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Putin aide accuses WaPo of ‘truth distortion’

Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev has accused the Washington Post of “truth distortion” over a quote wrongly attributed to him, and demanded the outlet apologize.

In an article on Saturday about Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s visit to the US, the outlet suggested that a recent phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, shifted Washington’s stance on the Ukraine conflict.

The Washington Post cited Dmitriev as saying: “Zelensky’s tour summed up in one sentence: Putin outmaneuvered everyone again.” It claimed that Dmitriev made the remark on Telegram.

In a post on X on Saturday, Dmitriev expressed outrage that the line – which he had reposted from another news channel – was attributed to him.

“Another eye-opening case of truth distortion from the fake @washingtonpost,” he wrote. “I reposted a post from a Telegram channel – yet your article attributed those quotes to me. That’s like blaming users for retweets.”

Dmitriev demanded that the outlet correct the attribution immediately, issue an apology, and launch an internal probe.

Later in the day, the outlet issued a correction, admitting that a previous version of its article had “incorrectly attributed” the quote to Dmitriev. The presidential aide thanked the WaPo on X for acknowledging the error, but asked the paper to issue a formal apology and publish both the apology and the correction “in the next print edition.”

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Zohran Mamdani Campaigns with Imam Tied to 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

One day after the New York City mayoral debate, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani openly campaigned at a mosque alongside Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Instead of distancing himself, Mamdani proudly highlighted the event.

He even posted about it publicly, as if daring New Yorkers to overlook the danger.

For years, warnings about Mamdani’s ties to Wahhaj have circulated. Wahhaj was named by federal prosecutors as a co-conspirator in the terror plot that killed six and injured more than a thousand.

Despite this, he continues to serve as an imam in New York and has donated to Mamdani’s campaign.

He remains an influential figure in the same activist networks that have normalized radicalism under the banner of “progress.”

The connections don’t stop there. Linda Sarsour, the anti-Israel activist who has publicly defended Hamas sympathizers, calls Wahhaj her mentor.

His son, Siraj Wahhaj Jr., operated a jihadi compound in New Mexico where children were indoctrinated and trained to commit terrorist attacks.

Federal authorities reported that the group stockpiled weapons, plotted mass murder, and buried the remains of children on the site.

Members of the compound received life sentences.

These are the people surrounding Mamdani. These are the networks trying to seize political power in New York City.

Instead of distancing himself, Mamdani embraces them.

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Democratic Senate Candidate Graham Platner Calls For Violence In Now-Deleted Posts

Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner once urged violence as a tool for social change in a now-deleted Reddit post, according to Politico.

Platner, a former Marine and oyster farmer, wrote in 2018 that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice” and suggested that those who “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle” should “do some reading of history,” the outlet

Platner did not dispute his authorship of the posts but renounced his past rhetoric in a statement to Politico.

“As I told CNN, I was fucking around on the internet at a time when I felt lost and very disillusioned with our government who sent me overseas to watch my friends die,” Platner said. “I made dumb jokes and picked fights. But of course I’m not a socialist. I’m a small business owner, a Marine Corps veteran, and a retired shitposter.”

CNN first reported Thursday that Platner participated in the subreddit r/SocialistRA, along with other left-wing forums. Many of his posts date back roughly five years and appeared under the Reddit username “P-Hustle,” where he called police “all bastards,” described himself as a communist, and said rural white Americans were racist and stupid.

Platner deleted the posts in August, the same month he launched his Senate campaign, saying he wanted to distance himself from what he described as a darker period in his life.

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Canada’s AG Claims Anti-“Hate” Law Isn’t About Censorship

Governments around the world have a long history of introducing laws that restrict speech while insisting they are not acts of censorship.

Each new proposal is framed as a measure to promote safety, combat misinformation, or protect vulnerable communities, yet the result is often the same: expanded state authority over what citizens can say or share.

Now Canada’s Attorney General Sean Fraser is attempting to reassure Canadians that the federal government’s new hate speech legislation, Bill C-9, is not a disguised attempt to police online expression.

The proposal, already facing strong opposition from free expression advocates, introduces new “hate-related” offenses and expands police powers over what is labeled “hatred” in the Criminal Code.

Fraser told MPs that the government is not seeking to criminalize internet activity that is currently legal.

“We should recognize there are many acts we may find offensive that do not constitute hate for the purpose of the Criminal Code,” he said during his appearance before the Commons justice committee.

He insisted the bill’s purpose is not censorship, even as he confirmed that its provisions would apply equally to speech on the internet and in public spaces.

The legislation, officially titled An Act To Amend The Criminal Code (Combatting Hate Act), also bans the display of Nazi and Hamas symbols that are deemed to promote hatred, makes it an offense to obstruct religious or cultural ceremonies, and rewrites how “hatred” is defined.

The bill frames it as “the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than disdain or dislike.”

Free speech advocates have warned that this rewording lowers the legal bar by abandoning the Supreme Court’s requirement that hatred must be “an emotion of an intense and extreme nature.”

Fraser responded that any online statement would only be subject to prosecution if it already met the threshold for hate propaganda under existing law. “The only circumstance where you could imagine some online comment attracting scrutiny under this law would attach to behavior that is criminal today but is punished less severely,” he told the committee.

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Gaza officials formally accuse Israel of organ theft, demand international probe

Gaza’s Government Media Office formally accused Israel on 17 October of stealing organs from Palestinians after Israel returned 120 mutilated bodies following the recent ceasefire, including some who had been tortured to death.

“We formally accuse the Israeli army of stealing organs from the martyrs,” stated Dr. Ismail al-Thawabta, Director General of the Media Office, while demanding an international investigation into Israel’s “torture, mutilation, and organ theft.”

The 120 bodies “arrived in extremely poor and distressing condition,” including blindfolded, bound, crushed under tanks, and missing corneas, livers, and limbs, Thawabta stated.

“The Israeli occupation executed many of them in cold blood. A large number were found blindfolded, with their hands and feet bound, and others showed signs of hanging or close-range gunfire,” he added.

“We also found bodies showing clear evidence of severe torture until death.”

Thawabta explained that Israeli authorities refused to provide the names of the victims, making it extremely difficult for authorities in Gaza to identify them.

After the release of the bodies, families of missing Palestinians rushed to hospitals—especially Nasser Hospital—trying to see if their relatives were among them. But many remain unidentified and will have to be buried anonymously.

“The health system in Gaza is almost completely collapsed. We lack the equipment for DNA testing and forensic analysis. Some families could only identify their loved ones from personal belongings or clothing. If we cannot identify the rest, we will be forced, sadly, to document and bury them anonymously, to preserve human dignity,” Thawabta added.

According to the Media Office’s data, 9,500 Palestinians remain missing, most of them trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

“Entire families—father, mother, children—remain buried for nearly two years,” the Media Office director stated.

The bodies are difficult to locate due to the sheer amount of destruction Israeli bombing has caused, and because Israel has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s heavy machinery, bulldozers, and excavators, preventing rescue operations.

“Even now, despite the ceasefire, all crossings remain closed, and Israel blocks the entry of rescue machinery. This is a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in modern history—over 3,000 families completely wiped out, another 6,000 families killed with only one survivor,” Thawabta added.

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Virginia Giuffre beaten, raped by ‘well-known prime minister’ in attack that broke Epstein spell, her memoir reveals

Prominent Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre was brutally bloodied, beaten and raped by a “well-known prime minister” in a series of savage encounters that finally helped the teenager break free from the sex trafficker’s spell.

In her posthumous memoir “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice,” Giuffre recalled begging Epstein to step in after the unnamed politician forced her to beg for her life — but the pedophile coldly told her it was simply part of her job.

“After the attack, I couldn’t stay a fool. Having been treated so brutally and then seeing Epstein’s callous reaction to how terrorized I felt, I had to accept that Epstein meted out praise merely as a manipulation to keep me subservient,” Giuffre wrote, according to an excerpt shared with The Post.

“Epstein cared only about Epstein.”

Giuffre simply referred to the deranged man as the “Prime Minister,” saying she was afraid the brute would “seek to hurt” her if she printed his name.

In the past, however, she pointed to Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak in court filings as one of the many elites who had raped her, a claim he has repeatedly denied.

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‘Catastrophic’ attack as Russians hack files on EIGHT MoD bases and post them on the dark web

Russian hackers have stolen hundreds of sensitive military documents containing details of eight RAF and Royal Navy bases as well as Ministry of Defence staff names and emails – and posted them on the dark web, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

In what has been described as a ‘catastrophic’ security breach, cybercriminals accessed the cache of files by hacking a maintenance and construction contractor used by the MoD.

The ‘gateway’ attack – which targeted third party the Dodd Group – allowed cyber gangsters to circumvent the almost impenetrable cyber defences used by the Armed Forces.  

The MoD said it was investigating the enormous data and security breach, believed to have been carried out by Russian group Lynx.

Leaked documents seen by the MoS disclose information about a number of sensitive RAF and Navy bases, including RAF Lakenheath, in Suffolk, where the US Air Force’s F-35 stealth jets are based and their nuclear bombs are believed to be housed.

Other bases include RAF Portreath – a top-secret radar station that forms part of Nato‘s air defence network – and RAF Predannack, now home to the UK’s National Drone Hub.

Details of contractors’ names, car registrations and mobile numbers, as well as MoD personnel’s names and email addresses, have also been uploaded. Some documents are marked ‘Controlled’ or ‘Official Sensitive’.

The disclosure follows a warning from the National Cyber Security Centre last week that the number of significant hacking attacks in the UK have reached a record high, with 204 taking place in the year to September.

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Democrats’ Bill Would Let Federal Workers Skip Paying Rent During Government Shutdowns

Since the federal government isn’t currently paying its bills during the shutdown, Senate Democrats think federal workers shouldn’t have to either.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii) and 17 of his Democratic Senate colleagues have introduced a bill that would relieve federal workers and contractors from their obligations to pay rent, mortgages, insurance premiums, and student loan payments during shutdowns.

The bill would also stay eviction and foreclosure proceedings for 30 days after a shutdown ends. Anyone who tries to carry out an eviction or foreclosure of a federal worker or contractor during that time would be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to fines or even jail time.

“Right now, hundreds of thousands of federal workers, federal contractor employees, and their families don’t know whether they’ll be able to pay rent and make ends meet. Our bill will protect these workers and make sure they aren’t harmed during this shutdown,” said Schatz.

To be sure, this bill is mostly signaling.

Politically, Republicans are not going to advance legislation that would reduce pressure on Democrats to vote to reopen the government.

Practically, the protections it would offer federal workers are unnecessary, at least in the housing context.

It would be odd, and indeed irrational, for a landlord to evict an otherwise good tenant if they miss a full rent payment during a government shutdown that will, in all likelihood, end in a few weeks. That’s particularly true given that government workers are guaranteed back pay once a shutdown ends.

Pursuing an eviction in that context would require a landlord to kick out a tenant who’s going to start paying their bills again soon, and instead incur the costs of the eviction itself, turning over the unit, and finding a new tenant.

Clearly, the reasonable thing to do would be for landlords and their current tenants to work out a deal in such circumstances. We have plenty of evidence that that’s what happens even during even more severe economic shocks.

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shutdowns put a lot of people out of work. Contrary to the predictions of activists, this did not produce a mass wave of evictions—either before or after eviction moratoriums were put in place, and even when promised federal rental assistance was hard to access.

By and large, tenants paid their bills with what funds they had, and landlords worked out deals about how to cover any shortfall.

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Venezuela regime change means invasion, chaos, and heavy losses

Maximum pressure has long been President Donald Trump’s stance towards the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela — he slapped crippling sanctions on the country during his first term — but in recent days the administration has pushed the stakes even higher.

The Caribbean is currently hosting an astonishing quantity of American naval and air assets, including four Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, a guided missile cruiser, an attack submarine, a Marine Amphibious Ready Group, and a flight of F-35 multirole fighters.

These are ostensibly deployed as part of an antinarcotic and drug interdiction operation, but the volume of firepower employed for what is normally a relatively sedate task has created broad suspicion at home and in Venezuela that a military intervention against the Bolivarian Republic is on tap. Maduro recently sent a letter to the United Nations stating that he expected an “armed attack” against his country in “a very short time.”

His concerns have probably not been assuaged by the formation of a new Joint Task Force last week (again ostensibly for anti-narcotics operations) in SOUTHCOM under the II Marine Expeditionary Force, precisely the kind of unit that would be deployed in a Venezuelan military intervention, still less by the recent New York Times report that Trump has authorized lethal covert operations by American intelligence agents within his borders.

The administration has made its interest in removing Maduro quite clear: it views him as the head of a narcoterrorist organization that is responsible for exporting crime, drugs, and illegal immigrants to the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared that Maduro is not the legitimate president of the country, due to his government’s obvious falsification of results in the 2024 election, and the Justice Department doubled the bounty for his capture to $50 million.

But while Maduro is, without a doubt, a usurper of the presidential office and a tyrannical dictator, he is no less the president and head of state of Venezuela. Ideological harangues about the sanctity of democracy will no more remove him from power or render his government moot than American disapproval of the Chinese Communist Party could affect the democratization of Red China, something both sides are well aware of. Removing Maduro will require more than sanctions, threats, or pressure: it will require war, and that possibility looks increasingly likely with each passing day.

While ending Maduro’s dictatorship would certainly be a boon to the Venezuelan people, the intervention comes with a number of costs and risks American policymakers should bear in mind and carefully weigh against the potential benefits of intervention. There is no free lunch in geopolitics.

The most obvious costs are those of the initial invasion. The American invasion of Panama in 1989, to overthrow the government of General Manuel Noriega, was carried out by a force of some 27,000 U.S. troops, 23 of which were killed and hundreds more wounded. Venezuela is vastly larger than Panama, and while its military is very poorly equipped, it likewise dwarfs the forces that were available to Noriega. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates an invasion of Venezuela would require nearly 50,000 troops, some of which will not return home. Any American government should be extremely conscientious about the causes on which it spends the lives of American soldiers.

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Mom Placed on Child Abuse Registry for Letting 13-Year-Old Babysit

When single mom of two and home health aide Alice (a pseudonym) needed to run a brief errand, she tasked her 13-year-old brother (whom she is also the caretaker for) with babysitting her nearly 1-year-old child. For this, she was placed on the state’s child abuse registry.

Mariel Mussack, an attorney with Community Legal Services, told Alice’s story during testimony before the Pennsylvania House Children and Youth Committee in favor of H.B. 1873—known as Reasonable Independence for Children—on October 6. Similar bills have been passed in 11 states to date, clarifying that neglect is when a parent puts their child in obvious, serious danger, not anytime they simply take their eyes off of them. 

As in most of the other states, the Pennsylvania bill has bipartisan sponsors: Rep. Jeanne McNeill (D–Whitehall), who is majority chair of the committee, Rep. Rick Krajewski (D–Philadelphia), and Rep. David Zimmerman (R–Reinholds). Krajewski opened the hearing by noting that he’d grown up with a single mom who worked two or three jobs, and therefore, he had to get himself to school and help care for his younger sister. “It really does chill me to think that, in the eyes of our state statutes, that could be seen as neglect,” Krajewski said. 

Zimmerman recalled growing up on a farm. “We’d be gone all day,” he said. “And we really would look out for each other.” 

Peter Gray, a research professor of developmental psychology at Boston College and a co-founder with me of Let Grow, a nonprofit fighting for childhood independence, testified that an independent childhood helps inoculate kids against despair. 

“Over the last 60 years, we’ve seen a gradual but overall huge decline in children’s opportunities to play, roam, and generally engage in activities independent of adults,” Gray said, adding that “we’ve seen a gradual but overall huge increase in anxiety, depression, and…suicide among young people.” 

That’s due to a shrinking “internal locus of control,” the sense that you can handle things alone, said Gray. The way you build a robust internal locus of control is by being trusted to decide some things for yourself, like how to spend your time, and what you can handle on your own. “But,” Gray said, “we’re not allowing [kids] to do that.”

As constant adult supervision becomes the norm, more and more kids are being reported to the authorities. Diane Redleaf, a civil rights lawyer and Let Grow’s legal consultant, says that 37 percent of American children will be the subject of a hotline call—that number soars to 53 percent for African-American children.

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