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Israeli drone pilots targeted own settlements, bases, civilians on 7 October: Report


The Cradle.co
Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00 UTC
IAFS
© Barak Shalev, Tomer Matzkin/Israeli Air Force
The IAF’s 161st Squadron’s fleet of Hermes 450 drones at the Palmachim airbase.
The pilots never imagined they would have to carry out air strikes on their own territory, and on such an 'undreamt-of scale'.

Israel's fleet of Hermes 450 "Zik" armed drones carried out attacks on Israeli military bases, settlements, and civilians during the Hamas attack on 7 October, according to a 14 November report from Mishpacha Magazine.

Previous reports have emerged showing that Israeli forces used tanks to kill Israeli civilians barricaded inside homes with their Hamas captors, and Apache helicopters to fire on Hamas fighters and their Israeli captives while returning back to Gaza.

During the fighting, some 1,200 Israelis were killed, with some killed by Hamas, and others by Israeli forces. Hamas took some 240 Israeli soldiers, civilians, and foreign workers captive.

Israel's armed drone program was initiated in 1993 by Ehud Barak, then Chief of Staff of the army under Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon later approved the use of offensive drones for assassinations in the Gaza Strip. The best known of these attacks was the killing of paraplegic Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin in 2004.

Since that time, armed drones have slowly been replacing Israel's previous use of warplanes, including US-made F-16s.

Comment: What Israel didn't do is the real story.

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X

EU state asked social media giants to censor posts


RT
Thu, 30 Nov 2023 11:12 UTC
McEntee
© Getty Images/Brian Lawless/PA Images
Irish Minister for Justice Helen McEntee
The only platform that refused to cooperate and take down "vile" posts was Elon Musk's X, the justice minister said...

Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee has claimed that most social media companies complied with the government's requests to take down posts during last week's Dublin riots. However, Elon Musk's X refused, the minister said on Wednesday.

The minister's statement follows mass unrest that erupted in the republic's capital last Thursday over the arrest of a man who stabbed five people, including three children, outside a primary school. A five-year-old girl and a woman in her 30s are in critical condition. The man was later found to be an Irish citizen who had immigrated from Algeria.

During the unrest, angry rioters ended up setting fire to buses and police cars, looting shops, and clashing with law enforcement. More than 30 people were arrested in the aftermath, with Garda Commissioner Drew Harris claiming that the unrest was the fault of "a complete lunatic hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology."

Taking questions in place of prime minister Leo Varadkar in the Irish parliament, McEntee was asked to comment on police claims that "far-right ringleaders" had used "sophisticated communication online" to gather and organize troops during the riots.

She responded by stating that the country's security services were "actively engaging with TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, or X" to take down what she described as "vile messages."

While most platforms were cooperating, "X were not. They did engage. They did not fulfill their own customer standards," McEntee said.

Comment: Safety valve: People need freedom to vent...including the Justice Minister and the PM.

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Pistol

Israel and Hamas agree to prolong ceasefire


RT
Thu, 30 Nov 2023 09:13 UTC
smiling hamas hostages
© AFP / AFP PHOTO/HO/HAMAS MEDIA OFFICE
A screenshot from a video distributed by the Hamas Media Office depicts militants handing over newly released hostages to the Red Cross, on November 29, 2023, Gaza.
Qatari mediators said the two sides had approved a one-day extension minutes before the previous truce was set to expire.

Israel and Hamas have agreed to extend the current ceasefire in Gaza by another day, following the exchange of dozens more captives on Wednesday, the Qatari Foreign Ministry has announced. The extension was reportedly finalized just minutes before the previous truce was due to end at 7am local time on Thursday.

According to diplomats in Doha, who have acted as mediators, the conditions for prolonging the ceasefire are the same as for the previous six days. These include an exchange of ten Israeli hostages and 30 Palestinian prisoners, as well as the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
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Star of David

Israeli military left premature Palestinian infants to die in Gaza pediatrics hospital

Rizek Abdeljawad
Electronic Intifada
Wed, 29 Nov 2023 19:19 UTC
premature babies neonatal care
© Xinhua via ZUMA Press
Premature babies are especially vulnerable to infection, malnourishment and dehydration as Israel's siege continues, physicians warn.
The Israeli military left five Palestinian babies to die in their small beds at al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip after soldiers raided it nearly three weeks ago.

The tiny infants died starving, cold and alone. Their bodies decomposed.

They were still connected to ventilation and intravenous tubes.

Video footage, which went viral on Tuesday, showed that the babies had been left alone for 17 days.

Comment: No words . . . .

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Eye 2

'A mass assassination factory': How Israel is using AI in its calculated genocide in Gaza

Yuval Abraham
+972 Magazine
Thu, 30 Nov 2023 12:00 UTC
gaza mother child
© Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90
Palestinians react to the devastation caused by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 11, 2023.
The Israeli army's expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel's current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals. These factors, as described by current and former Israeli intelligence members, have likely played a role in producing what has been one of the deadliest military campaigns against Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.

The investigation by +972 and Local Call is based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel's intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions.

Comment: See also: Israel's ground war conundrum

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Gold Seal

Politico acknowledges RT's online clout


RT
Thu, 30 Nov 2023 14:25 UTC
RT logo cube
© Misha Friedman / Getty Images
The EU branch of the US news website has lamented the Russian network's "outsized digital reach" despite Western sanctions.

The European newsroom of Politico, the Washington-based digital news website, appears to be perturbed by the online footprint of what it dubbed "Kremlin-backed accounts," particularly those run by RT and Sputnik, which, it has found, have "an oversized digital reach."

Politico expressed veiled concern with the competition on Monday in a story about purported Russian propaganda and its employment of the Middle East conflict to boost anti-Western sentiments around the world.

Comment: The Ministry of Truth is clearly upset that people are finding ways around it's official narrative. You would think that the solution to the "problem" that people are going to Russian news sources is for Western news sources to do better rather than attempt to censor these unsanctioned voices into oblivion (which clearly isn't working).

See also:

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Stock Down

US pending home sales drop to a record low, even worse than during the financial crisis

Diana Olick
CNBC
Thu, 30 Nov 2023 12:00 UTC
us houses suburbs
© Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images) / Getty Images
Pending home sales, a measure of signed contracts on existing homes, dropped 1.5% in October from September.

They hit the lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking this metric in 2001, meaning it's even worse than readings during the financial crisis more than a decade ago. Sales were down 8.5% from October of last year.

Because the index measures signed contracts, it is the most recent indicator of housing demand. It reflects the buyers who were out shopping in October, which was when the popular 30-year fixed mortgage rate briefly shot higher than 8%.

Comment: It's one data point but so many others also reveal that some economies are even worse off than they were during the global financial crash. However, evidently, because those rigging the zombie markets don't want the system to collapse, just yet, it continues to stagger on:

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Pistol

'I'd like to see them shot in the head': Councillor's hard line on Dublin riots

Alan Jacques
Limerick Post.ie
Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00 UTC
Cllr Abul Kalam Azad Talukder, Fianna Fáil.
© Cian Reinhardt
Cllr Abul Kalam Azad Talukder, Fianna Fáil.
Fianna Fáil councillor Azad Talukder was asked to withdraw comments at a council meeting this week after saying that he would like to see those involved in last Thursday's violent Dublin riots "shot in the head".

At this Monday's full meeting of Limerick City and County Council (LCCC), council members condemned the shocking scenes in the capital last Thursday (November 23) after a knife attack on three children and their care assistant outside a school in Dublin's inner city.

Fine Gael councillor Adam Teskey said that as chairman of LCCC's Joint Policing Committee (JPC), he felt it necessary and appropriate to condemn the "thuggery".

Comment: Back in June Councillor Azad Talukder 'made history' by becoming the first-ever Muslim to be elected as Cathaoirleach of Limerick Metropolitan Council. Talukder probably isn't considering the optics of making such inflammatory comments in the current times.

See also:



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NPC

Devternity Developer Conference invented fake female attendees to bolster diversity cred

Josh Adams
CCN
Thu, 30 Nov 2023 22:48 UTC
Devternity fake female speakers

Devternity, an online developer conference, is facing accusations that it invented several female speakers.
In 2023, it's a good look for a business to have an equitable distribution of male and female employees. Women are, after all, half of the population.

However, this understandable instinct to achieve a more balanced gender representation has apparently led one developer conference to fabricate speakers to bolster their diversity bonafides.

Devternity: Women speakers who did not exist

Dev.events, the organizer of the Devternity developer conference, is one such business. According to an investigation by Gergely Orosz , a writer for the Pragmatic Engineer, Devternity and Dev.events have invented at least two fake female speakers for their events this year. Although, there is evidence that it has been inventing fake women for its events since 2021.

At the time of writing, Devternity's website was down, and the company was not responding to CCN's requests for comments.

Comment: This is the stranglehold that DEI has on just one industry. It's equally bad in others, and worst of all, poisoning in the education system preparing students for the workforce

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Attention

Victor Davis Hanson warns America: 'Brace yourself for what's coming in 2024'


Truth Press
Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00 UTC
Hanson
© TruthPress screenshot
Professor Victor Davis Hanson
Conservative historian and professor Victor Davis Hanson has released a new video and it is basically a warning for America.

The essence of Hanson's message is a reminder of how far the left went to stop Trump last time and that people should be prepared for them to do anything this time.

It's an ominous warning but it's important to think ahead and be mentally prepared for anything, because that's what is on the table.


Real Clear Politics provides a transcript:

Comment: This circus is just getting started.

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