The American taxpayer dollar hard at work: Palestinian children injured in IDF air raids treated at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, 24 Oct 2023. (Photo: Ahmad Hasaballah / Getty Images)
The estimated death toll in Gaza is more than 44,000 and over 100,000 maimed. A recent assessment by the UN Human Rights Office found that 44% of the fatalities it was able to verify were children.
A new study of children living through the war in Gaza has found that 96% of them feel that their death is imminent and almost half want to die as a result of the trauma they have been through.
A needs assessment, carried out by a Gaza-based NGO sponsored by the War Child Alliance charity, also found that 92% of the children in the survey were “not accepting of reality”, 79% suffer from nightmares and 73% exhibit symptoms of aggression.
“This report lays bare that Gaza is one of the most horrifying places in the world to be a child,” Helen Pattinson, chief executive of War Child UK, said. “Alongside the levelling of hospitals, schools, and homes, a trail of psychological destruction has caused wounds unseen but no less destructive on children who hold no responsibility for this war.”
Two centuries ago, the ‘enemy’ wasn’t called terrorist, jihadist, or Hamas operative, but a ‘savage’ or a ‘redskin.’
The American Indian Wars (1865-1898) resulted in 1,944 total US casualties, including the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn (AKA “Custer’s Last Stand”). And how did the indigenous muqawama fare against the mighty US Cavalry and the rapid-fire Gatling gun?
“By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained of the estimated five million-plus living in North America before European contact.”
I bet you the children of those Indigenous people in North America 150 years ago felt the same way as Palestinian children in Gaza feel today.
No wonder war crimes-indicted Benjamin Netanyahu shut down al-Jazeera and is kicking the UNRWA out of Gaza: Eliminate any witnesses as well as any humanitarian organizations that can help Palestinians with food or medical care.
Sources:
Gaza and the West Bank – Where we work – War Child
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war
https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-genocide-united-states
Death feels imminent for 96% of children in Gaza, study finds | Gaza | The Guardian
Russian Missile Scientist Assassinated Near Moscow
Mikhail Shatsky was rendered ineffective by Ukrainian intelligence operatives. (Undated photo)
A senior Russian cruise missile engineer was shot dead near Moscow which Ukrainian media attributed to their country’s espionage services.
Mikhail Shatsky was deputy chief of design and head of software at the Moscow Experimental Design Bureau Mars, which develops automatic control and navigation systems for satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles. Mars is part of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom.
The Russian military uses Kh-59, Kh-69 and Kh-101 missiles against Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force recently intercepted two Kh-59/69 missiles over the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Shatsky was apparently gunned down as part of a “special operation” by the Ukrainian military’s HUR defense intelligence agency.
Said an anonymous security service source:
“Anyone in any way involved in developing Russia’s military-industrial complex and thus supporting Russian aggression against Ukraine is a legitimate target for the [Ukrainian] defense forces.”
Meanwhile, President Zelensky visited frontlines as Russia continued to pound Ukraine’s power infrastructure with a massive drone and rocket attack in an attempt to cripple the energy grid to freeze and demoralize the civilians with winter fast approaching.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits soldiers of the 27th Rocket Artillery Brigade on 12 Dec.(Photo: AFP)
Ukraine’s sabotage apparatus continues to improve and Shatsky has been added to the list of other Russian High Value Targets (HVT) neutralized within Russia’s borders by car bomb, blunt trauma, or direct gunfire. This particular liquidation is reminiscent of Iranian nuclear scientists who have been reputedly killed over the years by Israeli intelligence.
Earlier this year Canada donated 10,500 9mm Browning Hi-Power automatic pistols to Kiev which are perfect for use by the Ukrainian police or their espionage network.
Canadian Forces soldiers firing reliable 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistols. (Photo: Able Seaman Camden Scott / DND)
Sources:
UN Warning: Increase in Permanently Dry Land is ‘Redefining Life on Earth’
Just over 75 percent of the world’s land has been left “permanently drier” over the previous three decades, with massive implications for agriculture, food production, the eco-system, and mass forced migration the UN warns.
Dry land now covers around 40% of the Earth’s land mass, excluding Antarctica, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) study found, cautioning the shift could affect up to five billion people by 2100.
“Some 77.6% of Earth’s land experienced drier conditions during the three decades leading up to 2020 compared to the previous 30-year period.”
This is an “existential threat” posed by seemingly irreversible trends. Dry land regions where agriculture is difficult increased by 4.3 million square kms between 1990 and 2020, an area a third the size of India.
At the same time that land is being depleted, global demand for resources is increasing. By 2030, food production is estimated to require an additional 300 million hectares of land.
The changes are largely attributed to global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, which alter rainfall and increase water evaporation. The effects of the chronic water shortages include soil degradation, ecosystem collapse, food insecurity, and forced migration.
Already, 2.3 billion people live in expanding dry areas with projections showing a “worst-case scenario” of five billion people living in the conditions as the planet continues to warm.
This will add to the countless numbers of refugees trying to escape desertification, drought, poverty, famine, misery, and the attendant violence associated with desperate resource mongering, like we see in Haiti today.
North African migrants swimming from an overcrowded dinghy on 27 July 2015. Up to 30 refugees may have drowned that day according to the International Office of Migration (IOM). (Photo: Santi Palacios / AP)
Sources:
https://www.treehugger.com/what-is-desertification-5115926
US Charges Syrian National Living in South Carolina with Torturing Dissidents at Damascus Prison
Samir Ousman Alsheikh (L); then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (R) (2011 photo: SNHR)
A federal grand jury in Los Angeles, CA returned a superseding indictment charging Samir Ousman Alsheikh (72) of Lexington, SC with torture.
The defendant was the head of Damascus Central Prison (AKA the Adra Prison) from 2005 through 2008. In that role, Alsheikh allegedly ordered subordinates to inflict and was sometimes personally involved in inflicting severe physical and mental pain and suffering on political dissidents and other prisoners.
Samir Ousman Alsheikh was previously indicted for immigration fraud when he allegedly made similar false statements when applying for a visa that enabled him to enter the US in 2020, become a lawful permanent resident, and obtain a green card.
Recently an AMCIT named Travis Timmerman was freed from a Syrian prison who although himself was not tortured, heard the cries of the suffering from nearby cells.
Travis Timmerman in undated photo courtesy of http://www.indiatoday.in
Amnesty International debriefed former Syrian prisoners years ago and below are examples of how people were brutally tortured by the sadists in the ousted regime.
The “Tire” (Illustration: Mohamad Hamdoun)
The “Welcome Party” (Illustration: Mohamad Hamdoun)
The “Flying Carpet” (Illustration: Mohamad Hamdoun)
Members of the public who have information about human rights violators in the US or abroad are urged to contact US law enforcement through the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI or the HSI tip line at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE or visit https://tips.fbi.gov/home.
An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Sources:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-syrian-prison-official-charged-torture
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-syrian-prison-official-charged-immigration-fraud
https://snhr.org/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/08/syria-torture-prisons/
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-citizen-freed-syrian-prison-identified-travis-timmerman-not-austin-tice
Jack and the Green Sprouts Listeria Outbreak Sickens Four
The sprouts were sold in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, and recalled in early Oct 2024. At that time, the FDA says that there were no known illnesses associated with the sprouts.
Listeria monocytogenes infections can take up to 70 days to appear, although most people get sick within a month. The sprouts were recalled on 4 Oct 2024 and seventy days from that date is 16 Dec 2024. Some people may still get sick from eating tainted sprouts in October.
(Listeria bacteria image: CDC)
The classic early symptoms of listeriosis are nausea and diarrhea. If the illness progressed to a more serious form if the bacteria get into the bloodstream, patients experience a stiff neck, high fever, severe headache, muscle aches, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps.
About 1,600 people contract Listeria infections every year in the US and about 260 of those patients die.
Sources:
Jack and the Green Sprouts Alfalfa Sprouts Recalled For Listeria
CDC
Without Firing a Shot: This is How the Cold War Ends (for Now)
President-elect Donald Trump has picked the worst picks humanly possible to sit on his future cabinet: Unvetted, unqualified quacks, wonks, polemicists, misogynists, crackpots, racists, conspiracy theorists, oligarchs, TV personalities, kleptocrats, dipsomaniacs, and Islamophobes. One advisor wants to ban the polio vaccination. We need not go into their names again as they have been painfully burned into our braincells.
A Russian TV host gleefully claimed that “Trump’s Cabinet picks will dismantle America.”
Republican programs will intentionally weaken, sicken, pauperize, and demoralize the American people with their destructive health, social, and economic policies. This is called “social murder” when unnatural deaths occur due to social, political, or economic oppression, instead of from direct violence. Failing to provide reproductive rights to pregnant women fall into this category. The concept of “social murder” was originally coined in 1845 by German philosopher Friedrich Engels and this is what he saw two centuries ago:
Poorhouses and debtor’s prisons were designed to punish the penniless.
The American public is already suffering with 44,000 firearms murders a year. Countless numbers of people died during the COVID epidemic when GOP governors did not enforce health regulations, such as masking, vaccinating, or avoiding mass gatherings. Women unable to receive reproductive care have died. The number of US fatalities will increase in all categories of morbidity under the incoming Trump administration to the delight of the Kremlin.
Senior US intelligence officials have already signalled their departure when Trump assumes the Presidency and only a sober and sane US Senate confirmation process of these odious Cabinet picks might help mitigate the future catastrophes that await the American people. But hope is not a plan as the US Army taught your humble author decades ago.
The American people can thank Fifth Columnists like these two grinning Republicans below for helping to hand over America to the Kremlin without the Russians having to fire a single shot.
Examples of Lenin’s “useful idiots” You wonder how these two altacockers will feel when President Trump cuts their Social Security and Medicare benefits? (Photo: Jeremy Pelzer/Cleveland.com)
In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba to prevent Soviet nuclear missiles from reaching an island 90 miles from the American shore. The Cold War was inches or seconds from becoming atomic hot.
So terrified were people of a nuclear war with the USSR, Noël Regney (music) Gloria Shayne (lyrics) quickly wrote and produced this melodic song (in the key of C Major) as a plea for world peace which you will no doubt recognize:
The Kennedy Administration competently and coolly resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis when the Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba; the US in turn removed Jupiter nuclear IRBMs from Turkiye and atomic Armageddon was averted.
So, what would WWII veteran and Cold Warrior President John F. Kennedy say today about Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” walking with Russian President Vladimir Putin pictured below?
45th President Donald Trump being led by his KGB handler in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018. In President Putin’s right hand are the detailed instructions he readied for his American protege. Putin speaks German fluently and English competently so he transmits his orders directly to Trump without need of an interpreter.
Sources:
Russian TV host gleefully claims Trump’s Cabinet will ‘dismantle’ America, report says
Intelligence IGs head for the exits ahead of Trump’s return – Defense One
Alleged Chinese Spy with Links to Prince Andrew Banned from UK
Prince Andrew is pictured with the Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming. Photo: @AmbLiuXiaoMing circa 2020.
A Chinese businessman described as a “close confidant” of the Duke of York has lost an appeal against a decision to bar him from the UK on national security grounds. The man, known only as H6, brought the case after being banned from entering the country in March 2023. H6 had formed a close working relationship with Prince Andrew.
H6 brought his case to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a court set up to consider appeals against decisions to ban or remove someone from the country on national security or related grounds.
In the published ruling, the judge said that the then-home secretary, Suella Braverman, was “entitled to conclude that [H6] represented a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom, and that she was entitled to conclude that his exclusion was justified and proportionate”.
The court assessed that this meant H6 was in a position “to generate relationships between senior Chinese officials and prominent UK figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State”.
H6 was believed to be associated with the United Front Work Department (UFWD), an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tasked with conducting influence operations.
MI5 had expressed concern about the threat posed to the UK by political interference by China and that bodies such as the UFWD were “mounting patient, well-funded, deceptive campaigns to buy and exert influence”.
The Home Office said they believed H6 had been engaged in covert and deceptive activity on behalf of the CCP and that his relationship with Prince Andrew could be used for political interference.
In November 2019, Prince Andrew stepped back from royal duties amid growing public anger about his friendship with the late US financier and thoroughly loathsome sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Questions were subsequently raised about his finances after he reached a settlement – believed to run into the millions – in a civil sexual assault case brought against him by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers. The disgraced prince has always denied assaulting Ms. Giuffre.
Prince Andrew (L) and the incredibly repulsive Jeffrey Epstein (R).
Last month, a royal biography claimed the prince’s brother, King Charles, had cut Prince Andrew off financially, ceasing to pay for security at his home or provide him with a personal allowance.
Lo, how the mighty have fallen. Far above the proletariat, rather than seeking gainful employment like the working class people in the UK or the US, Prince Andrew cultivated contacts with Chinese intelligence to enrich himself. MI5 and MI6 already have their hands full with Chinese and Russian espionage and here Prince Andrew further dishonors himself publicly by putting Beijing’s interests over London’s for a mere 30 pieces of silver. At least no one died by this nefarious relationship that the public is aware of.
Sources:
H6 v SSHD OPEN Judgment final for hand down FINAL
Alleged Chinese spy with links to Prince Andrew banned from UK
Prince Andrew’s funding cut off by King Charles, claims book
Senior Cat Caged Most of Her Life is Finally Free
Coriolanus 