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New revelations in attack on American spy ship

Bryce Lockwood, Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister, is shouting into the phone.

“I’m angry! I’m seething with anger! Forty years, and I’m seething with anger!”

Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.

For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy’s most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they’re also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.

“They tried to lie their way out of it!” Lockwood shouts. “I don’t believe that for a minute! You just don’t shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!”

Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.

Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency’s position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots — communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.

The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel’s reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.

In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country’s chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had “become the center of considerable controversy and debate.” It was not the agency’s intention, it said, “to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material,” available at http://www.nsa.gov/liberty .

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, called the attack on the Liberty “a tragic and terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity, for which Israel has officially apologized.” Israel also paid reparations of $6.7 million to the injured survivors and the families of those killed in the attack, and another $6 million for the loss of the Liberty itself.

But for those who lost their sons and husbands, neither the Israelis’ apology nor the passing of time has lessened their grief.

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Everything Is a Weapon: The U.S. Government Is Waging Psychological Warfare on the Nation

“Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings? … Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.”— U.S. Army Psychological Operations recruitment video

The U.S. government is waging psychological warfare on the American people.

No, this is not a conspiracy theory.

Psychological warfare, according to the Rand Corporation, “involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups.”

For years now, the government has been bombarding the citizenry with propaganda campaigns and psychological operations aimed at keeping us compliant, easily controlled and supportive of the police state’s various efforts abroad and domestically.

The government is so confident in its Orwellian powers of manipulation that it’s taken to bragging about them. Just recently, for example, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the branch of the military responsible for psychological warfare, released a recruiting video that touts its efforts to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

This is the danger that lurks in plain sight.

Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare may be the most devastating in terms of the long-term consequences.

As the military journal Task and Purpose explains, “Psychological warfare is all about influencing governments, people of power, and everyday citizens… PSYOP soldiers’ key missions are to influence ‘emotions, notices, reasoning, and behavior of foreign governments and citizens,’ ‘deliberately deceive’ enemy forces, advise governments, and provide communications for disaster relief and rescue efforts.”

Yet don’t be fooled into thinking these psyops (psychological operations) campaigns are only aimed at foreign enemies. The government has made clear in word and deed that “we the people” are domestic enemies to be targeted, tracked, manipulated, micromanaged, surveilled, viewed as suspects, and treated as if our fundamental rights are mere privileges that can be easily discarded.

Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government has been subjecting the American people to “apple-pie propaganda” for the better part of the last century.

Consider some of the ways in which the government continues to wage psychological warfare on a largely unsuspecting citizenry.

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YouTube censors New York Post interview

YouTube removed a video of the New York Post’s interview of Aaron Mostofsky, one of President Trump’s supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. YouTube claimed the video was removed over election misinformation.

“We realize this may be disappointing news, but it’s our job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all,” YouTube said in the removal notice. The removed video was posted on the personal channel of the reporter who conducted the interview just before the riot began.

“Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the US 2020 presidential election is not allowed on YouTube,” the platform added.

Mostofsky, the son of Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Steven Mostofsky, was one of the first rioters to storm the Capitol. He was clad in a fur costume, a police vest, and a police shield when he was interviewed by the Post. He said he had found the police gear.

During his trial, where he was sentenced to eight months in prison, it was revealed that he wore fur to show that “even a caveman knows the election was stolen.”

“Can you tell me what you’re doing here today?” the interview started.

“Well, to express my opinion as a free American, my belief that this election was stolen. We were cheated. I don’t think 75 million people voted for Trump, I think it was close to 85 million. I think certain states that had been blue for a long time had been red and were stolen like New York,” Mostofsky said.

“And where did you travel from?” the Post’s reporter asked.

“Brooklyn,” Mostofsky said.

“Can you tell me anything about the shield here?” the interviewer pressed.

“The shield? Found it on the floor. I found a cap and I gave it to the cops because it may be someone’s personal thing. This [shield], I have no idea. There’s no name. They probably just grab it. Looks like it’s been used a lot,” Mostofsky said.

“Should senators be afraid? Should House members be afraid?” the interviewer asked.

“They shouldn’t be afraid,” he replied. “They should find their courage to do their duty … to examine the fraud, maybe delay the election. I don’t know what to do. But we have a Constitution. You don’t rewrite the law because of COVID. It’s not ‘Give me liberty or give me death, but COVID.’”

The Post says YouTube’s election misinformation policy, like many other policies, is enforced arbitrarily.

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Says People Charged With Violent Crimes Are Guilty Because Prosecutors Say So

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has repeatedly blamed bail reforms and local judges for exacerbating gun violence by releasing defendants back onto the streets, but on Monday she took her rhetoric a step further, saying that people charged with violent crime should be kept in jail because only guilty people get charged with violent crimes.

The comments, first reported by the Chicago Tribune, were part of a longer harangue against the Cook County courts and bail reform efforts.

“We shouldn’t be locking up nonviolent individuals just because they can’t afford to pay bail. But, given the exacting standards that the state’s attorney has for charging a case, which is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, when those charges are brought, these people are guilty,” Lightfoot said. “Of course they’re entitled to a presumption of innocence. Of course they’re entitled to their day in court. But residents in our community are also entitled to safety from dangerous people, so we need to keep pressing the criminal courts to lock up violent dangerous people and not put them out on bail or electronic monitoring back into the very same communities where brave souls are mustering the courage to come forward and say, ‘this is the person who is responsible.'”

The comments outraged civil liberties advocates and public defenders in Chicago, and rightly so. They should offend anyone familiar with the American criminal justice system and why it places such an emphasis on the presumption of innocence: to force the government to prove its case and shield defendants from prejudice and demagoguery. Lightfoot’s statements are particularly absurd, given the enormous amount of taxpayer money Chicago has spent settling wrongful conviction lawsuits.

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YouTuber 3D Prints “World’s First” Rocket Launcher And Fires At Target

3D printing has revolutionized gun-making and has come a long way since the single-shot “The Liberator” pistol was available for download in 2013. Now entire semiautomatic pistol carbines can be entirely printed at home, and weapon-making appears to have graduated to rocket launchers. 

Youtuber “Ordnance Lab“ (also known as Ordnance Lab LLC and holds a Type 10 FFL) published a video showing what they say is the “world’s first 3D printed rocket launcher.” 

“In this video we team up with D&S Creations, who have developed 3D printed rockets and rocket launchers. We test both a smaller caliber rocket and a larger one, along with a prototype for a shaped charge warhead. This is just the start of our working on 3D printed rockets. We have the launch and detonation figured out, now we need to work on getting the accuracy figured out,” Ordnance Lab said in the video’s description. 

One firing test shows a 3D-printed rocket with a shaped charge denoting on a target. The narrator in the video said the “flash powder charge produced a very bright and loud report.” 

This is the first time we’ve seen 3D-printed rocket launchers demonstrated in a video. Earlier this year, Deterrence Dispensed, an online group that promotes and distributes open-source 3D-printed firearm blueprints, released a video showing the use of a “66mm recoilless launcher.” 

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Federal scientists conduct illegal molecular research

Newly-released records show that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been involved in over two dozen cases of research with recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid (r/sNa) molecules without proper approval, and in violation of its own guidelines.

That’s according to the watchdog group Judicial Watch, which who recently obtained 2369 pages of records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Lincoln Dr. Matt Anderson reports an incident that began in March 2018 wherein Dr. Shi-Hua Xiang created an HIV pseudo virus containing Marburg glycoprotein M78 in a university Biosafety Level 2 laboratory, for which he did not have authorization.

NIH Documents

Recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid (r/sNA) molecules are constructed outside of living cells. The molecules are made by joining DNA or RNA segments (natural or synthetic) to DNA or RNA molecules that can replicate within a living cell.

They may also result from replication of previously constructed recombinant molecules.

NIH guidelines detail safety practices and containment procedures for basic and clinical research involving recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid molecules, including creation and use of organisms and viruses containing recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid molecules.

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NPR Misleads Viewers With Claim Of ‘Over 240 Mass Shootings’ Halfway Into 2022

Do American citizens still believe that NPR is truly an “unbiased” news organization? A new report by the taxpayer-funded public radio recently raised alarm bells for Americans across the country after it announced that there have been “over 240 mass shootings” in the United States since the beginning of 2022.

According to the article, the United States endured  “at least 246 [mass shootings] in just over 22 weeks,” for an average of “just over 11 a week.”

Such a number was reached without looking at the FBI’s traditional definition of a mass shooting, which necessitates that 4 or more people other than the gunman are killed during the incident. NPR instead elected to utilize the Gun Violence Archive of four or more people being shot, regardless of survival.

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