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The season of foreign election interference is well underway.
The Department of Justice this week announced it had seized websites linked to a Russian disinformation campaign. Federal authorities separately accused two employees of the Moscow-controlled media organization RT of being a part of a scheme to spread Russian propaganda, bolstered by millions of dollars.
And it’s not just Russia. On Friday, a hawkish think tank revealed that a network of pro-Iranian sites have been circulating disinformation around the election. That comes on the heels of the intelligence community linking Iran to a hacking of the Trump campaign. U.S. officials said in a briefing with reporters on Friday that Russia, Iran and China were all trying to influence the upcoming elections.
Just a few years ago, the political world was roiled by the news that Russia had sought to interfere with the 2016 election. Two presidential cycles later, attempted meddling from foreign governments has become an inescapable part of the U.S. election system, and presidential elections in particular have become major targets, with eye-popping stories of malign social media campaigns or illicit foreign agents. And 2024 is “lining up to be a busy election interference season,” said Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The United States’ response continues to evolve.
National security experts said the Biden administration has been far more aggressive than in previous recent cycles. But officials continue to grapple with questions of how to hold bad actors accountable, deter future efforts and preserve trust in a system in which both foreign and domestic operatives are actively attempting to sow distrust.
Even the question of how much to publicize attempted interference remains unsettled: It’s important to have transparency on attempted threats, but too much attention and officials run the risk of furthering the kind of chaos and uncertainty that the malign actors hope to create.
“That is the core of the debate: whether you are in fact carrying water for the adversaries by highlighting this activity,” said Emily Harding, former deputy staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The very threats themselves have also become political fodder for all sides. After the Trump campaign hack, the former president quickly claimed he was targeted for being “strong on Iran.” A Democratic PAC is weaponizing the recent crackdown on Russian influence efforts to attack Republican candidates. And the son of a former Trump campaign adviser who was charged with violating Russian sanctions immediately politicized the proceedings against his father.
Ongoing foreign threats to American elections Fears around foreign threats to U.S. election integrity have crescendoed for years, after reports of Russian efforts to curry support for former President Donald Trump in 2016.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the Justice Department would aggressively fight attempts from foreign adversaries to interfere in this year’s elections.
“We will be relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran — as well as China or any other foreign malign actor — to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy,” he said at a meeting of the Election Threats Task Force, a Justice Department initiative.
And a slew of alleged attempts have emerged this year.
After federal authorities suggested that Iran had been behind the hack of the Trump campaign and an attempted hack on the Biden-Harris campaign, Meta announced that the Iranian hacking group had gone after the WhatsApp accounts of President Joe Biden and Trump staffers.
Russia has also sought to further meddle in U.S. politics, the federal government said, by using state media and websites that appeared to be independent to spread pro-Russia propaganda to influence the upcoming election. To combat those efforts, the federal government announced plans this week that include a visa restriction policy targeting Russian state-controlled media organizations and financial incentives for those who report information on the foreign election interference to federal authorities. The Treasury Department also sanctioned a number of people deemed close to Russia’s alleged election interference scheme.
The analytics company Graphika also recently released a report detailing an influence scheme tied to China, an effort called Spamouflage, that aims to shape U.S. political discourse using social media accounts.
Questions of how the United States should respond As the threat of foreign interference becomes woven into American elections, experts and officials continue to debate the appropriate response.
Criminal charges related to election interference originating overseas are typically viewed as “name and shame” indictments — meaning that the accused are unlikely to ever be arrested or stand trial, usually because they are out of reach of the U.S. government.
Indeed, when prosecutors think they have a strong chance of arresting suspects, they typically don’t announce the cases until that happens.
Despite the low likelihood of a trial or guilty plea, U.S. prosecutors have said they believe such cases can have a deterrent effect. For one, they can rein in the lifestyle of those charged by severely limiting their travel, since the defendants could be subject to arrest if they travel to any country with an extradition treaty with the United States.
They also put the government alleged to be involved on notice publicly about the gravity of U.S. concerns and serve as a reminder to the U.S. public to be wary of potential propaganda, potentially innoculating voters to its impact.
However, “name and shame” cases remain somewhat controversial within the government because they have the potential to expose intelligence sources for a case that will likely never be pursued. Some critics also question the ethics of using the criminal justice system to level accusations that will almost certainly never be hashed out in court.
And because the very nature of the interference is often to inflame the passions of the American electorate — in part by exploiting existing cultural divisions — the allegations of foreign interference themselves have often been met with derision.
For example, though intelligence agencies deemed Russia’s interference in recent presidential elections as ostensibly an effort to amplify pro-Trump messages, Trump and his allies downplayed the Russian government’s involvement. Instead, they accused the U.S. agencies themselves of political motivations — a theme the former president and his squad revived this week after the latest round of charges.
Even when foreign threats don’t directly change an election, they shape politics and the public Some national security experts warn that there is a cost to publicizing those threats — even if the steps taken by the federal government do successfully slow foreign propaganda. The attention, those experts say, can deepen public distrust in the political system and unintentionally amplify the divisive narratives that foreign states are pushing.
Foreign disinformation campaigns don’t have to convince voters to back a specific candidate or issue, for example. The very idea that disinfo is everywhere has become normalized, with voters and campaigns constantly invoking it: “Fake news!”
Gavin Wilde, former National Security Council director for Russia, Baltic and Caucasus affairs, said it was not clear whether foreign propaganda had a specific effect on how people voted. But he worries about the erosion of confidence in elections.
“That’s been problematic, because our reaction to it can cause as much stress and a sense of precarity among the public as whatever you know the Russians or Chinese are doing,” said Wilde, who contributed to assessments of Russian efforts to target the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Still, analysts praised the Biden administration’s efforts as sending a clear message. John E. Herbst, former ambassador to Ukraine during George W. Bush’s administration, lauded the “comprehensive use of American power” that put “the Russians off kilter by putting this out publicly.”
“It’s the old notion that transparency is the best disinfectant and the best defense — a very good defense in any case,” Herbst said.
But he pointed to the reaction of the Russian state-controlled media organization RT, which flouted the U.S. government’s actions by joking that “Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT’s interference in the US elections” and “Somewhere Secretary Clinton is sad that it’s not because of her.”
“They do that because sadly, Russian propaganda themes have made it into part of our political discourse, especially on the right,” Herbst said.
Part of the allegations against the RT employees also concerned an unnamed company funded by the Russian state-controlled media organization. That company is reportedly Tenet Media, which is connected to a number of high-profile far-right influencers.
Foreign interference allegations have also become weaponized by campaigns.
Trump was quick to say he was targeted by Iran because “I was protecting people in the Middle East that maybe they aren’t so happy about that,” an attempt to use the Iranian effort to bolster his foreign policy credentials.
But Republicans were dismissive of the news of Russia’s alleged scheme and sought to neutralize it. Stephen Miller, for example, argued in a post on X that the Department of Justice was, in fact, the real threat to election integrity. Trump also turned the allegations on Kamala Harris, writing in a post on X that the vice president and the Justice Department were “trying to interfere in and suppress the Election in favor of the Democrats by resurrecting the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax.”
And shortly after news broke of the indictment accusing a former Trump adviser of working for a sanctioned Russian television station, the man’s son, Dimitri Simes Jr., was quick to lash out at Democrats, writing on X that “Joe Biden and his stooges are impotent cowards.”
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https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/07/foreign-influence-2024-election-00177828
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California public schools are set to begin a mandatory curriculum about climate change, reportedly designed to indoctrinate children in the state, as a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, AB 285, takes effect.
The Federalist reported on AB 285:
Science classes for students in California will feature new additions to the curriculum this year designed to indoctrinate students on climate change through the apocalyptic lens of far-left activists.
Last fall, California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 285 to mandate all science classes for grades 1 through 12 “include an emphasis on the causes and effects of climate change and methods to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”
The bombardment of doomsday climate commentary has meanwhile contributed to widespread environmental anxiety among children. In December 2021, The Lancet published a study from a team of nine researchers, including psychologists, environmental scientists, and psychiatrists, who surveyed 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 across 10 countries about their “climate anxiety” and their governments’ responses to environmental issues. Seventy-five percent reported feeling the “future is frightening,” and 83 percent said humanity “failed to take care of the planet.” The study also reported that nearly half said their “feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.”
It is not clear if counterarguments — often disparaged by Democrats as “denialist” — will be presented.
Students have returned to school in California amid a searing heat wave in the state — which is typical for late August and early September in the state, but such events are routinely cited as evidence of what was once called global warming.
Obama administration climate official Steven Koonin has pointed out that it is more likely that winters are becoming milder, rather than summers becoming hotter.
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US authorities have not detected any attempts by foreign actors to directly interfere in the upcoming presidential election, representatives of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) have stated. Intelligence officials did, however, claim that Russia, Iran and China are trying to sway public opinion and sow discord in American society.
During the 2016 and 2020 elections, US intelligence agencies repeatedly alleged that Moscow was deploying hackers and using “information warfare” to swing the vote in favor of Donald Trump.
None of these claims have been proven true; a report released by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2019 found them to be baseless.
During a multi-agency press briefing in Washington DC on Friday, an unnamed representative of the ODNI said: “We have not observed any foreign actors seeking to interfere in the conduct of the 2024 elections.”
“Instead of interference, the IC assesses adversaries so far are focused on using information operations and propaganda to try to shape voter preferences or undermine confidence in the election,” the official added.
When making similar claims in the past, US authorities have rarely bothered to define what they meant by disinformation when leveling accusations at Russia, Iran and China.
These were the top three nations supposedly attempting to “exacerbate divisions in US society for their own benefit.” The ODNI official added that there are several other countries that “are considering activities that at minimum test the boundaries of election influence,” while stopping short of naming them.
The official singled out Moscow as the “pre-eminent and most active foreign influence threat to this year’s US elections.”
As for Iran, the US intelligence agency believes the country is “making a greater effort than in the past to influence this year’s elections,” looking to “stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process.”
China, by contrast, is more “focused on influencing down-ballot races” at the state and local levels, according to US authorities. Beijing is allegedly seeking to “counter US politicians viewed as anti-China and to support others viewed as pro-China.”
Earlier this week, the US government imposed sanctions on two RT employees over their alleged role in disseminating video clips that sowed “discord and division” in the country.
Commenting on similar allegations back in July, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed them as “absurd.” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova insisted at around the same time that Russia is not in the habit of meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign countries.
China and Iran have similarly denied previous American claims
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https://www.rt.com/news/603655-us-intel-no-foreign-interference-elex/
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In a Black Lives Matter-inspired move, a British university has cancelled the term “Anglo-Saxon” from its curriculum.
The University of Nottingham has removed “Algo-Saxon” from courses on history and literature to push back against “nationalist narratives”.
According to The Telegraph, a masters-level course, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies, has been renamed as Viking and Early Medieval English Studies.
Another module, a literature course originally named “A Tale of Seven Kingdoms: Anglo-Saxon and Viking-Age England from Bede to Alfred the Great” has been recast as “Early Mediaeval England from Bede to Alfred the Great”.
While the thrust of the “decolonise the curriculum” agenda — which the university pledged to do amid the Black Lives Matter movement — has typically focussed on attacking British history and identity, the university reportedly said that it will seek to “problematize the term ‘Viking’” as well.
Nottingham academics have also been seeking to dismantle “essentialist ideas” about nationality, namely the very concept of a distinct English identity which has unique and fundamental characteristics.
The school is not alone in attacking the history of the Anglo-Saxons, with the University of Cambridge now teaching students that Anglo-Saxons never actually existed as a distinct ethnic group.
The move, ironically made by Cambridge’s leading Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC) studies, was reportedly done in order to promote “anti-racist” ideology.
“One concern has been to address recent concerns over use of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and its perceived connection to ethnic/racial English identity,” the department is reported as saying.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Cambridge University Press academic publication, the Anglo-Saxon England Journal, said that it would be removing Anglo-Saxon from its name to better represent the “international, interdisciplinary and rapidly evolving nature of research in this field”.
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The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans has ruled that illegal immigrants do not have the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.
This ruling is a significant victory for the rule of law and American sovereignty, as it underscores the importance of upholding the rights and protections reserved for U.S. citizens.
The case involved Jose Paz Medina-Cantu, a Mexican national who was arrested in Texas by Border Patrol agents in 2022. Medina-Cantu, who had illegally re-entered the United States after being deported, was found in possession of a handgun.
After pleading guilty to the charges of illegal possession of a firearm and unlawful re-entry, Medina-Cantu shamelessly attempted to challenge the legality of his conviction, arguing that the ban on his firearm possession violated his Second Amendment rights, Fox News reported.
However, the three-judge panel delivered a decisive response, affirming that the Second Amendment’s protections do not extend to individuals who are in the country illegally.
U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, a respected conservative voice appointed by President Trump, wrote a concurring opinion that highlighted the clear distinction between the rights of American citizens and those who have violated our immigration laws.
Judge Ho wrote:
The Second Amendment protects the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms. Our court has held that the term “the people” under the Second Amendment does not include illegal aliens.
Illegal aliens don’t qualify under the definition of “the people” set forth in Verdugo-Urquidez and Heller—not as a matter of common sense or Court precedent. As to common sense, an illegal alien does not become “part of a national community” by unlawfully entering it, any more than a thief becomes an owner of property by stealing it.
And as to precedent, the Court has repeatedly explained that “an alien . . . does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter forbidden by law.”
Moreover, the Court has provided further reason why it reaches this conclusion. For an illegal alien “[t]o appeal to the Constitution is to concede that this is a land governed by that supreme law.” And “the power to exclude [aliens from the United States] has been determined to exist” under our Constitution. So, the Court concluded, “those who are excluded cannot assert the rights in general obtaining in a land to which they do not belong as citizens or otherwise.”
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/09/federal-appeals-court-rules-illegal-immigrants-have-no/
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South Korean police are investigating messaging platform Telegram in connection with online sex crimes. The country is trying to tackle deepfake pornography targeting young women, according to a senior police official quoted by Yonhap News Agency.
Last week, local police received 88 reports of deepfake porn, the head of the National Office of Investigation, Woo Jong-soo, told the media, adding that 24 suspects had been identified in relation to the complaints.
The inquiry comes a week after the arrest of its CEO and founder Pavel Durov in France.
“As France has done, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency launched an internal investigation into the corporate entity of Telegram before officially booking it,” Woo said, adding that the probe would closely examine whether it had been abetting the distribution of sexually explicit deepfake content.
He said the administration of the messaging platform “does not readily provide investigation data, such as account information” to state authorities, “including those in the US.”
South Korean police are planning to collaborate with the French investigative authorities and international institutions as part of its probe into Telegram.
Eight automated programs creating deepfake pornography spread via Telegram are under scrutiny as part of the investigation, as well as group chat rooms responsible for disseminating such content.
Durov was arrested last Saturday shortly after arriving at Paris-Le Bourget Airport, and has since been charged with multiple offenses, including complicity in “administering an online platform” used by criminal gangs to conduct illicit activities, and refusing to cooperate with investigators.
The tech entrepreneur, who is a citizen of Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, was released on a €5 million ($5.55 million) bail on Wednesday and ordered to remain in France until the case against him concludes.
Telegram has insisted that the company complies with EU laws and that its content moderation policies are “within industry standards,” adding that blaming a platform or its owner for abuse of that platform was “absurd.”
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https://www.rt.com/news/603375-telegram-south-korea-deepfake-porn/
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The Ukrainian anthem has been found embedded in the source code of the voter database in the state of New Hampshire, the development of which had apparently been outsourced to offshore programmers, according to Politico.
Election officials had previously decided to replace the state’s voter registration database before the upcoming 2024 presidential election and reportedly turned to a small Connecticut-based IT firm called WSD Digital to develop the software.
However, upon reviewing the completed project, it was revealed that the firm had offshored some of the work. Given that this posed a risk of unknown coders outside the US having access to the software and potentially being able to manipulate voter lists, New Hampshire officials hired a forensic firm to scour the code for signs of hidden malware.
The probe reportedly revealed a number of “unwelcome surprises,” Politico claimed, citing a person familiar with the investigation. These included the use of open-source code, software which had been misconfigured to connect to servers outside the country, and the lyrics to the Ukrainian national anthem.
“A programmer had hard-coded the Ukrainian national anthem into the database, in an apparent gesture of solidarity with Kiev,” Politico wrote.
State officials, however, have stated that none of these findings have amounted to evidence of wrongdoing and that all the issues had been resolved by the company in charge of the database’s development before it came into use.
“This was a disaster averted,” Politico’s source said, noting that hackers could have potentially exploited the vulnerabilities to edit the state’s voter rolls or use them to stoke election conspiracies.
While the potential catastrophe in New Hampshire has apparently been averted, Politico stated that its own six-month-long investigation into the matter suggests that similar issues could pop up in other states due to a lack of oversight of the development of vote-processing software.
“The technology vendors who build software used on Election Day face razor-thin profit margins” the outlet wrote, noting that this provides little room for crucial investments in security and results in many states lacking a rigorous system to verify what actually goes into election software.
Meanwhile, the FBI reported last month that it was “confident” that Iran has been trying to interfere in the upcoming election in November and had allegedly sought to gain access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties.
Tehran, however, has denied the accusations, calling them “unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing” and insisting that it has no intention in meddling in US elections.
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https://www.rt.com/news/603406-ukrainian-anthem-us-voter-database/
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Excellent Starter/Refresher Documentaries.
September Clues
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Vle9KDFKfWYN/
September Clues Addendum
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Ogg17vKKxCCu/
A New Pearl Harbor - aka 50 Questions They Can't Answer
https://www.bitchute.com/video/TaL4XxiFDnA9/
9/11 - The Great American Psy-Opera
https://www.bitchute.com/video/gfBqgZs7vdY2/
Invest the time, it is well spent.
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In his article titled “U.N. Casts Little Light on Heat,” climate expert Bjorn Lomborg observes Guterres’ notoriously hyperbolic language on global warming and its effects ignores the fact that high temperatures are “mostly a result of seasonal changes that have long existed,” rather than of climate change.
The U.N.’s “latest climate-change alarms are more about demagoguery than data,” Lomborg writes.
A groundbreaking 2024 study found that “the global death rate from extreme heat has declined by more than 7% a decade over the past 30 years,” he states.
More importantly, perhaps, Lomborg points out that seasonal rises in temperature kill far fewer people than cold weather.
“In Europe, cold kills nearly four times as many people as heat — a danger that a warming climate helps ameliorate,” he notes.
While 155,000 people die each year from extremely high temperatures, 4.5 million people die from the cold, he adds.
Along with the U.N.’s alarmist-in-chief, Lomborg also calls out the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) for publishing a wildly inaccurate report on deaths from extreme heat.
In early August, the W.H.O. declared that in Europe alone, more than 175,000 people die each year because of extreme heat, a figure that overstated the real figure by some 400 percent.
Another U.N. group — UNICEF — its dedicated child-welfare organization — “also rang a false alarm in late July,” Lomborg writes, lamenting in a policy brief the deaths of 377 young people in 2021 from high temperatures across Europe and Central Asia.
The brief fails to mention that the very report it references shows that annual heat deaths of young people have declined by more than 50 percent over three decades and that “cold causes about three times as many child deaths in these regions each year.”
Deaths of young people from heat pale in comparison next to malnutrition, which claims 26,000 young lives across Europe and Central Asia every year, Lomborg writes.
Ironically, falsely attributing heat deaths to “global warming” is likely to lead to more heat deaths, Lomborg suggests, since the recent decline in mortality from heat is largely due to greater access to electricity and therefore to air conditioning, something that alarmists detest.
Economic growth and cheap, reliable energy are the greatest antidote to heat-related deaths, he observes, but these are only possible by prioritizing energy availability over climate ideology.
Guterres’ remedy to the so-called “climate crisis,” which involves abandoning fossil fuels, “would cost quadrillions of dollars, spike electricity costs, and spread poverty,” Lomborg writes.
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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/08/30/wsj-calls-out-united-nations-for-its-climate-alarmism/
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The US Secret Service will be provided with additional military support capabilities for presidential and vice presidential candidates ahead of the upcoming election in November, representatives of the agency and the Pentagon announced on Thursday.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has directed US Northern Command to plan and provide additional support and resources for the Secret Service at various locations during the election, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh.
A Secret Service spokesperson said the US Department of Defense had been providing the service with additional assistance, which includes “logistics, transportation and communications, through the 2024 campaign season.”
The representative noted that this support had been granted following the assssination attempt on former US President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
Trump narrowly escaped death when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on him from a nearby rooftop. The would-be assassin fired several shots, one of which struck the Republican candidate’s ear. One rally attendee was killed in the attack and two others were seriously injured before Secret Service snipers eliminated the shooter. The assassination attempt has since been investigated by the FBI but Crooks’ motives remain unclear.
Following the incident, the Secret Service said it was “ashamed” of the security lapse that allowed the incident to occur. The head of the service, Kimberly Cheatle, who had served as director of the agency since August 2022, was forced to resign following widespread outcry over her failure to protect the former president.
Trump, meanwhile, has expressed gratitude to the Secret Service agents who were protecting him that day, and has instead accused Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden of “making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service,” as well as using rhetoric that could “get assassins or potential assassins going.”
“Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric,” Trump told TV host Dr Phil earlier this week.
The former president also suggested that it was God who spared his life that day, and that his survival of the assassination attempt was a sign that he had a mission to save America and, perhaps, the world.
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https://www.rt.com/news/603301-secret-service-military-support/
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French authorities have launched an investigation into claims that Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov committed “serious acts of violence” against his own son, AFP reported on Wednesday. The investigation is separate from an ongoing probe into his alleged complicity in a wide range of crimes.
The 39-year-old Russian, who also holds the citizenship of France, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis, appeared before a Paris court on Wednesday. Though he has not been formally indicted in either French case a decision is expected overnight on Wednesday.
Durov could be charged with 12 criminal offenses, including facilitating narcotics distribution, money laundering, and organized crime, and aiding in the distribution of child pornography. According to Paris prosecutors, a “person unnamed” used Durov’s app to commit multiple offenses. Durov’s refusal to turn over the user’s data to law enforcement led to him being investigated, Politico reported on Wednesday.
Shortly after Durov arrived at the court, France’s AFP news agency reported that the entrepreneur was also being investigated on suspicion of “serious acts of violence” against his six-year-old son. Citing “a source close to the case,” AFP claimed that the probe was recently opened by France’s child welfare office.
Durov’s son was born in Russia and now resides in Switzerland with his mother, Irina Bolgar. It is unclear whether the investigation is linked to a criminal complaint filed against Durov by Bolgar in Switzerland last year. According to court documents seen by Forbes magazine, Bolgar accused her ex-partner of five instances of violence against his son, before filing a child custody case.
Both cases were filed shortly after Durov allegedly stopped paying Bolgar €150,000 ($167,500) in child support per month, Forbes noted. Durov has also claimed to have fathered over 100 children in 12 countries through sperm dnoation.
In a statement on Sunday, Telegram called it “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.” Telegram complies with local laws, including the EU’s Digital Rights Act (DSA) and anti-Russian sanctions, the company added. Neither Durov nor Telegram have commented on the alleged child abuse case.
Anti-censorship activists have described Durov’s arrest as part of a wider campaign against free speech waged by Western governments, with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden accusing France of taking the entrepreneur “hostage” in order to access private communications on Telegram. X Owner Elon Musk, American journalist Tucker Carlson, and Silicon Valley investor David Sacks have all condemned Durov’s arrest as an attack on free speech.
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https://www.rt.com/news/603224-pavel-durov-child-abuse/
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By Wayne Allyn Root
I have a life and death question for red state AGs and DAs. The most important question in modern history…
What the hell are you waiting for?
Because we just uncovered the greatest conspiracy to betray the citizens of America and commit treason since Benedict Arnold.
But this time we can add mass murder and crimes against humanity. And the confession is in writing, for all the world to see. This massive criminal case is gift wrapped with a bow on top.
So, what are you waiting for?
Mark Zuckerberg just confessed, in writing, in front of the whole world, to terrible crimes against America, the US Constitution and the American people- all because he was forced, extorted (and I’m guessing bribed, blackmailed or threatened too) by the US government and the highest officials of the Biden administration.
Just days ago, I made the case for red state AGs and DAs to go after “low hanging fruit” and indict Kamala and Tim Walz. The precedent has been set by New York AG Leticia James and NYC DA Alvin Bragg. A red state AG or DA can file any criminal case they want- even in the middle of a presidential election. If they think crimes have been committed, it’s their duty to indict and prosecute.
It’s easy to go after Kamala Harris for her role as border czar. Indict her for fraud, malfeasance, dereliction of duty, and treason. How many American have been murdered and raped, or died from fentanyl overdoses, because of her dereliction of duty?
Red state AGs and DAs- What are you waiting for? Indict Kamala Harris.
And of course, Tim Walz is the biggest fraud and conman in the history of politics. He’s guilty of “Stolen Valor” (lying about his rank and military service), not to mention lying about his wife using IVF to get pregnant (it never happened). And so many other lies I’ve lost count.
Red state AGs and DAs- What are you waiting for? Indict Tim Walz.
But those are no longer the “low hanging fruit.” We have a much bigger criminal case. It’s the world’s easiest case to prosecute. The star witness is one of the richest and famous men in the world- Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Meta.
And he just confessed, in writing, in front of the entire world, to terrible crimes against the American people.
But that’s only a small start. Zuckerberg implicated the entire US government, and top officials of the Biden administration. These government gangsters bullied, intimidated, threatened (and no doubt bribed or blackmailed) Zuckerberg and his staff to commit these terrible crimes against the American people.
These are the highest crimes- including election interference, mass murder, crimes against humanity and TREASON.
Zuckerberg is a witness to all of it. The government and top officials of the Biden administration intimidated Zuckerberg and his staff into rigging and fixing the 2020 election- by covering up the Hunter Biden laptop. This allowed Democrats to steal a presidential election from President Trump.
How many trillions of dollars changed hands in the form of government spending and government contracts because the election was rigged and stolen?
But then it gets worse. Zuckerberg admits the government and top Biden officials forced him to censor, silence and ban the truth about the lack of safety and effectiveness of the Covid vaccines, and cover-up the mounting deaths and injuries from the Covid vaccines…
And to hide the truth about Ivermectin, the one drug that was actually “safe and effective” for use against Covid 19. Hundreds of studies prove it could have saved millions of lives- with literally no side effects. But few Americans heard about it, because Zuckerberg hid the truth- upon order of this administration.
How many Americans died as a result?
That’s called mass murder and crimes against humanity. Not to mention the loss of trillions of dollars.
It’s time for modern day Nuremberg trials.
The case is so easy to prosecute. Just offer Zuckerberg full immunity to testify to the crimes and the names involved. Then offer each of them immunity for the names of their bosses. Then offer immunity to each of the bosses for the names of who gave the ultimate orders to rig and fix the election…and to condemn millions of Americans to death and injury, all in the name of greed.
Trillions of dollars were made as a result of election interference, and from vaccine sales and stock profits by Big Pharma and all their conspirators in the US government and Biden administration.
All roads lead to Biden, Kamala, Dr Fauci and the top officials of the FBI, DOJ, CIA, CDC, FDA, HHS and NIH. Everyone got rich and Americans died.
Here is the sum up of these developments…
*If this was Trump, he’d already be in prison for life, or given the death penalty. We all know that.
*Why did Zuckerberg suddenly confess? Because he knows how to read the tea leaves- Trump is about to win a landslide victory. Zuckerberg is trying to save his own hide from a prison cell.
*Do you believe Biden and our government did this only to Zuckerberg? This is the tip of the iceberg. They extorted, threatened and bribed every CEO of every media and social media company.
*This is the perfect criminal conspiracy case. If no red state AG or DA prosecutes them, then we know the entire system is rigged. They’re all either complicit, bribed, blackmailed, or cowards.
*Finally, if we can’t get indictments, then this becomes the largest class action lawsuit in world history. Class action lawyers are salivating. There are trillions to be made from suing the federal government, every Biden-Harris official involved, Zuckerberg, and every billionaire CEO of any media and social media company who censored, silenced, banned and covered-up facts that resulted in a stolen election, and death and injury to millions of American citizens.
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/wayne-root-easiest-criminal-case-prosecute-history-mark/
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Nobody panic (yet) but U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent out another global climate “SOS” at a Pacific islands summit on Tuesday, delivering his second warning in under a week that rising seas are set to deliver humanity a fatal blow in the region.
“I am in Tonga to issue a global SOS — Save Our Seas — on rising sea levels. A worldwide catastrophe is putting this Pacific paradise in peril” he said after flying to the region, according to AFP.
The World Meteorological Organisation has been monitoring tide gauges installed on the Pacific’s famed beaches since the early 1990s.
A new report released by the top U.N. climate monitoring body showed seas had risen by around 15 centimetres in some parts of the Pacific in the last 30 years, the report notes.
“This new report confirms what Pacific leaders have been saying for years,” Australian climate researcher Wes Morgan told AFP, echoing previous warnings of impending doom from Guterres.
“Climate change is their top security threat. Pacific nations are in a fight for survival, and cutting climate pollution is key to their future.”
Pacific nations are pushing for carbon polluting countries to cut emissions.
The issue is expected to feature heavily in summit talks throughout the week with Guterres leading the way alongside calls for funds to be delivered to Pacific nations to help them begin “climate resilience programmes.”
The veteran Portuguese socialist has spent the past week in the region, stating last Thursday some Pacific territories face “annihilation” from rising sea levels, as Breitbart News reported.
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Telegram founder Pavel Durov wouldn’t have “disregarded his own safety” and landed in Paris if he thought the French authorities were serious about arresting him, his former press secretary Georgy Loboushkin has told RT. Loboushkin believes that the order to detain Durov likely came from Washington.
Durov was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday, immediately after arriving from Azerbaijan by private jet. According to French media, prosecutors in Paris plan to charge the 39-year-old with complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, and fraud, arguing that Telegram’s insufficient content moderation, its strong encryption tools, and its alleged lack of cooperation with police allow criminals to flourish on the app.
“It’s a big mystery why he disregarded his own safety and decided to land in Paris,” Loboushkin told RT on Sunday. “He has shown throughout his history that he is a pretty cautious person in that sense. He has said many times that there is no point in going to jail.”
According to Loboushkin, the Russian-born businessman must have been unaware that a warrant was being prepared for his arrest, or thought – given Telegram’s compliance with local laws and sanctions – that he wouldn’t be in serious trouble.
“I think the attack is coming neither from the EU nor from France,” Loboushkin said. “It’s most likely an attack from the United States, which has been after Pavel Durov for a long time, and Durov has always talked about it.”
“He said, for example in an interview with Tucker Carlson, that he and his employees are under pressure, or at least there’s some kind of surveillance conducted by the FBI,” the former spokesman continued. “I think the root causes are there, so it doesn’t make any sense to discuss the intentions of the French authorities who arrested him, because they don’t play any role here at all.”
In an interview with Carlson in April, Durov said that he drew “too much attention” from law enforcement any time he visited the US, and claimed that American intelligence agents had attempted to recruit one of his employees to install a backdoor in the app that would have allowed them to spy on Telegram users.
Loboushkin is not the only commentator to suggest that the US was behind Durov’s arrest. “The Americans are behind the situation as a whole,” Ekaterina Mizulina, the head of Russia’s Safe Internet League, said on Sunday, alleging that Washington wanted both to restrict the free flow of information and attack TON, a blockchain platform originally developed by Telegram’s creators. With major Russian companies investing in TON, the arrest is essentially “a continuation of the US’ sanctions policy,” Mizulina wrote on Telegram.
American investor David Sacks claimed on Sunday that Durov’s commitment to free speech and user privacy made him a target in Washington. Writing on X, Sacks declared that “using allied countries to circumvent First Amendment protections is the new Rendition,” referring to the US’ use of foreign airports and military bases to transport terror suspects in the years following the September 11 attacks.
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https://www.rt.com/news/603054-us-behind-durov-arrest/
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A Texas public school district has decided to prohibit the use of pronouns that do not match students’ biological sex, regardless of their pronoun preferences or gender identity.
The controversial policy that the Keller Independent School District (ISD) adopted will require teachers to refer to students with pronouns correlating to the gender on their birth certificates, Fox 4 reported.
The rule also states that parents must be alerted if their children request to go by different names or pronouns at school and that parents must write a notice granting permission for schools to call their students by alternative names or pronouns.
Students have protested the policy, with one high school senior saying the district was prioritizing “a political agenda” during a public comment session.
“Every day I walk into a school and myself and my peers are suffering. It seems like more and more the school district is prioritizing budget cuts and a political agenda over the health of its students,” said Kennedy Schultz.
Madison Hickman, another senior, called it “hate.”
“You’ve created an environment where fear and isolation might just become the norm for our most vulnerable students. I hope this brings you the kind of community you’re striving for, one where conformity is valued over compassion. Hate is not a Keller ISD value,” she said.
Fox 4 also reported that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent the district a letter of concern, warning it that the policy is discriminatory, but the board passed it anyway.
Keller ISD also found itself in controversy in 2022 when it pulled dozens of books from shelves for review, including the Bible.
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PARIS (AP) – France’s acting interior minister ordered police reinforcements to protect Jewish places of worship after a suspected arson attack Saturday on a synagogue in a southwestern Mediterranean town.
Two cars parked at the Beth Yaacov synagogue in the seaside resort town of La Grande Motte near Montpellier were set ablaze on Saturday morning, injuring a police officer, according to French media reports. It was not immediately clear how many people were inside the synagogue at the time. There are no reports of other injuries.
Acting Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the incident was being treated as an “attempted arson” that is “clearly a criminal act.” One of the cars allegedly contained a propane gas tank, local media reported.
“I want to assure our Jewish fellow citizens of my full support and say that at the request of President Emmanuel Macron all means are being mobilized to find the perpetrator,” Darmanin said in a post on X.
He ordered more police deployed at Jewish places of worship around the country following a surge of antisemitism since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last year.
Darmanin is expected to travel to Le Grand Motte later on Saturday along with France’s acting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
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A police officer was injured when a car exploded outside the Beth Yaacov synagogue in the French town of La Grande-Motte on Saturday morning, police have confirmed.
Shortly before the blast, two vehicles had been set alight; one of them reportedly contained a gas canister.
“An attempted arson, clearly criminal, affected the synagogue in La Grande Motte this morning,” France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, adding that all efforts are being made to locate the perpetrator.
The mayor of La Grande-Motte, Stephane Rossignol, said surveillance cameras had captured an individual setting fire to vehicles in front of the synagogue, according to French newspaper Le Figaro.
A police source told the media the suspected perpetrator was seen leaving the area’s premises and was apparently wearing a traditional keffiyeh scarf and carrying a Palestinian flag. He remains at large.
Two doors of the religious building were damaged by the blaze, police told Le Figaro, adding that a team of bomb disposal experts has been deployed to the site.
Darmanin and French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal are expected to travel to the scene of the arson attack later in the day.
The wounded municipal police officer was rushed to the emergency room of Montpellier University Hospital, according to French media, with his injuries reportedly not being life-threatening.
French authorities have ramped up security around synagogues, having reported a sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents in France since 2023, after the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in October prompted the Jewish state to launch a large-scale military campaign in Gaza.
In May, a man was shot dead by French police after attempting to set fire to a synagogue in the city of Rouen.
Earlier in March, a 62-year-old man wearing traditional Jewish headwear was assaulted in Paris as he was leaving a synagogue. The attacker reportedly shouted ethnic slurs as he tackled the victim to the ground before fleeing the scene on foot.
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https://www.rt.com/news/603016-police-officer-hurt-in-explosion-synagogue/
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Answer,
Whitmer said, “Any insult from the Trump campaign is laughable when you think about his years in office and who he fought for. He fought for himself. He’s laid out nothing in terms of a vision for America. He’s feeding into people’s anxieties and anger. That’s what he’s always does. He has never done anything that makes someone’s life a little better.”
She added, “In fact, his time in office we have record job loss. We saw so many deaths from COVID because it was, he put out misinformation, denied that it was even a problem. I mean, this is a guy who he calls other people name, but offers nothing of value to the American people when it comes to a vision or a plan to make people’s lives better. That contrast is stark.
What you will see this week in Chicago is a bunch of happy warriors who understand the middle class, understand how we pull more people into the middle class and make sure every one of us can have the path of prosperity and live the American dream and take care of our families.”
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Almost 14,000 people in Britain have applied for payments from the government for disabilities they claim were caused by Covid-19 vaccines, The Telegraph has reported.
Only 175 people, or less than 2% of those seeking compensation, have so far received a one-off money transfer of £120,000 ($155,300), the paper said in an article on Saturday.
Data obtained by The Telegraph through Freedom of Information requests indicates that those who were eventually reimbursed suffered from conditions such as stroke, heart attack, dangerous blood clots, inflammation of the spinal cord, excessive swelling of the vaccinated limb, and facial paralysis.
Around 97% of the satisfied applications were related to the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and the rest to the US-made vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, it said.
The outlet noted that the UK government continued to recommend the AstraZeneca vaccine, despite its use being halted in Germany, Italy, France, and other European countries by March 2021, amid reports of a growing number of blood clotting cases.
Thousands of people have been refused payment due to the government’s medical assessors arguing that there is no concrete proof that their health problems are a result of the vaccines, the report read.
Hundreds of others were turned down due to being “not disabled enough,” it added. Under the rules of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS), an applicant has to be at least 60% disabled to qualify.
A spokesman for AstraZeneca told The Telegraph that its vaccine “has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects.”
As for the health complications caused by the vaccine, the spokesman said, “our sympathy goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones or reported health problems.”
In May, AstraZeneca, which officially admitted that its vaccines could cause blood clots in certain cases, began the withdrawal of its product worldwide, saying that newer vaccines adapted to the latest coronavirus variants were more effective.
Around 16,000 people have sought payments since the introduction of the VDPS in 1979, with most of the claims related to Covid-19 vaccines. The growing workload resulted in an increase of the staff responsible for handling applications from four people to 80 last year. “We continually review our processes to further develop the way in which we manage claims, and to provide a better service for claimants,” a National Health Service spokesperson said.
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https://www.rt.com/news/602752-uk-coronavirus-vaccine-astrazeneca/
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The Las Vegas police union is warning the Las Vegas Raiders and the NFL that if new requirements for officers to supply the league with biometric data are implemented, they will cease providing security details for games.
The NFL has recently mandated that all gameday staffers—including contractors and non-employees—supply biometric data, including an image of their face, via an approved app before being allowed clearance to enter the stadium.
However, the police union representing Las Vegas police officers is warning officials that its members will not comply with the new security requirements. If they are forced to do so, they won’t work Raiders home games at Allegiant Stadium.
At issue is the league’s close relationship with numerous anti-police organizations. Members of the police are afraid that the data will end up in the hands of these woke, left-wing organizations, which will then turn around and use the data as a weapon against police officers.
Las Vegas Police Protective Association President Steve Grammas recently sent out a video to members stating that he is not on board with handing his data over to the NFL to end up in the hands of “people that you don’t know.”
“I’m sure if you’re like me, you don’t want to have biometric data in the hands of people that you don’t know,” Grammas says in the video posted by TMZ.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Grammas added that he does not want officer data to end up in the hands of “anti-cop” people who could “target and harass officers just for doing their job.”
Grammas has suggested that police officers be excluded from the NFL’s new security protocols and be issued identifying wristbands instead.
But. so far, the NFL does not seem disposed to alter its plan.
“The credentialing system will enhance security at our stadiums,” NFL Director of Communications Tim Schlittner said in a statement, “and we look forward to working with all stakeholders to address any questions or concerns raised.”
Grammas concluded that if the full policy is implemented, his officers will no longer work at Allegiant Stadium for Raiders games.
The NFL has worked with numerous organizations critical of the police, including those championed by former NFL quarterback turned social justice warrior Colin Kaepernick.
The league has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-cop organizations, including the Vera Institute of Justice, the Oregon Justice Resource Center, and the Community Justice Exchange, all of which support defunding and abolishing the police.
The NFL even allowed 1990s rapper Dr. Dre to include anti-cop lyrics in his halftime show at the Super Bowl 2022.
It seems likely that this could become an issue for other police departments that provide security at NFL stadiums across the country. However, as of this writing, it is unknown if any other departments or unions representing them are considering a boycott.
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More people will leave Sweden than arrive in 2024, a major turnaround for the country, which was once the most enthusiastic adopter of mass migration in Europe, and which experienced all the social unrest that seems to inevitably come with it.
The Swedish government has hailed its new anti-mass migration policies, as migrants start leaving the country in larger numbers, meaning it now has net emigration for the first time in over 50 years. The government’s Migration Minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, has announced that “Sweden has stopped being an asylum immigration country” on the back of the latest figures.
This change is, in part, due to considerably fewer asylum seekers coming to Sweden this year and more migrants leaving Sweden. In a remarkable development unthinkable only a couple of years ago, a thousand more Iraqis left than arrived in 2023, over a thousand more Somalis left than arrived, and 500 more Syrians left than arrived.
The number of people leaving Sweden has increased by 60 per cent.
According to a Ministry of Justice statement based on Migration Agency data, Sweden will receive the lowest number of asylum seekers in 2024 of any year since 1997. Illustrating just how far these have fallen, there were 85,000 asylum applications in 2016, and just 5,600 so far in 2024, with new applications already running 27 per cent lower this year than in 2023, which itself had represented a record low year.
While these figures are relatively small and only represent baby steps towards the greater goal, which Minister Stenergard discussed, net migration being minus 5,700 in 2024 and being driven by former migrants departing is consequential for the country of just ten million people.
This change is not down to wider European trends, either, which makes Sweden’s achievement even more impressive. The government’s data pack makes clear that overall asylum seekers in the European Union remain very high, but “in Sweden, the decline continues from an already historically low level,” demonstrating Sweden has succeeded in the new government’s mission to make the country less attractive to mass migration.
Indeed, in 2015, Sweden took 13 per cent of all asylum seekers in the EU. In 2024, it is predicted to take just one percent.
Sweden got a new government in 2022, led by the Moderate Party—the national equivalent to Britain’s liberal centre-right globalist Conservative party—with coalition partners the socially conservative Christian Democrats, and the classically liberal Liberals party. The coalition is propped up by the right-populist Sweden Democrats, which, at times, were the lone voice on limiting migration during Sweden’s open borders years. Between their influence on the government and the much-changed Moderates, the Swedish state has taken a radically new course on immigration.
The Swedish government says that it has implemented “stricter asylum legislation” through combating what it calls the “shadow society”—the black market that allows illegal migrants to thrive—increasing returns and repatriations, cracking down on low-skill migration, revoking more residence permits for those who abuse Sweden’s hospitality, making chain migration harder, and requiring migrants to integrate.
Moderate Party migration minister Maria Malmer Stenergard hailed these policies as having been effective when she presented the latest immigration figures this week, boasting: “The government’s work yields results. The number of asylum applications is heading towards a historically low level, asylum-related residence permits continue to decrease and for the first time in 50 years, Sweden has net emigration.”
“Sweden has stopped being an asylum immigration country”, she reported.
Stenergard said lower levels of migrant arrivals are essential because persistently high arrivals make integration of newcomers into Swedish society difficult, given the tendency to form parallel communities. In other words, the Swedish government’s policy is to end multiculturalism and will require migrants to become culturally Swedish.
Indeed, Sviergesradio reports Stenergard told migrants this week: “If you are in Sweden to stay, you must learn the language, become self-sufficient and respect Swedish values”.
The Swedish upmarket newspaper Dagens Samhalle states the minister stopped short of outright saying that asylum migration had been bad but nevertheless said: “We have unfortunately seen that we have had a high asylum immigration in combination with a very poor integration. And there are many, not least those born abroad, who suffer from alienation. We must, for a long time, have greatly reduced immigration.”
Illustrating just what a journey the now-governing Moderates have been on, DS notes that next week is the 10th anniversary of former Moderate Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt‘s infamous call to the Swedish people to “open their hearts” to the asylum seekers of the world.
These comments came during the 2014 general election campaign, when Reinfeldt told the public that if they voted for him, he would introduce no new programs for Swedish citizens because the cost of taking on so many asylum seekers would be immense. He said then: “I can already say that it will lead to large costs… They are so extensive that it will place further restrictions on what there is room for in public funding. Therefore, we promise next to nothing in this election campaign, there will be no room for that.”
Unsurprisingly, with such a bleak offering to the country, Reinfeldt lost the election, but Sweden’s left-wing Social Democrats under Stefan Löfven won instead. Löfven implemented everything Reinfeldt had spoken of and more during the Europe Migrant Crisis of 2015–2016, causing a demographic change more rapid and more pronounced than any other country in Europe.
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Dozens of people have been killed and many more injured in an Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City, the Palestinian authorities have said.
The attack on the Tabeen school in the central part of the city took place on Saturday morning and was confirmed by both officials in Gaza and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
There are conflicting reports so far about the number of casualties. Al Jazeera said, citing Gaza’s government media office, that more than 100 people have been killed and dozens more injured in the bombing. Not all of the bodies have been recovered so far, it added.
AP provided information from the Gaza Health Ministry’s ambulance and emergency service, which put the death toll at 60, with 47 others wounded. The outlet described the incident as “one of the deadliest strikes” in the ten months of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Gaza’s government media office said in a statement that the number of casualties was so high because IDF warplanes “bombed the displaced people [at the school] while they were performing the dawn prayer.”
“We hold the Israeli occupation and the American administration fully responsible for this massacre,” the statement read. The strike “comes within the framework of the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing against our Palestinian people,” it added.
Palestinian journalists said the facility was hit by at least three bombs. Some people were reportedly trapped in the building, which caught fire after the attack. Emergency workers are unable to extinguish the blaze and rescue them, as Israel cut off the water supply to the area, according to their reports.
The Israeli military claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that it targeted the school because it had been used as a headquarters by Hamas, from which the group “planned and promoted terrorist operations against the IDF forces and the citizens of the State of Israel.”
“Hamas systematically violates international law and operates from civilian shelters, using the population as a human shield,” the IDF said.
According to UN data, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza, almost all of which were turned into shelters for refugees during the conflict, have been directly hit or damaged as of July 6.
Israel began its military operation in Gaza in response to a cross-border incursion by Hamas last October, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage. More than 39,600 people have been killed so far and over 91,700 others have been wounded in Israel’s airstrikes and ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
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https://www.rt.com/news/602409-gaza-school-airstrike-israel/
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Washington will send Kiev another $125 million worth of missiles and ammunition, the Pentagon announced as fierce fighting continued in Russia’s Kursk Region.
The US Department of Defense noted on Friday that this was the 63rd batch of aid provided to Ukraine since August 2021 – six months prior to the launch of Russia’s military operation.
To help Kiev meet “critical security and defense needs,” the US will send Stinger anti-aircraft missiles; ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS); rounds for 155mm and 105mm artillery; Javelin, AT-4 and TOW anti-tank missiles; small-arms ammunition; and demolitions ordnance, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The package also included multi-mission radars, Humvee ambulances, spare parts, services, training and transportation.
Washington’s previous batch of military aid, worth $1.7 billion, was sent at the end of July. According to the Pentagon’s own numbers, the US has sent more than $56.2 billion in military aid to Ukraine since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
Earlier this week, Ukraine sent several battalions worth of troops into Russia’s Kursk Region. Moscow has accused the invaders of indiscriminately targeting civilians with artillery, small arms and drone strikes. On Friday, Ukrainian drones targeted the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in Kurchatov, briefly cutting power supplies to the town.
“We don’t feel like this is escalatory in any way,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday, when asked about US military aid to Kiev.
According to Singh, everything Ukraine does is legitimate self-defense from the Russian “invasion,” while Russia can always de-escalate by withdrawing.
The Ukrainian leadership has said the primary goal of the Kursk operation was to induce “fear” in the hearts of the Russian people. One of the units involved in the operation, according to Ukrainian media, is named ‘Nachtigall’ after the notorious Nazi auxiliary from WWII commanded by Roman Shukhevych.
At least five civilians have been killed and 21 wounded – including six children – by the Ukrainian attacks, according to Russian authorities. The defense ministry in Moscow said that the invaders have lost almost 1,000 troops and over 100 armored vehicles as of Friday.
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https://www.rt.com/news/602400-pentagon-ukraine-military-aid/
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The British government is eyeing a crackdown social media, while a member of the public has been arrested for “inaccurate social media” post, and a Covid-era government spy team monitoring the public for “disinformation” has been brought back.
The United Kingdom has experienced days of civil unrest including protest, riots, and confrontations between ethnic groups since the mass-stabbing of young children last week. Hundreds have been arrested for real-life acts of violence and incitement, including a cop-bashing middle-aged gay couple on their way home from the bingo, counter-protester “Asian males” who assaulted Union Jack-wearing men, and a Labour politician who called for his political enemies to have their throats cut at a ‘peace’ rally.
Since the early days of this unrest the government has gone hard on social media, warning both users and platform owners that severe consequences would follow for the disinformation the government said is causing the unrest. Now the time has come to deliver on those threats, it seems, and in comments made at the headquarters of London’s Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard Friday morning Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced he was minded to crack down on the internet.
He said, reports The Guardian: “we’re going to have to look more broadly at social media after this disorder… this is not a law-free zone. And I think that’s clear from the prosecutions and sentencing.” Sir Keir boasted there would be “sentencing for online behaviour” in courts today, and reiterated “whether you’re directly involved or whether you’re remotely involved, you’re culpable, and you will be put before the courts”.
Critics say the government’s new slogan “think before your post” is a little too Orwellian for comfort, but some have already been caught up in that net. Cheshire Police boasted on Thursday evening they had arrested a woman “in connection with inaccurate social media post”, stating “a woman in relation to social media post containing inaccurate information about the identity of the attacker in the Southport murders.”
The leader of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, Silkie Carlo, expressed alarm at this language from the Police, stating their press release was “so badly written” — generously overlooking the possibility it was meant to be deliberately vague. Offering her interpretation of the law, Carlo claimed that it is not, in fact, an offence to accidentally post inaccurate information on social media unless it was intentional stirring of racial hatred or knowingly publishing false information intending to cause non-trivial harm.
“These are serious allegations and shouldn’t be trivialised, nor the law misrepresented, for short term political goals” said the anti-government overreach activist, reflecting on the vague police statement: “I assume the intention is to scare people [and] prompt more caution in social posting”.
Meanwhile, a Coronavirus-era shadowy government unit that Carlo’s Big Brother Watch campaigned against at the time appears to have been resurrected by the Starmer government this week. The Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) is coming back, now given a fresh identity as the National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT) is pivoting from snooping on anti-lockdown activists — including Members of Parliament — to protest content, instead, reports The Daily Telegraph.
The paper states the observation unit is already embedded within social media companies as a “trusted flagger”, meaning it can bring content the government doesn’t want live to the attention of their moderation teams directly. The online content the unit is going after falls short of criminal activity but nevertheless is considered unwelcome, the report stated.
In all, the British government is working up to going to war with social media companies, and probably in particular Elon Musk’s Twitter / X, given his strident views on freedom of speech and the importance of having a public square for ideas to be challenged. Musk has been openly goading Sir Keir for days, something which Member of Parliament Nigel Farage has characterised as the billionaire getting the first punch in, before the legislative hammer falls, as in Venezuela.
Speaking to TalkTV on Thursday, Mr Farage said: “What I think is really interesting is the war of words that Elon Musk has launched against Starmer. You can almost tell that’s a pre-emptive strike.
“He senses that the Labour government, regulators… that things are going to get more difficult. But you know what? Governments that try and ban things, government that try and suppress things, all they do is create new avenues for people to go. And I honestly think that to control the internet, to control that debate, it’s almost impossible.”
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President Donald Trump is rolling out a new catch-all attack on his Democratic opponents: “We’re going to bring back all our commonsense things,’ he said in an online fund-raising ad.
He also used the phrase in his Wednesday press conference at Mar-a-Lago, saying:
People want safety. They want security. They want respect all around the world for our country. They don’t want this horrible culture that is developing — a culture of no commonsense. It’s really a culture of no common sense, and it’s not what anyone wants.
He explained:
We want to have a safe country. We want to have a strong military. We want low interest rates, and we want to be able to have the American dream. We want to be able to have our youth be able to buy homes, housing, get good jobs, and we’re really just at the opposite right now. So it’s so sad to see … [Harris has] been the worst border czar in history … [and] 20 million people came over the border during the Biden-Harris administration … Now you have people dying financially because they can’t buy bacon, they can’t buy food, they can’t buy groceries, they can’t do anything, and they’re living horribly in our country right now.
…
She picked a radical left man [Gov. Tim Walz as running mate]. He has positions that are … not even possible to believe that they exist. Heavy into the transgender world … He doesn’t want to have borders. He doesn’t want to have walls. He doesn’t want to have any form of safety for our country. He doesn’t mind people coming in from prisons — and neither does she.
The “culture of no common sense” may help Trump and JD Vance combine their criticism of Harris’ economic and border policies into a pocketbook pitch aimed at voters who are worried about migration’s wide-ranging damage to their living standards and the nation’s economy.
Vance told Fox News on August 6:
Border czar Kamala Harris has handwritten an invitation to every illegal alien and terrorist across the world … When I talk to Americans, one of the biggest concerns I hear is, ‘Why are housing costs so high?’ I’ll give you two reasons, Sean. Number one, there are 20 million illegal aliens who shouldn’t be here and who are competing with Americans for scarce homes. Number two, Kamala Harris has supported higher interest rates, which makes mortgages totally unaffordable for most people. So these policies make ordinary people suffer … she’s putting the interests of illegal aliens above Americans citizens.
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https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2024/08/09/trump-slams-democrat-culture-of-no-common-sense/
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