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Pro-Trump social media app briefly hacked hours after launch

Joseph Choi
The Hill
Mon, 05 Jul 2021 06:46 UTC
donald trump
© Brandon Bell/Pool via Reuters
Former president Donald Trump addresses a member of the news media after attending a border security briefing with Texas Governor Greg Abbott in Weslaco, Texas, June 30, 2021.
Gettr, a new social media site launched by allies of former President Trump, was briefly hacked on Sunday when it first went online.
"The problem was detected and sealed in a matter of minutes, and all the intruder was able to accomplish was to change a few user names," Jason Miller, the site's founder and Trump's former spokesperson, said in a statement to Reuters.
The usernames for accounts belonging to prominent figures like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Miller were changed to read, "JubaBaghdad was here, follow me in twitter :)," as seen in screenshots shared by Salon writer Zachary Petrizzo.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

And there it is: Israel security institute says 'Israel needs to occupy Gaza to deter Hamas'


Middle East Monitor
Mon, 05 Jul 2021 20:04 UTC
israel tanks gasa border fence
© Faiz Abu Rmeleh/Anadolu Agency
Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles are deployed to the Gaza Strip fence in Sderot on 29 March 2019
According to an Israeli security research institute, the repeated failure to deter Hamas makes it necessary for Israel to occupy the Gaza Strip and overthrow the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement.

According to Sama News Agency, in an article written by the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security's Israeli security expert Omer Dostri, Israel has a right: "To adopt a gradual approach in dealing with the various threats facing it."

In his paper, Dostri states that Israel: "Should deal with each threat separately, from the lightest to the heaviest, focusing as much as possible on the most serious threat it is facing, which is Iran's nuclear programme."

Comment: Israel may have overplayed its hand with Hamas, by attacking the Al Aqsa Mosque in May. Hamas issued warnings to back off, or it would begin firing rockets at Israeli cities. They weren't joking.

This time it's different
The current escalation is distinguished by the fact that the Palestinian people demanded a response to the practices of the Israeli occupation. Hamas, in responding, is being considered heroic. There is no public judgment or denunciation of Hamas' decision to act, even when citizens are paying the harshest price of Israeli aggression, losing their loved ones and their homes.

It is clear in Gaza that Palestinians remain firm in their belief in resistance as the pathway to liberation from occupation.

This round of fighting is also significant because it came as a response to continuous violations in Jerusalem. All previous rounds of Hamas escalation have been provoked by Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip. Thus, when Jerusalem called for Gaza's aid, and Gaza rose to defend Jerusalem, this amplified the burgeoning sense of Palestinian national unity and liberated the Palestinian resistance from its isolation in Gaza.

Whether in Gaza or anywhere else in Palestine, Palestinians struggle against the occupation, whose attacks and violations affect them everywhere.

This escalation has also been characterized by an increasingly defiant spirit within the resistance factions. The cancelation of the "Jerusalem Day" march was an early victory. The reality of suffering and tragedy is always present in Israeli aggressions on Gaza. Still, this time, the escalation feels meaningful, it feels heroic.

People across Palestine desperately needed someone to make them feel supported and defended. Palestinians need to feel they are not paying the price alone. It is therefore hugely significant that resistance has exploded across historic Palestine.

Israel has been committed to destroying the Palestinian identity, especially in deliberately economically deprived cities, towns and villages inside the 1948 boundaries - the areas where the state of Israel was declared that year, during the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Mass protests in those areas, the torching of police stations and the replacement of Israeli flags with Palestinian flags, all seem like a new revival of the Palestinian spirit.


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Stock Down

Crisis, Crash, Collapse

Charles Hugh Smith
Daily Reckoning
Sat, 26 Jun 2021 00:00 UTC
flag on rocks
© unknown
On the rocks
We have a fine-sounding word for running with the herd: momentum. When the herd is running, those who buy what the herd is buying and sell what the herd is selling are trading momentum, which sounds so much more professional and high-brow than the noisy, dusty image of large mammals (and their trading machines) mindlessly running with the herd.

We also have a fine-sounding phrase for anticipating where the herd is running: front-running. So when the herd is running into stocks, those who buy stocks just ahead of the herd are front-running the market.

When the Federal Reserve announces that it's going to make billionaires even wealthier with some new financial spew, those betting that stocks will never go down because the Fed has our back are front-running the Fed.

There are two remarkable assumptions at the heart of momentum and front-running: The momentum herd and those front-running the herd base their behavior on the assumption that there will always be other rich people who will sell all the shares they want to buy at today's prices before the run-up to new highs.

Comment: The Fed has structured the end game. Pattern recognition pays in the end - one way or another.

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Footprints

Over 1000 Afghan troops flee Taliban into Tajikistan


Yahoo News
Mon, 05 Jul 2021 06:20 UTC
Barred Bridge
© US Army via AFP
Shir Khan Bandar bridge at the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border
More than 1,000 Afghan troops fled into neighbouring Tajikistan on Monday following clashes with the Taliban, as the insurgents amassed momentum on the battlefield.

The exodus of troops followed another weekend of fighting across much of the northern countryside where the Taliban have overrun dozens of districts, spurring fears that Afghan forces are in crisis.

"They did not want to surrender. They had asked for reinforcements but their call was ignored," said Abdul Basir, a soldier based with a battalion in Badakhshan province that had members flee over the border.

Afghanistan map zones

Comment: It is now an exercise in 'filling the vacuum' left by the US withdrawal and 'marking territory'.

See also:

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Arrow Down

We should thank the unemployed for their service. They've been used to control inflation

Gareth Hutchins
abc.net.au
Sat, 03 Jul 2021 03:09 UTC
people lined up centrelink
© William West/AFP/Getty Images
Since the 1980s, policymakers have asserted there is a "natural" level of unemployment for prevailing conditions.
I want to show you something. It has to do with our economy and it's probably been invisible to you. The majority of journalists have no idea about it and few politicians would, either. But it affects everyone and it shouldn't be something only economists know about.

Who controls the levers?

In this era of coronavirus lockdowns, we've learned a lot about our economic policy settings. For example, we've learned widespread poverty is a policy choice in Australia. Governments have the power to lift hundreds of thousands of households out of poverty if they want to.

The federal government did it last year, when it increased unemployment payments during the initial lockdowns. That situation lasted a few months. But then it let those families fall back into poverty by taking those special payments away again, as the graph below shows.

Comment: As soon as we try to control something, the potential undergoes limitation.

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Newspaper

Reporters Without Borders lists Viktor Orbán as 'press freedom predator' - only EU leader on the list

Merlin Sugue
Politico
Mon, 05 Jul 2021 19:30 UTC
orban
© Omar Marques/Getty Images
Reporters Without Borders has labeled Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán a "press freedom predator" for muzzling the country's media.

The NGO, known by its French acronym RSF, on Monday released a list of 37 heads of state and government who it says "embody in a particularly drastic way the ruthless suppression of press freedom." Orbán is the only EU leader on the list.

The Hungarian prime minister, RSF says, has together with his ruling Fidesz party "brought Hungary's media landscape under their control step by step" since coming to power in 2010, with government-friendly businessmen taking over outlets and targeting independent media.

Besides Orbán, RSF's "predator" list this year includes new additions such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam. Other figures remain on the list from the previous version in 2016, such as China's President Xi Jinping, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

"New names have been added in all regions of the world. Their methods of suppression are different, but serve the same purpose: to prevent critical reporting at all costs," RSF Director Christian Mihr said, adding that it is "frightening that those responsible often go unpunished despite committing brutal crimes."

Comment: Poland and Hungary - especially Orban - are at the top of the list of EU thought criminals. They're the only European countries who have made some show of resistance against takeover by the EU's special brand of woke totalitarianism. Any flaws or deviations from the program will be brought into focus, magnified, and made an example of - no matter how hypocritical.

See also:

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Cult

Pollster warns Brits face never-ending 'woke' culture wars as American-style divisions beginning to take hold in UK


RT
Mon, 05 Jul 2021 18:47 UTC
britain flags union jack garbage ground
© REUTERS/Simon Dawson
Union Jack flags lay on the ground at Parliament Square in London, Britain, February 1 2020
Escalating culture feuds could dominate British politics much like they already do in the US, American pollster Frank Luntz has claimed, citing new research revealing deep divides in voter attitudes in the UK.

The long-time Republican Party operative began examining the top causes of concern among British voters, after joining the London-based Centre for Policy Studies in May. Having surveyed several thousand people, he found that Britain was increasingly being divided along 'woke' versus 'non-woke' lines, rather than by the traditional social and cultural tensions felt between north versus south, cities versus rural areas and even men versus women.

In his study, which was first reported on by The Times, around 81% of Tory voters agreed with the premise that the UK was a nation of "equality and freedom", while a mere 19% said the nation was "institutionally racist and discriminatory". Among Labour supporters, 52% saw the UK as a bastion of freedom, and 48% said the country suffered from systemic racism.

Comment:

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Light Saber

Wikileaks ally Vaughan Smith: News of key witness lying is 'devastating' for US case against Assange; it must be dropped


RT
Mon, 05 Jul 2021 17:58 UTC
Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson wikileaks fbi
© Jonas Sverrisson Rasch/Dagbladet
Sigurdur Thordarson commonly known as Siggi hakkari, is a convicted criminal and FBI informant from Iceland known for various information leaks, sexually molesting multiple underage boys, numerous cases of fraud, and embezzlement from the Wikileaks organization
The US' case against Julian Assange must be dropped after a key witness confessed to lying, as the reputation of Western law and the future of journalism depend on it, UK journalist and friend to Assange has told RT.

The news that WikiLeaks volunteer turned FBI informant Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson fabricated some important parts of his accusations in the indictment against the site's co-founder Assange "was not a surprise," Smith pointed out. Those close to WikiLeaks have long known that the man "had behavioral issues," he said.

Smith gave Assange refuge in 2010 - first at the Frontline Club in London and then at his country house in Norfolk - when the publisher was fleeing from sexual assault allegations, which he consistently denied, in Sweden. The investigation was later dropped by the prosecutors.

Comment: Will the Empire back down in the face of such damning evidence against its case, or will the 'exceptional nation' lean on Britain to pervert justice in order for the US to get its hands on Assange?

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Rainbow

Spreading 'human rights' at the tip of a bayonet: the LGBT agenda has now become a tool in Western foreign policy across the globe

Glenn Diesen
RT
Thu, 01 Jul 2021 12:49 UTC
gay pride flag
© Getty Images / John Lamparski
New York, USA
When it comes to issues of 'human rights' and individual liberties, every country in the world takes a different stance. Culture, religion, and nationality all play their roles, but now it's clear the West wants to change this.

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted a picture of the rainbow pride flag raised outside the State Department in Washington, writing that the commemoration of two major LGBT events "reminds us how far we've come - and how much more we need to achieve, at home and worldwide." The key word here is "worldwide."

As the West elevates LGBT issues to be the highest measure of morality, reorganizing its culture accordingly, it begs the question - how will this manifest itself in foreign policy? Values are deployed as an effective instrument in Western power politics, with liberal democracy held up as a hegemonic norm that allows countries like the US to lead the world and exempt themselves from international law.

Even the CIA is rebranding itself now as an organization guided by the advocacy of LGBT rights, which is a clear indication that the celebration of 'our' righteous values will soon be expressed as derision and attack on the 'other'.


Comment: Don't miss: The Intersectional Empire Takes On The World

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Cult

Fearmongering again: From hyping WMDs in Iraq to denying the existence of weapons of mass injections

Teodrose Fikremariam
Ghion Journal
Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00 UTC
Colin Powell
Eighteen years ago, the American public and countries that belonged in the "coalition of the willing" were duped into a war with Iraq that led to a genocide. At least 600,000 Iraqis perished over the span of a decade as innocent men, women and children were burnt at the altar of the military-financial complex based on a discredited theory that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction and was intent on unleashing them against the West.

The crimes against humanity that were committed against a nation that never attacked us would not have been possible had it not been for the ever obsequious mainstream media. Instead of pushing back against talking points and doing independent validation of the lies they were being sold by George Tenet and his ilk, the supposed "free-press" parroted Bush and Blair administrations' propaganda and crippled society with fears of mushroom clouds blanketing America, the UK and beyond.

The non-stop stories of chemical weapons being unleashed against the United States and the malicious alliterations of biological bombs unleashing hell from Tikrit to Topeka conditioned Americans to accept a war that was planned by Project for a New American Century four years before the Twin Towers fell. On the eve of the "Operation Iraqi Freedom", what was in reality Operation Iraqi Liquidation, an astounding 72% of Americans supported a war against Iraq. At one point, George Bush's approval rating was 90%, the highest approval ratings in the history of polls.

mission accomplished

When Bush said “mission accomplished” on May 1st, 2003, his approval rating was north of 60%, a few years later the majority of Americans saw him for the lying war criminal that he was
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