Monday night, it dissipated before returning as a hurricane, battering Mexico's Pacific coast. Even after initially dissipating, remnants of the storm continued to move along the coast, bringing continuous rainfall.

In the resort city of Acapulco, which still hasn't fully recovered from the destruction of Hurricane Otis last year, several neighborhoods were flooded and residents in at-risk areas were told to evacuate to temporary shelters. Parts of the city have received over 500mm of rain this week, and 431mm over just the past 24 hours.

Update September 30

The EFE news agency reports:
Hurricane John, which made landfall in Mexico twice last week, claimed 29 lives in three Pacific coast states, including more than 20 in Guerrero, according to news reports.

The EFE news agency and other media outlets reported that the death toll from John rose to 29 on Sunday after authorities confirmed four additional hurricane-related fatalities in Guerrero.

The hurricane made landfall for the first time last Monday as a powerful Category 3 storm, slamming into the coast of southern Guerrero near the state's border with Oaxaca.

After weakening and drifting offshore, John regained strength in the Pacific Ocean before making landfall for a second time last Friday as a tropical storm on the coast of the neighboring state of Michoacán.

According to reports, 23 of the 29 fatalities linked to Hurricane John occurred in Guerrero. Five deaths reportedly occurred in Oaxaca — where at least 80 landslides were reported — and one fatality was reported in Michoacán.

Some of the victims were killed in mudslides while others were swept away by raging floodwaters. The storm also caused significant damage to homes, commercial establishments and other structures, including bridges.



Star of David

Best of the Web: A terror state through time: From Ben Gurion to Netanyahu

israel terrorist groups hagana irgun stern palmach
© The Cradle
Since its founding to the modern day, Israel has been shaped by a 'gang state' mentality, marked by unhinged violence and oppression that only deepens its cycle of instability - a history it seems unwilling to escape.

On 31 May 1948, a man born in Poland by the name of David Ben Gurion transformed the Zionist terrorist groups - Haganah, Stern, Irgun, and Palmach - into what would be called the "Israeli Defense Forces" (IDF). This man would go on to become Israel's first prime minister, and his actions laid the foundation for what many describe as a settler-colonial state in Palestine.

This fact sums up the occupation state's very essence today, offering a stark illustration of the indiscriminately violent roots upon which the state and its army were built. Today, Israeli military operations continue in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where tanks crush the bodies of the dead and wounded and where residents are thrown from rooftops or sniped in their homes.

"Causing death or serious bodily harm to civilians for the purpose of intimidating a population" is the very definition of terrorism, in the words of the United Nations General Assembly.

Explosion

Best of the Web: Mossad's Exploding Pager Attacks and 9/11

pager explosions
For the last half-dozen years, Israeli-born Ronan Bergman has served as a reporter with the New York Times, and I've regularly heard him described as the best-connected American journalist in Israel, with especially close ties to that country's powerful security services such as the Mossad, Shin Bet, and Unit 8200.

Much of that reputation goes back to the 2018 publication of his book Rise and Kill First, a widely praised and highly authoritative history of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, as well as its sister agencies. As I wrote in early 2020:
The author devoted six years of research to the project, which was based upon a thousand personal interviews and access to an enormous number of official documents previously unavailable. As suggested by the title, his primary focus was Israel's long history of assassinations, and across his 750 pages and thousand-odd source references he recounts the details of an enormous number of such incidents.

That sort of topic is obviously fraught with controversy, but Bergman's volume carried glowing cover-blurbs from Pulitzer Prize-winning authors on espionage matters, and the official cooperation he received is indicated by similar endorsements from both a former Mossad chief and Ehud Barak, a past Prime Minister of Israel who himself had once led assassination squads. Over the last couple of decades, former CIA officer Robert Baer has become one of our most prominent authors in this same field, and he praised the book as "hands down" the best he had ever read on intelligence, Israel, or the Middle East. The reviews across our elite media were equally laudatory.

Ambulance

Best of the Web: Stunning new research paper suggests Covid jabs sharply raise the risk of death or heart failure after heart attacks

graphic covid heart damage
The risk appeared particularly high in vaccinated people who have also had Covid (which at this point is almost everyone), Spanish researchers found.

Being vaccinated against Covid sharply increased the risk heart attack patients would die or suffer heart failure after heart attacks, a new Spanish study shows.

Over a six-month period after their heart attacks, Covid vaccinated patients had nearly double the risk of unjabbed ones. The risk appeared concentrated in patients who were both vaccinated and had had Covid before their heart attacks.

The researchers examined outcomes from almost 1,000 heart attack patients from March 2020 through March 2023 in a Madrid hospital. They found vaccinated and previously infected patients had an over 50 percent higher risk of death or heart failure than unvaccinated people who had also been previously infected - and a 90 percent higher risk than those who were unvaccinated and previously uninfected.

Comment:


Snowflake

Best of the Web: Multiple roads closed as motorists are trapped by late heavy snowfall in South Africa - 2 dead from hypothermia, snowdrifts of 2 meters (UPDATED)

Motorists have been stranded on snow-blocked roads in parts of KZN and the Free State.
Motorists have been stranded on snow-blocked roads in parts of KZN and the Free State.
The N3 Toll Route has been closed from Estcourt in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands to Harrismith in the Free State due to heavy snowfall.

This after the snowfall left motorists stranded in their vehicles and unable to move due to the thick snow on Friday evening.

Arrive Alive issued a warning to motorists to avoid Harrismith in the Free State and Howick in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.

"In the interest of safety, all traffic is being stopped at Tugela Plaza in KwaZulu-Natal and the Harrismith South Interchange in the Free State. Where possible, vehicles are being turned around at strategic locations on the route."


Comment: AFP reports:
Unusually heavy snowfall caused major disruption on South Africa's roads Saturday with people still stranded at midday after spending the night stuck in their vehicles.

The key N3 highway linking Johannesburg and the east coast city of Durban was one of the worst affected and several portions were closed, with even detours impassible, officials said.

Emergency services were working to reach people in their vehicles but it was still not clear how many were affected and in what condition they were, N3 Toll Concession operations manager Thania Dhoogra told the ENCA broadcaster.

"Emergency services have been working flat out through the night. They have been attempting to reach as many roads users as they can," Dhoogra said.

Blankets and meals had been delivered to some stranded motorists, the government of the KwaZulu-Natal province said in a statement at midday.

Trucks had been parked on the side of the road since Friday, Road Traffic Management Corporation communications officer Simon Zwane told AFP. "Buses travelling between provinces have been stuck at petrol stations for around seven hours," he said.

Motorist Muhammad Goolam told the Newzroom Afrika channel that he had spent the night in his car with his children outside the town of Harrismith, around 270 kilometres (170 miles) southeast of Johannesburg.

"Over 13 hours, food supplies out, I don't see us managing to drive out of here without any assistant from emergency personnel," he said.

Some areas had seen up to two metres (six feet) of snowfall, the Arrive Alive road safety campaign said in a post on X.



Update September 22

IOL reports:
At least two people died from hypothermia after they were trapped in the heavy snow on the N3 in KwaZulu-Natal over the weekend.

During a briefing on Sunday afternoon, KZN acting Premier Thembeni Madlopha-Mthethwa said while some motorists still remain trapped, many have been rescued.

This comes after road users spent two nights in their cars as they were unable to move due to the heavy snow.