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Dutch government outright lies about MH17 to pin blame on Russia

Eric Zuesse
The Saker
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 18:04 UTC
MH17 cockpit bullet holes detail

MH17 cockpit bullet holes detail
1. The Dutch Government's 279-page investigative findings on the "Crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17" were published in October 2015, and reported, on
page 84, (under 2.13.2 "Crew autopsy") that "First Officer Team A ... During the body scan of the First Officer's body, over 120 objects (mostly metal fragments) were detected. The majority of the fragments were found in left side of the upper torso." Then, it reported, on

page 85 (under 2.13.3) "the First Officer, from Team A, who was operating the aeroplane at the time of the crash."
(Note that they buried this crucial information, instead of saying clearly that "The pilot's upper left torso, immediately to the left of the area of the fuselage that had been shot out, had 120 objects that were mostly metal fragments.") (Here is a closer picture of that side-panel on the left side of the fuselage, to the pilot's immediate left, and here is that side-panel shown back on the airliner, so that one can see that this firing had to have been done from below, shooting upward into the pilot.)

This crucial physical finding, that the pilot's corpse had been loaded with "over 120 objects (mostly metal fragments)," is entirely consistent with the side-panel's having been shot through by bullets, which would have been coming from a Ukrainian military jet and aimed upward, directly at the pilot. That marksman had to have been highly proficient in order to hit the pilot so accurately with so many bullets.
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Vader

US government expanding Assange indictment to criminalize aid provided to Edward Snowden

Kevin Gosztola
Shadowproof
Fri, 26 Jun 2020 17:34 UTC
SnowdenAssange
© YouTube
Whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange
The United States government expanded their indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to criminalize the assistance WikiLeaks provided to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when staff helped him leave Hong Kong.

Sarah Harrison, who was a section editor for WikiLeaks, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former spokesperson, and Jacob Appelbaum, a digital activist who represented WikiLeaks at conferences, are targeted as "co-conspirators" in the indictment [PDF], though neither have been charged with offenses.

No charges were added, however, it significantly expands the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge and accuses Assange of conspiring with "hackers" affiliated with "Anonymous," "LulzSec," "AntiSec," and "Gnosis."

The computer crime charge is not limited to March 2010 anymore. It covers conduct that allegedly occurred between 2009 and 2015.

Comment: Grasping at straws: New US indictment of Assange accuses WikiLeaks founder of 'conspiring with Anonymous' hackers... in FBI sting op?

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Bullseye

Europe's support for apartheid Israel cracking? Belgium reps to debate and vote on resolution recognizing a 'State of Palestine' - UPDATE: Resolution passed

Yossi Lempkowicz
European Jewish Press
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 17:59 UTC
Belgium house of representative

House of Representatives, Belgium’s lower chamber of Parliament
The 150-member House of Representatives, Belgium's lower chamber of Parliament, is to debate on Thursday a resolution urging the federal government to '' formally recognize the State of Palestine.''

The resolution was initiated by the Socialist, Green and extreme-left parties.

The resolution, said Socialist MP Malik Ban Achour, who authored it, urges the federal government "to formally recognize the State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel and to consider this recognition as a contribution by Belgium to the solution based on the coexistence of two democratic and independent states having the right to live in peace and security with mutually recognized, accepted and respected borders. "

It was first adopted in the foreign affairs committee two weeks ago by a short majority of 8 against 7 votes. The liberals, Flemish Christian Democrats, Flemish nationalist NV-A and the extreme right Vlaams Belang opposed the motion.

Comment: Update 26/06/2020: The Times of Israel reports:
The resolution "concerning Israel's annexation of occupied territories in Palestine," proposed by three politicians from the Greens, passed with 101 'yes' votes and 39 abstentions. No one voted against.

The motion urges the government of Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès "to take the initiative with third countries, at European and multilateral levels, to prevent the annexation [by] Israel of the Palestinian territories, or parts of them."

The resolution further calls on Brussels to play a leading role in formulating a "list of efficient counter-measures geared at responding in a proportional manner to any Israeli annexation of occupied Palestinian territory."

[...]

In its preamble, the bill twice referred to former Israeli officials having warned against Israel becoming an apartheid state in case of annexation.

On Wednesday, the parliament's foreign affairs committee will again debate the second resolution on Brussels' recognition of a Palestinian state. It will come back for a plenary vote in two weeks.

Back in February 2015, the Belgian parliament passed a resolution urging the government to seek a majority within the European Union for a recognition of a Palestinian state. But the new resolution was much more direct in its demand for immediate recognition.

It calls for the "formal recognition of the State of Palestine next to the State of Israel" and urges the government to consider this act "Belgium's contribution to the solution, based on the coexistence of two democratic and independent states that have the right to live in peace and security, with mutually recognized and respected borders."


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Pumpkin 2

The daily gaffe: Biden slammed after wrongly saying 'we have over 120 million dead from COVID'

Andrew O'Reilly
Fox News
Thu, 25 Jun 2020 14:39 UTC
biden confused dementia
© ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
Joe Biden
Republicans are slamming Joe Biden after the presumptive Democratic nominee made a verbal gaffe during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania and said 120 million people had died from the novel coronavirus.

"People don't have a job, people don't know where to go, they don't know what to do," Biden said Thursday. "Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID."

As of Thursday, there have been more than 122,000 - not million -- coronavirus deaths in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins figures.

While Biden appears to immediately catch himself after his gaffe -- the pool video of Biden's comments cuts off after he made the remark - Republicans were quick to jump on the former vice president's comment.

Comment: Joe Biden's insistence on continuing his campaign when he is clearly (except to himself?) incapable of holding the highest office in the land is fraudulent. If he is being persuaded by his handlers, it almost amounts to elder abuse. However, as has been commented previously, "Biden, as president, would be a deep state handler's dream: seemingly oblivious to control, too daft to care, untrustworthy to a fault, a mind fog for information."

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USA

The Great Awokening: A prequel to the Second American Revolution

Eric Kaufmann
Quillette
Mon, 22 Jun 2020 00:00 UTC
Jackson statue
© Getty Images/Drew Angerer
Protesters attempt to pull down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square near the White House on June 22, 2020.
Statues toppled, buildings renamed, curricula "decolonized," staff fired. The protests following George Floyd's killing have emboldened cultural revolutionaries in America and Europe. The iconoclasts are changing minds, and could be in a position to enact a root-and-branch reconstruction of America into something completely unrecognizable to its present-day inhabitants. Imagine a country whose collective memory has been upended, with a new constitution, anthem, and flag, its name changed from the sinful "America" to something less tainted. Far-fetched? Not according to data I have collected on what liberal white Americans actually believe. Only a renewed American cultural nationalism can resist it.

According to multiple surveys, the effect of the riots which occurred at around the same time as the BLM protests is quite different from what occurred with previous waves of rioting. First, many of the participants in the major riots were white. Second, there has been no clear call for Nixonian law and order following the riots, but rather greater public acceptance of the BLM movement's unsupported claims that contemporary structural racism explains why police shoot unarmed black men or violent crime plagues inner-city neighbourhoods. While 57 percent of Americans disagree with the protestors' radical slogan, "defund the police," an astounding 29 percent support it. This is so despite the deaths of a number of black people during the riots and the fact the riots have coincided with a steep rise in the number of black homicide deaths in inner-city neighbourhoods due to a "Ferguson Effect" of police reducing their presence in these areas.
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Attention

AG Barr claims 'there's something very disturbing' about tech companies censoring viewpoints

Talia Kaplan
Fox News
Sun, 21 Jun 2020 00:00 UTC
AG Barr
© Twitter
Attorney General Bill Barr
"There's something very disturbing about what's going on," Attorney General William Barr told Maria Bartiromo in an exclusive interview responding to recent incidents where technology companies, including Google and Twitter, tried to censor content.

Barr made the statement during the interview, which aired on Sunday Morning Futures, reacting to NBC's apparent influence over Google in punishing two conservative news sites over what was deemed offensive coverage of the protests following the death of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who died in police custody on May 25.

In a report published Tuesday afternoon, NBC News claimed Google "banned" The Federalist and ZeroHedge from Google Ads for "pushing unsubstantiated claims" about the Black Lives Matter movement. Google later pushed back, claiming that The Federalist "was never demonetized," and adding, "We worked with them to address issues on their site related to the comments section."


Comment: There used to be regulations, somewhat effective against monopolies, that were designed to support the individual as well as kept big biz on track. Now the government is chasing a runaway industry where rights and protections are disappearing and societal freedoms are being 'rewritten' or outright deleted. Something does need to be erased, but it isn't the legal binders that protect personal rights.

See also:

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X

Federal appeals court orders judge to dismiss Flynn charges

Harper Neidig
The Hill
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 10:11 UTC
Flynn
© azerbaycan24.com
Michael Flynn
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered a judge to grant the Department of Justice's (DOJ) unusual move to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals approved Flynn's petition to intervene in the case after a district court judge had tapped an outside counsel to argue against the DOJ's move.

The panel ruled 2-1, with two Republican-appointed judges carrying the majority, that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan overstepped his authority in second-guessing the prosecutors' decision.

Judge Neomi Rao, who was appointed to the circuit court by President Trump, wrote in the majority opinion:
"In this case, the district court's actions will result in specific harms to the exercise of the Executive Branch's exclusive prosecutorial power.

"If evidence comes to light calling into question the integrity or purpose of an underlying criminal investigation, the Executive Branch must have the authority to decide that further prosecution is not in the interest of justice."
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Green Light

Pompeo greenlights Israeli annexation of Palestine's West Bank


Daily Sabah
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 06:01 UTC
Pompeo
© AFP
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated Wednesday that Israel had the U.S. green light to annex Palestinian land, amid wide criticism of the Jewish state's plans. Pompeo told reporters:
"Decisions about Israelis extending sovereignty to those places are decisions for the Israelis to make. We are talking to all of the countries in the region about how it is we can manage this process for our end-state objective.

"I regret only that the Palestinian Authority has refused to participate in that. I remain hopeful that in the coming weeks, we can begin to make real progress towards achieving that."
He was speaking moments after the United Nations and the Arab League, during a U.N. Security Council session, joined in calling for Israel to abandon its plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

Arab states, notably US ally Jordan, have voiced alarm at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's indication that he will move ahead as soon as next week to annex much of the occupied West Bank, saying that it would kill prospects for peace.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

Hamas to Israel: Annexation is 'a declaration of war on Palestinian people'

Khaled abu Toameh
The Jerusalem Post
Thu, 25 Jun 2020 17:44 UTC
Hamas
© Reuters
Hamas members in Gaza
Condemning the Israeli plan as a "criminal" project, Abu Obeida said, if Israel will follow through on the annexation, it would be "a declaration of war on our Palestinian people."

Israel's plan to extend its sovereignty to parts of the West Bank would be considered a "declaration of war" on the Palestinians, and it will regret the move, Izzadin al-Qassam, the so-called "military" wing of Hamas, said Thursday. The Israeli plan is the "biggest theft of Palestinian land in decades," Izzadin al-Qassam spokesman Abu Obeida said in a statement. The "project of the resistance was to remove the occupation from all the lands of historic Palestine," he said.

Condemning the plan as a "criminal" project, Abu Obeida said:
"We won't talk much, and we won't make more statements. We say in words that are limited and clear and which the occupation and those who stand behind it need to understand very well: The resistance considers this decision a declaration of war on our Palestinian people. The resistance, in this war, will be the loyal and trustworthy guard in defending our people and their land and holy shrines."
Abu Obeida said his group would make Israel "regret bitterly" its decision to apply its sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.
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Stop

Japan scraps deployment of its Aegis Ashore missile defense system


Kyodo News
Thu, 25 Jun 2020 14:54 UTC
Taro Kono
© Reuters/Issei Kato
Japan's Defence Minister Taro Kono
Japan has ditched plans to deploy an Aegis Ashore land-based missile interception system as a shield against high-tech projectiles such as those launched by North Korea, Defense Minister Taro Kono said Thursday.

"After deliberations at the NSC, we have come to the decision to cancel the deployment in Yamaguchi and Akita prefectures," Kono told a panel of ruling party lawmakers, referring to Wednesday's closed-door meeting of the National Security Council chaired by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The decision followed Kono's abrupt announcement on June 15 that it had halted the process of deploying two U.S.-made batteries of the missile system, citing technical problems and increasing costs amid strong local opposition.

At a meeting of Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, part of which was open to the media, Kono also said the Defense Ministry found it difficult to pick alternate sites.

Comment: See also:

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