In an uncommon (these days) act of objective journalism, James O'Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas and now the CEO of OMG Media, has gone to Western North Carolina to investigate. He went to see who was telling the truth about the situation there: the federal government or the people struggling to survive in tents in freezing temperatures.

This isn't the first time FEMA has been accused of not aiding the survivors of a disaster. The accusations of cold disinterest to downright negligence were also present after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Superstorm Sandy in the North Eastern states, and the terrible wildfire that ravaged Lahaina on Maui, Hawaii.

In each case, the story was the same. Victims of the disasters criticized FEMA's lackluster responses and were accused by the media of spreading "harmful misinformation."

Hundreds of Israeli airstrikes have wiped out the majority of Syria's military capabilities in the last few days

Obeida Arnaout, a spokesman for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) extremist group that just took over Syria after a joint assault with Turkish-backed fighters, refused to address Israel's airstrikes across the country in an interview aired by British news outlet Channel 4 on 11 December.

During the interview, Arnaout avoided answering the question twice.

"Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night: it's spritely waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mull'd, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men." - Shakespeare, Coriolanus

Long ago, but what seems like only yesterday, I didn't go to the U.S. war against Vietnam but the war came to me. It was when my exile began.

I am telling you this to try to shed some light on today's wars and alarums since my tale is common for a small subset of Americans of my generation. We learned long ago that the USA was run by ruthless killers who reveled in war. Vietnam, the Phoenix Program, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc. Nothing was beyond them. We sensed that they would never stop and they haven't. The genocide of Palestinians, the proxy war via Ukraine against Russia, the current US/Israel/Turkey bloodbath in Syria and Lebanon led by our ruthless terrorists - it is all nightmarish, malevolent, utterly evil, and conjures up hell on earth. And it will get worse in the future.

Jay-Z, the star rapper and entrepreneur whose real name is Shawn Carter, was accused in a lawsuit Sunday of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 allegedly along with Sean "Diddy" Combs.

The anonymous accuser, identified only as "Jane Doe," said the assault happened after she was driven to an MTV Video Music Awards after-party.

The federal lawsuit was originally filed in October in the Southern District of New York, listing Combs as a defendant. It was refiled Sunday to include Carter.

Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee, who filed the suit, did not comment.

Carter called the allegations "idiotic" in a lengthy statement Sunday evening and alleged that Buzbee was engaged in unprofessional behavior.

After years of rumours that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory in China, the virologist at the centre of the claims has presented data on dozens of new coronaviruses collected from bats in southern China. At a conference in Japan this week, Shi Zhengli, a specialist on bat coronaviruses, reported that none of the viruses stored in her freezers are the most recent ancestors of the virus SARS-CoV-2.

Shi was leading coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a high-level biosafety laboratory, when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in that city. Soon afterwards, theories emerged that the virus had leaked — either by accident or deliberately — from the WIV.

Shi has consistently said that SARS-CoV-2 was never seen or studied in her lab. But some commentators have continued to ask whether one of the many bat coronaviruses her team collected in southern China over decades was closely related to it. Shi promised to sequence the genomes of the coronaviruses and release the data.

The latest analysis, which has not been peer reviewed, includes data from the whole genomes of 56 new betacoronaviruses, the broad group to which SARS-CoV-2 belongs, as well as some partial sequences. All the viruses were collected between 2004 and 2021.

Last week, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot to death on a New York City sidewalk in what was clearly a thoroughly planned-out attack. Over the next few days, as authorities hunted for the killer, online progressives did not try hard to hide their delight that a millionaire health insurance executive like Thompson was killed.

Social media was flooded with posts and videos — with different ranges of subtlety — suggesting that Thompson, at the very least, did not deserve to be mourned because of all the health care his company has denied to poor and working people. Progressives framed the shooting as an act of self-defense on behalf of the working class. Before the alleged killer was caught Monday, they promised not to snitch if they saw the shooter themselves and fantasized about a working-class jury nullifying all charges, leading to other CEOs getting gunned down with impunity if they oversaw price increases.

The narrative that these online progressives clearly subscribe to and perpetuate is one where, in the United States, healthcare is a totally unfettered, unregulated industry; where — because of a total lack of government involvement — wealthy CEOs charge whatever prices they want and then refuse to provide customers what they already paid for without facing any bad consequences.

The characterization of healthcare and health insurance companies charging absurdly high prices while treating their customers terribly without the risk of losing them is spot on.

Public health policies cannot strip physicians of their free speech rights, the plaintiffs' lawyer said.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas this week revived an emergency application to block the Washington Medical Commission from investigating licensed physicians in the state over their criticism of COVID-19 policies.

The Washington state commission deems the doctors' dissenting views on the disease as potentially dangerous misinformation that should be suppressed. The physicians counter that just because they have medical licenses they don't forfeit their free speech rights under the First Amendment.

The Dec. 4 order by Thomas regarding the application in Stockton v. Ferguson was unusual in that Justice Elena Kagan rejected the same application on Nov. 20. The applicants renewed their request in a court filing directed to Thomas on Nov. 22.

I cheered when I heard that Marine veteran Daniel Pennyhad been found not guilty.

And I felt shocked and saddened when I saw the footage of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson being executed in the middle of Manhattan.

Those two reactions would surely be the correct and appropriate ones for anyone with an ounce of fairness and humanity in their heart.

Penny risked his own safety on the crime-ravaged New York subway to prevent a dangerous, mentally ill, homeless man with a lengthy rap sheet of violence from carrying out his ranting threat to kill someone.

Marine veteran Daniel Penny was acquitted by a Manhattan jury Monday in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely — a lightning-rod case that cast a light on the mayhem plaguing Big Apple subways.

Jurors cleared Penny, a 26-year-old Long Islander, of criminally negligent homicide after the caught-on-camera fatal encounter on an uptown F train last year sparked fierce debate about mental illness, public safety and vigilantism.

A suited-up Penny, who remained stone-faced for much of the four-week trial, broke out a huge smile as his not guilty verdict was read out — prompting both applause and anger inside the courtroom as the high-profile case came to an end.

From religious Jews scurrying out of New York City sewers on New Year's Day to UFO flaps over US military bases, Trump nearly being taken out by a real-life Manchurian Candidate (and then again by a recruiter of mercenaries for the CIA's wars), and now Syria being overrun by the latest iteration of Al Qaeda, none can dispute that 2024 has been a wild year.

While global events have been horrific to watch at times, they've also been riveting and at times even inspirational. We were as pessimistic as anyone about Trump's chances of surviving all the lawfare being thrown at him and the expected election rigging, much less an assassin's bullet on the eve of the Republican Convention. And yet, a miracle happened. Donald Trump is going to be US president again.

What he and his 'Team Trump Avengers' can possibly achieve against the all-powerful Washington 'blob' remains to be seen, but in the meantime we have enjoyed the howling, the liberal tears and the about-turns that Trump's victory has provoked. We must also take stock of the utter mess the deranged Biden regime has left behind: a war in eastern Europe that has cost Russia and Ukraine millions in lives and livelihoods; a genocide in Gaza and a Middle East that has never looked so volatile; the de-industrialization of Germany and thus potential economic collapse in Europe; and the global promotion of so-called 'trans ideology' to children, amounting to child abuse and, often, what is effectively child sacrifice.

The inclusion of the likes of Robert Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk within Trump's 'unity government' bodes well for the re-introduction of proper science, proper intelligence and free speech in the USA (and thus the wider Western world), and offers the tantalizing possibility that good governance - that is, 'the rule of normal man' - has returned, but we strongly encourage people to temper any expectations they may have by remembering that the powerful political, bureaucratic and corporate forces 'the Avengers' are up against are deeply entrenched in all layers of society and have, as Senator Chuck Schumer warned Trump many years ago, "six ways from Sunday to get back at you." It may well be that their next 'move', or series of moves, will result in them 'overturning the chessboard' of society rather than see it reflect the will of the people.